The other week I posted about Simple Effects that Make Game Visuals Feel More Impactful. Building on that topic, this week I write about techniques and ideas I employ to make games feel more appealing to view.

Every week, I play a lot of games that are fun, innovate and mechanically sound yet bland to look at. In the web world, production quality can set you apart from the competition. If these bland-looking games took the effort to look better, they would score better. As the visuals of my games improved, their score and the money I earned from them increased.

Here are some of the ideas I use to make games more appealing to look at.

Backgrounds

Next to character animation, backgrounds are arguably the most important aesthetic in a game. 2-D backgrounds need to look good since (for the most part) they remain stationary, unchanging and tend to take up most of the screen.

Humans are attracted to beautiful imagery. They’d rather play something beautiful over something ugly. 

I once made a bland-looking game called Siege Knight. I then created Sentry Knight 2, a spiritual successor with better art. Sentry Knight 2 was hardly that different of a game, but was recieved better. Siege Knight recieved a score of 8/10 and Sentry Knight 2 scored 9.4/10. Sentry Knight 2 also was played millions of times more than Siege Knight.

(Screenshots from Siege Knight's art compared to that of Sentry Knight 2)

I am not a background artist nor particularly good at painting. Since backgrounds are my weakness and design and game animation are my strengths, I have Jason help with backgrounds.

There is nothing wrong with hiring someone to help you in areas you are weak in. Collaborating produces better results, in my opinion.

Here is a video of Jason taking my concept for the swamp level in Sentry Knight Tactics and rendering it beautifully.

On the subject of backgrounds, parallax can enhance the appeal of backgrounds further. Notice how having parts of the background on different layers makes otherwise stationary art dynamic and even more interesting to look at.

(Different layers move at different speeds in relation to the camera)

Ambience

Beautiful backgrounds are great, but after a few seconds they become boring to look at. Adding ambiance makes these backgrounds feel more alive and they become more stimulating to the eye.

Ambience can be anything that adds character and a mood to the scene. In Sentry Knight Tactics, I add ambiance in several ways:

(Disclaimer: I temporarily borrowed the NG preloader snow forthis example
as a placeholder until individual snow is programmed in)

Simple animations such as snow falling, animals moving, characters breathing out hot air and snow kicked up by the wind make this scene feel more alive than if it were just stationary art. The effects help capture the mood of being in a blizzard.

My general rule of thumb is as long as things are moving, there is something for the eye to be stimulated by.  

Characters

As seen in the examples above, I like to make my characters and interactable objects stand out from the backgrounds as much as possible. The painterly, outline-less backgrounds by Jason contrast with my bouncy, simplistic bold character aesthetics.

Myy characters always move, even when standing still. I mentioned this before in my older post Simple Effects that Make Game Visuals Feel More Impactful. The eye always is entertained by constant motion.

My hope is that posts like these encourage other up and coming devs to get better, increase the bar and in turn force the rest of us to work harder to stand out.

To any veteran devs out there, let me know what else you like to add to make things more fun to look at.

Next week, I'll talk about mechanics and systems that are rewarding and fun.

You can make games for fun and you can make games for money.
You can also do both at the same time.

As an budding developer, how can you make money off of your games? Or even find an audience to actually generate income from in the first place?

Learning to make money from your work can be confusing at first. You can’t make any money if you don’t have access to an audience. Getting an audience and making money is what I’ll be going over in today’s post. 

I know a lot of talented developers who have no idea how to make money off of their work or how get their game in front of players- yet they've been making games for years! This post is intended to be helpful to them and beginners alike. This is a guide that I wish I could have read six years ago when I started making games.

10 out 10 people with money agree: "Money is pretty cool"

I’ve been making games for 6 years now. I made my first few games just for kicks. I wasn't thinking about money and was quite surprised when they generated some money. Four years after making games for fun, I went from amateur hobbyist to developing games for a living.

If you want to move beyond being a ameuteur designer, you'll need to be able to fund your bigger projects. You'll need to hire musicians, artists, sound designers and more, all of which cost money. 

As a developer, having an audience is vital

You can sell games traditionally for a set price. That’s what my ex-team did with Coin Crypt, and what I’m going to be doing with Sentry Knight Tactics on Steam. 

