Lack of Ideas

So I've been using unity for almost a year, and came to a point where I want to make games and have somewhat the skills to make on too, but I have no ideas at all :/ So if you have any tips on how to come up with any game ideas, please tell me (preferably 2D or puzzle games for mobile)

 

I had an idea for a casual puzzle game but I discarded the project since I want to get out of the puzzles zone in the future, so I might as well share.

I assume you've played 2048? Imagine a grid with similar swiping mechanics, except that the grid isn't randomly generated, it's pre-filled by the developer and level based.

Instead of numbers, you have shapes with different colours. You can either match by shape or by colour. The goal is to have only one tile remaining at the end of the game.

e.g.


If the user swipes left. The square will eat the orange triangle (based on colour match) and then the user is stuck with a square and a triangle that cant match, and therefore loses.

If the user swipes right, the triangle eats the square (based on colour match again) and then swipes up or down and one of the triangles will eat the other (based on shape match). There will only be one shape remaining and the user wins.

Of course, above is a simple example. Add limited amount of moves. Maybe stars/medals based on moves used? Picture bigger grids, special blocks, etc.

I haven't invested much more thought in the idea other than what's presented here, but I'm sure there are ways to make this entertaining while remaining casual.

Edit: Just now realized you asked for tips on how to forge ideas rather than actual ideas. Oops

 

I'll be honest, if you can't come up with ideas on your own you may struggle actually completing something, unless you can gain some ownership over an idea someone else gave you.

But anyway, this thread on here is full of ideas.

 

Or use a generator.

 

Call of Battlefield 2D platformer

 

Then it's time to move on and try other hobbies. Otherwise it won't be fun. If it's for business and you still have no ideas, try cloning popular titles.

Or join a team that does have ideas. Because this forum is packed with ideas-people.

 

Gotta agree with this. I think with most developers the opposite is true, we have way more ideas than time to execute them.

 

Adding on to this some people find their inspiration through activities that are unrelated to game development. If you find you can't come up with ideas then it may be best to simply take a break from Unity and try something new.

 

Have you read the devmag articles on puzzle game design?

Leo Widritch has some interesting thoughts on creativity you might find useful too. If nothing else it'll help explain why people are suggesting doing something else

 

There are a lot of people who struggle with ideas or at least good ideas so don't feel bad about that.

It sounds like you enjoy game dev the actual work part of it but no so much the games part? Maybe?

If that is the case then I think what someone above said about making some clones is a great option for you. Pick something very simple such as Space Invaders or any of the many classic games from that time. Then build your version of it.

What this will do is give you a predefined structure for the design and you can just focus on spot ideas. Great ideas often start with great questions.

In this scenario some questions could be...

• How can I change this theme to make it fresh? (Because it doesn't need to be a tank/ship fighting a wave of aliens)
  
  
• What is one cool skill I could give to the player as a temporary powerup that would add a lot to the game play experience?
  
  
• What are the simplest things I can do to juice up the game the most? (always good to get in habit of thinking about the most bang for the buck)

And so forth. That may be enough to get your own ideas flowing. If not you can make something very cool and then with that completed game under your belt you may be able to work with / for other people where they come up with the ideas and you develop them.

 

Why not work for someone else? That way you get to do the bits you like, and you can leave the idea and design work to people who are good at that side.

 

I come up with ideas by wanting to play a certain type of game, searching if such a game exists, and then determining the game doesn't actually exist yet, or at least this unique variation I want to play doesn't exist. This also helps with the market research you should be doing, in that you've already at this point established a potential hole in the market your game could fill with relatively little competition.

Another benefit is with regard to motivation. You'll be far more likely to finish your project if you're actually motivated by wanting to play it yourself. The hardest part of game development is completing the project. Starting on a game and getting it to a minimally playable state is surprisingly the easiest part.

 

You can just do variations on other 2d games you enjoy. Your game doesn't have to be totally original, just put a new spin on something. For instance, look at all the variations to tower defense. Do they have to be towers? What different types of creature would be interesting? How about if they came from different directions each time?
Flappy bird was popular for a while, what other creature could you move with a tap? There's also nothing wrong with doing a clone for a start and then making changes afterwards, or just making a clone and moving on just to get working on something.

