Golden Rules of Game Design#
written by frozenkartoffel
Hi everyone, just decided to post this here as general building advice. I’ve compiled a list of rules you should ideally build your tower around, which will make the tower more enjoyable, less annoying and better overall. Enjoy!
Definitions#
- Client Object:
any client-sided object from the kit. Examples include morphers, buttons, elevators. abbreviated as CO.
- Gameplay:
The jumps and sections of the tower in their purest form. If you were to strip all the decoration from a highly decorated section, you would still have a section with the same overall gameplay.
- Design:
The tower’s decoration.
- Creativity:
TBA
- Sightreadability:
How easy it is for players to read the jumps of your tower before performing them.
- Flow:
An effect that comes from good sightreadability, it makes the tower fun to speedrun and more fun to play.
- Indication:
Small hints telling the player what to do or how to approach certain jumps, or small visual differences indicating specific client objects.
Rule 1: Less is More#
When it comes to client objects, I’d recommend staying with a smaller CO palette for your tower. Oftentimes, I see towers where the creator throws every single CO in seemingly at random. This not only makes your tower more unpredictable, it also has the consequence of making the gameplay worse. Now, you might be confused at what I mean by this, but the gameplay in one of these towers usually focuses on incorporating every CO in the gameplay seemingly at random, and this really hurts the tower’s gameplay. First of all, CO gp is far more difficult to balance, and CO spam usually ruins the natural flow of the tower, which can make it feel more tedious and more like a chore. Secondly, a limited CO palette helps you make your gameplay more varied over the span of it, which might sound weird, but it’s healthier for the gameplay since you’re not constantly focused on putting every single CO in and that actually gives you more room for valuable gameplay, which is basically the meat on the tower’s bones. Additionally, a limited CO palette can help you think more creatively through the span of your tower, leading to more fun CO usage and better overall gameplay and flow. Having a limited CO palette makes your gameplay more sightreadable and also more fun, because the player’s already learnt what all the COs do throughout the tower, which in turn makes fails feel less unfair and gameplay feel less unpredictable.
Rule 2: Indication does not mean Essays#
You might be a little confused at what I mean by this from just reading the title, but there are so many better ways to make indication compared to the lazy way of shoving signs in the player’s face that tell them everything they need to do. Now, there are a few different cases I’ve seen sign indication used in, so I’ll go over them and say what I think should be done instead of putting a sign.
2.1: Telling the player what to do exactly#
2.1.1: Sightreading, flow and other things#
I’ve seen signs like “Hold W and press space” or “Just hold W” a lot. Signs like this hurt natural sightreading, and remove the fun from learning the gimmicks in the tower. This kinda ties back to Rule 1, but if you have a game mechanic that needs to be explained by a sign, don’t! You should first introduce that game mechanic to the player in a natural way, for example a small netted section that uses it. Then, when the player comes across the spot you indicated before, they will know exactly what to do, and they will be able to sightread it. The reason I said this ties back to Rule 1 is that I’ve seen a lot of towers where one random CO combination gets used once in the entire tower and needs to be explained by a sign (tower of zilch being an example sorry shoni lol). Instead of doing this, you should use that specific CO combination more throughout the tower, which can lead to all the benefits I’ve already explained in Rule 1. Now, there is an exception to this rule, and it is for example ToIF’s final stretch. The pendulum is introduced there, and it is basically the final jump of the tower. I’m not too annoyed by how it’s indicated there, even if it uses a sign, but I’d rather just make it a no-jump part so the player doesn’t jump and ruin their momentum and make the arrows pointing where to go more clear.
2.1.2: Inaccuracies#
What I am very annoyed at is that these signs sometimes don’t work or are just completely wrong. For example in EToH’s SoLIQ, there’s a sign saying “just hold w” (or something similar can’t remember), and when you hold W, it just sometimes doesn’t work entirely, making you lose progress. Fails like this are not the fault of the player, but the fault of the tower. The player did as instructed, and yet they were punished for seemingly no reason. This is a very bad way of doing things, and can be a big reason for why players don’t like your tower. Instead, you should introduce that specific mechanic as a lasting gimmick similarly to what I said in 2.1.1, and make it less inconsistent. For things like the pendulum on ToIF or the X pusher example I mentioned, the spot where they get deactivated should be indicated instead of invisible, and the platforms that catch you afterwards should be changed.
2.2: Attempts to make weird jumps more clear#
Sometimes I see people trying to indicate weird or unpredictable jumps with signs. There are two different approaches I would take in this scenario.
2.2.1: Arrows and Glass#
While not a perfect way of indication, arrows work much better than signs, and show the player directly where to go. Now, I’d much rather recommend using glass. If you don’t know what I mean by that, glass is basically a 0.5 transparency part, similarly to the main window of the tower frame. You can tweak the transparency and such, but glass not only helps the player see the upcoming jump without an arrow but also helps to lead them where to go, because it shows them the next jumps.
2.2.2: When in doubt, delete#
This might sound like a weird title for this header, but what I mean is basically: if your jump is so weird that you need signs to show where to go or what to do, and it isn’t helped by glass or arrows, delete it! If your playtesters take several seconds to try and process what to do, or even longer, delete it! You don’t always have to like completely delete it but just either delete it or rework it.
Rule 3: Balancing is ideal#
Now, there’s steady growing demand for towers on the easier spectrum for FToH, and there are way more intense+ skill builders than the people who have the same skill level as the tower they’re building. What this leads to is, as it’s been called jokingly before, “EO opinion”, or basically a less balanced tower. It’s very hard to know what types of jumps the easy, medium, hard skill players will struggle with, and this can lead to some difficulty spikes. These difficulty spikes might seem easy to players of the same skill as you, but they will most likely make players of the intended skill level avoid your tower and go for other options. What I do as a PC main is usually testing my towers on mobile, as I have a substantially lower skill level on mobile (Hard-Difficult). You could also get people who are of this skill level to play your tower. Most people are Easy skill, so you could oftentimes just bring one or multiple friends and then see what they struggle with. You could also find Easy-Difficult skill players in the wild in the earlier EToH rings and ask them for playtesting, whatever you prefer. Both of these approaches will help you balance your tower’s difficulty and make it more enjoyable overall.