When starting to make games, I highly recommend making "free" games. I put free in quotes because they are free to the player. There are lots of ways for the developer to make money though! I discuss that more below.

Free games are a very popular way to attract eyes because there is no price barrier for people to play your game. The sites your games get featured on (like Newgrounds!) will already have a well-established player base. From here, you can start building your own audience.

As for selling games, proving you have something worth players money when you have zero credibility is much more challenging. An existing audience makes this much easier. Having the support of an audience who like my games made getting on Steam much easier.

There are a lot of different ways to make money with your free games

There are many ways for you to make money off of a free game. You can post free games on the web and mobile platforms alike. Here are the different types of ways to make money off of free games:

1. Sponsorship -  For free game developers, this is a great method. You complete your game and seek out a sponsor. You can email game sponsors directly to see if they’re interested in your game, or use a bidding site like FGL.com. Sponsors tend to pay you based on how well they think your game will attract players. Higher quality games tends to equal higher payment. Sponsors will put their logo on your game in an attempt to attract more players to their site and play their other games, thus making them more money.

- Almost all of my games available online use this method. I find it's the best way to make the most money in the web game world.

2. Microtransactions/Premium Content - In this method, you sell a game for free but offer more content to players should they decide to pay money. 

- I haven't done too much of this but plan on doing it more in the future. I sold premium content in the form of extra levels and spells in Sentry Knight 2, and it sold just over 1,000 premium units. 

- Some players view microtransactions as "evil". I disagree, as they help fund the developer to make more free content. I've personally become accustomed to buying microtransactions in games. I think MTX are totally fine if handled reasonably. 

3. Ad-revenue - Ad companies will pay you money based on the amount of views/plays your content gets. The more plays, the more money you'll make.

- This is great if you have a game that manages to go viral like the one myself and @wolvegames made: Video Game: The Game. It was played by Pewdiepie and Markiplier and recieved an insanely high views because of them. Those views translate to even more Ad Revenue money.

Even if you hate Let's Players, remember: they can be a valuable tool in drawing eyes to your games.

You can (and should) combine all three of these methods to maximize your revenue.

​Free games also have chances to spread virally to other websites, further increasing the eyes on your game. There are tons of platforms to release free games on: Flash, HTML5, Unity, mobile, etc.

The rules for success change when selling traditionally

When you move from free games to sell games "traditionally", the rules change. Getting in front of an audience is still vital, but a bit harder. Player's expectations for quality raises dramatically when selling a game. 

The world of "traditional" digital sales is a new horizon for me. While I have worked on a few games that have sold on Steam, I am still quite new to this world. However, here are a few suggestions that worked for me and my partners that can help you gett your game out there to a paying audience:

1. Publisher - A publisher will financially support you to develop your game and then help you distribute and market your game. They are in touch with press and have connections to help get your games in the public eye. These people also tend to exhibit your games for you at game conventions. You will have to give them a percentage of your sales, but it's likely they'll help you get more sales than you would have without their help.

I'm currently doing this for Sentry Knight Tactics with Armor Games as publisher. I'll be sure to post about the process more in the future.

2. Bundles - These are digital bundles that include your game and multiple other games. They tend to be heavily discounted. Because of the savings, these bundles tend to sell a lot of units. Less popular games get a lot more sales if paired with more popular games. 

Coin Crypt was featured in a bundle with some really popular indie games like Mercanary Kings, Freedom Planet and The Stanley Parable. Being sold alongside those games got it in the hands of people who never heard of it.

My hope is that this is helpful to newcomers or people struggling to find an audience.

I know there are quite a few veterans on this site who have had great success with sales on steam. Going forward, I think it would be cool to pick their brains to share with readers. If any veterans are reading this, please share your experiences!

I will be posting more thoughts like these and development posts of my game, Sentry Knight Tactics, every week in 2016. 

Last week I made my first post about Going From Amateur Hobbyist to Developing Games for a Living. This week I write about some techniques I like to use that make games feel better, visually. I've stolen all of these effects from other games and I encourage you to use them too.

