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分享让游戏设计更生动的润色技巧

发布时间:2015-04-27 12:46:19 Tags:,,,,

作者:Nathan Lovato

你制作了一款很棒的游戏。其机制无懈可击,首个用户流程也很出色,人们马上就知道怎么玩游戏,但不知何故你的游戏还是有点不对劲。因为玩家首先接触到的是游戏的控制器,设计师就不得不费心思优化游戏体验,这种对游戏体验感的调整通常会涉及游戏润色这个概念。

什么是游戏润色?

这个概念是指为一款可行的游戏增加满意层次从而提升游戏感。满意度源于感觉,每种视觉和声音输入都有可能令以虚拟方式运行的东西变得富有可信度。这并不是创造真实感的艺术,而是令游戏更具生动性的幻术。这就好比是游戏设计师在压榨一枚开胃果的汁液。你能够感觉到在那些吊人胃口的文字下潜藏着一个强大的游戏设计理念。这是设计师可用于提升游戏感的一个特殊视角。

当用户体验设计遵从客观原理和规则时,游戏活力就会更具个性化和富有情感。你们对游戏的优化方式可能不尽相同,每位开发者都应该有自己专属的润色技巧。例如,Vlambeer就是创造屏幕震撼感的大师,而PopCap则是生动界面的典范,许多其他开发者的游戏中都贯穿着他们自创的风格。

从游戏开发者角度来看,这种润色技巧主要取决于2个层面:动画和音频。

渐变的艺术

渐变是使用计算机在两个极端值之间进行插值的过程。线性插值是我们所接触的最基本也是最常用的渐变方法。在动画动动方面,线性插值只会产生索然无味的结果。这很正常,要知道现实世界中没有什么东西会完全采用线性方式运行。

优秀的渐变方法取决于出色地运用12个动画原则。理解动画基本原则是关键,这需要一定的训练。但是,我们还有一些常用工具可以轻松实现渐变感:缓冲(easings)。

缓入缓出  

正如之前所言,在现实世界中几乎没有什么东西会以线性方式运行。要加快速度或创造惯性就需要再加把劲。运动中的对象总需要一些时间才能达到最大速度,或者完全停止下来。

我们想重塑自己游戏中每个运动对象的惯性感。这也是我们传递游戏世界中每件物体重量感的最佳方法。

那么缓冲是什么意思呢?它是用于逐渐插入2个值之间的函数集。缓冲为我们提供了一个表现惯性的便捷方法。缓冲方程可以用多种加速或减速曲线插入2个值。我们有许多缓冲类型,有些奇特的函数可以产生极为有趣的结果,例如弹跳/拉升公式。你可以在easings.net网站上找到许多常用的方程。

easeing(from gameanalytics)

一些常用的缓冲方程样本(from gameanalytics)

你可以看到每个方程都有3个变量,这可以用于:

*缓入,在开始时加速

*缓出,在最后减速

*两者皆可

你可能想让一个正在出现的动画缓出,尤其是UI元素。当它落入屏幕画面时,你想让游戏logo优雅地减速落入其最终位置。你可以将移动中的UI元素视为一个角色:它在移动状态的最初进行加速,而后以恒速方式移动,然后在停止之前稍稍滑行一下(缓出)。

该何时使用特定的缓冲类型?这要取决于你的需求!

你应该靠自己的速度感和计时感来选择缓冲类型。如果你想创造粗鲁的移动感,那就要选择指数缓冲。如果你需要柔和的移动感,就可以选择更简单的二次缓冲。只需要问问自己,我想为玩家创造哪种情感体验?

