Hi, I'm making a game with a friend, it's a 2d runner/platformer about a lost astronaut running away from giant space worms in maze-like underground burrows. The most fun I have playing is to try to go as fast as I can in the few levels we built. I am therefore curious what the speedrunning community would think about it, and more broadly what kind of useful features speedrunners like to see on games of this genre to make runs as smooth and painless as possible, things like an in game timer for example (already there). There's also a crude leaderboard in place, so if you wish to try to beat the dev's time, please knock yourselves out.
You can try it here : https://affairesetrangeres.itch.io/this-is-no-cave
It's an early demo of course, we plan to try to find funding for the game so we can hopefully make a fully fledged title !
To the mods : if you consider this thread as unwanted advertisement, please feel free to delete it. It's not really the goal, I mainly wish to learn more about what makes a game interesting for speedrunners.
If you yourself are interested in running it, you can submit the game to have its own board at https://www.speedrun.com/knowledgebase/supporthub/request-game-or-series
Bruh @Wrap , they made the game, I don't think its an issue of if they plan on running it
@tristesire honestly, the biggest things is to include an accurate in-game timer, and an in game leaderboard. Including both these things will attract runners, and if your game is fun to play, it will probably attract a semi-decent sized community.
@Wrap The game isn't really ready for that, I'll submit it if the project ever gets launched.
@VyPr Those are the two features that came to our mind, they are already crudely implemented. What about a ghost of the best time ?
@1234 Thanks for your feedback ! It's true we need to rework the tutorial a bit, it was designed pretty early in developpement and the game has evolved quite a bit since.
For me, I prefer that games have very little RNG in them, especially if the game is very difficult to beat. If a game does have RNG, than I would like it to be less mechanically demanding. As @VyPr said, an accurate in game timer is very important; a lot of games have IGT but the IGT is easily abusable or innacurate. I also like speedgames that are shorter in length (about 5 minutes or less), but that preference differs from person to person. Some people enjoy doing very long runs. Finally, I like games that lend themselves to having categories. If your game is basic right now, adding collectibles like coins or powerups opens the door to categories like 100% and low%, and can improve the experience for casual players who are completionists.
Edit: I played the game for a couple minutes and its pretty fun. I might speedrun this myself.
I also disagree completely with in-game leaderboards IF they just read the completion time and update the board, you've got to have something akin to ghosts reconstructed with recorded inputs for in-game leaderboards to function without uploading video proof, believe me, I've had enough problems with it. I can't think of many other examples at the moment, but: Polybridge 2 has good in-game leaderboard proof standards, and Clustertruck doesn't. And yes, in agreeing with @VyPr , if there's going to be an in-game timer, let it not be destroyed by the in-game FPS :-), it must be accurate!
One thing I would recommend for speed games of that genre in general is to keep a good pace. If you have cutscenes, make them skippable. Don't make the players go through minutes of text at a time. Keep autoscrollers to a minimum, maybe even none at all. Stuff like this makes it much more fun to grind these levels over and over again. General quality of life options like instant text or in game timers are always good to have too. Another thing that makes a good speed game is multiple movement options. If the player can do nothing but run and jump, it can make repeat playthroughs not very exciting. But if you give them anything like a slide, wall jump, etc it makes the movement more fun and allows for a higher skill ceiling. This can also lead to multiple ways to beat a level, something like a casual route and a different route for experienced players. Think how Super Metroid has an intended casual route through the game, but the developers gave you a wall jump which leads to many opportunities for sequence breaking and all that fun stuff that makes games even more replayable. And even if your game intentionally doesn't have many movement options, try something like two different routes. (Note that I haven't actually played your game yet, these are just general recommendations.) EDIT: I beat all the levels of your game, and I thought it was really fun! I can definitely see all the optimizations a player could make. The only thing I didn't like as much was the worm chase scenes being extremely tight and unforgiving, but maybe that's just me being terrible at computer games so take it with a grain of salt or two.
Thank you all for your input ! I'll keep all that in mind for the future.
I had one question about the slow feature, my programmer argues that it should also slow the timer to not deter its usage, but I guess that renders it kinda useless for speedrunners, doesn't it ?
Here's an illustration of my point : https://gfycat.com/fr/personaldownrightalpinegoat
Oh you should absolutely not slow down the timer, that way it rewards those who are skilled enough to beat the levels without it
Main thing for most people is the mechanics. Simple to learn, hard to master is the most fun any speedrunning gets (SM64/Minecraft for example).
It helps if it: -Has an optional in game timer (make this off by default for normal players) -Looks good -Is also just a good and fun game
@SnarkySceptile Yeah, that's what I figured!
@Sizzyl Makes perfect sense, that's the goal. I feel like we still struggle on the easy to learn part, even if the controls are pretty simple.
To chime in very late about the last part- Superhot, being a game where time only moves when you do, has two modes for individual level runs in terms of it timing is based off real time or "game time" as if you had played at full speed. Both are their own category.
Think you'd just have to determine if the slow feature is integral enough to your game where it's worth having two timer modes, or if not I would default to 'real time' and keep it going full speed during the slow.
Other people have already mentioned the usual advice so I won't pile on, but best of luck!
Yeah, the slow feature was initially added in an attempt to facilitate the game, who was very hard at the time, it's far from being as integral as in Superhot's design. But who knows how the game will evolve !