Ultimate Indie Gamedev Genre Tierlist

hey everyone welcome to this very special video where Marx and I will be hosting a video together where we discuss what are the best video game genres to make as an indie game developer so not to play but to make if you yourself are sitting over there with your great idea and you're like I want to make an RPG or a first person shooter or whatever we've basically combined all of those genres and we'll just be tier listing them because that's the meta nowadays apparently we'll be discussing what are some of the good things about each genre and then we'll give it a score of course those are just opinions so if you disagree let us know down in the comments it boosts engagement so I have prepared here this tier list on my laptop and I'll be going over it with Thomas and I think our first genre let's start pretty big something that a lot of people want to make as one of their first games is a first person shooter so think of something like you know Call of Duty Battlefield I think almost everyone Halo anyone who's into games has probably played a first person shooter at some point and whilst in my opinion they're quite fun to play how good are they to actually develop in oh I think they are not very good because they are often based on realism and as an indie game developer it's very hard to create very realistic things think art or mechanics even but then you have something like escape from tarkov which is also an indie game made in unity even and that's also why like for example super hot is a great example on how it can be done it's not impossible but you have to have a unique mechanic to make your game unique basically so if you have a unique mechanic you can make it work it's just not a Surefire hit but it's never sure if I hit but it's not easy to get a hit I think if you're gonna start with just being a Call of Duty clone you can forget to get any basically publicity or any interest but like Thomas says something like super hot where you have those time mechanics coming in and also I think made by a single guy not sure on that one but it's definitely still an indie game and it's a really fun experience even yeah with its more limited length and limited mechanics and very basic art style even I'd give it like a b tier I I think BT yeah low a high B I would give it so let's put it in there the next genre I have prepared for Thomas is one that I personally have spent a lot of time playing I think I have a few thousand dollars in Minecraft and it is the survival sandbox so I already set one example for example this Minecraft very very popular and famous indie game you probably never heard about it it's very small game indeed you know but also some other games for example are rust or Arc if you've known about that one Survival game concept is basically very simple subnautica on all these games you're put somewhere usually single player put into a big world and you just have to survive you have to gather resources you have to craft things generally I think as to play those games are quite fun however I don't know if developing them can be the easiest what do you think Thomas of course we just placed our first thing so I'm already thinking relative to what we just mentioned I think it's already better than a first person shooter I actually disagree I think it's harder because you have especially if you have the crafting system you first need a very big world and either you need to work with procedural generation which can very quickly make your game look very boring or very still unless you like decide to put it in a forest and then you would still need to manually put more buildings there and then you indeed have I need to craft all of these things one game that comes to mind is subnautica where you have to spend quite some time to craft everything and that also takes a lot of time as a developer I feel to really think out what is my crafting system what are all the items going to be and actually implementing those because almost every item comes with its own mechanic I mean true but it's also a lot easier I think for this genre to give your unique Twist on it so that's why in my opinion a first person first person shooter is very locked in and you of course have your unicorns like super hot but I think with a survival game like Minecraft rust and subnautica like you mentioned are three completely different games it's a lot harder to say the same thing about a first person shooter and therefore I think it's easier to make something unique something Unix make you stand out more makes you usually a better game I think indeed so technically it may not be easier but it will be easier to stand out and to really if you're for example getting wish lists or something you'll get more attention that way so we're gonna put it at an a no I put it in a b but it's a bit above slightly like it's not a lot better because you of course have your technical challenges but it can be more unique no I want it to the left because that's better yes yes that's how tear this works I think I'll put it like this someone at home is now very tilted next genre we're going to cover is Platformers 2D 3D doesn't matter just Platforms in general I think like your Marios your Sonics or the big ones or things like shovel Knights uh Celeste things like that for Indie I personally don't have much experience playing these kind of games however I know that like almost every Unity tutorial you look out online starts with a platformer so from what I think it is probably one of the easier genres to get started in to just get it away around with how does an engine work but I think because it's so easy to get into it it is also a lot harder to find something that makes you unique I think one unique platformer I can think of in recent years is Jump King I don't know if you know it it's this game where you basically just have to jump it's a bit of a rage game very simple