Tierlisting EVEN MORE Genres for Gamedev

[@detectivewolf9488]

Visual Novels got it too hard. People who like visual novels actively seek out new visual novels to play and more people are into it than you think. Basically, it's not as popular as a genre such as FPS, but the playerbase for visual novels is pretty dedicated.

[@Password_1234]

I think you're missing the biggest problem with rating the difficulty of a visual novel: Where a game in almost any genre tends to improve with a good storyline, story is usually still optional. Not so for a visual novel. If the story isn't good, your game will not sell (unless you are making one of those VNs that come with a disclaimer ensuring you that all characters are at least 18 years of age). And I don't necessarily mean a "good" story as in "high brow literature", but more as in "engaging to its target audience". The story is absolutely central. Even if it's just a glorified dating sim, the characters still have to be interesting enough for you to care. And that is the big problem with rating how difficult it is to create a VN. Because you basically have to include the question "how difficult is it to write an engaging story?" and I wouldn't even know how to begin placing that on any kind of difficulty-tier board.

[@ODDin17]

That's true, but then again, the core of any game that isn't a visual novel are the mechanics, so you can also ask "how difficult is it to design good mechanics", and there's no clear answer to that either. Sure, your mechanics can be derivative, but, well, so can your story.

[@hanzflackshnack1158]

He skipped over that on purpose when he emphasized, how do you sell a story? then showed the Steam page to show that you're just a thumbnail in a sea of thumbnails. He's concerned enough that it's a waste of time to not factor the quality of the writing...

[@renatocustodio1000]

I'm a traditional programmer and I really, really want to make a game some day. Thank you for all these videos!

[@tasharules]

I think you have a good leg up in this area. For me I started making games 6 years ago, it wasn't until I went to school for Software Development 6 months ago that I was able to program my games more efficiently and understand what everything meant. Choose an engine that uses the same or similar code that you're proficient in and you can take off running. For me I used Gamemaker Studio, so when I got to my Javascript and Java portions of my classes everything kinda clicked, and I've took off running.

[@a9yle]

11:00 my first game was a visual novel and it has 100k downloads on google play

[@blesk400]

Whats the name? Would love to check it out!

[@a9yle]

it's in my channel bio (also it's in arabic)@@blesk400

[@okfire3186]

@@blesk400 30 days

[@alexx4450]

I actually think there is a large community just dedicated to visual novels and many make so much money. You can also do adult style visual novels and that is another category by it self, people throw money on any kind of adult visual novel, if it's good you are gonna make a fortune.

[@zoombapup]

I think you're kind of dismissing the VN genre a bit too quickly here. You can sell ANYTHING if you can reach the target audience for it. I know a number of indies that do really well with VN sales, because they've got dozens of games in that genre. It just means you have to target your marketing really well to get success.

[@rattled4806]

That doesn't make it good though. A game in any genre can be successful if you can market it really well and it can be enjoyable by enough people. Doesn't mean the genre is better than others

[@zoombapup]

@@rattled4806 My point was that dismissing a genre is a bit too premature. I'd be perfectly fine for having the whole of a small genre if it supported me well enough to keep going and have a good life. But of course there are bigger and smaller genre's.

[@tjmixmasta]

The premise was ease and marketability; Visual Novels need a lot of things to sync nicely for them to even have a chance (visuals, writing, voice-acting (if applicable), music).. and even if you nail all of those, you only have a teeny little market who would care, and those who care may already be playing existing visual novels. I love the genre; it's just a tough genre to work within sustainably

[@LocherYT]

I love VNs that are coupled with other existing game systems. Like a great time management simulation and minigames (Little Busters) , or with turnbased combat (Utawarerumono). You can even spin an elaborate story around the game system and use it strictly for presenting text (VA-11 Hall-A)

[@vladv5126]

Well the argument can be made that they are barely definable as games and also it's a VERY saturated genre most commonly associated with low grade horny shovelware which makes it VERY hard to convince people that your particular visual novel is worth the money.

[@skellyaceart]

As an artist who wants to make games in the future, I feel that the primary appeal, especially when it comes to first impressions, are character designs and UI. Unless you combine a visual novel with a different genre (such as a Metroidvania, with certain parts being a visual novel and other parts being a Metroidvania), a lot of what makes a visual novel appealing is the design of both the characters and the user interface. If the character designs are too plain, then some potential players might be turned away. If the UI is terrible, with clashing colors or not fitting with the theme of the game, then it diminishes the user's experience. It's all about consistency. And, especially for the character portraits, their expressions must also be considered. If the characters don't have a lot of varied expressions that suit the characters, then it can take away from the moment. Of course, I'm not going to go on a tangent and infodump about the importance of character expressions and their overall design, but it's something to consider.

[@R0ulette]

Deck-building games and trading card games are different genres. A deck-building game involves starting with few cards and gradually gaining and culling cards as you progress through a single playthrough

[@MrLolMachine11]

Im close to graduating with a degree in business, but ive come to fully realize my passion for game development recently. Over the years ive gotten into different hobbies such as fashion design, writing, and ive always been an artist since i was young. Im at a cross roads between being a game dev or just finishing my masters and going into law school. Im confident i have unique ideas that can mix up a few genres, like spectacle fighters! Im still very young so this choice feels overwhelming for me. Thanks for the video!