理解和掌握渐变的最佳方法就是观察其他开发者的运用试。最快捷的学习方法就是充分研究同行的作品。

润色需用于增强核心机制

游戏润色通常是指用于优化玩家体验的技巧。但这和使用现成的方法并不是同一回事。游戏润色必须响应游戏的核心玩法。我们无法随心所欲地提升游戏体验。屏幕震撼,挤压和拉升,弹跳感和其他快速动画只适用于特定情形!它们在动态游戏中较为常见。

而在故事导向型的游戏,或者在恐怖游戏中,你所需要的动画可能需要巧妙地传递一种神秘感。你无法使用搞笑的弹跳方程。你所采用的渐变幅度和节奏都会因为项目需求而产生巨大差别。

Child-of-light(from gameanalytics)

Child-of-light(from gameanalytics)

我认为润色的意义就在于强化原有的玩法。在Vlambeer的射击游戏中,其开发者所采用的润色方法相当直观:就是要让玩家获得一种力量感。你也可以通过增加子弹的大小,让子弹速度更快,在射击时增加一些后座力等方法来制造这种感觉。

那么其他类型的游戏该怎么办?每种题材和故事都可以视为不同的果实:它们都该有自己独有的果汁。让我们先看看另一个层面的内容:

音频

在提升游戏体验的过程中,音频是常被人们忽视的一个环节。至少低预算的独立开发者即是如此。但它却能够快速提升游戏反馈。优质的音频可以强化游戏中任何交互行为的存在感和可信度。糟糕的音频设计却可能摧毁一款游戏。

你应该格外重视与游戏玩法相关的声音内容。玩家所执行的一切交互行为都要有明确的音频反馈,要让这些声音听起来圆润而饱满。换句话说,你要找到一种音感并想想这些音调如何传递一种存在感或作用。在休闲游戏中,多数音调具有愉悦性,富有旋律而令人兴奋。每种声音听起来都令人愉快并且能够丰富积极的体验。这方面可以看看《TwinGo!》所有菜单上的交互行为如何创造出欢乐感,堪比任天堂游戏的音频质量。在创造类似于《The Room》这种空间游戏时,很有必要用寂静或近似于寂静的状态来创造一种强烈的音量变化,以便突出神秘或险恶感。

这些声音与玩法相关,所以是你音频设计中的重要元素。它们在某种程度上是我们的核心音频设计。但游戏的主要音效并不足以创造引人入胜的听觉体验。我们仍需要考虑音轨的问题。

音乐的力量

音轨可能是我们创造情感的一种最有效的工具。虽然我们每天都沉浸在音乐中,但却未必了解音乐的构成技巧。音乐有点神秘和不可思议,它可以改变我们的心情,让我们精神振奋甚至是陷入怀旧之情。

我在之前的文章中曾提到《Xenoblade》强大的标题画面。如果你一直盯着这个精美的画面,任由场景渗入,就会发现它会触动你的心弦。我建立你关掉音频看看这个视频,看看还会不会产生同样的感觉。你会发现画面的确很美……但就是缺乏情感。

在声音设计和动画制作领域中,开发者需具备一定的经验才能更好地理解出色音轨的特征。我在这方面的建议就是不要忽视音乐的力量。你可以找一些优秀的作曲家和音乐制作人来帮你解决这个问题。如果你真的想做出好游戏,那就一定要聘请一名专业人士!

对于所有游戏来说,拥有可靠的玩法音效和音乐都是一个必不可少的基本条件。音景是一种较不常用的声音类型——开发者预算不足的情况下尤其如此。音景是一种意在将玩家引入游戏世界的音轨。

要让玩家沉浸在游戏世界中,就很有必要增加与场景氛围相对应的声环,即使当时游戏中已经在播放音乐!音景的作用并非让玩家有意识地倾听音乐,但它会逐渐淡入背景。玩家不必“听到”,只会“感觉”到音景。

玩家正淌水过河?水流声就应该柔和地与游戏音轨混合在一起。玩家在穿过烟囱?你可以用一些较轻柔的爆裂声来创造火苗燃烧的感觉。背景音频有助于开发者优化玩家体验。

常用的润色效果

你为游戏润色的方法要视项目具体情况而定,以下是适用于多数项目的一些常用视觉特效技巧(多数取决于粒子系统):

第一个方法就是,游戏中的两个子画面无论何时发生碰撞时都要使用动画特效。这可以是:

*角色着陆或奔跑时扬起灰尘。这是一种可让角色与游戏世界融为一体,并令其脚步更具重量感的有效方法。

*火花或星星。这是一种在两个对象发生碰撞时,创造一种冲击感的简单方法。

让游戏暂停半秒也是一种极有利于强调碰撞感的方法。你可以适当延长暂停时间,仅玩家的攻击或死亡更具影响力。这实际上就是我们所谓的hold这种常用的动画技巧。可以让角色动画的关键姿势hold住几帧时间从而强化效果。这可以为观众的大脑腾出数秒时间来处理某个动画的最重要时刻。

痕迹是另一个常用特效,可用于强调对象的运动弧线,对于快速移动的对象尤其适用。例如,我们常可看到发生以下情况:

*在刀剑或武器砍杀的动画中,在攻击过程中快速消失的痕迹可以创造出一种刀光剑影的效果。

*快速奔跑的角色身后所出现的痕迹。

需要注意的是痕迹会令对象移动速度变慢。非动画制作人员可能无法直观地感受到这一点,但痕迹的确会干预动画。也就是动画师所称的“污点”(smears)。痕迹或污点将对象当前的姿势和数帧前的位置混淆起来。所以要慎用这一招!

trails(from gameanalytics)

trails(from gameanalytics)

进一步润色:程序生成运动

你还可以通过向动画添加深度和微妙的变化来润色游戏。

在2D精灵引擎中,我们所能创造的运动类型很有限。我们可以操作动画的定位、旋转和资产比例。所幸我们也并不需要太多其他功能。使用正弦或余弦函数,我们就可以创造奇迹!

*假设你正使用一个周期函数来创造植物旋转的动画,你要让它们看起来正被风吹雨打。建议:如果你要创造一个可信的刮风效果,分布多层正弦曲线的变化幅相。

*激活透明循环的子画面的不透明度和缩放,从而创造逼真的火堆/灯盏。

*以富有弹性的方式激活圆环的缩放,令其用循环的方式移动,从而创造具有可信度的飞跃效果。

对于Unity这种3D引擎,你可以使用着色器和Vertex渲染轻松添加大量变体和复杂运动。Vertex渲染是轻度而易于绘图的工具,可用于任何掩蔽效果。我这种工具提供了3个可用于掩蔽网眼的频道,多数时候为我们提供了更多灵活性。

用代码可以激活我们对象的特定部位!我们可以使用对象的世界位置自动补偿关卡中簇叶每个部分的刮风动画阶段。这种操作几乎没有任何“副作用”!它同时适用于2d和3d游戏。

案例研究:可行的润色方法

分析案例是检验方法是否可行的绝佳途径。如果对其他人的游戏适用,就很有可能也可用于我们自己的游戏。至少我们可以借鉴同类游戏的用法,或者将其视为一种灵感来源。

第一个例子就是奉行极简主义但却相当火爆的免费游戏《Jelly Jump》(Ketchapp出品):

在这款游戏中,所有的润色都与弹跳中的果冻有关。让我们先分析一下游戏的基本视觉设置。

ad_jellyjump(from gameanalytics)

ad_jellyjump(from gameanalytics)

首先,其背景完美地突出了角色。果冻位于画面中央,其颜色与周围环境形成鲜明对比。你还能注意到果冻的色度与周围环境并不一致。它看起来更为卡通化。它创造了一个可靠的润色基础。要知道,没有好果子我们就榨不出鲜果汁。

正如我之前所言,润色主要与果冻有关,这包括3个层面:

*它摆动。

*它飞溅。

*它着陆时在地上留下痕迹。

在此,我们发现了视觉润色处理的3个相互原则。角色是使用渐变(摆动)来激活,其移动伴随着粒子效果,在地上留下了永久的烙印。这种视觉提示的结合可以创造具有可信度的果冻。

观看快速玩法环节,你可以清楚看到果冻摆动取决于其跳跃的冲劲和着陆时的力量。这强化了核心跳跃机制。这也是游戏润色的核心所在!