mechanics I think that if you wanted to make a clone of it you could probably do it in about a day but still very engaging I don't know what you think I personally think that these are at least 80 year Platformers maybe even s tier I I like Platformers a lot especially when you're starting your Game Dev journey I probably would suggest you to make a platform as one of your first games because they teach you a lot of good Concepts when you get it's easy to get started but it's very hard to just nail controls on a platformer you know the game feel something we talked about before on this channel to make it as an indie game I think it's probably one of the best from a technological standpoint from a marketing standpoint I'm not sure on that one it depends because if you make a 2d or 3D platform it's entirely different Beast uh but I would also lean towards a or S tier so I would give it s if you're leaning towards it let's just give it s I mean sure let's give it an S let's give it Ester bam our first s tier the next genre I picked this one that we may be personally a bit biased in and that is generally the concept of a top-down strategy game so think if you want some AAA games think about the civilization series Age of Empires stuff like that and if you want a very good Indie example I would say our own game Forge industry there is a link down below where you can wish list the game go ahead and do that right now we'll wait for you just a second go ahead still waiting okay perfect thank you so I think we do have a bit of a bias maybe or we have the most experience in developing this kind of genre at least um you do most of the programming work I just have to make the assets mostly but I think we both have a pretty good idea of what are some of the good and the bad things about having a game like this yeah so on this kind of genre I think it's very team specific a lot of teams have great artists and things like that but this is a very mechanic driven game so you need a lot of programmers that's also why we chose it because almost everyone on our team is a programmer aside from marlex who is like a semi-programmer so depending on your team this can easily be an S tier but it can also be an F tier because if if you are three art guys don't make this kind of game I think one problem that you also have with this game is that your audience has this expectation of it has to be really deep technically you can't just half as a strategy game you really need to show that you can put a lot of time into balancing everything really have a lot of expansion options as well if you look at for example something like factorio the amount of depth you can go there is really nuts and you will always have people out there who play your game that are probably smarter than you but it's your job to still figure out a way to have a game that can be really optimized as well and not just oh all of these buildings have the same rate of production for example so I think first of all yeah the mechanics is hard but then actually balancing it is probably also one of the harder parts of actually making this fun to play not to mention marketing because this is a very static game so to say when you have a platform you can very easily visualize things like cool jumps wall jumps things like that while in a strategy game it's more the thought behind it and they are more slow usually so it's also harder to Market in my opinion so it this is a very tough one actually I think I would I would almost dare say seatier yeah I was like also thinking Seether yeah we really made a mistake with our game damn we're too committed now we can't back down so generally we don't recommend you if you're starting out as an indie developer don't make games like this as your first project don't do like what we did we'll probably survive but that's also as he said because we have the team behind it yeah we're playing to our strengths and you should do the same so for you this can be an SS steer but it can also be an F tier with every game genre basically play to your strengths keeping onto the topic of very deep mechanics I think the next one also fits that bill a bit and that's simulation game so for example Farming Simulator Euro Truck Simulator or even more Niche games such as uh Game Dev Tycoon is one that I think about or roller coaster simulator stuff like that basically the concept of getting the game ideas very easy you just walk around in your life and you pick one thing you're like oh I see plants I'm gonna make a gardening simulator or whatever I thought you were going to say plant simulator both of them probably exist but it's both easier and harder to make these games because you have a very well defined I think scope creep is a bit harder here because if I have a simulator about farming I'm never gonna Implement planes I hope again the issue that I see however is you really need to know your stuff if you have for example a shipping simulator I think that your audience will demand some like actual real world shipping lingo and you have to know how it works yeah you have to know the the talk from the business so to say the business the business start the business guys but I do think is good about this genre I think it's very similar actually to what we just mentioned about strategy games but like Mark said your scope is more narrow which is always a good thing I think the downside of this is you also can't really marketing just like strategy games it's well you can but it's harder than the more visual things like Shooters and I think it can be more visual if you look at for example Euro Truck Simulator you're actually driving around the truck however you will always have a smaller audience to market the game too but it's also good to have a good view on who your audience is so it's also an upside yeah if you have a more restricted audience you can very narrowly focus in on what are they actually interested