Unpopular opinion: most indie design problems are actually production problems
I swear half the time a team says “the combat isn’t fun” the actual issue is something dumb like the hit sound feeling weak or the enemy reaction triggering 0.2 seconds too late :’)
Saw this happen recently on a prototype where they were talking about redesigning the whole system. Meanwhile the camera was fighting the player, the feedback was muddy, and three different people had tweaked values during the same sprint so nobody even knew which version actually felt better anymore.
Feels like indie teams jump to redesign way too fast.
Like yeah, sometimes the mechanic really is bad. But I think a lot of “design problems” are actually:
- unclear feedback
- messy iteration
- changing too many things at once
- nobody tracking what made the build better or worse
- Discord opinions becoming design direction
The funny part is some of the best-feeling games are mechanically pretty simple. They’re just insanely consistent.
And some genuinely good mechanics die because the implementation around them turns into soup.
Starting to think production discipline is way more of a game-feel multiplier than people want to admit.