I was thinking of that too, personally I would call it Cut Content world but yours also works fine.

Yes, that’s a core method of puzzle game design, one i have also used as well. Stumpers are the ends of optional paths.

yeah there are plenty of scrapped pieces of content in games that still had potential to be used elsewhere (like Bionis Shoulder from Xenoblade Chronicles)

@@treehann I like the idea of the optional paths ending in the most 'extravagant' puzzles with the hardest being second to last. Makes it feel more like a reward, also it can get frustrating when you've beaten 9 levels but just the last one is impossible. When it's the second to last, you feel like the challenge ramps up more but that you are managing it anyway, and then when you reach the last one and solve it relatively easily (despite it looking complex) it feels super gratifying.

Mind Over Magnet: The Lost Levels

This is an interesting take; I'd love to hear more viewers' interpretations. Visual design does carry a lot of weight when it comes to interpretation. On a similar line, my interpretation was actually that it's unclear that the button can be pressed a second time; it's not obviously a toggle. (In fact, when I paused the video to try to figure out the puzzle myself, I guessed that there was another mechanic that Mark hadn't yet disclosed. And when I saw the footage at 3:07 of the playester falling back down and hitting the button a second time, I figured it out instantly.) I suspect that, had the button been an on/off switch, players would have figured it out almost immediately-again, an instance of a subconscious visual cue.

@@yowza9638 I feel like in your case there really isn't a problem: The first thing a player will do when they get stumped is just fumble around with the obvious puzzly-bits and see what happens, I think 99% of players will press the button again before they give up. That's really more of a flaw of searching for a solution based on a still screenshot of a puzzle rather than having your hands on it yourself, though.

That was immediately what I thought as well! I would 100% write the other side off as just a symmetrical part of the level.

Yeah absolutely, that part needed to be asymmetrical, the edge to place the magnet smaller with a little pedestal and id go as far as putting a magnet shape in the background to clearly signal what you're supposed to do, if it was meant to teach

Yeah, if it was a ditch instead of a bump, it would've been easier to figure out

Mark has been industry-adjacent for long enough to know how game development works. The rank amateur in his bedroom thinking he's Eric Barone or Toby Fox probably has no clue at all about how a traditional dev team divides responsibilities.

Oof. That's an _amateur_ dev to not know the difference between an artist and a level designer.

i was in a similar situation before. was only going to really make music for a game, but then they wanted me to learn unity and design levels and do ai pathfinding stuff and whatever else.. i get it was a small team with only really one main dev but im not a game dev i just make music lmho

Yikes

Just in advance, making sure everyone who sees @@anon_y_mousse's reply realizes it's bait, they just want to stir up conflict with people by pretending they didn't hear Mark explicitly say he was going to pay people for music.

I know these videos don't get as many views because of nane recognition but this is my favourite KZfaq series. So inspiring and informative in real time.

It has inspired me to watch his videos

Same to all of these comments, this video series actually got me out of tutorial hell and into actually doing stuff. Really helps that he shows all his mistakes so we can avoid doing the same

The one film Roger Ebert tried to make was a punchline for him for the rest of his days. Which makes what Mark's doing even more impressive.

it sounds like a good idea until it ruins experimentation, which puzzle games are all about

​@microdavid7098 I think you're misreading their comment. At least how I read it, the magnet would say something *after* you experiment, to acknowledge what you did. This (at least to me) would encourage experimentation, not discourage it. Unless I'm misunderstanding something

though like mark said it would still make sense to uses them sparingly so it wouldn't become obnoxious or too helpful

only if you spend x amount of time trying a solution that won't work, or maybe y number of attempts?

It’d be fun if there were reactions to unintended solutions!

i agree, and probably add some more facial expressions in general. like, the magnet could react in some way when falling from a great height, or when it is attracted to another magnet... maybe, as time went on, the magnet would get more used to being tossed around, and react accordingly, like at first it was scared, and over time starts getting more excited about it... it feels like you could just continue adding stuff like that forever and just make the game so much more alive. but i don't know how hard it would be to implement, especially for such a small thing

Thank you!

A shadow of a rat in the background running past every 90 seconds would be interesting.

Apologies - hit the upload limit on Google Drive! Back now: forms.gle/EUssSFKDb113bUDy7

Ah, no worries! Thank you sincerely for letting me know! @@GMTK

Newbie game dev here. I guess a general direction is needed - like whether the game should make the player feel smart, frustrated or relaxing. This will affect both the mechanics and the art style of the game. Other than that, mechanics should come first as the game should be first and foremost fun. That's my two pence, though.

@@melian5018 Yeah I know, but what if you want something like, a story element or a feeling you want to convey, to be something gameplay at some point centers around? If you don't figure out that first, then how do you make the gameplay first? You can do some of it sure but, as your vision changes and as you progress and figure things out, you might find yourself going back to things and making changes. Let's say you want to make a swamp area in a platformer. You might find ways to incorporate swamp elements into the platforming- toxic water, lots of trees in the environment... You can't always make the platforming elements first and then just reskin it to look like a swamp after- sometimes you need to think about other things first. Depending on what you're making, I can imagine there possibly being more back and forth in this regard unless you can somehow figure EVERYTHING out really early on- which can be hard because creativity isn't something you can always rush. Which is why I find GMT's video here interesting. His development process very much fits the kind of game he's making, but I have to wonder what it would be like for him to work on a game with a different direction?

This feels like a classic case of bottom-up vs top-down design to me. Bottom-up being the GMTK approach of focusing on the fundamentals of gameplay, the mechanics, level design, etc... before adding in the aesthetic elements like art or story. Top-down is of course the opposite wherein a strong design element dictates the rest of the game like a story you want to tell or a visual style that everything is meant to be a reflection of. It sounds like you are heading towards a more middle road, with perhaps a bias for top-down. The benefit of either approach is it provides strong core pillars to design around that is immensely helpful in creating a cohesive synergistic experience, but different games call for different approaches. I almost exclusively prefer top-down for visual novels for instance. Most games in my experience benefit from a bottom-up approach because that's putting first the element that is unique to the medium. If you want to tell a story, it doesn't *have* to be through a game, but if you want an experience where people can create unique builds through skill point allocation, that's kinda hard to make into a song or a novella. I find most people intuitively fall into either a mixed approach or a top-down approach, but I would highly recommend experimenting with some bottom-up design and seeing where it leads.

It's one of the classic approaches. A lot of mainline Nintendo games are purposely made with minimal visuals at first, like just moving boxes and basic shapes and such, to make sure the gameplay is fun on its own. Even Splatoon, a game that seems like it'd be 90% visual and seems to have the mechanics and visuals joined at the hip, was first just gray boxes moving through empty backgrounds to make sure that movement and shooting were fun on its own.

I feel like whatever works, works but generally even if you have a strong narrative concept or mood you wish to convey, unless you know your mechanics and how they'll work to some extent first, you'll have a hell of a time generally and not in the good way. Depends though on the type of game. If you were doing something like Journey, sure start with concept art and getting the atmosphere you have in mind done out but even then, you should still start gameplay in a blank space with the bare minimum of what you need, greybox and just pad it out as you go.

That's not bad! I'll experiment with that

Not officially diagnosed - just a hunch! I have all the hallmarks like hyper-focus (which has been very useful for game dev!)

@@GMTK Speaking as someone who had a hunch for over a decade before seeking a diagnosis, if you're still hunchin' about it then chances are...