How gamedevs add juice to their games

Reuben played ‘Wizard With a Gun’ recently, and was inspired by the sound of guitar strumming in the game’s menu. For such a simple design detail to be so evocative, he was inspired to note down more examples from indie games. From there, we’ve compiled a list of 30 game details for our most recent video:

To Reuben, one of the best things about video games is that they can be more than the sum of their parts. It’s like a magic trick; by assembling code, art, music and animation, games can come to life. These small design tricks all help build a cohesive overall package that make these games so much fun. As game devs, we should be paying attention to these small things you can do in your games to add vibrancy to player’s experiences. Thus, we hope the video inspires you to think about what you can do to “juice” up your game!

For your reference, here’s a transcript of all the games mentioned in the video, and the details we’ve noted from them!

1. Wizard with a Gun has a simple menu that plays the sound of guitar strums as you scroll through it. It’s lovely in how it helps establish the game’s atmosphere.
2. In Wanderstop you’re playing as Alta, a fighter who is struggling to just relax. So, the animations in Wanderstop when you’re wielding tools look and sound like you’re swinging a sword. Alta doesn’t know how to do things in a way unlike a fighter. Great characterization, and great SFX to match.
3. In Wheel World, you’re racing around on your bike, sometimes pretty chaotically. If you’re too reckless though, NPCs dive out of the way. Even that barricade can’t keep you safe from me!!
4. In Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip, you go around causing and solving problems for the townsfolk on your journey to drive into space. As you drive around, you’ll often accidentally crash into things. And yet – the city never seems to get too smashed up! That’s because if you watch closely, all the pieces you knock over on your travelling around will get back up and put themselves back into place. Nifty!
5. In Cryptmaster, in order to save you need to desecrate altars. You can choose what you do to the altars though. In addition to the contextual dialogue that the different actions have however, some actions also have contextual sound effects.
6. In Rift of the NecroDancer not only do enemies move to the beat, but also EVERYTHING does. The enemies groove, the characters pulse, even the UI jams its funky heart out to the beat!
7. We could make a full video out of all the cool things in UFO50, but we’ll just talk about the continue system in Rakshasa. Old school games often have a basic continue system, which is fine, but a little uninspired. Rakshasa makes you EARN your continues. When you die, you can revive yourself and continue by collecting these coins. But, as you die, you need to collect more and more, while avoiding more and more enemies. If you’re good enough, you could theoretically continue forever. It’s in function still a set ‘continue system’, but adds such a high level of player control that it stands out.
8. In Dawnfolk, you’re building towns in a grid. But- the menus are also in a grid based system, and you can even “grow” your menu by spending points you earn. It’s a really interesting way to tie menus and progression into the core game loop.
9. In Dunecrawl, you’re riding around on a lot of different bugs. These mounts, the Steedle, have a limited amount of health before you get flung from them. But look, once they’re out of health they go into this ‘scared’ mode, which you’ll need to get them a berry to bring them back from. Poor guy is scared! So much cuter than being dead or ‘knocked out’.
10. Olaf the Boozer is a fun blend between The Hangover and a Sokoban puzzler game. This game plays with memory and space so much, but Reuben loved this little moment when you’re looking for a carpenter. You solve the puzzle, moving around the entire shop, to narratively simulate the experience of searching for the carpenter. What a cute way of unifying the gameplay into the narrative.

11. This is maybe a little obvious, but in Nubby’s Number Factory, the character who introduces himself to you as Tony is actually Ethan “MogDog” Anderson, the creator of the game. This detail is mainly an excuse to show the sick old web aesthetic of this game. And hey – Ethan’s website has the same vibe! That’s passion!
12. Sorry We’re Closed begins with protagonist Michelle having a vision of a hideous demon. But, you can close your eyes and pretend to be asleep. If you do, you’ll hear the faint footsteps of the incoming demon. It’s such a simple and minor thing but adds so much to the terror of this scene.
13. This UI framing in Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is so nice. During cutscenes, and for things like popups, you see this cool scrolling background above and below the UI. Really gives it a cohesive “old emulated game” feel.
14. ENA: Dream BBQ uses a similar scrolling background, but here it’s used to animate this wizard character, whose ‘background’ of stars and moons on their clothes is masked by the clothes themselves, and animated differently. Such a strange effect, but gives him a real otherwordly vibe. This game is unhinged though – lots of cool and strange things to check out in here.
15. Which Way Up is a very fun party game themed around space and gravity. Whilst lovely, sometimes you want to enjoy it on your own. Which is why it’s so fun that Which Way Up has a built out singleplayer ‘narrative’ mode, like how the earlier Smash Bros games used to do it. Something neat is the way each level is comprised of a series of timed challenges – the flow from challenge to challenge is so natural and unified it gives them such a sense of place and progression.
16. The character creation in Rue Valley is fantastic. You assign points to your stats, but the more you assign to a stat, the more negative traits you get. Now – from playing the game these aren’t actually that negative, but by framing them as negative, it makes players consider the choice a bit more actively, which was great. What a cool trick!
17. In Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip – yes, it’s so full of life and detail it made the list again. Anyway – in Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip, to resummon your car, you hit this parking sign. But – they did something very simple, and made it move around! It turns this very simple interaction into a small minigame of catching and thwacking the sign on your journey. It’s great when games turn what might be a simple piece of UI or a menu into a fun little interaction – it brings so much joy to have these things in a game.
18. Blood Typers has you exploring horror scenarios by typing, which is already so delightful. As you play through, you’ll come across computer terminals, which you need to ‘hack’ into by typing. But just look at how scared your character is while you’re doing this – frantically checking over their shoulder in case anybody is sneaking up on them. Love that.
19. Sephiria is a “bun”geon crawler, where you’re adventuring down through caves as a cute bunny with a sword. But – in the beginning there’s this small moment near the start where you repair your house. How fun to re-use your combat controls in order to absolutely smash repair the shit out of your house.
20. Thank Goodness You’re Here is a game made of fun details. Here are some of Reuben’s favourite signs in-game:
    1. “Lost Cat. Also lost: 1 child”
    2. “Tony’s Parked Vans – Never Caught Moving”
    3. “Pissing on Ludonarrative”
    4. “License to Serve Minors, from Larry the Landlord”
    5. “Kid’s Deal: Just eat some of your mums”

