![]() ![]() A well-oiled hinge is smooth and silent, but a rusty one squeaks, groans, and annoys the crap out of you. Whereas Juice is highly visible, Oil is really something you only notice when it's missing. With that out of the way, I think there's another equally important kind of polish that doesn't get as much attention, perhaps because it doesn't have it's own term yet. ![]() It's impossible to give broad statements that are true for everything, but adding Juiciness to your game makes your game better 100% of the time, guaranteed. It's just as easy to imagine a richly rendered 3D game with lifeless interactions as it is a simple 2D game with garbage screenshots that positively bounces to life when you play it. "Juice" is a kind of polish, but a very specific kind - excepting animation, it's nearly perpendicular to the traditional concept of "production value." Simply improving graphics, sound, and other measures of "quality" doesn't necessarily add juice, and vice versa. The term is elaborated in these two excellent talks, "The Art of Screenshake", and "Juice it or Lose It": ![]() It makes the player feel powerful and in control of the world, and it coaches them through the rules of the game by constantly letting them know on a per-interaction basis how they are doing. A juicy game feels alive and responds to everything you do – tons of cascading action and response for minimal user input. A juicy game element will bounce and wiggle and squirt and make a little noise when you touch it. “Juice” was our wet little term for constant and bountiful user feedback. It was first coined in the seminal article How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days: "Juice" is probably a game design term you've heard before. ![]()
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