 

Just pick a game and clone it. Why is an original idea necessary? If you have the skill you can do a better job at something that has already been done.

Besides, once you get cracking on it you'll probably start to get ideas of what else you can do with it.

 

Ideas come from momentum of thought. A creative person is only creative because they seek creativeness and surround themselves in both physical and mental creative activities for long enough to achieve a momentum of something.

Just start doing stuff and trust me it'll come, or don't. Play games that make you feel inspired or happy. Doodle, even if it sucks. Get the mental juices flowing and at one point you'll wish you could have a little less ideas (probably not).

Starting is the hardest part. Do something, and eventually an idea just seems right and clicks. Go for that one.

 

Feed ideas into your life to restart the flow of ideas out of it.

If you're simply starved for ideas, play some games, have some experiences that are close to the one you think you'd like to make, or go back to games that really got you in a creative frame before. This can refocus your vision and help you see the end goal.

If you're stuck, and can't think of anything new, seek new experiences. Put games down and read a book you wouldn't normally read. Watch something you wouldn't normally watch, pick up a new skill, do something new to you. The way that it stretches your brain will make it easier to be creative. Gaining a new way of looking at the world will show you what experiences you could build a game around.

 

No, you err. It's impossible that you have no ideas. You rather have too many, what you lack is time to do all you want, and motivation.

Tackle the problem as why you can't choose an idea right NOW, rather than having "no ideas".

Making a game is a big long term commitment, so surely you want to be extra careful what you choose to make, but paradoxically your indecision makes you waste time.

 

I've been suffering from a similar kind of problem for a long time, so I know that it's very possible that one can lack artistic inspiration while being good at technical or critical side of the art.

I only imagine that those who seem to be teeming with artistic ideas and inspiration to be born with such a talent and it must feel natural to them. I assume it might be difficult for them to understand why some people seem to be struggling with something they can do so naturally without too much effort.

I know this, because I was fortunate to be gifted in learning technical stuffs which feels so natural to me. Believe it or not, I've never had to spend more than a couple of days at most to learn any new programming languages, frameworks, or tools like Unity. As such, I can't really understand why some people seem to have much trouble learning those things, so I just assume it must be something similar to the trouble I have with having original ideas and artistic inspiration.

I'm not really boasting or anything, and I really hope the OP's problem isn't as extreme as mine because it can be really frustrating, and can even make you feel depressed.

I'm only mentioning this because some people seem to have difficulty in understanding how can someone have much trouble in coming up with ideas when it must be the easiest part for them.

I've read all those replies with interest, and I'm determined try to follow some of them myself. But still, I'm a bit skeptical that they could solve my problem so easily, because I've tried all my life without much success.

I just wanted to say that it's very possible someone can struggle with having original ideas while one doesn't have much trouble in learning technical aspects in executing them.

 

Yeah, I honestly believe that some people are just naturally creative/intuitive and others are logical/analytical. Now, I'm not saying that this is an absolute either/or type of thing. There are probably many ratios of creative vs logical. However, for the most part people will fall into one of those categories.

I've been good at art all my life. I have more ideas than I can even find the time to write down, let alone actually implement.

Learning programming has been doable for me, but a bit of a struggle sometimes, and I probably won't ever become truly great. I can do enough to get by, but that's it. Learning programming is generally slow for me, and I keep finding myself asking "why does it work like this?" I don't like tutorials that just go over stuff without saying why. It's like okay, now for this we have to use the "new" keyword, and I'm thinking, okay.....why? If tutorials leave out stuff like this, I get annoyed.

But anyway, yeah I just think some people are naturally going to have an easier time at something.

 

There are scientific studies on how learning art develops the neural pathways used for art in the brain. I'm probably a better programmer than artist because of early negative feedback about my art (it had something to do with crayons and wallpaper if I recall correctly) but even so my artist side has improved when I needed it to. I fully believe I could get a lot better at art (and a lot of other things) if I put the time in to develop those skills. Studies like The artist emerges: Visual art learning alters neural structure and function just confirm what I'd deduced from my own experiences.

The brain does take the easy neural path by default, and it is hard work to overcome that but it is a little easier if you believe it is possible in the first place. There are studies on how belief in change being possible can improve academic results too.

