Tierlisting the BEST FEATURES for your game

I know trains were a joke. But "Gimmicks" would have made a good category. Gimmicks like adding train can litterally take your game from a generic indie horror to a cult classic, as with the game you mentioned. Adding the grappling hook to just cause 2 took it from a generic action shooter, to a beloved classic sandbox series. It's an easy way to get your game to stand out and can end up being the games entire identity, as with the portal series being an extreme example.

my next game will be a game where you stand on a train that is driving around a lake, and you are fishing this lake, while standing on the train

Fun fact: Former Blizzard director on Vanilla Wow Mark Kern has said he puts fishing in literally every single game he makes- just because his wife loves to fish in games

Spoiler alert: All of it is scope creep.

Best he mentions trains again in this video, as they turn up in all the other scope creep vids.

Great list as always. If you ever do a sequel or remake of this then maybe some of these things could be added: - minimap (or actually a map overall) - color blind options - easter eggs/secrets (altho maybe this is kinda too similar with achievements as it is something extra players can do if they want to) - DLC/expansions - (animated or video) cutscenes - voice acted dialogue - fast travel - customization (main character, cursor, pet, base/house/camp, font, text box color & shapes... etc) - autosave/checkpoints (i feel like manual save is maybe too obvious for a tier list like this but autosaves and/or checkpoints shouldn't be overlooked)

Hi I am gamer from Denmark. You talked about location in Danish so I would like to give you my perspective. Unless you are making games for kids in Denmark then I would say that you should not bother with location. Most gamers here prefer to play games in English since past location in Danish has been so bad that most of us dont even bother to change from English to Danish.

I hope you keep your word, because now I'm going to add trains to my... chess puzzle game. Gonna be back for that free marketing in ~four months from now.

Listening about Trains while implementing a fishing system in my game haha, you guys are awesome. You have been consistently providing so much value to the game dev community. Wish you all the best! 💛

Hi. I just watched your video, and now going to build my own full-feature dnd game with trains.

CONTEXT: - should be noted that the Tier-Ranking is affected by the game engine used, as per difficulty of completing the feature. - Godot, for instance, makes it VERY EASY to create key rebindings and controller support. And, by virtue of trying out what works with the controller + key rebinding, it opens up your mind on what is and should be possible in the envisioned game. By contrast, online multiplayer is likely much harder on Godot, than on Unity/Unreal. - For this reason: some features are S+ tier if easy to plug-and-play, but C-tier if their development is hard as a result of the framework used.

I was actually thinking of a branching story based on relationship meters. Picking something good or bad will either add or subtract a float. During dialouge if a float is greater than some number you get that narrative. As long as you make the characters not entireoy rely on other dialogue or make it generic enough that it works for either you can whip out a whole new story quickly.. This works only for certain games though where every character isnt fully connected.

Can confirm, trains are an S tier feature

Yay more tier lists, love these videos!

That proud smile after the game's journalist difficulty mode joke 😂 p.s. I agree that trains are S tier.

your video unironically gave me an idea on how to add trains as the level-change mechanic for my first game. Thanks guys!! <3 Other than that, it's a really helpful video.

7:09 Redindable controls are very important for the countries that don't have the same keyboard layout. Bc otherwise you need to add a new language to your keyboard and switch to it just to play a game. The casual player will probably refound rather than searching how to install another layout

01) Translations Useful. Look at what your genres audience speaks and what they accept on other games. 02) Controller Depends on the genre, though the Steamdeck changed that a bit. Some genres are now considered controller-games like any sidescroller and even the average third person actiongame that does not include shooting guns. I would look at what the average person uses to play for the genre. 03) Rebinds Unitys new Input has "key position"-bindings, so my WADS are where there should be on azerty keyboards. However, for keyboard control's its a topic with a lot of emotional weight since people are used to their way of controlling games. For Gamepad, it's probably fine to go without rebinds for a lot of games. Toogle VS hold is also both a matter of taste and accessibility. 04) Graphic settings people like vsync The term "some people like vsync" is strange. On some systems, games without vsync look like shit with all the flicker and screen tearing. So a game without vsync is not an option. vsync on by default is probably fine for some genres, for others like action and especially shooters, the audience will be very very very mad. Also, don't forget to test the timing both with and without it and at high and artifically low FPS. 05) NG+ The completion rate of games is between 30% and 60%. Are player's who finished it once and wish to play it a second time the biggest issue you could solve with developement time? There's a reason this is often delivered by patch. 06) AntiCheat It's not as easy as just anti-cheat. For multiplayer games, especially player vs player and with matchmaking, it's not done with an anticheat solution from the asset store. Theres a reason why the big multiplayergames use both server logic and kernel level anticheat. Cheating in games is pandoras box. Don't bother for singleplayer, and if your players form the party by inviting their steam friends they can filter who they play with. 07) Achievements It's a nice way to add progression and goals to a game, and it's a few function calls. 08) UnitTests I'm not a fan of "Unittests take so much time thats why i dont do them". For some functions, writing unit tests is less work. My save system has unit tests, simple because with those i can test a lot of aspects of the system without having to start the game 4364 times and recreate the test situations over and over and over again. 09) Workshop Requires a healthy game to begin with. If you have a game that benefits from that, you know it. If you have to ask the question, you don't. 10) Demo YES-Tier. We can't win by paid advertising or hype. We need to convince. But holy shit, do not release crappy versions as demos. There's a difference between a playtest and a demo. My experience with NextFest 2024 has been kinda sad as i ignorelisted half of the games i played. 11) Multiplayer Multiplayer is S++ or F--. The game is either a multiplayer game, in that case it is not a discussion, or it is not. In that case, don't waste time. A lot of good story games of the last 25 years had their story cut short because corporate demanded multiplayer. Remember all the fun rounds of deathmatch we had in SpecOps:The Line? No? Me neither. 12) Branching Narrative I don't see that as a feature that can be added or removed after a discussion. It's either part of the design or not. There's not "we make an RPG, do we add branching narrative?". That's a different game. Important: Branching narrative is not the same as player influence. You can give the impression of a world that reacts to the players actions with very little work. The Deus Ex 1 toilet dialog comes to mind. Famously the tests of Dishonored generated the feedback that the game was "too linear" because players did not notice they had options, so they played differently and all thought that was the only way. 13) TRAINS Choo-Choo Charles sold. S++. 14) Difficulty Settings Depends on the genre. The difference in ability between players is massive.

As a left-handed, rebinding can be a huge dealbreaker for some games, especially shooters where you need to access quickly a lot of keys. We don’t have access to the same keys because our thumb is on the left side of the keyboard

A big branching narrative game usually doesn't need other features to succeed