Game Feel and Juice

    Game feel is the art of turning a plain and boring game into an exciting and tangible experience. Good game feel design is something that mostly goes unnoticed, however if a game has bad game feel design, it is immediately noticeable and will turn most players off the game completely. Good game feel design is about little tricks that will improve the player feedback, and gives the world weight, permanence, and character. Games that are great examples of game feel are Vlambeer titles such as Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers, and other games such as Super Time Force or Hotline Miami.

A game with no feel

    As I said previously, game feel is often about subtle little tricks, which when all combined together bring a whole new feeling to the game. Some of the most common tricks are simple things such as bass boosting sound effects such as gunshots or explosions, enemies flashing white for a single frame when they're hit, and recoil pushing the player back when shooting. These tricks will all be found in any action game worth it's salt, and are incredibly easy to implement. Other tricks are perhaps not so obvious, but will add to the experience just as much as those that are readily apparent. This could be something such as 'sleeping' the game when the player hits something, whereby the game pauses for milliseconds. This is found in countless games and is one of the oldest tricks in the game feel book, everything from The Legend of Zelda to Streetfighter uses this technique to add weight to the player's actions.

The same game as above, with 'feel' tricks implemented

    I have researched game feel, listening to GDC talks from Vlambeer co-founder Jan Willem Nijman and Jonaton Soderstrom, creator of Hotline Miami, and have produced a list of around twenty to thirty tricks that I feel I could implement in my game that would all add a little bit of something to the overall feel of the game. Game feel is one of the aspects of game design that often goes missing in poor indie titles, a mistake I aim not to make myself.