The Importance of Feel in Player Control
Dan here.
Through all the games we have made together here at Dotly, and all the games I made prior to Dotly, there is one thing that has continually been of growing importance. The player controller. Too many times I have seen games that had an amazing central idea, but were ruined by non-solid player control.
Why is this so often overlooked by amateur game devs? Your character is your conduit into the world: It is you, existent in the game world that the developer has created.
When I first started making games, I was definitely guilty of not putting enough emphasis on the player controller. I would make something that was merely serviceable, because I was more excited to get to the central gameplay ideas. Spending time tweaking player movement values and perfecting the way the player moves seemed like misuses of the little time I had.
Now, when I make a game, solid player movement is the FIRST thing I do. Before I add content, the player needs to feel good. When a player sits down in a chair to try your game, the first thing they do is move around and get a feel for the controls. If the controls don’t feel right to them, the experience is immediately tainted.
I first started thinking about this when I played Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy as a young boy. In the PSM review, the reviewer said that it had the “Super Mario 64″ effect, where just running around felt really good. You didn’t need a goal, or a destination to have fun in those games. All you needed was your player, and a controller, and you could run around and have a blast.
One note, however: It is important to make the player control in a way that feels right for your game. Take into consideration the standards that have been created by the games that precede you, but do not tie yourself to them. This is something that we have learned while developing Aphelion.
In Aphelion (releasing this month!) I spent a long time getting the player movement to feel just right.
At first, I had basic arrow key controls, and you could hold shift to move faster. This is essentially the industry standard for moving a player. Yet I quickly found that introducing this other button seemed unnecessary: since Aphelion only has 4 movement axis, it was much more fun if you could sprint by pressing the arrow key really fast. So, you now hold the direction key down to move at a certain pace, and if you want to move faster, you can press the key and you will move at that speed. This immediately made the movement more dynamic, and with only four main inputs (the four cardinal directions) we have created an entire game with a very dynamic movement system.
Mashing the arrow keys may not make sense for all games, but it made sense for ours. So do what feels right. And for goodness sake, spend time on your player controller.
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Cheers.