[@bitemegames]

I would advise not to make the choice lightly. A degree is always a great back up before starting your game dev journey (impact can vary depending where you live). As the game industry is a very harsh one and success isn't easily found by starting indies. However if you are sure that this is what you want, I'm sure you can do it! Best of luck on either path you take! -T

[@MrLolMachine11]

@@bitemegames Oh absolutely! I Have every intention of finishing my degree even if just as a backup or funding for my passions. Having a solid place to fall back on is essential to long term success! Thank you for your kind words

[@LorneDev]

I've got a degree in business. It's VERY useful if you plan to run your own studio, so see it as an investment in your gamdevelopment ;)

[@jarrettonions3392]

Those all look like skills that would contribute to gamedev. Probably good to finish at least the course youre doing.. learning dev as you go (there is lots to learn and may take a while before before creating something people will buy). One thing ive learned recenty...you can have the best product... but unless you can actually run a business..its not going anywhere. Keep going. Youre on the right track!

[@moti1s]

I can't get over the fact that you gave a visual novel a D tier just because you can't sell it... I wasn't even thinking of being able to sell an indie game i'd make

[@teratoma.]

you can also sell visual novels too and earn decent money if youre solo/duo devs with a cool story and art big hitter Milk outside a bag of milk is an 1 hour experience, shts very artsy and esoteric and it has 11k reviews with 7,3 euro cost, that's insane

[@Iceblade269]

From someone who develops VNs, marketing is the biggest hurdle for a visual novel. Like they pointed out if you just want to make a game and nothing more, it’s S tier. Marketing a visual novel hard because you don’t have as much contemt to talk about. There isn’t much gameplay depth, there isn’t any innovative or skill-based gameplay, and you need to be mindful of unintentionally spoiling the story to your audience. That’s not counting the niche community. English visual novels are infamous for their bad quality, so you REALLY need to polish out your game. You also are at a disadvantage if you aren’t writing some variant of romance, mystery, or horror. And good luck getting non VN enjoyers to play one. I do agree that making them D for bad marketing isn’t very fair due to most indie games being free, I’d also put it at C because of how limited they are when making one. Sure you can implement other mechanics, but at that point why not just make a different genre?

[@LocherYT]

Tbh the most ease for VN development is provided by most VN engines like Ren'Py and its commercial mostly revolves around being able to engage the reader. There are many budget VNs on steam that sell purely because the premise sounds funny (Hatoful Boyfriend). Big budgets usually only sell due to the prestige of the company/series. I'd say you need to add more interactive elements to it for it to sell like Coffin of Andy and Leyley, which is basically just RPG Maker consisting of mostly linear text reading.

[@lunisenlilja]

maybe i'm biased cause i love visual novels (and the vn dev community) but i very much disagree with putting it so low. while it is true that it's a niche and the overall player base is smaller than other genres, it also means it's way less desaturated. for marketing, posting an image of a nice looking character and saying "you can date this person in my upcoming game" is enough to get people interested lol. you may not make bank with a vn, sure, but they definitely are marketable to the right audience

[@austinblackburn8095]

Between the fact they are so easy to make. If you get a small dedicated audience you could probably release 3-4 games a year and get a living wage. Something most game devs can't say.

[@Yalloriess]

Please make a part 3!!! Game Genres Missing: 1. Stealth (Metal Gear Solid, Assassins Creed, etc) 2. Real-Time Strategy Games (Age of Empires, StarCraft) 3. City|Village|etc Building 4. Sims-like (Like The Sims, TribeZ, State of Decay, and Virtual Villagers where you manage a community/ group) 5. Point and Click (Like the TellTale Games, Deponia, etc) 6. Farming Games 7. Turn-Based Games (XCOM, Final Fantasy, etc) 8. Horror (Alien: Isolation, Five Nights at Freddy's, etc) 9. Party Games (Super Mario Party, Kung Fu Chaos, Fuzion Frenzy) 10. Boardgames 11. Sports Games 12. On Wheels Games (Tony Hawk, Jet Set Radio, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk) 13. Franchise Games (As a unique topic to work on an existing IP) 14. Co-Op Games (Games that NEED you to play with another player like It Takes Two) 15. Modding Existing Games (To really test yourself and let others see and use your work) Once you one day get through all genres please put all the genres together in the same list!!

[@LionMister]

Hire this person already!

[@voidboi0]

16. On-Rails (The House of the Dead, Pokemon Snap...) Good additions! Surprised they haven't mentioned Horror yet. Also I think "6. Farming Games" would classify as a Sim in their previous video.

