How can make moving itself as fun?

I am making turn based, board game like tile map game.

How can I make moving around on that tile map itself being fun?

 

add some wobbly physics to the pieces. Bigger pieces go thunk.

make the movement animation fluid and have a nice arc with ease in and ease out.

accompany that with pleasing sound effects.

make it like ten year olds who are super invested in the game are moving the pieces

 

I think FFT did this really well with the animations.

Or X-Com also did this really well since moving was completely gut wrenching. You never knew when you were about to be ambushed.

 

A fog of war mechanic results in exposing the contents of new tiles and hiding old ones during movement. This can be fun on its own.

 

This idea wI'll be an odd one.

Give the player the magical ability, to teleport almost anyway on the map, even behind opponents, when his/her magic meter is filled up.

And put fancy special effects and sound effects, when he initiates the teleporting ability. Doing that might make the player enjoy playing the game more, and give them eye and ear candy.

 

If you go for enough "juice" in visual f/x, sound f/x, animations, and solid controls and get to the point where just moving the pieces will be fun, it will make the rest of the game more fun. Create some prototypes, get some playtesters just moving the pieces around without any idea of the final game. See how they react. It doesn't even have to be final artwork, just something of a similar enough style. (i.e. If the pieces in your game are 3d miniatures, use a basic 3d model you already have.)

There was a 3d platformer game where I read the postmortem and one of the developers talked about putting together a prototype where the character ran around, there was some tweening when you turned, bits of dust popping up from the feet, some basic sound effects. People at the company were having fun just running the little guy around a basically empty scene. That is when they knew they had a good game on their hands. (Unfortunately I don't remember which game it was.)

 

Make it context sensitive and slightly random. Give the pieces a personality.

By context sensitive I mean if the pieces are lifted and tap each space as they move, have it be a little less up and faster if they move longer distances. Moving 2 spaces is a big clunk, clunk, but moving 10 spaces is a quick, hardly-bouncy-at-all tap, tap, tap ... like a real person would do. Maybe the very final square always have a little extra flourish (again, like a real person). Also, a move to an "important" space (in range of an enemy, or lots of enemies) can be a little more dramatic -- maybe just a slightly higher bounce and louder and harder thunk as it comes down the last time.

For personality, vary the motion a bit for each unit type. Some just slide (but pause a tiny bit on each square), some are hoppier, some are lifted, make little fake square taps in the air like they're too good to touch the board, and come down very delicately. For randomness, some might trip on long moves (and get up, and keep going, of course). Some get impatient and go extra fast on the last 2-4 squares of a long move. Some seem nervous and sometimes take a little more time to get started.

But they need to move quickly. Watching them may be fun at first, but people will want to play the game after that. I'd say to have the piece count as moved the instant the player selects where it goes. Let the player move another piece right away while the first one animates it's movement.

 

And probably have a "turn piece animation off" toggle in settings for when someone wants a quicker game.

 

I'd much rather have it go very fast, or snap in place, when it needs to -- like if the other player selects another piece to move right away. Maybe have a little ghostly image of where it will be. I've found that when there's an option to turn off a slow animation you pretty much have to use it to make the game playable, then you never see the animation again. It's like you're making the "real" game more boring on purpose.