Will I ever be as good an artist as someone who devotes all their time to it? No, I have other interests I give preference too, but is my potential the same if I was to commit that much? I believe so, and fully accept that my choices have determined my skills. Natural ability may have helped form my choices (early positive feedback), but practice and hardwork soon overtakes that and as the studies show, they can actually bring about physical changes to make me better at that task.

 

Definitely.

Which is why I suggest finding a team with other people who can shore up your weaknesses. I found this early in my engineering career. I love running chemical plants. I hate building them. I could spend half my life learning how to build them. Or I could just become really good at running them, and find someone else that can do the building bit.

Its the same in games. Find someone who can do the bits you struggle to do.

 

I'd switch "struggle" with "don't want", I wouldn't have got far in life if I found someone who was good at walking instead of overcoming my struggles with it

 

I think theoretically speaking, anyone can train themselves to be decent at anything - the problem is, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? For anything to even begin to change, it must have already been aligned in that direction by something else.

 

On the other hand there is Hawking.

 

I think it's a reasonable advice which I should follow someday. But the problem is, I cannot leave my current job which has little to do with video games. And I'm already over 40 which means I can't simply start my career over, no matter how much I like to do so.

As such, when I decided I should create my own game, I contemplated my options. Even though the kind of games that I like the most are such titles like <Life is Strange>, I know that I have virtually zero chance of making anything like that if all I can do is spending couple of hours every weekends on my own.

And I know that in such a game, programming skills are not really a deciding factor. So, even though I manage to join a team that can make such games, I thought it wouldn't feel much satisfying because my role would be a marginal one at best.

So I concluded that I should go for a sandbox type game that has little story but is somehow moddable so artwork and animations can be added later by more talented people. And it was my plan that if I build some sort of a base platform for such a game, I might come up with an actual game idea later, or it might attract others who can help me with art / idea part, if I can add enough interesting features before that.

That was the best plan I could come up with, which I hope would enable me to achieve something I can feel satisfied with, by spending weekends for the next 5 or so years.

 

Yeah physical limits do put a different slant on things than self imposed limits, but even so he does keep struggling against them..

 

I want to point out that being good at art isn't the same thing as being creative. Creatives tend to be better at those things obviously, since they have the ideas and this the will to enact them (and thus they gain practice), but it's more than possible to be creative without being artistic. I stumble around in a DAW and plink at piano and guitar a little bit, but frequently come up with melodies and compositions in my head that I'm not skilled enough to capture. And we're all aware of the many folks who have an idea for a great MMO but don't have the first clue how to actually make one...these people get flak, but essentially they're creatives who aren't artistic (yet).

And I also want to enforce that it's not an either/or type of thing. I can be one of the most logical people I know (I'm a scientist by training), yet at the same time I have many creative ideas.

 

Yeah, it's difficult to really categorize anyone because there are so many different combinations of skills.

A creative person could be creative at writing for example.

I just brought up art since it was something that I always found easy to learn (though still took lots of practice!), but the logical side of programming or math or whatnot was a bit of a struggle sometimes.

 

I think the whole idea of being good at one thing and not another is largely a self image thing. Once you get good at something, it's too easy to compare that to something you aren't good at and forget how long it took you to get good at what you are good at.

Not that some people are not more inclined to something, but I don't think that really matters as much as people think, outside of those that are just gifted. Most of us are average, we have the same capability as all the other average people to be relatively good at anything really.

How your brain works comes into play also. If you do more multitasking between different skill sets, your brain gets better at that. If you have been doing just one thing for years, it will take a while to train your brain to jump back and forth between multiple skills. But there is no real inherent limit in this area. Your brain can manage way more then you think it can you just have to train it.

 

That reminds me of a person I met when I was playing in a band. At that time, I thought I had some hope at being a guitarist because I had been playing for more than 10 years, and knew quite a bit about using DAW and amplifiers (I even built myself a tube amplifier and some effectors) and so on.

And one day, I met a friend who said he wanted to start a band and asked me an advice how to do that. He had absolutely zero skills at playing any instruments and didn't know how to do home recording. I encouraged him and gave him couple of advices, thinking he might start some cover band if he practiced hard for the next few years.

Within a year though, he came up with a demo tape full of original songs he wrote. He still had some problem playing difficult chords on a guitar, and recording quality was quite bad but I was really surprised at how good his songs were.

