Many games suffer from poor design. Situations where you don't know where to go, or where enemy placement at the start of the level makes it unfair will frustrate the player. Today I hope to rectify this - assuming you actually read the article, of course!

Time gentlemen, please
If you're going to place the player in a precarious situation at the start, give him a chance at least! A few seconds to look around the playfield or a short cutscene warning of impeding danger is much more welcome than a shock by the player when The World's Largest Rock™ squishes your main character within milliseconds. This is common and very annoying!

Lost?! Why didn't we take a map with us?
Ahh. The classic hallmark of any large-scale platform game - the leap of faith. It still exists, even today. If you're going to place a lower ledge out of sight, give the player visual clues. If your level is under a roof, put supports on the ledge to 'keep the roof up'. If not, use other scenery, or abilities to prevent this such as a grappling hook.

AARGH! STUPID @$8#ING GAME! (the most important one IMHO)
Most gamers have felt this way at least once, and all because it was the game that made us lose. Pixel-perfect timing is one of the culprits; dodgy collision-detections and stupidly unfair enemy/player lack-of-control are the ringleaders. The way to prevent this is to debug constantly. Ensure that the player can control smoothly, responding instantly to commands. Keep to a difficulty curve - if you suddenly jump from 1 enemy attacking to a hundred and there's no way you can survive, you will evoke a similar reaction. You know you have reached gaming bliss when players lose and say 'That was my fault. I should have done X instead of X' instead of 'HOW THE [expletive deleted] DID THAT HAPPEN?! *sound of sledgehammer hitting console*'.

Oh, there's a couple of other things:
Emotion is good. If the player hates Hyper Evil Guy then he will want to kill him first - and if he loses, to play it again and win.
Include extras and bonuses for completing the game. There's more replay value to try and unlock everything.


You may choose to follow this, you may choose to ignore this. But whatever you do, trust me on the sunscreen.