goldenferret
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I'm thinking of planning of possibly postulating about theoretically making some kind of hypothetical game. This game will revolve around minigames, and I was wondering what people look for when playing a minigame. What kind of design elements should it have?

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Sillyman
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It should be fun.

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eytanz
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You might need to give a bit more information before you can get useful responses. What overall type of mini-games? How are you planning to relate them to each other? How many overall?

One very general comment I have is that I don't like it when there are mini-games that are very different from each other. Not that all the minigames should be identical - far from it - but it's best if they all are aimed at the same player. So that I either enjoy all of them, or I dislike all of them.

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Dex Stewart
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And one thing you really should really be careful about is the time players spend in the menu, and how long the awarded points remain on the screen etc. I remember trying to play Mario Party 6 (I think) at a friends' place and getting incredibly bored because a 'lot' of the time was not spent playing, but waiting for the game to start.

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[Last edited by Dex Stewart at 12-31-2007 09:43 PM]

Maurog
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Just look at WarioWare Mega Microgames and you'll see all the elements of the winning formula:
- Zero waiting. The game just starts.
- Zero learning. Everything is intuitive or extremely simplified.
- Very strong, very responsive feedback. When you do something right or wrong, it immediately flashes and beeps accordingly.
- Varying difficulty level. Some things -should- be ridiculously easy to do, to make contrast with the rest.
- Very short. A real game has some boredom tolerance, but if you're bored in a minigame even for a second, it failed.

WarioWare is an extreme example of course, but it's very prominent.

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Jatopian
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Unfertilized. I mean, sunny-side up. I mean..
what Maurog said, actually.

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mrimer
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PICK!

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goldenferret
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Thanks. To be specific, I'm thinking of the types of minigames found in the PSP game "WTF", if anybody's ever played it; they go on for as long as you like so you earn as much money as you can. I'm trying to make them less boring though. The overall concept of the game is that you're a guy at a temp agency trying to earn money. Each job is a specific minigame (for example, one of the more fun ones is where you have to take people's orders who are constantly changing their minds). You buy little capsules out of the vending machine to unlock doodads, toys and more jobs. Hopefully I'm going to be able to include a wide variety of minigames so the player can pick and choose at their leisure.

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Mattcrampy
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I would say that I enjoy minigames with a conclusion, as I like to be able to say that I accomplished something. It annoys me to have to 'grind' a minigame, seeing as usually it ends up being too easy and I stop having fun.

So, uh, I would say that I wouldn't play WTF.

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Jatopian
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Both infinite and finite minigames have their fans. It's really a false dichotomy, because what people get out of these minigames, once they get past the cutesy stuff, is a feeling of accomplishment. Thus a game should go as long as the player can feel that he is somehow progressing. This is why RPGs with a focus on grind frequently may be more popular than others (WoW, anyone?) - you're guaranteed to get that reward of progress and worthwhileness if you just keep grinding till you're over-leveled.

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goldenferret
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Maybe I'll make the games finite, but have quantifiable measures of how well you did, so you earn varying amounts of money. Or some finite or infinite. Don't know yet.

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