Secrets of Game Feel and Juice | Game Maker's Toolkit

Some game designers use words like "game feel" and "juice" to describe the abstract and often invisible factors that make the best action games surge with life and energy. In this episode of Game Maker's Toolkit, we try to figure out what those words mean, and how you can capitalise on them to make your game feel more fun and satisfying.

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Jan Willem Nijman (Vlambeer)'s "The art of screenshake"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEq...

Jonatan Söderström (Cactus)'s "The 4 Hour Game Design"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgwlJ...

Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho (Grapefruit)'s "Juice it or lose it"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aC...

Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance):

Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games, 2012)
Random Heroes (Ravenous Games, 2012)
Super Time Force (Capybara Games, 2014)
Rogue Legacy (Cellar Door Games, 2013)
Super Meat Boy (Team Meat, 2010)
Castle Crashers (The Behemoth, 2008)
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Nicalis / Edmund McMillen, 2014)
Super Mario World (Nintendo, 1990)
Super Mario 64 (Nintendo, 1996)
Nuclear Throne (Vlambeer, 2015)
rymdkapsel (Grapefrukt, 2013)
Ridiculous Fishing (Vlambeer, 2013)
Gunbrick (Nitrome, 2015)
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (Capcom, 1992)
God of War (Santa Monica Studio, 2005)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Nintendo, 2002)
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (WayForward, 2014)
Guacamelee (Drinkbox Studios, 2013)
Shank (Klei Entertainment, 2010)
Gun Godz (Vlambeer, 2013)
Super Crate Box (Vlambeer, 2010)
Peggle (PopCap Games, 2007)
Alien Hominid HD (The Behemoth, 2007)

Music used in this episode:

00:00 - Miami (Hotline Miami)
01:15 - Main Theme (Super Mario 64)
01:56 - Forest Funk (Super Meat Boy)
02:41 - Luftrauser (Luftrausers)
03:35 - Construction Yard (Super Crate Box
04:35 - Decade Dance (Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number)

Clip credits:

"God of War 1 - Part 1 of 11" - bdcool213
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhdvG...

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Closed Caption:

Hi this is Mark Brown with Game Maker's Toolkit:
a series on video game design.
This is an iPhone game called Random Heroes.
It's a run and gun platformer and it's fine.
It exists. But it feels kind of limp and lifeless,
like the video game equivalent of a cabbage.
It doesn't even really look much fun, right?
Now compare it to a game like Super Time Force
and it's a completely different experience.
It feels alive and responsive. It pops and
crackles, like electricity is surging through
your Xbox. It's just much more fun.
I think this is a good example of how one
developer, Capy in this instance, has maximised
an elusive quantity in games that some call
"game feel".
This is a mostly abstract, largely invisible
art, but getting it right is essential when
making a great action or platforming game
and it's something that players can immediately
detect as soon as they start waggling analogue
sticks and jabbing at buttons.
It mostly occurs in the fundamental action
of the game. It governs the second to second
play, and is felt in the very undercurrent
of the game.
A good way to test for this is to think how
does the game feel even when you strip out
the points, the story, the graphics, the music,
and the clever level design. Even without
all those trapping, is your game still fun
to interact with?
The Super Mario games are. In Mario 64, the
plumber is such a fun avatar to control, with
his bouncy jump, his wall kicks, his triple
leaps, his long jumps, and his stomach dives,
that you could lose hours just hopping around
a blank room. And it's said that for the first
few months, that's exactly what Mario 64 was
like as Shigeru Miyamoto fine tuned every
aspect of Mario's movement before making anything
else.
The "game feel" here is about the friction
and momentum and weight of Mario, and it's
the most important thing. In fact, the level
design and enemies in Mario 64 exist simply
to facilitate Mario. The levels let players
express his movement, and challenge them to
master his underlying move set.
Other developers have clocked this. Super
Meat Boy, for example, feels fun at a primal,
kinetic level. But plenty of platformers are
hampered by loose controls and stodgy movement.
Likewise, the best action games would still
be fun even if you're just blasting enemies
in a blank room forever. But many others lack
that vital energy.
When it comes to the fundamentals, there's
not much I can do to help right here. It's
going to be completely different for every
type of game, and I'm not sure that "be Shigeru
Miyamoto" is particularly useful advice.
But there are lots of little tricks, often
used in the polishing stages, that you can
crib from great games to make yours feel 100
times better. And in the spirit of brazen
theft, I stole most of these from talks by
Vlambeer, Cactus, and Grapefrukt. I've linked
to the full talks in the description below
if you want more.
So. First up, is screen shake and Vlambeer
is the king of this stuff. All its games wobble
uncontrollably when you fire a gun or hit
an enemy or saw through a fish. It feels satisfying,
and provides instantaneous feedback that the
player is touching the world.
Vlambeer also likes to pause the game for
a split second when you hit or kill an enemy,
just to make those impacts more impactful.
You see this in fighting games too - watch
how the action judders in Street Fighter,
to really make those kicks hit home. God of
War does this also and most Zelda games do
it as well.
To be honest, anything you can add to make
it really clear that you're damaging an enemy
is worth it. I'm talking about making them
flash white, get knocked back, spray blood,
change animation, or make a satisfying sound.
It all provides useful feedback, and it improves
the game's feel .
Similar effects can make playable characters
feel like they're really part of the world.
Like tiny dust particles when you hit the
ground and recoil when you fire a gun.
And sound effects are key. Make them bassy
and loud. A gun shouldn't sound like this…
It should sound like this.
You can use randomised sounds effects to avoid
repetition, or steal the rising pitch idea
from Mario and Peggle to sell the tenuous
joy of nursing a combo.
Next, be creative with your camera. In Luftrausers,
the camera doesn't follow your plane - it
intelligently moves to frame the action and
reveal nearby threats. And in Hotline Miami,
the camera juts out far in front of where
you're looking to help know how your hero
is orientated.
And make stuff big. Really big. Make the bullets
as big as your face like in Nuclear Throne,
make the explosions mini atom bombs like in
Super Time Force, and make the blood spatters
into geysers of red goop like in Hotline Miami.
And Hotline Miami has a permanence that many
other games lack. Bodies and blood sprays
stick around when you walk back to your car
to give you a little short-term nostalgia
of the chaos you've caused, and make battles
feel really hard won.
Ultimately, this stuff, which some call juice,
is all about doubling down on whatever your
game is about. If it's about shooting, then
make the guns kick and make the fire rate
fast and have the camera shudder with each
shot. But if it's about jumping, give your
character friction and keep the camera stay
still so you can land each jump.
Game feel is something that developers can
spend months, if not years working on, so
I doubt you're going to find the secret to
making your game feel fun and satisfying in
a five minute YouTube video. But hopefully
there's something to take away here, about
making the fundamental action feel good, and
making every lick of polish speak to what
the game is really about. Follow that advice,
and maybe, just maybe, I won't have to play
so many limp and lifeless iOS games for my
job.