尽管《Jelly Jump》并非应用商店中最具深度的游戏,但我认为这种极简主义的游戏也能为我们提供很好的学习机会。这种带有倾斜视觉设计,采用一键点触方式的游戏具有很棒的参考价值。它们的中心机制和视觉设计通常都会充分润色,同时又保持了简单性。Ketchapp发布了不少此类出色的应用。

《The Floor Is Jelly》

The-floor-is-Jelly(from gameanalytics)

The-floor-is-Jelly(from gameanalytics)

这是另一款以果冻为题材的游戏《The Floor Is Jelly》,它是另一个杰出的典型。其地面摇摆与来自Disasterpiece的美妙音轨相得益彰,创造了极佳的润色效果。

该游戏的地面具有生命力:角色每次着陆都能感到地面在摇动,地面会响应玩家的移动。每次冲击都能看到树丛和树木的挤压和伸展。落叶缤纷,鸟儿惊飞,整个世界都呼吸。

在此,我无法提供这款游戏润色技巧的详细分析,只能建议你去试玩游戏,自己发现其中的奥妙。不得不说该游戏中的每个选择都会强化游戏的主要机制和故事。

最后一例

Broforce-Juicing(from gameanalytics)

Broforce-Juicing(from gameanalytics)

另一个出色的例子就是《Super Time Force》(Capy Games出品),你不妨去看看Mark Brown关于该游戏介绍的短视频。

《Super Time Force》的长处就在于丰富的视觉特效,以及每个系统采用了大量的粒子效果。看看该游戏的截图就能发现:每个玩法都与游戏元素的移动有关。游戏为每个重要元素都制作了动画效果。每次碰撞都会产生令人满意的视觉效果。

总结

你必须把游戏的情感本质放在第一位,想想你想向玩家传递哪种情感。只有弄清哪种情感最适合自己的游戏,你才有可能进一步润色和优化游戏。接下来你就要知道何时收手!要知道过犹不及,如果滥用润色技巧不但会浪费时间,还会惹恼用户。简单来说就是——动作越普遍,润色就越简单。

以下是我对于优秀游戏的润色建议:

*激活一切重要的元素

*研究擅长润色的游戏

*不要忽视音频(本文由游戏邦编译,转载请注明来源,或咨询微信zhengjintiao)

juice out of your game design!

Nathan Lovato

So you’ve made a great core game. The mechanics are rock solid, the first time user flow feels great and people can understand how to play, but somehow your game doesn’t feel quite right. Since gamers first began interacting with controllers, designers have struggled to make experiences feel better, this adaptation of your games feel is often referred to as a game’s juiciness.

What is juicing all about?

Game Juice is a pretty wide yet specific concept. As the term suggests, juicing is about taking a game that works and adding layers of satisfaction to improve game feel. Satisfaction is created by the senses, every visual and auditory input has the ability to make something that is virtual work in a way that is more believable.  It’s not the art of realism, but more the art of illusion that leads a game to become juicy. As a designer it’s as if you squeezed the juice out of an already appetizing fruit. You can probably sense that beneath that catchy word lies a powerful game design concept. It is a specific lens designers can use to push our games’ feel further.

Where UX design follows objective principles and rules, game juice is more personal and emotional. The type of improvements you could add to your game may vary a lot. Each developer should have his own signature juicing techniques (and successful developers do have theirs). For example, Vlambeer is considered to be the master of screen shake. PopCap, could be considered the masters of Juicy interfaces and many others each create a sense of style that runs across all of their games.

Juicing, from a game developer’s standpoint, relies mainly on 2 domains: animation and audio.

The Art of tweening

Inbetweening or tweening, is the process of interpolating values between two extreme values using the computer. The linear interpolation, or lerp, is the most basic tweening method we have at our disposal. And the one we tend to use the most (for starters, a lerp function returns the weighted average of 2 values). When it comes to animating movements, linear interpolations produce tasteless results. This is normal, considering that pretty much nothing in the real world moves in a linear way.