At that time, I realized it's something different to be proficient at playing an instrument or to know a lot about technical aspect of an art and to be a real artist. Probably he was such a type who's very creative without having the necessary skills. And I have no doubt there are many such people who have great game ideas but without a clue how to make them real.

 

Indeed. And Unity has probably helped those people a ton by lowering the bar of entry so much, with a free engine (not as unique now, but it was unique years ago) and the asset store and such.

 

So you're saying that you don't have hope as a guitarist because someone else demonstrated skill as a songwriter? They're two different things.

That isn't an example of why you won't be a guitarist. To the contrary, it's a perfect example of why working with other people is a good idea. You said yourself that the technical aspects of the work he showed were poor. I would guess that from your 10 years of experience you could improve his work's technical quality by a huge amount. On the flip side, you're not demonstrating a lot of interest in the songwriting side of things, but this other fellow seems to be doing alright at that - probably because during the year he's practiced that. Combine your skills and the result will be greater than the sum of its parts.

 

Actually, it's a long story. I just didn't want to derail the thread with details of my personal experience, especially when I'm afraid I already did that with my earlier post

Anyway, it's not that I didn't want to write original songs and chose to concentrate on the technical aspects instead. It's quite the contrary, actually. I always wanted to be a musician and didn't really care about engineering stuffs, and it's still quite the same.

It's just that I realized I lack artistic talent as I grow older, so I became a bit more practical that I try to do something I can do best (programming, and etc) but still somehow related to the things I love (music, visual arts, and so on).

 

Until @Eldemarkki lets us know otherwise, I'm assuming he took the early advice and is now off doing something else rather than reading this thread

A friend was showing me how he converted his loft into a guitar room. He has a collection of amps, 15 guitars (some of which are rare and expensive) and has gigged as a pro musician. What struck me as really odd is that he has never written his own stuff, he's always been content just playing covers. I'll have to ask about how he learnt guitar next time I see him, I've a feeling there's another insight on learning there to be found.

I've nowhere near the technical ability he has, but rather than learning by playing covers or understanding theory I was always focused on making noise that matched what I was feeling. I built a cigar box guitar 5 years ago so it was easier to do that with my minimal musical knowledge (open tuning so 1 finger chords). Within a few days of finishing it I was writing my own stuff for it (though that video is a variation on what I wrote on it when it was a bass) - I've not really progressed much beyond that - it did what I wanted, reconnecting me to my emotions after long coding sessions. So I have a few patterns I improvise around and rarely look for anything new. I found those patterns just by playing every fret, then every other fret, then every third fret and so on.. Built up my speed and a feel of how different intervals sounded and off I went. I basically debugged how I was trying to do music and made a tool that made it easier for me

I derailed my own post there, I was just going to comment that a lot of programmers are also musicians.. The artist / programmer or artist / musician combinations don't happen as often in my experience, though hanging around here might change that. The studies I mentioned earlier do show an artist / creative ideas link though, so it's probably worth doing regular doodles / sketches if you want to encourage creative thoughts and change your brain.

 

Were any of them useful to you?

One thing creative types have in common is curiosity, so just by asking your question about how to come up with game ideas you've shown you are on the right track. Now you just need to be persistent and keep working on ideas.

 

Ideas evolve over time, first try picking an idea something you are interested in. Just start working on a design document, sporadically work on it. Eventually while not thinking about it but thinking about it in the background your brain will come up with an idea that will make it "pop". Thats the easy part you have to say is this something you really want to spend 6+ months on

 

Wait, so you are like 11? In which case a team is a necessity. You can't even create a Facebook page without parental permission, and none of the major platforms will enter into a contract with a minor. At the very least you've got to bring your parents on board.

The general advice about using other people to generate ideas is still valid. Start a conversation about your favourite games. Ask what would make them better. You'll find the ideas will flow naturally.

 

I've often wondered about this because based on many other posts around here there are a lot of very young people (as in truly very early teens and maybe younger) who are actually releasing games on the markets. At least on mobile and possibly Steam. I wouldn't think it was possible (due to having to sign some kind of agreement / contract) but then it is the Internet and anyone can punch any numbers into the DOB field(s)... where there is a will there is a way so yeah.

 

I can't sign contracts and that kind of stuff. But I will say that I can create a Facebook page.