Day & Night really necessary?

Do you think games are better with day and night? If so how long do you recommend for night?

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It depends on the kind of game. If you’ve got a happy adventure game, you’d usually want only day. If you’ve got an eerie horror game, you’d want only night. If you’ve got a game that has realistic elements, such as a open-world survival game, you’d want a day/night cycle.

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I like games w/ day and night. But for some reason night always feels way longer than day. So when I do it I make my nights 2x as short as my days.

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In-game timescales (the technical term for a day/night cycle) can be important for a large amount of gameplay cycles, events, narrative directions, and plenty of other aspects of design - but it isn’t always necessary and sometimes can actually harm gameplay.

The real-time in-game timescale of Animal Crossing is a core part of gameplay and removing it would be detrimental to the experience the game is trying to share. But if I were playing Halo: Combat Evolved’s Truth and Reconciliation mission - a more “stealthy” night mission early in the game - and I could just wait until the daytime, it’d kind of ruin the effect.


Even games on Roblox use in-game timescale effectively: Defaultio didn’t have to close down some stores during the night time in Lumber Tycoon 2, but as a player I feel like it’s an effective way to draw me into the realism a bit more.

Many social games almost always benefit from some kind of in-game timescale to push players into actions that they feel they should be doing at that time. But again it isn’t always necessary because there are other ways to motivate your players, say with a timed server event that players can go to.

So basically to answer your question:

It depends on the game.

@Intended_Pun’s idea is pretty clever if the game doesn’t rely on a linear progression of course. If you find your players bored during the night, then I highly recommend following his tip.

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I believe that it depends on what kind of setting you are going for, if the game looks beautiful with a sunset and brings out the details of the game then go with that but a day-night cycle can also be immersive for your players. It all depends on what you are trying to get your players to experience.

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Honestly, the answer to EVERY question akin to this post will always be “It depends on the kind of game”.
If you’re making a platformer, then no, if you’re making an open world game, then yes.

Short and simple as that.

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Like what literally everyone else said, it depends on the kind of game you’re making. A day cycle is capable of setting atmospheric value or having an impact on the functionality of your game. It depends solely on how you utilize it to determine whether it enhances your game or harms it.

I think you should see what type of game you have and what type of game do you want it to be so you can base in settings like day night, in my experience I would recommend you to use it but make the night shorter than the day because players prefer being day but as I said base on the type of game, I hope this helped :+1:

It gives them a more realistic feel, so yes.

I personally support it.

In my opinion I’d rather keep it one because some games set it way too fast and it’s super annoying when it switches.