in if you have a train simulator you can really most people are interested in trains really care about the exact model numbers and version numbers of specific trained locomotives for example and you can also let that show out in your marketing material for example that you are in fact really deep with it that's one advantage purely development wise I think it's a bit of the same you're pretty mechanically intensive but also an extra challenge I think with Simulator games is there are simulated games that strive for realism once again so your art is also probably has to be more detailed than with a strategy game so it's a very hard one once again then why did we pick these genres you're welcome there's never an easy answer to game development or everyone would be one yeah I think maybe just slightly above real-time strategy just because you are more inclined to keep to your scope and because you have a clear goal of who your audience is well it's a lot harder with certain others so more of a c plus where a strategy would be more of a c minus yeah so also to the left no I'll do it like this the next game genre we're going to cover is puzzle games things like yeah with your brain things like portal or Baba issue which is an indie game I don't think more exist things I've made it up but yeah it's real it's pretty fun or tell us principles yeah some other games are tell us principle for example or the witness is one that I've also played in like a million more that we can't think of right now but I think there's a reason why there are a million more that we can't think of right now and that's it I think these are actually some of the more easy to make as an indie games so my my idea is that most of these games are also single player or at most Co-op so you don't have to deal with the whole networking aspect that much and it's also very something you can really put your creativity and your uniqueness in to make your game stand out it's really easy for a puzzle game to stand out for example think about the non-euclidean puzzle games that are currently a bit of a hype in game development where if these people who make puzzles where you have to work through Dimensions even and I think once you have that core mechanic figured out of okay what is my game really going to be about I think the actual development process of creating your levels is relatively smooth sailing and codewise a bit more limited you just need either first person or third person camera controller or whatever and then once you have the original Mechanic you just have to make a bunch of levels and maybe put in a bit of a story and that's it yeah I actually agree with that I think pure mechanic wise it's probably one of the easier ones to make you also have a lot more freedom like marnick said the main challenge here is making a lot of content and good content at that so I'm pretty inclined to give it like an eighth year I wouldn't dare put it in S3 because I still think platform is better yeah to get started at least but an atheater is pretty safe I think yeah I think if this is your second game maybe that you're working on then it will be ask your definitely if you want to move out of the platform if this is your first game maybe wait with the puzzle because sometimes it can be really frustrating because in these games you maybe not always make a lot of progress until suddenly you figure out your mechanic and then it goes quickly but I think this is still one of the better options you can have if you want to make a unique indie game and this is also great to learn more about game design I think so if that's something you want to learn about it might be worth a shot next genre RPGs it's a very broad topic you can even say things like World of Warcraft if we if you want to make an morpg you can put it in F tier it's dumpster we already it's not a World of Warcraft that's dumpster no yeah it's the it's the multiplayer online aspect the MMO part we didn't even really include that one here because don't do it it's dumb you don't have the funding for it you don't have the marketing for it you don't have the technical skills for it skip the MMO part at least the other part RPG you can think of things like Skyrim but also things like startup Valley even or RPGs so it's a very Broad well genre but in this case I think we'll mostly be focusing on the fantasy RPGs so things like The Witcher Genji impact or undertale a very popular Indie option or even Hades I think these are like a trap everyone loves RPGs playing them everyone wants to make RPG we even wanted to make an RPG before we grew brains I guess um I'll put on some footage of that one probably um the problem is the scale of an RPG a good RPG if you look at something like The Witcher is 100 or 80 hours breath of the wild 40 hours to 80 hours as well Skyrim I know I mean if you just do the main storyline already is I think 20 hours and most people if you add in mods is like 500 to 1 000 hours making content that big and also an RPG you need to have a story and we're game developers mostly I guess who's watching this and not story Riders and whilst you can easily make stories basic ones an RPG your story really needs to be very core to your game and if you have a bad story which is quite easy to get if you're not really experienced your game falls apart I agree but I also disagree okay what I mean by that is I also mentioned undertale for example and I think this is an example of an RPG game that works very well for the funding it had it was made by one guy I think Toby Fox he made everything so depending on what you envision as an RPG if you want to make the next Witcher don't if you want to make something like undertale or even even if it's in a 3D World something that is at least limited by scope it is possible but like Marx that is probably trap so be careful with that one I think scope creep also is probably the biggest issue you can have here