THE 9 THINGS THAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THE RMNCASTS

As the podcast guy, I'll expand the reasoning behind these a bit, but they are mostly accurate.

1. Play character should always move fast or have a run / sprint button.

This is so I can explore and run around and find things and do quests. If it's slow, then I'm much more likely to get sleepy and stop playing the game.

2. Text (dialog) speed should always be fast (or adjustable).

3. Dialog should NEVER have pauses.

I'll put these two together, because it emphasizes a point I make a lot in the podcasts: People don't read text the same way they hear the spoken word. I understand that pauses and slowed ellipses are to help convey to the player that the actors are processing information/reacting, but I will guarantee you that the player isn't thinking like that. They're thinking about the story, that boss fight that just happened, equipment upgrades, and so forth.

Dialogue can have dramatic pauses, but very sparingly; they should be used to give the actor time to process the information, as opposed to the player, and shouldn't be longer than a second or two.

4. When the player dies, the fun is over. Does this mean knocked out characters should always live like Final Fantasy Legend II?

This is probably the toughest sell, since you have to balance out difficulty versus reward. There's nothing wrong with making something challenging, but if the penalty is having to restart, a redo is going to become less attractive in the future. See: Chocobo Racing Balloon Popping Game Thing in FFX.

5. Having a party full of stunned, sleeping or poisoned characters is not fun. So make enemies only stun all, sleep all or poison all every 5 turns.

This goes towards game balance. If your boss has a sleep-all move, how is the player going to rectify that, and is it reasonable to expect a player to know AND perform that way?

6. Originality and flair mean a lot for your game... unless you are trying to emulate a classic like Zelda or Dragon Quest.

Self-explanatory. It's very difficult to see what you probably consider to be The Greatest Idea Ever as being not, so it's important to remember that when you create anything. Take fair criticism and assessment, and listen to what people have to say.

7. Big empty maps are not fun. Every area in your map must look distinct so that way players have a landmark to find where they are.

Also self-explanatory. I used to like big maps, and I still kind of do, since I grew up playing the original DQ games of amazing aimless and time-wasting wandering, but if you've got no map and have no idea where to go, then trying to reach a goal point becomes very tedious very quickly.

8. Long intros aren't fun, they're boring. More than a minute of intro is too long. People like to play the game.

There are so many things you can do at the start of the game to make it more than just exposition for ten minutes! This is, by far, one of the easiest fixes any game can have. I'm sure you have a LOT of info you want to give to the player, but you have to make sure the player is engaged and committed before you tell them all about your game world and its characters.

9. Randomness is fun and entertaining (Family Guy). Why make sense with your game when it seems so much more appealing to have Ninja vs Pirate?

Humor is very hard to pull off in a game, but humor games are few and far between, which is why when you come across one, it stands out.

I do use dialog pauses. It seems odd for a character not to have them, just because no one ends a sentence and just keeps talking into the next one. I never slow down the text speed unless it's plot crucial information, and even then, only for maybe 4 or 5 boxes for a cinema portion. Too bad the SHIFT + ENTER text skip combo only works in the test game option.

People, look at this marvelous invention I made, I think it's going to make me rich . I haven't decided what to call it yet though

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Isn't that what a semicolon is?

;

Whenever I use one people think I meant to use a comma.

No, that's not what a semicolon is.

Semicolons are for combining sentences. Commas are for pauses.

I used to put pauses in my text until I realized how useless they are; nobody reads that slow and its really annoying. The only possible use I can think of for a pause is with subtitles when the characters have voices and you want the text to go as fast as the person is talking. But even then it's not really needed.