Good tweening boils down to a good application of the 12 principles of animation. Having a good understanding of animation’s basics is key, which requires some practice. However, there are a few common tools we can use to make our tweens feel good easily: easings.

Easing out, easing in

As I said, in the real world nothing moves in a linear way. It takes a certain force to move anything from building up speed or creating inertia. It always takes a certain amount of time for objects to accelerate to their maximum speed, or to decelerate to come to a full stop.

In our games, we want to re-create that feeling of inertia for every single animated object. This is also our best way to convey a sense of weight for any item in our game world.

So what does easing mean? It’s a collection of functions used to gradually interpolate between 2 values. Easings offer us a convenient way to represent inertia. Easing equations interpolate between two values with all sorts of accelerations and/or decelerations curves. There are many easing types at our disposal, and some fancy functions can produce very interesting results. I.e. the bounce/elastic formula. You can find many common equations on the easings.net website.

easeing

A few samples of common easing equations

You can see that each equation has three variations. It can:

Ease in, accelerate at the start.

Ease out, or decelerate at the end.
Do both.

You will generally want an appearing animation to ease out. In particular for UI elements. When it falls into the screen, you want your game’s logo to gently decelerate towards its final position. You can treat a moving UI element like a character: it accelerates at the start of its moving state (fades in), moves at a constant pace and slides a bit before it stops (eases out).

When should you use a particular easing type? Well, it’s up to you!

Easings have to be chosen using your sense of spacing and timing.  If you want to get abrupt movements, you will want to lean towards exponential easings. If you need softer movements on the other hand, you can focus on the simpler, quadratic easing. Ask yourself the question, what emotion do I want to create for my player?

The best way you can push your understanding and mastery of tweening is observing how other developers do it. The fastest way to learn is to thoroughly study your peers.

Your juice is meant to reinforce your core mechanics

Game juicing is often presented as a collection of tricks you can use to better the sensations of your player. It is not a matter of using prebuilt formulas though. Your game’s juice should always echo your core gameplay. We cannot improve our game’s feel randomly. Screen shake, squash and stretch, bounciness and other fast-paced animations are only relevant in specific situations! They make sense in dynamic games.

In a story-driven game, or in a horror game for example, you want your animations to be subtle to convey a sense of mystery. You cannot always used that funny elastic equation for instance. Both the amplitude and the rhythm of your tweens will hugely vary depending on your project’s requirements.

game analytics for game developers

Child of Light offers many examples of subtle uses of secondary animations

I insist: the concept of juice is meant to reinforce your existing gameplay. Juicing up shooting games has already been thoroughly documented by Vlambeer in the talk I linked to above. In such a game, juicing is pretty straightforward: it boils down to making the player feel powerful. You can do so by increasing the size of your bullets, make them move faster, add some recoil when shooting, etc.

What about other types of games? Well, each genre and story can be thought of as a different type of fruit: it deserves its own trademark juice. I’ll give you a quick rundown of the few games’ that juice, but before that we have to talk about the other domain we want to pay attention to, as for is juicing is concerned.

Audio

Audio is often overlooked as far as improving your game’s feel is concerned. At least among indies with low budgets. Yet, it offers an affordable way to improve your game’s feedback rapidly. Good sounds reinforce the presence and credibility of any interaction happening in your game. Bad sound design can break your game.

You should put a strong emphasis on gameplay related sounds. All interactions the player can make should have clear audio feedback, those sound should feel full. In other words, you want to find a sound feeling and try to think about how the tone communicates presence or impact.  In a casual game, most tones should be happy, melodic, exciting or rewarding.  Each one should feel pleasant and should enrich a positive experience.  Check out how TwinGo! creates the feeling of joy in all the interaction within the menu structure, almost mimicing a Nintendo-like quality.  When creating an atmospheric game such as The Room, silence or near slience is important to create a dramatic volume change when something mysterious or sinister does happen. Using delicate compression, you can make them pop out!

