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The Secret to GOOD Game Ideas 💡 [Practical Ideation Methods Explained]

Indie Game Clinic

91,994 views

Do you struggle to come up with fresh ideas? Or have too many, and struggle with knowing which ones to commit to? Maybe you finish a game, show it to people, and they all say "what a terrible idea, why did you WASTE 3 YEARS on this!?!? 😲😲😲"

🤝 Patreon*: Patreon: indiegameclinic

In this video, Dr. Joe will take you through 8 tried and tested tools for generating and evaluating ideas, to give your indie games a better chance of success. Yes, it's all about the execution, but some ideas are simply easier to execute, or will make a better impression!👨🏻‍⚕️🩺.

If you're new to the channel, and found this video useful, why not check out some of my playlists:
🧠 Game Design Video Essays
🤨 Indies Under the Knife
💸 Playlist

⌚Games & Toys Discussed⌚
01:17 - Paperboy
01:20 - Jostle Parent
01:23 - Wilmot's Warehouse
03:06 - Reigns
03:24 - Cibele
03:35 - Mini Metro
03:42 - Angry Birds
04:05 - Among Us
04:08 - Werewolf
04:26 - Marbles
04:30 - Fidget Cubes & Spinners
06:07 - Dredge
07:50 - Ape Out
08:48 - Warcraft 3
09:00 - Plants vs Zombies
09:35 - Behold the Kickmen
11:07 - Marvel's Midnight Suns
11:37 - Into the Breach
11:53 - Stardew Valley
13:55 - Bloodborne the Card Game
17:25 - Dark Souls
20:10 - Grand Theft Auto
22:35 - Amateur Surgeon: Re-Generations
24:00 - licking poisonous amphibians

20 Comments

@IndieGameClinic Creator 4 days ago Pinned

Thanks for watching! You can support us and get a bonus content over at http://patreon.com/indiegameclinic. 🚑

Or find us at https://indie-game-clinic-shop.fourthwall.com/en-gbp, and https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/indiegameclinic 📚👕

@yizhizhu5154 2 months ago

A babysitting theme made into a rage game sounds like a pretty promising plan.

@ardidsonriente2223 4 months ago

My favorite ideation method is to play or watch something, and then take a note whenever something happens that "should have been better this other way".

This feeling usually can spawn an interesting idea you can explore and develop. Notice I said "interesting", it can also be a really bad idea, but it is worth paying attention to them anyway.

I think we can call it the "I'd win against [famous and respected creator]" approach.

@A_goofy_Skya 11 months ago

I love how there's little to no music. It's so much more relaxing, and I can actually feel my brain absorb the information better.

@AlbertSäfström 11 months ago

I really like when teams focus on their strengths. The original team that made Deep Rock Galactic had 4 programmers and one artist, so they chose a simple art style and made a game reliant on heavy procedural generation. It’s much easier to fit an idea to your strengths than it is to recruit a team to fit an idea.

@GermyJer 2 years ago

This should be required viewing for all aspiring game devs

@MarioCola 2 years ago

We have to support this channel at all costs

@gameboycolor47 4 months ago

The "build for a player moment." At first felt kinda unimportant than I started thinking "what are my moments?" And realized I DO have those moments and get it now lol

@Mako-Joseph-Bryant 1 year ago

I'm a comp. sci./game design student and this content is gold.

@hyperventalated 6 months ago

You brought up Werewolf in relation to Among Us, but I also thought of the online game Town of Salem. Ive always found that game super interesting because it is practically just Werewolf, except it takes advantage of its existence as a video game by adding rules and complexities that would be way too much to remember or handle if it was played in-person. I figured it was worth mentioning because it's a great example of a game doing something that is not exactly "original" but takes advantage of its own medium in a very direct and tangible way so as to be notable anyways.

@FernHollowStudios 5 months ago

New game dev/ artist here, this is the best most quality channel I have come across in the game dev youtube'verse. Thank you sir! <3

@Paul_Ward 2 years ago

Dont forget the ultimate strategy for game success. Ideating where to put the dwarven woodwind bangers.

@60b1in 2 years ago

I realize I did almost all of these here and there on an intuitive level. But it is always good to have these tools enumerated and using them consciously. 🙂

@archentity 9 months ago

Speaking of a game where you start as an elderly person, I want to play a game where you start the story as a very old wizard who gives the player access to the most powerful spells in the game upfront, but those same powerful spells all have consequential effects. For example, someone gives you a rescue quest to save their loved one from magical bandits. Well you could go and set their whole hideout on fire with your OP arcane firestorm spell, but you will also probably end up setting the hostage ablaze as well, failing the quest, and possibly even create a new enemy out of the quest giver.

@Sarixis 1 year ago

I'm an aspiring indie game dev myself, I've been loving your content to help me better interrogate my own ideas and goals as I try to write down plans into pre-production documents to make a prototype. To attempt a very rough 1-Sentence Pitch of my concept that you can critique, "Explore dungeons where you swap between different characters to solve puzzles and defeat monsters in your quest to save Bavernia from Queen Griselda."

For additional context, the fundamental concept is taking a JRPG party and putting it in the mode of a 3D Zelda game to quote your genre video. Each character is tooled to act like one of Link's items that make them specialized to solve certain puzzles and defeat a specific enemy type.

@MetalandPugs 8 days ago

I've been trying to come up with a small game. The problem is once you come up with ideas, there is sometimes this hidden scope that you don't see. Once you start working on the project it grows exponentially bigger immediately before you know it.

@designer_ignacy 6 months ago (edited)

Looking for a design problem is probably my favourite way of working... This may be out of necessity, since I happened to work on projects that were already started as I was joining the team, but even in personal projects I tend to think in this direction, it's really rewarding I would say, and empowering, to notice an elusive problem, solve it, and then see that it in fact is no more and the experience had improved. And desining for memorable moments too, this is always in my other hand

@Will_Forge 10 months ago

17:39 Experience points and gold being the same currency is actually just OD&D, meaning original D&D. It was something they had to change once they introduced the Thief class because obviously the thief is going to level up way faster and easier than anyone else, but they didn't change it until a later edition. The Thief was the progenitor to the Rogue, and the rogue actually fixed a number of other game breaking features of the thief.

@brandonf8794 10 months ago

Just had to say I am trying to design board and card games and I actually find your videos extremely useful, obviously a lot of overlap, guess I should check if you do do board game stuff but video games will be a bigger market I suspect.

Keen to keep learning from you, already encouraged me to get some cards on a table and start prototyping from one of your other videos.

So thank you for your content man, it’s meant a lot and I really enjoy the way you share and cover these topics without… let’s just say you keep it nice and open without getting absolutely lost and distracted with things that have nothing to do with the topic of the video but you also cover a breadth of interesting and thoughtful points about gaming and game design and so I feel like I get a lot more than I bargained for when clicking on a video with a certain title.

So thanks, and rock on man, cheers. 🍻

@yeekiatunpro50 1 year ago

Memorable memory aka game feel is absolutely huge. I'd argue it's the foundation of any game. What do you want your players to feel? Narrow it down to 1 thing and then think of all the ways you can double down on that one feeling. Need for speed, Mario kart and Forza are all racing games, but they cannot be feel more different. If you're not designing for a specific feel, then you're just making another racing game that no one cares about.