Make your game more replayable

A lot of my blog has been touting stuff I like and bashing stuff I don't, but I am going to try to make it up by providing something game developers might learn from. I played Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2, a game I do not recommend even for beginners. It is not a terrible game, but its main flaws are being too easy and too repetitive. You will have to do the exact same tournament upwards of 10 times in the campaign mode. The game seems to constantly give you rewards and make sure you are a step ahead. The expectations are low just so you can exceed them and get extra rewards. And if you happen to fail enough, there is even an easy mode you can turn on without any penalty! I understand that modern discs have a lot more space than cartridges did, but you do not have to use all of it. It is like how, if you are making a video, you do not have to make it last the website's time limit. If you do, you will probably end up adding a lot of filler. At the end of the day, it will not matter how many accessories, clothes, and hairstyles I unlocked as long as I know I hardly had to work for them. Two important things to think about are how challenge in a game can make you feel like you have accomplished something and how a short length can add replay value. There are benefits to making a game short enough to complete in one sitting, such as including limited lives and continues. One aspect of a lot of the older cartridge games are that you are only required to do things once in them. Even though the game I am talking about does not have this, it is also good to not have an economy so you do not have to complicate things and you can save extra disk space, and there would be one less time-consuming, unbalanced part of the game to complain about. I hold disdain for short-but-challenging games because they are short games made even shorter by the fact that one of the parts is too hard for many players, but that is only when it is mentioned by people who I feel think they have better tastes because they play older games. In truth, that design can do a lot to help a game. Instead of adding in things that are not fun and exist to make it feel longer or cheat you out of a victory to make you play it longer, you could use that extra space saved to add in all sorts of content. If you insist on appealing to newcomers, you can have some challenging sections and some sections players just know they are going to win. The difficulty would be uneven, but that can be good because players would have something to look forward to besides increased difficulty on the next part. I know it seems awkward for people to take breaks while they are already playing a game, but it puts some variety into it and lights at the end of tunnels. Having lots of dialogue, long cutscenes, busywork and sidequests is not good either. Come on, I just want to play! "Hours of playtime" is not a good thing to put on the box of a game because the amount of time it is played is up to the player and that could mean the game is slower paced or there is a lot of filler. You do not put a bunch of easy parts in the main game because what if someone wants to start over and make a new file? They will have to go through a bunch of unfulfilling tutorials and easy parts, along with slow parts that involve hearing or reading things they have already heard or read. The easy parts should just be limited to the training/practice/how to play mode that is not part of the main game, and the first part, maybe the first few parts of the main game. In the aforementioned game, there are sometimes special rules added to tournaments or match games, such as having mirrored holes, limited clubs, or extra penalty strokes for landing in terrains that are not even out of boundaries. The problem is, along with rain, the rules do not show up often enough, and you are left with the same tournament you have already done many times. The game could be improved by including special rules and rain a lot more often, and earlier in the game. Other improvements involve making the competition stiffer and requiring less activities before the next part of the campaign mode. Also, make the game faster paced so you can have all eighteen holes instead of just nine and make the game more exciting. With all that extra replay value and disk space, you can include a higher difficulty or two, or maybe some videos so you can watch the game instead of making it easy. Now that is more like it! Just something to think about for Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 3, or whatever the next game in the series is going to be named.