because you start pick what RPGs usually you have this ground vision and then you dial it down a little bit but then during your development it's very easy to expand upon it again whereas yeah I know I've had good RPG experience for example evoland I think it takes about three hours to play I was very happy throughout the entire playthrough basically don't do this as your first game that's number one and even then I would put it at the D tier maybe even I think of course RPG is very broad like you said we have stardew Valley and Skyrim both counting as an RPG but I wouldn't do it I wouldn't do it unless you have at least a few people maybe working on your team as well if you're solo stardew Valley took six years to make don't do that you're never gonna survive that long most likely I think D tier is fair but if you may want to make something like undertale you can maybe put it in like a beat here yeah but in general we'll put it as a d tier yeah I think the next one we have we don't really need to say that much about it's the massive online battle arena or mobile um think about Dota or League of Legends as some big names generally what is the concept you have a set Arena and you have two teams playing against each other so that's fault one it's multiplayer and it requires like six to ten people for a game to start if you have a small game if you don't have a big following it can already be very hard for your players to even be able to start unless you start implementing like AI companions but usually they're always quite dumb but your genre starts with massive it's probably not a good idea to make it as an indie game developer and even if you want to make it think right now to yourself are you a network engineer if the answer is no you shouldn't make one the answer is yes you probably still shouldn't make one it's the networking Parts is very easy underestimated you have to make predictions you have to make sure it's very low on latency things like that you have to have a server even who even has some funds for that and not just one server you'll need servers throughout the entire world because of course you can't have 500 milliseconds of ping usually for these kinds of games as well as in Indie I would probably put it in FDR it's also a trap bit like the MMO part we just mentioned like I said if it starts with massive your the scope is too massive don't do it I agree let's put this one at F tier and move on the next genre is one that I personally like to play a lot or it's really fun at least in my opinion and that's Rhythm games so just dance F's are AAA basically example or something like Guitar Hero concept is simple you need to follow the beat and you'll have good soundtracks or whatever with a saber even beat saber indeed also a very good example I think these games again concept wise are very easy to develop I think just a beats concept of beat saber can be done really easily the problem here is you need to have someone on your team or even multiple people who are dedicated to music unless you want to license a ton of popular songs which you probably don't really have the money for as an indie it's gonna be very hard to really make it that engaging yeah I think technically it's not that hard to make you can even pretty easily think make it feel good like game feel wise but the content is very hard to create because no one loves a music game or a rhythm game my bad where they're all generic songs that's just some guy made everyone loves the oh I'm playing latest pop song or this heavy metal thing in beat saver which is pretty cool so I think that's your main challenge also I think the modern Community is like a large part of what gives those games alive for example trombone champ is and another example of a rhythm game and like you can play a lot of mods for it with custom tracks and that's pretty cool and it's really it really boosts how long people play your game so if you would make one I would probably suggest some way of people having to create custom levels it also maybe lets you avoid licensing calls yeah licensing can also be a pretty big problem I feel I would in general stay away from this genre however unless you can yeah first of all you need modding support I think in general however you need that player base for modding support to start and to get that player base you need to have either be lucky and go viral on like something like Reddit or whatever or just pump a lot a lot of money into marketing or whatever if you look at something like OSU I don't know how it got popular it's also a rhythm game but that one they didn't have ads but it's just true online that it got popular but it's not something you can really easily bet on so if you're just wanting to make something fun that maybe you can jump to with your friends or whatever fine but I wouldn't really look at this if you're planning on a lot of money for example once your game releases I would say eatier or detier I think it should actually be both RPGs because RPGs are a bigger trap this is also a trap everything's a trap make Platformers for the end of life but I actually think it's easier to make a good rhythm game and make it work than to make a good RPG game and make it work that's true so C then or what would you even you would even go higher no I put it in D but above above RPGs you okay we're gonna kill people with this tear list but hey this is not how it's supposed to be done okay next up is racing games Think Like Gran Turismo Need for Speed from back in the day I think inertial drift another one I'm not sure I think games like my summer car and even BeamNG drive whilst maybe not as much racing still very much car focused or any developer games as well yeah about this genre I think it's a pretty bad one actually oh I think it's pretty good because the mechanics are quite easy you just need to have a car that can drive down somewhere and of course I think the hardest