[@finesseandstyle]

Missing Space Sims

[@thesleepingdragon6474]

They somewhat touched on both RTS and City-Building in the last tier-list when they discussed "Top-Down Strategy"

[@CoDEmanX47]

Some genres and games that came to my mind: - Classic arcade / retro games, like a pong or breakout clone. Easy to make, hard to market, but possible to combine with other genres - Point and click, like Deponia or one of these detective games where you try to find the right clickable areas to find clues - Hot-seat / local multiplayer games, although this might be more of a feature than a genre. Bomberman, Snake Arena, Cannonhill, Little Fighters, Battle Painters, Potion Party... - As what does Rocket League count? Not a racing game for sure even though it's car-focused but with a sports twist - Is Snake an own genre? Something like Tron has similar characteristics but adds multiplayer - Is Tetris an action puzzle game? - Some games strongly focus on economics but don't quite fall into the simulation category. Universal Paperclips for example, although it's kind of an idle game I suppose? - Party games like the ones from Jackbox (Quiplash, Guesspionage, etc.) and in particular drawing games, e.g. Drawful, Garticphone, Skribble.io

[@StarFoxZX315]

Not gonna lie, the visual novel part was REAAAAAALY biased. Felt more like pure spite for the genre than anything else (doesn't surprise me given how western culture is nowadays, but it's quite unprofessional for game devs to act and talk like that). About action RPGs, comparing anything to Path of Exile is unfair as hell. A game that's been out for more than 10 years and still has updates is a monster, pure and simple. If you want to talk about simple games in the genre, a good option would be the original Secret Of Mana (SNES) or its remake, that has very simple 3D graphics. Combat is simple, progression is simple and still not boring. Something that also bugged me in the first video and did the same on this one is the marketing part. Maybe the person making the game is actually planning on a free title, starting a community and/or a portfolio. It's not right to judge the game DEVELOPMENT because of its marketing. And even if this dev is trying to sell a product, having a job and only a limited time available to work on its game. If the title sells, let's say, 5000 units at USD 10 each in one year, that 50k Dollars more in the dev's account, not to mention an even bigger number of followers (and possible buyers). Expecting astronomical sales on a first title is simply not realistic.

[@anonymousartichoke]

Most of what I play these days are ARPGs: Diablo 3, Path of Exile, and Torchlight Infinite specifically. They're all great games but still leave something to be desired for me so I really want to make my own. I hear what you're saying about the scope and competition though, honestly if I do manage to make it I might just keep it for myself and my friends (I have a LOT of time on my hands)

[@bitemegames]

Not putting a genre as A or S doesn't mean you shouldn't make it! We just want people to be informed about the potential struggles they may go through. If you start with these caveats in mind, then by all means, go for it! And best of luck!

[@tivasthegamer9817]

It's great that you go for it. Just be aware that it will take quite long to finish it. Send me the link when you have it done! I will definitelly check it out!

[@leafMontilla]

"No big studio is ever going to green light a Colonel Sanders dating simulator" 12:16 Sure, but aren't TellTale games all about visual novels with those Walking Dead and Batman IPs? I know they're not usually what comes to mind upon hearing "visual novels", but I struggle to see why they're different beyond the use of non-static 3D assets which most visual novels don't use. I mean, maybe I'm missing some huge part of Tell Tale games that distinguishes them from visual novels because I haven't played them, but I think that just 3D animated assets do a lot to help with the otherwise very niche marketability of visual novels. I guess I'd lump in "waiking simulators" with visual novels because they usually only have one noteworthy game mechanic: dialogue/narrative options and choices. The rest is just the game's aesthetic.

[@bitemegames]

I think the difference between Telltale and the indie visual novelists is Telltale takes existing IP, and expands upon it, aimed at the mainstream, like their current "The Expanse" game. It's the indies that do the weird stuff, such as an Omori or KFC dating sim. They make the same genre, but aimed at different markets. -M

[@emirwattabor6991]

Visual Novels make great money actually. I think you just don't play them, which biases you against them as a medium. The only issue for visual novels, in my mind, is the lack of transferable skills. Besides storytelling and UI design, a developer specializing in visual novels who tries to branch out into other genres mostly starts from scratch. Other genres will teach you animation and principles of game design or level design, but visual novels are effectively just a digital extension of a comic. This isn't to knock visual novels as a medium; they are incredibly beautiful and it takes a lot of skill to write a compelling story and combine it with compelling visuals, particularly detailed character designs and aesthetically pleasing user interfaces. But, it is fundamentally DIFFERENT from other genres, which makes it a poor choice if you want to learn a variety of skills that transfer to other genres.

[@trvkv]

You shown Disco Elysium as a visual novel, I think that Detroit Become Human can also be considered as one, which is AAA, very successful game. And there are more of those, like Oxenfree (cross genre with puzzle game), whole Telltale games like The Walking Dead and other from this developer and a lot of horror games are visual novels too. You definitely underestimated this one.

[@Chris3s]

Disco (RPG), the telltale games and quantic dream games are not purely VNs, but more like (action) adventure games focused on story-telling. Walking simulators are also somewhat related

[@trvkv]

@@Chris3s Of course, nobody denies that. The context to my comment is in the video.