As those sounds are gameplay related, they are the most important elements of our sound design. They are our core sound design in a sense. But a game’s main sound effects alone don’t make up for a compelling auditory experience. We still have to think about our soundtrack.

The power of music

Soundtracks are probably the most efficient tool we have at our disposal to create emotion. Although we are bathed in music on a daily basis, the complexity of it’s technical makeup is often foreign to us. Music is somewhat mysterious and magical,  it can alter our mood, cheer us up or even make us feel nostalgic.

In last week’s article about creating immersive game intros, I linked to the powerful title screen of Xenoblade. It really feels beautiful. If you keep staring at it and let the scene sink in, it will touch your very heart. Well, I invite you to take a quick look at the video with the sound muted. Does it still feel the same? The image alone looks pretty… but lacks emotion.

As in sound design and animation, a good understanding of the characteristics of powerful soundtracks comes with experience. The only advice I can give you in the case of music is not to neglect it. There are many competent composers and music producers out there waiting to help you push that game to the next level. If you are serious about making great games, don’t hesitate to hire one!

Having solid gameplay sound effects and music are a basic requirement for pretty much all games. There is a type of sound that is used less often – in particular if you have a low budget: soundscapes. Soundscapes are audio tracks that are meant to ground the player into the game world.

To immerse the player it is important to add sound loops corresponding to your environments’ ambiance. Even if you have music playing on top of it!  Soundscapes are not meant to be consciously listened to but fade into the background. They are barely meant to be heard: they are meant to be felt.

Is the player crossing a stream of water? The sound of its flow should gently mix with the game’s soundtrack. Is the player passing by a chimney? You can make that fire feel warmer with some soft crackling. You get it. Background audio can help you to improve the player’s experience.

Common juicy effects

Although your approach to juicing will depend on your game, here are a few common visual effects that will work for most projects. Those mostly rely on particle systems.

The first idea is to use an animated effect whenever a collision happens between two sprites in your game. This could be:

Dust when a character lands or runs. This is an efficient way to make your character feel like it belongs a bit more in his world and give his steps some impact.

Sparkles, or stars. This one is a cheap trick that once again gives a sense of impact whenever two objects are colliding.

Pausing the game for a split second is also a very efficient way to reinforce a collision. You can lengthen that pause or delay to make a hit or a death feel powerful. This is actually a common animation technique that we call a hold. Character animators can hold their key poses for a few frames to reinforce them. This leaves some time for the viewer’s brain to process the most important moments of an animation.

Trails are another kind of common effect. Trails are useful whenever we want to put an emphasis on an object’s arc of movement. This is particularly useful for fast moving objects. For instance, we often see trails:

In a sword or weapon slash animation. A little tip: the trail should instantly disappear on hit.
Behind a fast moving character.

It is important to note though that trails slow down movements. This may not be intuitive for non-animators, but trails can hinder the impact of an animation. They are a specific application of what animators call smears. If we think about it, trails or smears blend the current pose of an object with its position a few frames before (you can go to the animation smears tumblr to see some examples of how animators use those). So be careful with trails!

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Juicing further: procedural movements

Your game’s juice also can be squeezed out by adding depth and subtle variations to the animations you implement.

In a 2D sprite engine, we are limited as far as the types of movement we can create. We can play with the position, rotation, and scale of our assets. Luckily, we don’t need more! Using sine or cosine functions, we can make wonders happen!

If you animate the rotation of plants using a periodic function, you will make them feel like they are being pushed by wind. A little tip: to create a believable wind effect, layer multiple sinuses of varying amplitudes and phase!

Animate the scale and opacity of a transparent circular sprite to add warmth to a bonfire or a lamp!

Animate the scale of a circle in a bouncy way and make it move in a loop to get a believable fly!

In the case of 3D engine like Unity, you can easily add a lot of variation and complex movements to your assets using shaders and Vertex colors. Vertex colors are lightweight, easy to paint, and can be used for any kind of masking you could imagine. We are provided with 3 channels we can mask our meshes with, giving us more masking flexibility than we need most of the time.

