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You can see it in my prototype recording here (around the 0:10 mark): bsky.app/profile/reno...

Combat.

Removing a feature and making the game better is such a real design lesson. Good taste often means letting go.

nice 😆

Exactly haha. It was in for so long as well, felt sacrilegious when we took it out. We also had a time system similar to the Bomber’s Notebook that was in for ages. The reality is no idea is sacred and if it’s not really serving the core always feel safe to experiment and change.

For Planted! one aspect of growing produce was that it could 'go bad' if left in the ground for too long (arcade speed). However new strategies around protecting/keeping some back for later challenges meant it didn't make sense to punish the player. Also didn't look aesthetically pleasing either!!

i removed woke features

For my medieval library management game, I had a complex system for the state of the book. Spine, cover and pages each tracked how broken and how dirty they were. It was kinda cool but impossible to communicate and not actually necessary for the restoration gameplay (which is still WIP)

Monuments to Guilt had a little museum radio doo dad for additional context to the exhibit but as I landed on the final tone of the thing it just didn't fit to have my goofy voice bothering you with inane insight you could gleam just from looking around.

In my puzzle game, I added some rays of light and a splash of particles every time you placed a light bubble. Now the rays only appear when you place a light bubble that satisfies adjacent clues (feels more rewarding). The particles have been removed completely.

but in the end, for a game that ended up having four levels total, I figured that removing the mechanic would be a better solution rather than overcomplicating the game, the design and my life lmao. It was supposed to be a quick learning experience after all (it took me 3 years, dangit Uni)

We also experimented with snapping the bounce direction when you bark deflect vodka and other objects to just 8 directions. Thinking it might be easier for people to aim where deflected objects would land, but that ended up actually making it MUCH harder and less predictable.

On one hand I'd kill to see those prototypes, on the other hand, to me, Lorelei is literally a perfect game. Not one thing missing, not one thing out of place.

The radio in OXENFREE was once a tape player. Record any sound and play it back somewhere else to tap into the supernatural. Radio ended up being streamlined and way more on theme!

raising the Decay Level equal to the die roll. It ended up short circuiting the death spiral mechanic that the game operates on and basically made it so players could succeed almost all the time. Cutting the mechanic has made the pacing of the game smoother and aligned with how I want it to run.

I made a game about drawing paths in a grid to score points. Added a bunch of ‘special line’ types that would give curses or extra score when a line was used. It meant extra complexity, but players didn’t feel like it added any depth or fun to the game. Ended up just keeping one of the types

in Into the Slimy Mines, power was originally range-based, so you had to create a network of relays to make sure stuff deeper in the mine had juice. But in practice this was very easy to set up and your network was rarely at risk, so it didn't add anything at all to your planning.

...It also makes more sense in real world terms. I might run about outside my house, but I wouldn't do so inside.

In Match Tree I added the ability to choose tools before you start a map so the replayability is higher. And I removed it and enabled all unlocked tools which made playing the maps much more interesting. Now I just realized I didn’t remove the screenshot… store.steampowered.com/app/3010870/...

Such a good feeling when the game's flow clicks and you're like that one Kronk gif

NEW VIDEOOO??? YES!

Key Fairy used to have a "Calm" system, where monsters would reset when you died, and you would have to find, and unlock, an Ancient Node to permanently calm the area. We ended up benching the feature because (among other things) it made the creatures feel like "Enemies", rather than people.

Sometimes something sounds cool... and then it just isn't! Gotta kill your darlings as they say. 😂

Elder Scrolls-style skill leveling. Yes, it makes a lot of sense to get better at something by doing it. But many skills are more situational, so they won't naturally keep up with your other skills. I ended up with a global XP pool. Every time you level up, you pick which skill to increase.

--themes around parasocial/exploitative relationships vs genuine and mutual care, and so I initially added a sort of friendship mechanic inspired by Nectar from the Hades games. During the main mission, players could find and gather a resource called God Favor that they could either use to heal--

My computer would run out of memory before it could finish simulating the most complex puzzles in the game. I ditched the system in favor of hand-authored hints, which was more work but results in a more designer-controlled experience, which I prefer.

Mythmatch: The player being able to gather resources. Removing it forced the player to rely on the NPCs, which created a level of empathy, team work, and community to reject the lone hero trope.

(And to be fair, less interesing/immersive than what I'd like. But well, that's how it is now 😄)

I wonder. There are certainly many I wish I had taken out before submitting them to game jams.

Where to start? 👀 The biochips in Rogue Trooper on PS2 originally had a minimum of 4 abilities each, which led to nested menus to select the one you want. Even as devs we constantly selected the wrong top level menu, so streamlined it down to 4 total abilities to remove friction.

New rule : players can only make a 1-tile move per turn Why it works : they must rely on the tiles effects to move further... And tiles effects is the core mechanic of the game. So...👌🏻 😏 😁

Several fully playable scenes in Neofeud 2 didn't quite make it to the final cut, but some of them became short clips in the intro, which improved everything all around!

Originally my stock trading game had a main mechanic where you’d use a newspaper to make investments ahead of time. It ended up making the game extremely predictable, so I ended up going the almost complete opposite direction of almost never predictable and it’s been much more fun since!

For my anti-GenAI roguelike Art Attack: the combat has you fighting by spreading paint on the ground. I wanted the paints to mix on the ground, but the shaders were too complex, so we had the player mix paints in the inventory instead. This way, each color could do something specific.

Tried to make my deckbuilder a roguelike: added the shop, amulets, that kind of stuff... And it just wasn't fun! And core mechanic felt mudded after all additions. Switched to a regular deckbuilder, made it a narrative one. Now the gameplay is much better: crystal clear, straightforward, fun.

People kept asking for undo on death in Desktop Dungeons, but it would stretch out failure from a sharp learning moment to a boring grey trudge towards an underpowered quit after undoing constantly. Took a decade to deliver a version of undo that didn't make the game worse.

Phoenix Springs used to have a conversation options menu. But since your inventory holds ideas, we also use it as a way to ask questions.

In the jam version of Loose Ties there was a separate "score" that counted your correct deductions. Eventually this was folded into the energy that keeps a run going. It entangled the deductions into the rest of the game and brought them much closer into the foreground (:

Usually I kill unviable ideas before implementing them, but the biggest one I can think of is taking cards out of the game since the input system made them redundant

In Raccoons to Riches, early on in development I added a little animated text panel that'd pop up and say "Your Turn/Customer's Turn" after every action since that seemed like it'd be a helpful reminder. I recently removed it, and the game loop feels a lot snappier now!

Nice. Cutting to hit rolls speeds things up so much in pretty much everything.