[@sealsharp]

I like this video series ( it is a series now, deal with it! ) because it's not so clear to answer ^_^ Here's a few thoughts i had to the genres, ### Soulslike ### There are explicit and implicit requirements for genres. With a genre like souls, expectations are really depended on the original and that can make it difficult to deliver what players expect. So if you create a soulslike like Tunic ( the zelda with a fox ), that's not a problem. Its practically inserting souls-elements like the methodic combat and the death-reset into a zelda game. If the game is third person and mechanically close to Souls(tm), then players expect the same quality in gameplay. That means the character controller, the combat, the physics needs to be great. It's not just expectations, it also that difficulty amplifies problems. If the dodging is slightly clunky, that's barely noticable in a hack&slash power fantasy that is about dominating enemies, but it will break a soulslike. It did. Souls-competitors like Lords of the Fallen and the first The Surge got only average reviews because they were a little to clunky for the genre. Well, and let's not get started on invasions. That requires multiplayer infrastructure, the rabbithole of griefplay, hacks and cheating and of course the game needs a critical mass if player to not be considered "dead". Within the genre "soulslike", it depends wildly on what youre going for. ### Visual Novel ### What you two innocent souls did not consider is games about ...touching each other downstairs. It's not my genre either, but this genre has dedicated fanbases and does exceptionally well on crownfunding. I don't get it either, as there is more than enough of that content on the internet already, but who knows what's in peoples brains, it seems to work fine. ### Action RPG ### There are a few games that do the genre really well on a budget and in 2D ( Hero Siege , Chronicon ) and i think one is made in gamemaker. On a small scope, the genre through it's farming-loop and generated areas can have the same benefits as the roguelike genre as it reuses content.

[@bitemegames]

Nice and detailed comment. Thanks for sharing! -T

[@jackawaka]

Awesome video! I personally think Action Adventure games have a more simplistic combat system when compared to souls likes, souls likes usually have an inventory system and action adventures are considerably more limited in terms of weapons and abilities generally

[@CrossfacePanda]

Every dev who’ve ever made a fighting game says they are by far one of the hardest games to make, just because there’s so many tiny things you need to consider and get right. They have a massive amounts of animations as well, so even if you only make a 1v1 fighter with a handful of characters as an indie, it’s gonna be a lot of work. A single character usually takes a big studio over a year to make; now imagine how long each one will take with indie dev resources where you probably can’t work on multiple ones in parallel. Most indie fighting games I’ve seen have been made by decent sized indie studios, had really small starting rosters (usually less than 8), and took many years to make. It’s also a genre more than any other that you shouldn’t tackle if you aren’t intimately familiar with it inside and out already as a player. If you just like to mash on buttons in fighting games casually, that’s totally cool, but as a creator you really need to understand the complexities and depth of this genre to understand the building blocks that make it up. Even more so if you want to make a simplified fighting game, as you need to understand why it works the way it does in order to scale things back (Masahiro Sakurai in creating Smash Bros is a great example of this, as he had a deep technical and mechanical understanding of traditional fighting games as a player to what to change and simplify, and what was essential to keep).

[@VoltitanDev]

I think visual novels are more S-tier since it's a great first start for game developers that prioritize the story element and if they're feeling strong in their game design can cross it over to another genre. As a game dev myself my first two projects were visual novels before the third one had gameplay elements.

[@pamiu1597]

suggestions for future entries: - limit the bg videos to mostly indie entries to give people an accurate idea of what is feasible on tight resources; elden ring and dbzf were both bizarre exemplars - grading on 3 or more dimensions like design/technical/marketing, compressed to a single tier for ease of visualization - board games! in fact one can practice developing these by porting physical games to tabletop simulator - a cousin of board games, party/social games like jack in the box, fall guys or amogus

[@bitemegames]

We've actually covered boardgames in our engine tierlist. We'll see if we can structure our future tierlists more, these videos are quite old in terms of our channel's existence to be honest, so there's a lot of things I want to improve (or have already improved on). -M

[@Criptudos]

Do a part 3. Still has a tons of genres u could explore, like Tatical RPG

[@RisingBrie]

The game at 20:55 is Wildfrost. I really love that game

[@bitemegames]

Indeed! Seems like I messed up during editing. Whoops -M

[@naimakka1949]

for fighting games the whole multiplayer is solved for you because there is ggpo networking which is free, open source and widely accepted as the best protocol for fighting games (i just dabbled my toes into indie game dev so I dont know how exactly would you go about the implementation but I played a fair ammount of fighting games)

[@raphaelvonalchemy7390]

What game is at 20:57? Edit: It is Wildfrost

[@Eval999]

Hearthstone and Magic are not deckbuilders. They are collectable card games. A "deckbuilder" is a game where you assemble a deck from scratch through play, like Slay the Spire.