Vertex colors make it easy to mask part of a foliage mesh and simulate a wind animation on that masked portion for instance. Here is an example of this technique in practice. Try to look at the parts of the patches of leaves that are touching the branches: they do not move. In Unity’s case though, Speedtree handles the masking and animation for you. But you can achieve the same result with plain code.

It gives us the power to animate specific parts of our objects using code! Using the world position of our objects, we can automatically offset the phase of our wind animation for each bit of foliage in our level. At [almost] no cost! And this is true for both 2d and 3d games.

Case studies: Juicing that works

Analyzing examples is the best way for us to see what works. If it works for others, chances are it will work for our games. At least we can pick relevant titles to use as references or as sources of inspiration.

The first example I will take is one of a minimalistic, pretty popular free app published by Ketchapp: Jelly Jump (Apple Store link).

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In that game, all the juicing revolves around the jumping jelly. Let us first analyze the game’s basic visual setup.

First of all, the background is immaculate to emphasize the character. The jelly is placed at the center of the screen and its color is saturated to contrast with its environment. You can also note that the jelly is not shaded like the rest of the level. It feels cartoony. It creates a solid foundation for juicing. Keep in mind that we can’t get a good juice without a good fruit.

Then comes the juice in itself. As I said above, it revolves around the jelly, which does 3 things:

It wobbles.

It splashes.

It leaves a mark on the ground upon landing.

Here, we find 3 principles of visual juicing used in synergy. The character is animated using tweens (wobbles), its movement is enriched with particles, and it leaves a permanent mark on the ground. This combination of visual cues result in a believable jelly.

Watching a quick gameplay session, you can clearly see that the jelly’s wobbles are dependent on the thrust of its jump and the force with which it lands. This reinforces the core jumping mechanic. And that is it for the heart of this game’s juicing!

Although Jelly Jump is not the deepest game you could study around the app store, I think that taking a look at minimalistic games offers us a great opportunity to learn. One touch games with lean visual designs are great references to study from. Their central mechanics and visuals are generally very polished, albeit simple. Ketchapp published a few good examples of such applications.

50 shades of jelly

The floor is Jelly Screenshot

I would like to keep moving on our way to jelly-ness by pointing out an exceptionally juicy game about jelly: The Floor Is Jelly. This is another exceptional game to study from. It possesses a particularly polished feel thanks to the exceptional synergy of the wavy ground and the beautiful soundtrack from Disasterpiece.

Just look at it: everything moves.

The ground itself is alive: it ripples every time the character lands on it. It responds to the player’s movements. Every bush or tree squashes and stretches with each shockwave. Leaves are falling. Birds are flying. The world breathes.

I can’t provide you with an exhaustive analysis of this title’s juicing techniques. I invite you to play it instead and see for yourself how well it works. It is really a matter of synergy in that case: every choice is reinforces the game’s main mechanics and story (yes, there is some sort of a story in The Floor Is Jelly).

One last example

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I would like to add another great example that was pointed out in Mark Brown’s short video about game feel: Super Time Force, by Capy Games.

Super Time Force’s strength lies in the abundance of visual effects used in the game. And the abundance of particles used in each system. A single screenshot from the game is enough to tell the tale: every gameplay related element moves. Any important element is animated. Any collision is an occasion to play satisfying visual effects.

Summary

Hopefully, this first overview of the concept of game juice gave you a sweet taste of it. It is now up to you to come up with your own way to extract more out of your own game.

You should always focus on your game’s emotional essence first and foremost, what emotion are you trying to convey to your player. You won’t know what fruit type you’re trying to juice until you think about which emotion suits your game best. Next you should also know when to quit! Used in excess, juicing techniques will both waste your time and annoy your users, as a simple rule of thumb – the more common an action, the simpler the juice.

I will leave you with my recipe of a good game’s smoothie:

Animate everything that matters.

Study the juicing Masters.

Don’t neglect your audio.(source:gameanalytics)


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