Coming of with game story and game play mechanics

[shinmix]

How do you come up with game stories and mechanics. This is a independent of technical aspect of game dev and more of the story/design aspect. How to come up with good story. How to make game mechanics that it's not too difficult and time consuming but also not too easy or boring.

 

[Winterfire]

As with anything, it must be born from an idea. A bunch of creative ideas (brainstorming) either from a group or by getting stimulated by different things such as movies or games, and you will be ready to write a Game Design Document which gives you the advantage of having a complete overview of the project and hopefully give an order to an otherwise messy and chaotic bunch of random ideas.

Multiple mechanics often work with a story, but let's assume the protagonist is a skater... A turn based combat system would not work, and you are too understaffed to make an open world game in Jet Set Radio style, so you'd probably come up with a platformer-racing game instead.

Likewise, if the protagonist is a boxer and you want to give more focus on the story (A novel), you could just have a very simple minigame for boxing fights, and decide to drop any complex mechanic.
At that point you'd need to pick the engine that makes your life easier, and go from there.

Once you have a story and decided on a gameplay style and mechanics, you can test them (to balance and see if they are fun) by making the famous "Developer room", a level/scene where you drop that stuff for the sake of quickly testing everything.
If it works, go for it else back to the drawing board.

 

[Mock1ngb1rd]

Spoiler: my two cents

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[eugeneloza]

There are two ways.

If you do this primarily for fun (and this may be extremely important for self-motivation) - look into what you like. E.g. if you like tennis games and roguelites - make a roguelite about a tennis player who will go around kicking monsters with a tennis ball, spend XP on skills and money on clothes and new rackets. But failing to kick the ball will result in nasty things happening. In other words: "you are your target audience, do what you like" regardless of how weird it may look there are other people out there that will like the same thing.

If you want to earn the money more than just for a coffee cup, you need to research the market and your target audience. What the games were released recently (not only adult ones, but special attention to those as they are your direct competitors)? What players liked and disliked in them? How popular were they? What are the most common keywords people use to look for specific adult games? Then do a brainstorming - which kind of players do you want to appeal to? What do they like? What do they dislike? What theme will be interesting for them? What other kinds of media they consume, anime? Movies? How can you tell them clearly that this game is for them? How will you formulate that in one short sentence? What will the "pitch" (one-pager) look like? How can you persuade them through screenshots - yes, that's the game you should buy? How can you show not only art but also gameplay through screenshots? What will you put into the trailer? What will happen if a very similar game will be released same time as yours, how will you stand out? What will happen if you made mistakes in answers to these questions, how bad will it be? How can you make it safer for you? - And only after you've gotten good answers to all of those questions and many more you sit down to start working on your idea (and now you have a lot of materials to start from).

 

[whimfu1]

I've been working on a game for several months now and I will admit I've scaled back, rewritten, and changed mechanics to match my skill set. However a method I've done a few times to help me simplify ideas is working backwards. I'll give an example, assuming we're talking about an erotic game, let's say our end goal is to date a gym trainer. I am coming up with this on the fly so bare with me, then a logical beginning would going to a gym.

Start - Go to the gym
End - Date your personal Trainer

After that I start putting steps to reach that goal, keeping in mind what I find fun and in my skill set.

Start - Go to the gym
Step 1 - Hire trainer
Step 2 - Get stronger through their coaching
Step 3 - Personal growth and Flirtation
End - Date your personal Trainer

Now this is just quick but the main thing is story beats only. With them listed out I can then add on the actual game mechanics I would find interesting to try with some alternatives in case I'm simply incapable of implementing them reasonably.

Start - Go to the gym (Lvl Easy: Simple introduction could be a splash screen)
Step 1 - Hire trainer (Lvl Medium: Multiple choice for alternate paths? Yoga instructor, Spin class, Power Lifter?)
Step 2 - Get stronger through their coaching (Lvl Hard: Mini-games? Rhythm Arrows, Speed Clicker, a Quiz?)
Step 3 - Personal growth and Flirtation (Lvl Medium: Stat increases and romancing section repeats daily)
End - Date your personal Trainer (Lvl Hard: H-scene or final quiz ect.)

While it might not be perfect I can at least start something and see where I can go. This will allow me to set a hierarchy of things I want to achieve that can be spaced out throughout updates.

For an example in my own game I have a useable cellphone. This phone is meant to have a minimap and several apps. However it's a monstrous coding task so for my first demo I only have the minimap working and the apps are simple splash screen placeholders. I'm of the mind set of showing the interesting idea first and then allowing the fun to come in as the content fills out.

I hope this helps.