I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to try for accountability on actually releasing a game. To that end, I'm going to go through the development process to release a game. Here is the transcript from the twenty-third episode on finding your secret sauce for your game:
Welcome to another Side Quest of The Adventure Mechanics, it's me, Chandler. I've talked quite a bit about prototyping versus production in the past. By that I mean what to do in the prototyping phase, where you're supposed to be exploring what makes your game special. And what needs to get done for production and what you should be prioritizing during it. I haven't really talked about what should make your game special, though. More importantly, when you should look for it. Today, I want to talk about making that secret sauce for your game.
Not all games find their "secret sauce" at all, let alone while they're being prototyped. But before production is really where you want to put in the time and find what makes your design special. You need to find your secret sauce before you put in the content. I know in cooking, you usually use sauce to clench up the flavor of a dish, but in game development, you really need to figure out what's in the sauce before you make the dish, if that makes sense. And that means you're going to be making and setting aside a large number of metaphorical dishes before you find that right flavor for your game. You're going to be working on this one design for quite some time, so you better be sure it's going to be good.
But, what exactly is a secret sauce? That depends entirely on what you are designing. In an RTS, that may be avoiding the multiplayer aspect in exchange for a deep story. In a farming simulator, that may be dealing with the dead instead of plants, like in the game, Graveyard Keeper. Whatever the secret sauce is, you need to make sure that it is going to carry your game, or at least be the interesting thing that brings players to it. It should tie all of your disparate mechanics and art together into one cohesive whole. It's the interesting thing that gets everybody's attention in the first place. But most importantly, it's what sells your game. If your secret sauce follows the recipe seen in too many other games, like making yet another pixel art Metroidvania, for example, you may not hit the goals that you set for your game. If your pixel art Metroidvania has a time travel element to it, that would make your game stand out a bit more. Sure there are a lot of pixel art Metroidvanias, but not nearly as many that use time as a resource. That's just one example, though.
Another way to stand out is to have a very distinct art style. Let's say you still want to make that Metroidvania, but you don't want it to follow the pixel art aesthetic. You can make your game focus around bugs, while keeping the gothic flair seen in many other Metroidvanias. If you're not familiar with it, this is exactly what Hollow Knight did. That is basically a love song to Castlevania Symphony of the Night, but with the aesthetic of bugs and Castle Crashers mixed in for good measure. And if you compare Hollow Knight, as popular as it is now, to other Metroidvanias released around the same time, you'll see that it leaned into its art style to really stand out. Not all games can have a strong and distinct art style, but not all games need it, either.
Thomas was alone took the platformer genre and put a heavy narrative to it, but left the characters as blocks. It still has a distinct art style, one that is very easy to initially replicate, but the interesting part of that game wasn't the art style. Listen to our full episode on it if you want more context. The art was consistent but it wasn't what kept people talking about that game. It's a great example of leaning into the narrative as the secret sauce. The game narrates every level. And it is telling you quite the story while you are playing what in essence is a level-based platformer. The game plays incredibly differently when you both mute the narrator and take the text off the screen. And it's much to the game's detriment when you do so. That's the secret sauce of Thomas Was Alone.
There are many other examples of secret sauces that work well. I'm sure if you look at any of your favorite games, you'll be able to pick out one or maybe a couple things that are interesting in them. The features that really sold you on the game in the first place. In fact, do that as an exercise and compare your favorite games' secret sauce to what you have planned for yours. If you are anything like me, your secret sauce isn't going to be at the same level as the games you compare to. It's still a good exercise, though. It can even make you think of your game more critically and really examine what you think is special about your design. Again, that's what I'm talking about when I say "secret sauce." It's not meant to be a convoluted design concept that is only relevant to academic game design. It's meant as a tool for you to bring your game's best foot forward and, most importantly, put a spot light right on it.
But, let's say you've found an interesting prototype, but you haven't quite found your secret sauce for it, yet. I know some people will say to find it in production. But this is really going to put an effective ceiling on your game. After all, in production you aren't exploring base mechanics or art styles or special audio tricks. Nor should you, to be honest. Production is for the swamps of content creation. You're making all of the assets and all of the story and all of the levels for your game there. Doing a sidebar and trying to find out what makes your game special is going to make production that much worse. That's not to say that you can't change your game in production, but rather you want to limit change in production. Like in software design, shifting as much risk to as early as possible, called shift-left testing, reduces cost. And let's be honest, exploration in production is expensive. That's why you really really want to find that secret sauce for your game before you even start doing the content pipeline.
Once you have figured that out for your game in the prototyping phase, you are going to want to emphasize and polish polish polish that secret sauce until it shines. You may remember me advocating for using assets to get your game out faster, but the secret sauce is one of the cases where you absolutely want to put as much of yourself into it as possible. If you end up using assets in your secret sauce, spend time making them yours, at the very least. This is the highlight of your game, after all. You need it to be the best that you can manage, given your skills, time and effort available. Yes, I have been working in Scrum and Agile world for years, how can you tell?
If you have your secret sauce, put it into your pitch. Use that pitch on as many people as possible and see the reaction to it. Is it piquing interest? Is it getting people excited about your upcoming game? Or is it getting polite, but neutral, responses? This is the first "playtest" of your game. If you're not getting the reaction you expect from your pitch, it's time to evaluate it and possibly look at another secret sauce for your game instead. Keep in mind that pitching your game is a skill, though. One you should be working on as much as possible. That's a good talk for another time, however. For now, just focus on polishing how you get your game's secret sauce across to the potential player base. If it's getting the responses you want, the easy part is over! You now have to make the game. Hopefully using the secret sauce you pitched.
Okay, that's enough on secret sauces for now. At this point, I think I'm hitting the jamais vu experience for the phrase "secret sauce". That being said, what has been your experience looking for what makes your game special? Let me know in the comments section below. If you want to follow me, I am on various social media as jcsirron. This has been another Side Quest for The Adventure Mechanics. I'll talk to you next time.
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