[@c.d.dailey8013]

All right! I came from the first video. I am getting into the tier list. The genre I am really invested was an RPG. However that ranked low. So I was wondering about alternatives. I was thinking of making a maze as my first game. In this second video, I got a lot of ideas. This one ranked action RPGs low. I prefer the turn based kind. I wonder if that can be bumped higher in rank. With turn based, one doesn't have gameplay so dependent on time. Another big split is WRPG vs. JRPG. In this case, it seems like it is pick your poison. Neither of them is that more complex than the other. They just focus and elaborate on different things. Maybe this is hair splitting. Maybe I just gave you ideas for a further video. There are some interesting genres in here. I am glad fighting games were covered. I asked about them in the comments of the first video. They were in the middle. Here I got to play close attention to the reasons for the ranking. A basic fighting game is easy to set up. That is great for me. It is the depth of the game that brings down the score. There are lots of characters, moves and button combos. I am not at the point of making engaging or marketable games. I just want to be able to make games at all. So a simplified fighting game would be a great candidate for an early project. One cool genre in this game is action adventure. There was some struggle to come up with examples. The main one that comes to my mind is Legend of Zelda. When I get more experienced, I would like to make a Zelda-like game as a practice excersize. There can be a maze with collecting loot and a simple combat system. I would like to skip the puzzles. I am not a fan of puzzles.

[@c.d.dailey8013]

Wow. We are getting obscure here. There is some weird stuff. The visual novel is interesting. I have a lot of writing, drawing and digital art experience. I like how a game can be made by one person and still have nice anime imagery. Point and click adventure may work for me too. I have never played either of these obscure genres. However they would be good to make as a trading exercise. Something that can use the skills I do have and minimize coding sounds like a good start. RPG and action adventure can deliver on great visuals and story too. I am just not there yet. I had no idea that deck building was a genre. What the heck? I used to play Magic the Gathering Arena. Does that count? This is another good idea for an early project. It was really high on the tier list. I am a big fan of Magic the Gathering. I am also a big Pokemon fan. I currently play the Pokemon video games. I used to play the card game. I have experience with building TCGs using index cards. I never published anything though. I did have the idea of mixing cards with RPG. Now I learn that deck builder is mixed with other things. Bummer. I hope nobody has the same idea I did. There is some weird ones. I don't like match 3 games. They are too simple. I don't like idle games. Would Farmville count as an idle game? It is plagued with timers. How am I supposed to have fun, when the game won't let me do stuff to have fun? Candy Crush and Farmville are the too worst games I have ever played. They are just Skinner box traps with pretty pictures. Other games are more substantial and give the brain more of a workout. I wonder what a rogue-like game is like. I only know rogue as the basic class in RPGs. Is this a genre of games focused on rogues? Is there focus on sneaking and stabbing? I don't know.

[@DCatGameDeveloper]

@@c.d.dailey8013 you know that's only their opinion right, don't take it too serious

[@22spamaccount22]

2:40 At least for Dark Souls, the attacks need to be telegraphed in a manner that the player recognizes the attack pattern, and must dodge/block accordingly. For sekiro, the enemy must be animated in a manner so the player can recognize when to parry in that split second.

[@Veecy]

I just took a big drink of water right before you said "for an idle game, you don't need hands" and I almost choked

[@cheesecakenl1980]

As a hobby developer myself I love these tier list's. Imho I think you could rank genres with multiplayer even lower. Like Arpg.

[@luciafantin]

Maybe if you make another one you can rate life-sim, tycoons or management games or like factory games (think factorio, satisfactory or shapez), sandbox. And what if you make an adventure game without the action part? Kinda like Sable or Journey. Also what genre would something like Spiritfarer be, is it like a narrative + platformer + managment? Combining genres adds so much possibilities!

[@zsheets7483]

18:37 So a bullet hell deckbuilder would be SSS tier?

[@Oki_wfsth]

That’s one hell of an idea

[@kshyr811]

didn't take too long: "The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood" - visual novel with deckbuilding

[@joshuagrant7812]

I know tier lists are the digestable internet meme format, but I would have gone with scoring them on how challenging for programming, design, art, writing, marketing etc. as all of these have tradeoffs for different things.

[@pixelsoupgames]

Really great advice guys! Glad I found your channel. Do you have a reccomendation of engine for a game that is heavy on UI? I'm currently on Unity and wondering if there is something more intuative for UI intensive designs.

[@bitemegames]

While some of us have dabbled in different engines, our main experience is with Unity. I understand the questions that arise when using Unity UI. I think it's very important to create good tools, and reusable generic code to handle UI in Unity UI. UI toolkit is also a possible option (UI system that will some day become the default one). However do check the documentation to see if it currently supports everything you think you will need. As for other engines I feel I lack the experience to give clear advice. Maybe try all of them out and create a small proof of concepts in all of them to see what you like most. -T

[@pixelsoupgames]

@@bitemegames thanks for taking the time to reply. I forgot about the new UI toolkit! I will explore that so I can continue with unity.😁

[@Freakshow_OW]

I'd be really interested in your thoughts on horror games - both story based and jumpscare based ones

[@bitemegames]

Hmm, I personally am horrible at watching/playing anything horror, so I don't know exactly if it's good or bad, other than that I am not a good target audience. I think horror gamedev has a few ways you can go: - Make something relatively small, but unique, and hope to get picked up by a big KZbinr/Streamer (Think like Slenderman, and a lot of the stuff Markiplier and PewDiePie used to play) - Make something that has polish, focuses on a horror world, but use as little jumpscares as possible. I think great examples of this are games like Scorn and Fear & Hunger. They are more focused on a brutal, gruesome world instead. - Make a bunch of quick, more generic horror games, inspired by Resident Evil, PT,... There is a lot of shovelware on Steam with this style however, so I think this is dangerous as well. Overall, I am not the biggest fan of horror genres, both personally, as well as from a gamedev perspective. Of course, I am biased, but I hope this still helps a bit. -M

