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I’ve been developing games on the Roblox platform for almost a year. However, I’ve made games earlier than that, but I never took it seriously or actually did anything with them.
All this time, I stared at the impossible amount of players on many games that seemed like they were going to fall off, but then spiked up and up in their player counts. I wanted to be that developer. Someone people looks up to and says “Now that’s a developer.”
I’ve sort of ingnored advertisements and Roblox’s Ad Manager. Mostly because I was afraid that my game wasn’t good enough, or honestly that I wouldn’t have enough funds. But now I kinda want to try it.
So my real question is, what game should I make? Maybe an “Obby but…” genre. I hear those do well, if you give it some replay-ability and a nice core loop. I want to start simple for my first game that I’m going to advertise. I also don’t want to make a rip-off or copy of Dead Rails or Grow A Garden. Because that game wouldn’t feel like my own, I just copied someone’s idea.
What game should I make for my first time trying to create and advertise a successful game?
Please tell me if this is the wrong category.
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You know, many devs starts with genre, but it’s bad idea, the best idea is to start with player, if you want your players to play your game
By that, i mean start with gameplay, later you’ll find out about mechanics because these things are normal to appear later, what you should start about is with interactions
Interactions usually involve simple thing:
Action → Reaction
Example: Player clicks a button → Doors open
If you have interactions, they work independently, let’s find few interactions:
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Player clicks the button → Doors open
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Glowing part hits tree → Tree grows
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When tree grows too big → Sticks spawn
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Player have a blaster and activates it → It shoots in the direction of the cursor
Now you can combine them, and change them, let’s start with the doors,
Then we can make it so you must first build doors from sticks to be able to use them
At the end, let’s make lasers hitting the tree make it grow
Now, call a blaster grow ray, and you have somewhat of a game loop:
- Player uses grow ray on tree
- Tree grows and drops sticks
- Player build doors
You can turn it into door fixing simulator, where you have different kind of doors on the map and you must repair them to get points and buy better blasters to get more sticks → we made a game from random interactions
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I understand what you are saying, about recognizing the mechanics first. I already have and I always do. I just don’t know what kind of game I want to make with those mechanics.
Don’t plan mechanics, plan interactions, you don’t make mechanics, you can’t make mechanics, they can’t be made, they’re result of interactions combined together
First start with interaction, and tell if it’s fun or not, then connect few very random interactions and you’ll see what game is being created
Mechanics aren’t part of the game, they’re the result you see on the screen
I don’t like the sound of random interactions. So your saying I’m going to end up making, “Race cars on a road with dinosaurs and guns.” You shoot the dinosaurs, get currency, buy better guns and cars, continue shooting dinosaurs, and so forth.
This is pretty much how big hits were made on Roblox, also you don’t combine literally random interactions, you choose some interactions that make sense together, that can be combined, randomness only gives you better idea
Big games like jailbreak or grow a garden pretty much start with interactions or simple idea, e.g jailbreak was first test of a car system, later became prison life V.2 and with time became one of the biggest games on Roblox
So like:
Obby but your a HORSE
Something like that. You become a horse and complete obbies across different worlds. You collect currency buy upgrades, skins, and other things and continue to play the courses. You can also try to beat speedrun records or race your friends.
So I thought of obby, horse, and race. That’s what I came up with.
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See, you’re getting closer, but first ask if it’s fun or not, if you would play this, share this idea with few friends, and ask them if they would play the game, my game idea went from PVE wave defense into a sandbox clicker in a week, based off prototype and MVP, first make very simple and fast version of your game and test it, this will help you to find fun game idea