You ever play a game and it’s all competently made and such but somehow it just feels 20% off for what it’s supposed to be? And then you play something else of similar genre and it just feels SO much better to play.
What’s the esoteric part about gamefeel? Why’s 2013 Tomb Raiders and it’s sequels feel like 20% off? Why is Black Ops - rated on Gameplay - so much better than Singularity which came out the same year despite both being made by Raven?
I feel it’s a mix of vibes and a bit if attention to detail with programming. You need to feel out things like movement speed, jump speed, sound and recoil of guns.
Then there’s also small things you can code into a game that make a big difference. A big one in 2D platformers id the coyote jump where you have a split second after walking off a ledge where the player can still jump. I also just learnt about jump queuing where if a player presses jump a fraction of a second before touching the ground you still let them jump when they land.
And then there’s things like animation cancelling. An animation may go for longer than a player realises, but a good game will let you end that animation early if another input is detected.
And then there’s other small stuff. Like I’m playing Devastation at the moment that came out around the same time as Half Life 2 but the game feel is all off with the physics.
You can pick up and throw things in Devastation, but objects just float through the air and it feels off. In HL2 they put a bit if backspin on throws so s chair won’t just sail through the air and land upright on all 4 legs like in Devastation. Walking into physics objects in Devastation just sucks all your momentum and it feels lime things get caught under your legs, whereas in HL2 you feel planted on the ground and everything bowls out of your way when you walk into it
yeah it’s a lot about minimizing friction between your intent and the in-game action. buffers that are too narrow feel bad, especially when there’s any input or response delay, but it also feels bad if it’s too loose and you get locked into some shit you pressed a minute ago. witcher 3 had a bunch of weird momentum on the movement that people really didn’t like at launch because of the disconnect it created.
there’s also stuff like consonance between your input and the game, down to jump would be a terrible input most of the time.
for tomb raider in particular iirc there’s a thing with the QTE mashing where there’s a rhythm to it because if you mash too fast it skips cycles, and that feels awful. we just shouldn’t have quicktime events in games though.