I have/had a game on the site, now locked away in the archives during the change over. I could ask to have the topic brought back, but I'm not in a big hurry to do this. The game was not all that good.

At the time, I thought it was awesome. I worked on it, on and off, for over five years. A lot of time was spent covering the same ground though, because I didn't really have it planned out. All I knew was how the story started, and about halfway through I wrote up the script for the "cinematic" ending. Essentially, outside of one or two things revealed in the questlines, the only real sense of characterization came into the mix five minutes before the closing credits and didn't actually include the main character! Not the way to go.

One of the reasons was that the game was an experiment for me. Every step of the way I was thinking "Can I get this to work how I want?" and when I did get it to work (sometimes BARELY), I moved on. I had a rough idea for a story, but until four months before I actually released the thing, none of the main cast had names. They were Male Lead, Female Lead, etc. I had neither gameplay nor story well thought out. It showed. Not the way to go.

Some of the things I thought would be fun features in the game were just irritating. To use the extra movement abilities the player had to open the menu, go to a sub menu and select the skill. Now, the movement skill either timed out after a single use, a short time period, or when the "mana" store was exhausted. For the regular game, they worked okay enough, and there were some uses that I thought were fun and well executed. But, I had a "puzzle" dungeon, early on, that was supposed to act as a tutorial for the system. It probably took about thirty or so uses of the special skills to get through, allowing for some errors and experimenting. That means opening the menu, going to a sub menu, selecting a skill, using it on the map * 30. It wasn't fun, it was a nuisance to the player. Not the way to go.

It depends what type of game you're aiming for, but in almost any case balancing will be a big issue. Is it too easy, too hard, too frustrating? Do you allow people to save everywhere or in limited areas? (I'm a big fan of allowing the player to save anywhere, because it makes the games much more manageable. If someone wants to play for a little while, or has to stop to do something else, it is nice not to have to hunt for a save point. - End tangent) With my game, I took the overly ambitious step of allowing the player to work through the middle third of the game in any order, so I made a bunch of redundant enemies with different levels. It worked based off the hero party's level. The problem is that I'd originally set the quests in a linear order, with the enemies becoming stronger accordingly. After going the "chose your own order" road, the result was that even with the enemy levels scaling toward the player, one area was almost too difficult if you tackled it first, and another was insanely simple if you tackled it anything but first.

I also built the game with the expectation that people would play it the way I had. For someone who ignored some of the more useful abilities, I can imagine that several of the battles had to be frustrating/annoying. Conversely, if someone knew what they were doing and built the main character accordingly, the harder battles came down to planning and equipment load out more then skill. I wasn't quite able to get the feeling I wanted, where a player who was well prepared and knew what they were doing would be able to have a really good fight. Not the way to go.

My system was also mana/skill point use heavy. To be most effective in battle, the player had to use the main character's skills well and often. This, combined with movement abilities, meant that the player was probably running out of mana every two or three battles. I included a way to recover it, a meditation skill that forced the player to remain still for a while, but this disrupted the pacing of the game, turning it into something almost akin to red light green light: This enemy is too tough for me to fight normally, I need to use my skills. Okay, now I can clear this off easily, good thing too because I can't use any more skills right now. Okay, battle is over - standing around to recharge. Alright, I'm ready to go. Another enemy encounter - I saw it on the map but the move speed was set to high so it caught me anyway - damn, same monster grouping. Lather, rinse, repeat. I would hazard a guess that some who played the game found this fairly annoying. Not the way to go.