part here is just like Shooters standing out so I think what makes for example BeamNG Stand Out is their physics engine and how you can really bang the out of your car and have it like all crumpled up but in the end it's just W makes the car go forward s makes the car slow down programming wise development-wise quite easy slap in some low poly models and you have a very basic gain yeah so why it might be easy to get it started but to make a good one I think it's very hard because a lot of these racing games are on the edge of realism or they're good or gate route it's either one of the two and if you strive for realism it's very hard because every car has to feel unique think like when you play Gran Turismo the interior of the car is completely realistic the way they drive should be realistic and they all handle in a different way so there are lot of tweaking to do your models have to be realistic if you go that route it's very hard I think if you go the arcade route maybe something like Mario Karts I think arcade or just arcade racer even because we're not just limited to cars for racing games we can also make like spaceship racing games or whatever where you do have more options for creativity add in like some missiles or whatever I think don't go for realism at least if you go for a realism racing game you're screwed but I think if you can make it more rkd make it some give it something unique I think it can be quite good also what I personally experience with the realism games is that game feel can be quite hard for example if you look at a video of like someone racing their car at 200 kilometers an hour in like some game it doesn't feel exciting it's really hard to convey that speed through a computer screen often and it really hinders a lot of game feel I find I would just say go for arcade if you're gonna make something and if you're going for arcade I think I can put this as a beat here honestly I would go seater because there is arcades if you go for realism it's probably easier or something like that but I think it's hard to put it very high so probably yes I see I would put it B still though because it's so easy to get started with as a developer as well it's easy to get started but it's hard to it's hard for very big success I feel but if we're looking at you guys who are probably after this video gonna be Googling or youtubing unity and then whatever genre we put as Esther tutorial I think that this is still a pretty good idea I can live with bit here then let's put this at B tier assuming that you're going for an arcade style and last but not least is a metroidvania game for those who don't know well what's in the name Metroid and Castlevania metroidvania it's kind of a platformer but not entirely because it's not just a platformer there's also a bit of combat and what is very typical about these kind of games is that you revisit the same places and because you had upgrades for some way you can jump higher for example you can now reach new parts of the map example is like like I said Metroid Castlevania or things like Hollow Knights or dead cells I think these are not as good as a platformer but I think they still rank very high yeah because they do share some of the platform or DNA in the end so of course they will have some of the good looking genes um I think maybe a bit of more of an issue compared to regular platforms that you need more content because you need to be able to revisit so you'll probably need a bit more planning into how am I going gonna make everything interact with each other make it still a bit balanced mechanics wise I think it's should be quite okay to implement but here I think you'll be spending more time on really tweaking your levels for example making your combat feel good stuff like that yeah I agree another thing that I don't think is pretty bad about it is there was a time period where no one was making metroidvanias but they are now getting popular again so a lot of Indies are making metroidvanias now and yeah that's also that also means you have a lot more competition even though I just said that I would still put it in eighth year I was thinking ATR as well like low a low a but still a I think in general yeah I I agree you agree okay you brought up this genre and that basically wraps up this first edition of the theorist I have no idea how this video is going to pan out if you've managed to stick around until now very much thank you for watching so far good job we know that of course there are so many different genres that we could still cover but we figured that hey maybe let's not go for a five hour video as our first one if you want to know some more genres for example feel free to leave them in the comments down below and we'll maybe make an a V2 of this video we'll recover some more random genres that you guys suggest if you're new here as you saw we made this content specifically for game developers that's what this channel does in general so we make game development tips and tricks basically not the full-on code part usually but more on how do I run my Game Dev business and things like that if that's something that you're interested in be sure to subscribe and leave us a like as that really helps us and you also get this cool content I think I've said everything we've taken enough of your time so now is the time for you to go and look up how to make a platformer metroidvania or puzzle game in unity or whatever engine you prefer and start working on your own dream don't forget to add in five quick easy steps or 10 minutes to your search thanks for watching and we'll see you guys in the next video bye

Channel: BiteMe Games

Views: 12,570

Keywords: gamedev, indie, indie developer, game development, unity, c#, blender, game design, game studio, devlog, development, startup, forge industry, flega, steam

Id: Yg8wig1LTtE

Length: 28min 58sec (1738 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2023