u/LAE-kun

I'm making an arena shooter, but it's really short, so I spent a few months adding some replayability elements. So far I implemented a few unlockable characters, meta-progression upgrades, unlockable weapons and some kind of level-up system which unlocks new bonuses on arena (like breakable boxes with healing items). Now it feels like there's a lot of things to do, but... At the same time I can't even call it a shooter game anymore - now it's all about replaying the same levels for the sake of unlocking new stuff! It is completely different from what I intended in the first place and now I have no idea how to revert things back without removing all that content I spent months on.

Should I just remove some of the replayability elements and call it a day? Or are there other ways to make the shooter game feel more like an actual shooter?

I spent quite a lot of time making top-down shooter, but I still can't choose a suitable setting.

Like, fantasy setting is very convenient because I don't need to explain who all those monsters are. Everybody know what is goblin and why slimes are weaker than monster-bears. But at the same time I am unable to draw it as dark fantasy - all the monsters looks like colorful cartoonish dorks and there's a "poof" animation after their death. I think it looks too childish for a shooting game.

On the other hand, sci-fi setting allows me to draw a lot of various robots which explodes after defeat, scattering smoking metal parts all over the floor. Which in my opinion is pretty cool and suits shooting game well, but... I have no idea how to explain what these robots are, why you are fighting them and what is actually going on. Also in this case I can't imagine any location other than "generic futuristic corridor inside a spaceship" or whatever.

What should I do?

I noticed that making yet another game always feels familiar even when you're trying out a completely new genre. But for some reason game marketing feels like unknown territory every single time. Even worse - your previous knowledge may be completely useless, because things keep changing all the time.

Online forums are dead. Game journalists are useless and expensive (unless you're a big studio with a lot of money). Devlogs on youtube are interesting only for other developers. Posts on twitter/bluesky doesn't really convert to wishlists (unless you're a famous person). And now steam changed discoverability on their front page. That's crazy!

Like, man, I just wanna make fun game mechanics and show my work to a bunch of people - why is it so hard to find those people every single time?

Every time when I'm trying to look at my game from the outside I always have one of completely opposite feelings: "Oh my God, this is a masterpiece! I'm such a genius!" and "Why am I wasting my miserable life on this worthless shit?". No in-betweens. So I wonder how do you guys evaluate your own games? Do you focus on any specific components or are you just pretending to be "another person seeing their game for the first time" or maybe something else?

A few days ago I added a new feature to my game, and then I had a few ideas for other features that match so well with the previous one. And then a few more ideas. And more! Today I realized that all these features will increase the scope of my work by about 4 times.

On the one hand, more content = more fun. But on the other hand, implementing all of this (and possibly some new stuff) will take a LOT of time. So, this is so-called scope creep, right? As far as I understand, in this case, I should just cut off all the unnecessary elements from the game, but... I kinda need all of them?

How do you guys deal with scope creep? And, more importantly, how much are you normally willing to cut from your game?

I'm not talking about a "good" story, but any story at all. I mean, there have been a lot of successful games without a plot in the last few years. Vampire Survivors, Balatro, Megabonk, Vampire Crawlers, Sol Cesto — they're all great and fun games, but their stories are mostly a couple of sentences on the Steam page.

Yes, I understand that in such games the story isn't important at all — it's all about the gameplay and stuff... But after playing Kingdom's Return (a repetitive, grindy game), a portion of small and silly dialogues feel like a breath of fresh air. Like, I don't need walls of text and deep lore, but it's nice to have some story pieces here and there.

What about you guys? What do you think about the importance of story in such a games?