"juice" (in terms of game making) will always remind me of this amazing, classic talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg

Reminds me of this interactive demo (created by the lead of Dead Cells) where you can adjust the juice amount in the menu: https://deepnight.net/games/game-feel/

Fantastic watch thanks for sharing. I realize now how a favorite game of mine, Wario’s Woods on SNES, juices up a twist on match 3 puzzle and how dry early versions of Tetris were (succeeding despite that).

Interesting, I came across "juice" in this same sense of relatively subtle UX polish in this article: https://garden.bradwoods.io/notes/design/juice.

Oh I thought you were gonna post that one of Vlambeer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

Same, Vlambeer were extremely good at "juicing" their games. Just look at Nuclear Throne and Luftrausers, games that would only be half as fun without all the action and chaos going on after every shot.

This one talk is the reason why all of my small game projects feature copious amounts of screenshake. :)

I feel modern game design as the exact opposite problem: It's all show and no substance. It looks spectacular on video, but it doesn't feel spectacular when you play it, since it's non-interactive script driven gameplay, barely more interactive than a cutscene.

A bit of juice is fine and necessary, but the moment your juice starts to look like interactive gameplay, but isn't, it went way to far and just becomes noise. I rather have some less spectacular debris I can interact with, then just a particle system filling the screen with non-interactive nonsense.

TotalBiscuit was ranting about it ages ago[1]. 2kliksphilip also has numerous videos[2] on the lack of interactive physics in modern games.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHyD49DaeA

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxQW2GL64U0

I think you might be better served seeking out counterexamples. There are presumably more game makers and games now than there were yesterday. (Even if AAA studios consolidate.) So surely some are bad, some are too focused on visuals and not nearly enough on "the gameplay loop."

But games come out that break the mold of AAA style over substance, and sometimes they are great. Games like Stardew Valley or Valheim or Factorio had very small teams, and rudimentary graphics, and yet offered up countless hours of addictive gameplay.

What are some other examples of breakout hits?

You might like this article: https://www.raphkoster.com/2012/01/20/narrative-is-not-a-gam...