Hello, something that has been bothering me of late is how exactly to I know if a game idea is going to be good before making the full game or even the demo. In short I’ve released three games before and the last one of them was a comedy narrative game kind of like The Stanley Parable. I really like the genre and before moving on from it, I wanted to make another narrative game, but this time with a dark twist.
Reading random stuff on the internet, I stumbled upon one of the most controversial experiments in history - The Milgram Experiment (basically innocent people were asked to torture another person to see if they will obey). I’ve always been interested in ethics and moral choices in games and stuff like The Trolley Problem, so I decided to make a game out all of these themes where the psychological horror comes from the fact that you are the one that gets to face moral dilemmas and decide if and how you should kill a subject. All of your choices during testing have an impact on the ending and I have planned 8 different endings. At the start of the game it’s unclear who or why is making you do this, but over the course of the game you will get little bits of information that help you piece the story.
So that is kind of my elevator pitch of the game. First question is - does this sound compelling to you? Would you yourself play something like that or watch a streamer play it? Second question is how do I validate if this idea is good and worth pursuing? Currently around 20% of the game is complete and around 80% of the demo. I do have a Steam page of the game that has garnered around 800 wishlists and am holding off on official announcement trailer until I have more good footage. Do I talk to friends? Do I ask more people on forums? Do I need something playable that I need to put in front of people? How should I approach this?
Thank you for reading this, any comment or idea is appreciated!
Well…
One thing is you can’t know if a ‘game idea’ is a good one before battle test it.
On one hand it’s similar to writing a book or shooting a movie. Sometimes most mundane narratives have something that ‘clicks’, making it a hit. And sometimes most interesting ones have bad execution, to become instant failures.
On the other hand, of course there are some understanding about ‘what is entertaining’ and ‘how to make things fun’. There are lots of discovered rules, tropes, approaches that worked so far. Like, Game of Thrones books always meant to be a cash cow TV series, and you see traces of almost all the rules that makes a book a good TV material. So there are many sources about narrative and game design that can guide you through your journey.
Of course the concepts discussed in these sources aren’t definitive and open to interpretation. But they helped me dearly exploring ideas and hand down better experiences.
Some I can recommend are,
Art of Game Design (Jesse Schell): It comes with a deck of cards which is very valuable for self-feedbacking.
The Game Narrative Toolbox
How Games Move Us
With games, it’s ‘vertical slice’s, like preparing a 10 minute condensed version of a game. You can gather lots of feedback with that. Every game had that at one point. Balatro had that, GTA 6 had that, as well as “What Remains of Edith Finch” had that. If you can pique interest with a vertical slice, it’s mostly good idea to pursue the rest from that point.
Thank you! I have the Jesse Schell book, but I started another about making games that was about how games created experiences. When I read it I will move to Art of Game Design. So far the first three chapters have been very insightful!
So how did your experience is going with lenses? Do they help you with self-diagnosing so far?