Here is a little clip of special effects that I use in my games:

Notice how motion lines, impact holds, screenshake, and particles make everything feel exciting to look at. For a little extra work, these effects create a huge impact in making the game feel more appealing to look at. 

Below is a breakdown of the tricks that I employ in my games that add visual impact to gameplay.

1. Motion Lines

These effects emphasize speed and power. I totally ripped them off from the Japanese. Notice the same motion lines around the edges that appear when the character inflicts a heavy hit.

Anime and games like Smash Bros employee these techniques a lot. As you can see in my first gif, I like to have them appear a frame before impact holds to really emphasize hits. Use these whenever something you want to highlight happens in game.

2. Impact Holds

This is something you see a lot in anime when the artist wants to imply heavy impact between two forces. Right before a powerful spell happens, I will employ holds like these.

Notice how right before the one robot crosses weapons with the other, a brief impact flash occurs for a frame.

A lot of games today have “holds” where the game pauses the action for a split second to imply a powerful impact. Smash Bros tends to pause hits on characters to emphasize that an attack's recipient was hit hard. I find anime-esque impacts like these take the appeal of holds one step further.

3. Screenshake

This examples’s pretty obvious and is used everywhere in animation. Still, it’s worth emphasizing how effective it is.

The moving of the screen makes your characters actions feel like they have more weight. When a character fires his gun or something heavy hits in game, use a screenshake.

4. Particles

Particles are very simple but create a lot of extra visual interest for very minimal effort. I use a lot of particles. Some are hand animated, some are handled via programming. 

                

In this example: whenever the Priestess heals, white particles fly from her staff. Also, purple particles appear over her target. The Marksman also drops a shell casing everytime he shoots. Those are added via programming.

Not all particles need to be animated with code. When characters are hit, I have little hand-animated impact particles appear too.

You can add these in all sorts of places. When characters run, make dust kick up. When a character in a shooter misses its target and hits a wall, have smoke come out of the bullethole.

5. Lingering effects

Effects that persist on screen for a while remind players they’ve caused serious carnage. By keeping effects around for a while, you create a scene telling the player they’ve left their own mark in the world.

When an explosion happens, visual indicators like smoke, scorch marks and embers emphasize this. The smoke fades out slowly and fire persists long after the explosion has faded away.

Having corpses and bloodstains of slain enemies stay on the screen for awhile is another way to add lingering visuals.

6. Persistent Motion

This one is not so much an effect but I decided it's worth including anyway.

Always keep your characters moving, even when idle. A lot of beginners have their characters completely hold still when inactive. This is a mistake; immersion feels broken and characters seem lifeless when motion stops. 

I have my characters always bounce around regardless of action. My idle poses are very simplistic, but they work.

You see this in almost all fighting games. In these games, whenever a character isn't being controlled, the character still breathes and moves around.

Hopefully these techniques help you out. 

I'll be adding more development posts in the future. They will discuss in greater detail some of the design decisions I make. I'll be making a new post every friday.

You can follow our blog on twitter if you want to see even more of our development.

A few days ago, Tom said something on twitter that inspired me to make this post:   

                                 

I owe the beginning of my journey of making games to Newgrounds. I’ve decided to start writing about the process here to shed light on development for those interested in making games too. 

Since I’ve been fortunate enough to quit my job two years ago and be financially sustained by doing what I like (making games), I want to share with you my mistakes, my learnings and my process as it evolves.

I’d like to return the favor by writing posts every week.

I feel it is only right to give back and hopefully inspire others the way I was inspired by artists on Newgrounds who came way before me.

My game, Sentry Knight Tactics (pictured below), is a continuation of a series of games I’ve developed over the course of a few years. I’ve developed a few other series of games; some of which were failures and others that were successes.

                    

How do you know what will stick and be successful for you?

You don’t. Experimentation and borrowing from other successful works is key.

I’ve made about 30 games for fun and experimented with tons of genres before I found what works for me. I’ve worked on a few original series, done many game jams and have made contract games for sponsors. Some received millions of plays, high scores and continue to make me money. Some were absolute failures and received public scorn. All were learning experiences that help me as I continue to grow.

