Ever since my dad found out I am developing a game of my own, he started take interest in it and asking me stuff.
Although he didn’t play video game, he has a strong business background, and always update his knowledge on
the latest technical stuff like VR, AI deep learning, cloud service,…etc, so every question he asked, I always
took it seriously and consider it as a form of criteria to assess the likelihood of success of my game.
One of these questions he kept asking me multiple times and I find it very hard to answer is this one:
Is your game unique?
What I am currently developing, is a shooter / puzzle game with fixed camera and controls…overall very similar to
the early resident evil series. I started this project with a simple mindset of “creating a game I like to play”,
the issue of whether this game is “unique” never once occurred in my mind until he asked me.
Sometimes I replied with answers like:
“I didn’t consider it unique, but it has a classic gameplay style (which I like) combine with modern graphics.”
or
“I’m not sure if it is unique, but I plan to implement some interesting puzzles…”
or simply…and honestly
“I didn’t think it’s unique, I just make a game I like to play.”
After hearing my reply, apparently not satisfied with it, he will then ask me:
“If that is the case, how do you differentiate your game from other (indie) games?”
“How can you make your game stand out in the crowd?”
and then, at that point, I just can’t give him a straight answer.
Of course I can argue my game has a different story, different theme, different puzzle then the other games,
but “different” is far from “unique”, it’s hard to convince somebody my game is special without showing them
a gameplay feature that just make whoever plays it go like “WHOA! THAT IS AWSOME!”.
Currently, I am aiming for the first prototype of my game, I already made a basic UI, combat, inventory system,
I still got dialogue, level transition, save system to work on, my estimation is, by the end of this year, if
everything goes well, I should have a playable demo to show to people. And after my first prototype, I plan to add
more content to my game, fixing bugs, improve existing features, but not adding new feature to my game. If I
plan to add new things or make a drastic change with my developing schedule, now is probably the best time to do
it.
What is your perspective on this matter? How do you define uniqueness in terms of gameplay? Do you think a good story,
interesting dialogue suffice to make a game unique? Is making a game with another game in mind not a good idea to
start off with?
Please share your insights on this matter. Thank you.