[@Freakshow_OW]

Thank you, I am currently a few weeks into erratically starting my first game which is in that second kind of style that you described, the story part works well but my skills with blender and photoshop are making it hard haha. The codings been pretty simple so far but all I've kinda done is set up systems

[@t3rr0talabode52]

Remind me, have "sandbox" (Minecraft, space engineers) or "space sim" (elite dangerous, star citizen) been mentioned (in this video or the other tierlist video) yet? I bet I know where they'd go, but I want to know if I'm right or not. I'm debating on something similar to that for a game for my friends, but I want to know how hard they are (again, I think I know). Great video though, I like the marketing and programming (edit: meant to say "development" in general) perspective on these videos!

[@bitemegames]

I don't think sandbox games in itself were featured (if i remember correctly). However we did cover survival where I think Marnix used Minecraft as an example. Don't think we covered the other game you mentioned -T

[@HomestudyASMR]

디펜스게임- 중독적이고 컨텐츠도 좋다. 프로그래밍구현도 꽤 쉬운 편. 그러나 요새 디펜스 형태는 다 비슷해서 마케팅이 어렵다. 그래서 다른 장르와 합치면 좋을 것 같다. 로그라이크 - 계속 죽으면서 쎄지고 다음 단계로 가. 계속 반복하게 만드는 노가다.(이미 스팀에 이런 로그라이크는 많음) Bullet Hell - 몰려드는 적들을 화면 가득차게 공격하면서 깨나가는 재미. 무기가 자유로워서 독특하게 아무거나 만들면 되서 접근성이 좋다. 클리커게임 - 모바일로 출시. 대신 아트가 진짜 개이뻐야함.

[@Uzabi]

What do you guys think about making a mobile game as an indie? I feel like its much harder to succeed on mobile platform then it is on the PC mostly because mobile is so oversaturated right now. Would you agree or is it possible to succeed on mobile as a solo or small team?

[@bitemegames]

I personally think the mobile market is very saturated. On mobile there are a lot of free to play games, you compete with these as a small indie with near to no marketing budget and most of the time ask an up front cost, this is a very tall ask of your customer. I think other "classic" platforms have an audience that generally suits better for most indies. -T

[@BlazeHeroic]

I'm amazed that you didn't mention the one that popularized and exploded the tower defense genre: Plants vs Zombies.

[@bigsarge1982]

I have now watched it! Hahaha.. I still think beat em ups is different... what tier do you think they would fall in?

[@bitemegames]

I think I would give them an A- or B, I think they are a lot better for indies, as they generally focus less on multiplayer, and often involve somewhat easier art (pixel art, using a top down sidescrolling camera). I'm not entirely certain if they are the best in terms of demand however. Making the promo material such as trailers is easy though as it is action packed all the time. -M

[@bigsarge1982]

@@bitemegames I’m about to retire and I’m thinking developing a terrible game is next on the list haha. Could use 4 programmers to help out tho lmao

[@jack_of_no_trades]

I agree with your points ,but only established genres seem to be discussed. what about creating a new genre altogether either from scratch or by combining genres? I think that deserves to be a separate "genre" even though it might be hard to generalize.

[@buckets3628]

loving it

[@teratoma.]

guy on the right has no idea what he's talking about, VNs are a great choice if youre solo/duo dev

[@bitemegames]

*checks video to see which side I was sitting again..., left..., phew* I agree, Thomas was a bit too hardcore anti-VN, they're pretty solid if you're limited in coding experience, since you have great engines like Ren'Py, the only thing you need is some alright art, which can be an issue for some. -M

[@petereriksson6760]

I think you are dismissing multiplayer too easily. Think Azure PlayFab and the like. If you have a programming background, it might not be too hard. Especially if you can make it less real-time, like turn based or timer, semi-action…

[@mnaufaldillah9254]

What's your thought on sports games, specifically soccer/football games? It doesn't have to be like FIFA/EA Sports FC. But it has pixel graphic(or cel shaded/anime graphic for better). The example is Pixel Cup Soccer or Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions.

[@bitemegames]

Singleplayer sports games? I think those are solid. Multiplayer on the other hand is more tricky, as you already require there to be an audience for your game to pick it up. If there's no initial audience, your game is doomed to fail. I think the best way to help remedy a failed launch here is by changing your business model from an upfront payment, to a F2P with cosmetics. I think a good example of this is Slapshot rebound, or how most Battle Royale games work as well. -M

[@mnaufaldillah9254]

@@bitemegames I see. I think to start with singleplayer sports games with local multiplayer support. With long term plan adding story mode with simple cutscene and player career mode based on Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions and Baseball Power Pros(Konami's Baseball games, like MLB: Power Pros in the west) Also, You're right about online multiplayer, as I witness the failure of Captain Tsubasa: Rise of New Champions online multiplayer.

