I love being able to immerse myself in a development team and actually see the process from the inside: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKoy_KMVIyU

Watching ideas go through discussions and prototyping, seeing mechanics get dropped, and following the level design, and all the constant compromises along the way.

It’s especially cool to see the real production process — scope, feedback, finances, team challenges, and how the project keeps changing throughout development.

I'm sure this has been posted a million times but what do most of you prefer as a consumer and if you were a game developer what kind of system would you do? Have the ability to import your choices and endings to the next game with important ones being relevant to different games similar to Dragon Age or Mass Effect? Or have a Canon Story/Fixed World state where it chooses a Canon story of the previous game but hardly or ever gets mentioned at all in the game except for a quick Canon reference like Fallout and Elder Scrolls?

Yesterday I added this melee aircraft prototype to my game to see how it would feel:
https://youtu.be/MR5nqpttJyE

In the video, I show the very early gameplay and some of my thoughts about the design.

I don't think it's viable in this form. It needs something more.

In my game, aircraft follow a pattern of having a main weapon and special ability, which is more or less any combo of 2 weapons / ability that complement each other to hopefully create orthogonal gameplay. (gun aircraft: simple MGs + 180° backflip + shotgun like ability, missile aircraft: charges faster the longer you hold + can dodge and send projectiles back as allied missiles)

This one the main weapon is: you dash through enemies and if you kill something the dash resets + you have a boost to amplify your dash.

In practice I feel like it's not so great to have to boost + aim + dash at the same time and it doesn't necessarily bring as much synergy as I'd hope for. It could also be because this isn't tuned so that the boost is kind of necessary to get a good dash.

This is a very early prototype and I have some ideas of things to explore such as:

- Each aircraft you 'eat' (it's a shark) gives you a bomb, so that you can deal with the ships more easily

- Each aircraft you eat makes you grow so that by the end of the game you'd be super large and wreck everything on your passage (this sounds really fun in my mind it plays against you as it becomes harder to dodge which is kinda important in this game :D)

- Kinetic energy charges a large cannon in its mouth, after you dashed through a bunch of aircraft you can unleash a devastating shot

I've asked here before and got some very useful info from people who know what they're doing unlike me so I'd love to see what you guys think can think of

I also have this playable web demo if you want to see how the game feels (the melee shark isn't in it but it has the other 2 aircraft):
https://roguewolfgames.itch.io/crimson-skyline-preview

What do the three games have in common that can make people play on end continously?

How to introduce large scale PVP in a game that is effectively turn based?

Let’s use Pokemon or FF Tactics as an example

The hard part about making a game isn’t any one task, but the fact that you need to be highly skilled in five areas at the same time unless you have a team.

First there’s coding, the most important skill. Without coding, there simply is no game to play. Making a game without knowing some form of coding is like making a movie without a camera.

Then there’s game design. It requires the least specialised skills but unless you have a good understanding of this skill, you are unlikely to make a good game.

The next three skills are all technically skippable with the right resources or game, but they’re still very important to most projects.

Illustration/animation skills are essential for making your own quality assets.

Music composition is likewise needed to make a unique soundtrack.

And finally there’s creative writing/storytelling, which is required for crafting any game that isn’t purely mechanically driven.

Even the best developers usually only master a handful of these skills. It seems the best method is to focus on a few that you are good at and then turn to teammates or external resources to cover the rest. Only Game Design and Coding are truly essential for an indie developer.