Mining Grounds

I’ve shipped seven games in seven months and soon to release my eight. I have to say that I’ve learned a ton. Not only on making games, but on the design perspective as well. But there is at least one thing I keep struggling with and that is the on-boarding of my games. I feel that I’m quite good at building complex game mechanics nowadays, but also to make graphics and storyline. But once I have the core game complete, I quickly realize that the new player does not understand the mechanic (or the story) I’ve built. Most of the players want the game to feel intuitive, clear and straightforward at the beginning. Whereas I easily trust that the player will try, learn and ultimately figure out the game. Which, obviously, leads into a conflict.As I’m building games within a month, I can’t really build intuitive tutorials and on-boarding systems for my games. It easily becomes a game that has some depth in the mechanics, but the player is not able to understand it. Because the game doesn’t communicate it in any way. I yet again realized this when organizing a playtest to my friend for Mining Grounds. The systems that I thought were intuitive and clear, were the ones he was struggling the most. And that happened at the very beginning of the game. And if such experience happens for most of the players, you can pretty much guess how people will react. If the first minutes of the game include a feeling that the player doesn't know how to proceed: It will affect the whole experience of the game. All that depth I’ve built and complex mechanics doesn’t really bring any value, because the player's mind is clouded with negative thoughts about the game. For comparison, my fourth game: Buttons Up! Didn’t really require a big onboarding or tutorials on how the game functions. It was very easy to get going and understand how to proceed. And because of it, it’s still standing with a massive median playtime of two hours and forty minutes on Steam. For Mining Grounds, I made the same mi...

Mining Grounds Demo just got an update!Play until level 30 with a better balance!Linux Support!Mac Support!But also, all graphics has been updated to get rid of all assets made with AI. Everything you see now in the game is hand made!Hope to see you mining this week!

You can either watch/listen this post on Youtube, or read it belowHands down and I have to admit that I’ve made a mistake: I used AI in my game project. I know, it’s nothing new for many, many indie game developers and big studios out there: But for me, personally. It was a terrible mistake. Let me explain myself Ever since AI opened its doors for ”consumer use” I could already see all the bad signs it could bring. The ones who would suffer the biggest blow, would be the creators. The ones who’ve been honing their skills for years to build graphics and all sorts of entertainment. Suddenly, anyone who had ever even successfully created a stickman, or written a structured, well thought sentence, could start creating graphics, code, novels and everything. The ones who have no experience in creating something from scratch by only using their practiced skills can never understand what it really takes to create something. Because of it, these people find it very hard to understand what is the problem in AI. As expected, everything happened very fast. It became a norm in a matter of months. Every art asset, every written sentence started to be questioned if it’s made with AI or not. And in a blink of an eye, the artist's work became less valuable. Because ”I can do it too”. Now we see the effects of it by having massive layoffs and shifts in the quality of our entertainment. Suddenly it’s less about the process of creating something extraordinary and more about performance and the output. But what does this have anything to do with me? As a solo game developer, I observed this process. I felt angry, sad and powerless to do anything about it. I kept on creating my games hand-made and stood behind the idea of not using the AI in my creations. I shipped seven games in seven months, all made by hand. The graphics, the stories, the music and the sounds. Using real instruments, my microphone to record sounds while drawing everything by hand. My games didn’t really get that much ...