[@JustRaevynn]

Surprised horror isn't on either tier list. Indie horror games are a MASSIVE market and get arguably the most attention through youtubers playing them.

[@bitemegames]

Check out the 3rd entry: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bmbRo6tniLKeapY -M

[@thesleepingdragon6474]

I feel like the Visual Novel discussion was too heavily focused on joking about "dating sim". They were saying: 1) it is extremely hard to market with a very niche audience 2) there aren't many good examples of highly successful/rated games (especially on a large-scale or from a big developer) Maybe I am thinking too broadly and am adventuring too far outside of the genre, but wouldn't a game like Life is Strange be considered a AAA-level visual novel? And wouldn't games such as the Tell-Tale series' be more of a AA-level? They show Disco Elysium as an example and (I am EXTREMELY bias about this game) I would consider this an unbelievably massive indie success/masterpiece. I understand the argument that these are "graphic adventure games" and even some others may implement too many mechanics from other genres, but it still seems like they are adjacent to the Visual Novel genre at least? Games such as The Banner Saga could arguably be adjacent to this genre as well. I remember when I played that game, I couldn't care less about the combat/mechanics and wanted to just continue down my "choose-your-own-adventure" story. I am not a developer, I have very limited knowledge, and I am just an above-moderate gamer. Please someone educate me or correct me if you disagree.

[@bitemegames]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gYPClZ9jq7GqbNU -M

[@edward3190]

space sim/shooter? I'm making one, wish me luck ;)

[@bitemegames]

Good luck! -T

[@keldzh]

Aren't Heavy Rain and Life is strange VN games too? Is it really Doki Doki is the closest to AAA in the genre? :) They aren't indie but neither Batman nor Heartstone are indie too.

[@SamGarcia]

You should probably separate the developing from marketing for the tierlists.

[@Swooper86]

20:57 That's clearly not Slay the Spire...

[@sawyerlachance1300]

Where would Survival Horror fall on the tier list?

[@dk-sky3820]

Visual Novel: D tier Visual Novel 18+: S (for Shut up and take my money) tier

[@Slicekb]

Would have been interested in seeing where sports games were ranked...

[@MarcusPrimeX]

These dudes havent encountered a gacha cloaked visual novel game with a pretty addictive loop gameplay mechanics and a totally great world, character and item building story. The visual novel is just how the game delivers the story, just like any other game with a story, the best thing about visual novel core games is the story is literally hooked to the gameplay and you are rewarded with both story and achievement when unlocking certain stages. In any other gacha games, i just press SKIP button to go through the story, however, when you meet a game with a visual novel as main core, that is when you get addicted since each and every unit, every town, every item, every thing in the game is a story offered to you. The more you know something, the more you appreciate it.

[@Blackrabbit234]

what about horror?

[@DCatGameDeveloper]

No farm sim? Stardew Valley, Sun haven, Roots of pacha like games?

[@antoniomarcos9010]

2:18 ohh shit this guys looks suspect;........... HENTAIIII!

[@wdampier]

What about auto-battler?

[@GreenheartYT_06]

Hmm... It seems like it would be both semi-hard to make and hella hard to market. Auto battlers are perceived to be rather bad.

[@fk3239]

There are roguelikes, and then there are roguelites. Most of these examples are roguelites. Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racer is to RPGs what those are to roguelikes. Roguelites can be pretty much anything, though ofc some are more... Roguelikelike than others.

[@Salmacream]

Souls likes have to feel good. Thats a major issue. Ive played dozens of them, if they don't feel good. You quit and refund them. You as an indie are trying to live up to FromSoft. Frankly I don't think many devs have a quarter of the skill required. Thats why souls likes flop so hard.

[@GabdaRocur]

I disagree in some, like Tower Defense I would put higher, as it has flexibility, yet, I understand and agree on marketing, so It would be ok, but... Action RPG? I understand your point, but, diablo like is it saturated? No, do you need content? Of course, but D? Technically and Content wise yeah it can be, more challenging, but let's be real, you don't have a lot of these, if you want a "Diablo clone", you will find some like Torchlight, Grimm Dawn, Victor Vran, but, they are the big ones, and what about the small ones? Not much to be honest. Do you need a Path of Exile? To be honest in the moment I saw that skill tree I was like "Nope", sometimes less is more. Even with lower quantity of content if you do a good game, it don't see as hellish as a Fightning game, Where technically you have SO much more to worry, like Multiplayer and Networking (Which Fighting Game does not have it nowadays?), gameplay feeling (kinda tricky), balancing and so on? I feel the ARPG would be kinda C. And come on, SOULS like on B? Action on C? (Where you are right, Souls is a Action, too broad), maybe you would need one for this basically. Action would be kinda ok on C due to it's broadness as you said, it's like saying "Sports Game" and comparing creating Fifa against Pong, but Souls like above? Man, just the balancing to make not too unfair will be hell for someone doing a big game like this, you don't just need to do a "hard game" but a hard game where you can feel you can pass again, not a hard bullet sponge minion who makes you rage quit, and will have probably same problems as Fightning the controlls needs to be pretty good otherwise you will have a Miner Ultra Adventures all over again, (and I'm not Souls like specialist, but networking may be necessary to at least be at same level as others).