21. Haste is a unique roguelike runner. They nailed the feeling of doing well – you really feel the music pumping. But – they also really nailed the “bad” feeling of doing badly. If you’re too slow, the world around you starts to crack, and you can hear the music start to warp and hit off notes with greater frequency. For a game with such a small amount of UI, it really conveys a lot just with the background music here, which is very nice.
22. The King Is Watching is a gorgeous little city survival game, with this really nifty “watching” mechanic to activate your city. What Reuben was watching, however, was this cute little goblin guy who hangs out outside of the play area. He hunts, he fishes, he scratches his little butt, and he is generally adorable while I rebuild my city after a goblin attack.
23. Schedule 1 has been blowing up on Steam lately – great to see some more Sydney games go so strong. This game has such a fun goofy vibe, and it’s great that the character creator had dedicated “eyelid resting position” sliders. It lets you make your character anything from tweaking out constantly, to always high and sleepy. So on theme for the game.
24. Babushka’s Glitch Dungeon has this glitchy aesthetic which it plays with very well. The randomisation in the glitching of the levels, made moving around the map as you visited the same location multiple times fresh.
25. Is This Game Trying to Kill Me? Is a really fun escape room with a cute techno/horror theme. Escape room games are great, but sometimes the puzzles just don’t click. In this game, the hint system is especially smart. There are contextual hints you can choose to reveal, sometimes multiple at once. Plus – they’re all images, so it doesn’t explicitly spell it out for you (although the hints are very clear if you’ve looked at the right thing). Great way to ensure players can help unstick themselves if there’s a puzzle that just isn’t landing.
26. Random events are really well done in Welcome to Elderfield. When you come across a random event, you see a visible dice roll, which lets you know if an event will be positive, neutral or negative. This short animation quickly injects a little bit of tension, and ties perfectly into the vibe of the game.
27. Unbeatable is another fantastic rhythm game, which always knock it out of the park in terms of gameplay details. But – we’ll be focusing on the cutscenes It’s a simple one, but characters often interrupt each other with their text boxes, making the dialogue between multiple characters so lively. It also brings a lot of character, from the way some characters are more brash and will butt in.
28. Grime has a fantastically weighty combat system, but games with a prominent dodge mechanic like this can be a struggle- it’s hard to telegraph exactly how long your invincibility frames are. A common solution is the classic invincibility flashing, or something non-diagetic like that. But, Grime ties the invincibility state in very nicely to the mechanics, showing your body un-form and reform as you enter and leave invincibility. Great way of having art design support mechanical clarity.
29. In Humbug Tales, you are raising and shepherding your ants to explore the world. The demo was really fun, if a bit buggy (pun intended). Having said that, one touch of polish were idle animations where your character would pet the ants, helping you bond with your herd – so adorable!
30. One of the best game demos from this list is Mindwave. Such an incredible feeling game, with a gorgeous art style too. Their use of fairly simple text effects to convey emotion was really appreciated. When you’re waiting in line, the text starts to blur, until somebody gets your attention. Then, later, your character auto-skips through text as you get bored reading license agreements. Very relatable, and very well done.

That’s all for now! We hope you enjoyed seeing such fun and unique details in some obscure and upcoming indie games. Check out our Youtube channel for more!

We hope you enjoyed reading this! Have a question or want to chat more about game development? Reach out to us!

Other places you can find us:

• Our other game development resources
• Join our Discord server