Of the games I made, those that did well I made sequels of. Dino Shift became Dino Shift 2. Siege Knight became Sentry Knight. Sentry Knight was loved so much, Justin and I (the programmer) were commissioned to make a sequel and a got a publisher’s interest in Sentry Knight Tactics. These games were financially successful enough for me to not have to work as a graphic designer anymore. 

Experimenting with these early games informed my aesthetic sense and game “feel”. From Dino Shift, I learned players like my cute, colorful characters with expressive, emoticon-like faces. From Sentry Knight, I learned players liked cool animated special effects, gorgeous backgrounds (thanks to Jason) and cartoon gore. I also learned to remove what they hate.

Do what works. Do what you like.

I try to take the feel and aesthetic to the next level with each game I make. The increasingly higher ratings and higher income from my work quantifies their importance to success to me.

     
                                                          (Quality, Score and Plays increase with time)

Aside from learning through experimentation, I tend to borrow what works from other games. My philosophy is that more of what is good can’t be bad. A concept has proven itself and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. 

My new game is NOT original, just smarter

Sentry Knight Tactics borrows a lot inspiration from Mika Mobile’s iOS game, Battleheart.

                           

My new game is Battleheart on cocaine. I loved Battleheart. It has a lot of heart despite my many gripes about all it does wrong. Sentry Knight Tactics is what Battleheart could have been if done well.

Sentry Knight 1 was originally supposed to be a side-scrolling RPG. I lacked the skill, money, and vision to make such a game at the time and instead made Sentry Knight 1 the tower-defense game it became. As I developed the Sentry Knight series, I thought about how I could make the world fitting for an RPG. 

I always wanted to make a 2D interpretation of World of Warcraft growing up. Battleheart perfectly broke down the party-based raid controls of WoW into a simple, single player game.  Since they did it so perfectly, it would be foolish for me to try and reinvent the wheel. I took this genre out for a spin with my jam game: Punk Bitches vs The Undead before I decided to integrate the concept with Sentry Knight.

Sentry Knight Tactics is going to do what Battleheart tried to do but actually make it good.

Battleheart demands you grind levels over and over again. Battleheart recycles its ugly backgrounds.  Battleheart only has a few enemies. Battleheart has lousy music. Battleheart’s levels are limited to one screen. Battleheart has no story. Battleheart’s sequel was terrible and lost all the charm of the original. 

I’m taking what Mika Mobile did and making it better with my brand of game feel I learned from making older games.

                            
                                                      (Side-scrolling, loot AND killable chickens. Wow!)

Work smarter, not harder

Time is money. When starting making games, you’ll be broke. You don’t want to waste time and money producing expensive games that take forever to make and that you don’t have the vision or experience to make.

I have a series that was liked amongst fans. I have a publisher who gives me X money to produce a game. I work on my new game within these restrictions. A lot of developers more talented than I burn themselves out, go broke or just flat out fail from from not reaching the unrealistic and high expectations they set so early in their career.

One day, I’ll be able to make even bigger games. Until then, I work within my restrictions.

What are you going to do this new year?

I want to post more about my process in 2016; hopefully i'll make one post every week.

I want to make three games this year.

I hope my posts inspire other people to make content this year.

I hope the people that I inspire in turn inspire others.

Let me know what you’re going to make.

PS. If you want to see more Sentry Knight Tactics stuff and don't feel like waiting for the next post, follow its twitter

Here’s a new post because I’ve been hunched over a hot Cintiq burning my eyes out by starting into it for far too long. 

I just released a wave-based arena shooter, Sentry Knight Conquest, on Newgrounds! Justin and I took the classic Sentry Knight upgrade, wave based formula and introduced some vlambeer inspired juice to it. You can play it HERE. 

Speaking of genre-changes and sequels: My next game, Sentry Knight Tactics, is on Steam Greenlight. Go VOTE FOR IT after you check out this trailer below:

Armor Games is gonna be publishing it when it passes through greenlight, so that’s pretty cool. Help them help me feel validated and achieve my dreams of not starving during development by VOTING on the game here. 
 

It’s been described as “If Turtles in Time and Battleheart had a baby that was raised by WoW and studied at the Vlambeer School of Juice” by nobody.