[@bitemegames]

Not a big souls-like player myself, so not sure how important the "multiplayer" part is to be honest. You have some nice points, thanks for sharing! -T

[@GabdaRocur]

@@bitemegames Some critics, but nice content, loved the channel

[@leafMontilla]

@@bitemegames A big (albeit optional) component of the Souls games is multiplayer, where players can summon friendly allies, or perform hostile invasion of another player's game. This does not take place in a multiplayer mode, and is seamlessly integrated into the game's "campaign", effectively adding "co-op" and "pvp" mechanics to the game. There's more to this mechanic than I could fit here, but I recommend looking into it. It's a mechanic that can add a lot of value to a game, and can be implemented across various genres of games.

[@poppers7317]

F/E tier for idle games? What? That doesn't seem right. I love idle games. "But how much money did you spend on them?" I hear you say. 0 buckeroos I think I get it now. But I still want to create one. I think there is still a lot of room to be creative. Most idle games are pretty samy and not that interesting. But Wami for example has several challenges that are pretty fun. There's always stuff you get then you complete them and they aren't that easy. That's engaging. Doing always the same and then reincarnating is boring. There needs to be some variety.

[@kaiser724]

These guys are really funny

[@libertarianterminator]

VR?

[@CrowSpaceboy]

I hate that you lumped fighting games and brawling games together because they are completely different in scope, requirements, and target audiences. You only really talked about fighting games during your section and i think your discussion of it was fair, but "brawlers" is a completely different genre. (Streets of Rage, for example)

[@Entropy-ic3tf]

Nah, I disagree with fighting game being easy C- or D and put it to F. Sure, you can make a simple single player game, but even then, the animations and hitboxes you have to make per character is a nightmare to deal with solo. The character classes you have to create and the unique moves you have to evaluate and animate is also a nightmare. The worst trap is one thinking you can create a 2d game like street fighter back in the days. You'd be surprised how difficult creating animated sprite characters that is around 100px or more. I'm saying this as someone who fell on that trap and completed a simple one, if you're an indie developer and eyeing of creating a fighting game? Don't do it, spend your time with more meaningful products like RPG, where the skills you'd gain are somewhat transferrable. Even if it's harder to make in content area, it's still not comparable to the amount of time you'll dedicate for creating a fighting game. There's a reason why only companies create fighting game.

[@mscapeh4451]

no darksouls dident invent that gameplay japan slasher games and nightmare creatures in 90s did.

[@safeworm599]

Can you add nsfw games in tierlist😂😂😂

[@rykehuss3435]

Path of Exile is cosmetics only? have you even played it? its designed to make you buy tabs. Only completely insane people play it f2p. Currency tab, map tab, premium upgrades on base tabs, a quad tab, div card tab, fragment tab, fossil tab, essence tab, more quad tabs...PoE is not free to play its free to try

[@aslv]

tower defense*

[@ReadingOcelotl]

visual novels belong in DD

[@KarasuuX]

They totally skipped horror games which is kinda funny lol

[@PsijicV]

Make same for mobile games.

[@muffinman472]

Just say you don’t take visual novels seriously

[@fouralph]

The wolf among us, The walking dead, almost all telltale games are visual novels, they are very very famous, visual novel are also easier to market if you have a really interesting story.

[@aryantzh2028]

wtf, souls like has won game of the year 2 times with a lot of players and usually it has more than 100k reviewers on the steam and even elden ring got more than 500k reviewers with over 90% positive reviews and these guys still think deck building games are better lmaoo

[@aryantzh2028]

i'm talking about objective here, the data says souls like won game of the year 2 times, got more than 500k reviewers with over 90% positive reviews, that means a lot of people liked this genre, maybe these guys just suck at playing those games, give up before trying to be good.

[@TreeFiddy-1337]

They are ranking it based on developing a game in that genre... You missed the entire point of the video.

[@participatoroftomfoolery]

The thing about visual novels is by default youre limited to making dating sims and pornos and not much else

[@mr.bumper0982]

The devs are really really off base on incremental/idle games. They only mention the worst ones, and talk about how easy it is to develop. It's only easy if you don't care and don't want to have unique mechanics

[@bitemegames]

We believe we showed off some big Idle games like Melvor Idle, Leaf blower simulator and Adventure Capitalist. We aren't able to feature all games of a given genre. However if you have some constructive feedback for us or tips for the others, please share. -T

[@Gianlucca123]

ngl i will never caught playing those novel games. Not only do they look extremely boring, but theyre typically associated with geeks and losers cuz there are so many really weird dating ones

[@killorfill6953]

Fri, June 30, 2023 [NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD」has reached 1,000,000 sales

[@bitemegames]

I really need to convince Thomas to let me make a VN... -M

[@mmagicbhomb]

I've never bought a platformer, but I do buy a lot of visual novels. I'm surprised platforms are on the top of the list while VN is a D (?) Maybe you guys are just haters?😃 Anyway, interesting videos, thanks🫶

[@bitemegames]

You'll love tomorrow's video then... We definitely overrated platformers as well. -M