You're navigating the competitive gaming industry. How do you blend originality with popular game genres?

Play. Play a lot. This hands-on experience will not only give you valuable insights into the genre you’re targeting but also speed up all your other research activities. Whether you’re reading books, exploring articles, listening to podcasts, or chatting with colleagues about the genre, actually playing the games helps you grasp ideas and concepts much faster and deepens your understanding of the content you’ve consumed. Yes, you might feel less productive today because of the hours spent playing, but tomorrow you’ll be twice as efficient.

Research Trends: Study popular game genres to understand what makes them successful. Identify Unique Elements: Determine what unique features or mechanics you can introduce. Innovate within Genre: Combine familiar genre elements with original concepts to create a fresh experience. User Feedback: Involve your target audience early for feedback on your innovative ideas. Prototype and Test: Develop prototypes and run beta tests to refine the blend of originality and genre conventions. Story and Aesthetics: Use unique storytelling and visual styles to differentiate your game. Balance Familiarity and Novelty: Ensure that your game is accessible to fans of the genre while offering something new.

Once you’ve identified a trend you’d like to explore, do your best to analyze its success rate: — How many games are released each month in this trend? — How many of them succeed? — What do the successful games have in common that helped them find their audience? — What made others fail? This perspective will help you identify trends that, despite being visible in the industry, may not offer many opportunities.

I believe it's not just about inventing new mechanics and fresh game loops, but also about giving familiar mechanics a smart new connotation. Take “Black & White”, for example, which basically uses elements of the builder genre and also uses the basic mechanics. However, the player is no longer a nameless entity, but becomes GOD - this has a huge impact on the perspective of these basic mechanics and creates a completely new gameplay experience WITHOUT having to develop new mechanics.

As a narrative lead, I naturally think the current trend towards more narration in games is great. However, this always creates a kind of implicit compulsion to enrich EVERY game with narrative elements. I don't think that's necessary and sometimes even counterproductive! In games in particular, we have various degrees of storytelling at our disposal: No story at all, only worldbuilding, strongly linear story, branched designer story, exclusively elements for a player story. Here it is important not to “blindly” throw any elements into your game, but to look at what can support the gaming experience and, above all, not lead to any ludonarrative dissonance!

Understand what people like in popular games. Make your game unique by changing familiar rules or adding new elements. The game should be enjoyable, even if it's different. A good story can make your game memorable. Good graphics and music can make a big difference. Pay attention to what people think about your game and improve it based on their feedback. Target a specific group of players who might really like your game.

In my opinion, the best "original" ideas build on the foundations of a proven game model and fuse it with current popular mechanics. For example: Dead Cells: metroidvania foundation + rogue like + movement and combat that supports speed-running. The Twin Cells team perfectly aligned with the market trends at the time and built an amazing, successful title that's now available on almost any platform you can imagine.