~ Til next time, beautiful ~

Hi,

I just released the comissioned sequel to Sentry Knight over at Armor Games; go check it out! Doing sequels are strange; trying to maintain the feel of the original game but adding new content and trying to mix it up is a hard balance. But, i'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

Also, I've been working on Coin Crypt (on Steam Early Access, go check that shit out), and me and my team exhibited at PAX Prime in the indie mini booth. It was a hecka cool experience having people come up to play the game and watch them enjoy it. Also, I got to meet so many other cool devs and even meet some of my game dev heroes (swoon). Being around talent like that really was inspiring and made me set the bar for my future work WAYYYY higher. It really made me realize how much more hard I need to work.




Breaking out of flash and doing work on other platforms has been really rewarding too. Not only in terms of what I've learned and the friends I made, but it's also become my livlihood. I quit my job 5 months ago and have been living off of making games since; which is fucking awesome. 

THE END.

Hi,

I recently finished up a sequel to my old game, Dino Shift, which you can play by following the link below:

Dino Shift 2: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/635158

But more importantly, a friend of mine made some plushies of the game's main character. We're giving one of these adorable bastards away for free. For your chance to win him, all you have to do is leave a comment below.

Should you win, I'll PM you for your shipping info and then send it your way. When it arrives it's yours to do with as you please: Maybe put it on your impressive shelf of collectables? Or hold it tightly as you cry yourself to sleep on yet another lonely night? Do whatever you want with it - up to you!

Also, should you not win the contest and/or just want to buy one (or ten!), you can do so here: http://www.storenvy.com/products/6196411-dino-plushie In other news, Justin, LlamaReaper and I are making a new game for both browser and mobile. Finally beginning to branch out of flash and it's pretty exciting. Our programmer, Justin, has a blog dedicated to the development of it, should you care enough to follow it: http://jwolfgames.com/

:D

Its been forever since I made a news post here, so here is a news post about things and stuff.

My newest game (that I did animation and design for) is out on the front page now! If you haven't played it: go check it out, yo! http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/631799

I'm pretty happy overall with how it came out. http://jwolfgames.newgrounds.com/ (Justin) did an awesome job coding this bad boy, and LlamaReaper (http://llamareaper.newgrounds.com/) killed it on the background art. 

I like defense games still, but I'm sick of the genre now haha. Also, I'm really hoping to break out of flash games at some point too. Its fun and makes decent money (keeps me from having a "real" full time job, which I'm thrilled about), but I've never tried another market and I'm really itching to do it. 

I also did some special fx animation for Lan's Crystal Story II: http://www.kongregate.com/games/lan14n/crystal-story-ii

Other than that, I'm still working on a short little cartoon. Its been forever since I animated something that wasn't in a game or for work/ a client. I miss animating flash shorts and my goal in this year is to do more of that. Also, I rarely put art up here now since I pretty much never finish any still art. I post a lot of my sketches and junk on tumblr, go check them out and critique my shit. http://tyleryt.tumblr.com/tagged/my-doodles

PEACE

Hey there bags and baguettes. I released my new game Siege Knight today. You should go play it and (hopefully) enjoy it. Also, looking for criticism to improve plz.

PLAY IT. GO ON.

------------------------------------------------

Also, I'm not sure if people are interested in this kind of thing or not but I put together a collection of "clean, yet imperfect/messy" website/media icons. If you care or have any interest, you can download the set here:

PREVIEW
DOWNLOAD ICONS HERE

I'm also totally open to expanding upon this list if anyone has any suggestions. I'm sure I missed something, but I think I got all the big/important ones covered.
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I've also been playing with the idea of a 3D dino-shift, if anyone remembers that game. I think it might be a fun change of pace. Heres a mockup of the character vs. the old design:

HEY GUYS/ To whom it may concern:

MintPaw and I released a cleaned up version of our game jam 7 entry. You should check out the NEW ONE HERE

Game jams are neat for coming up with quick little "prototypes". I thought our game was kind of cool so we decided to revisit it , add some more mechanics, and make it prettier.

That is all.

Also, enjoy this cat's face.