While most gamers can’t wait for the month of June to come around so they can see what’s coming at the next E3, there’s no denying that fourth quarter is the best time to be a gamer. The last few months of the year are when some of the biggest (and often best) games release just in time for the holidays. Like all the previous years, huge titles like Halo 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Star Wars Battlefront are on their way.

Of course, it’d be a shame to forget all about the amazing games that kept us busy throughout the year. Below is a look at some of the most popular games that have been released so far in 2015, and why players can’t get enough of them….

Splatoon

Splatoon is the surprise hit that no one thought was going to be popular for a number of reasons. First off, it’s a new intellectual property on a Nintendo console. Since it isn’t Mario, Zelda, or Metroid, it was doomed to sell poorly. Secondly, Nintendo consoles have never been the home of competitive online shooters.

Of course, Splatoon proved everyone wrong by doing what Nintendo does best: taking an established genre and giving it a fresh spin.

Players can’t get enough of this third-person shooter for its interesting visuals, fast-paced matches, and unique approach to how you actually win. It’s easy to look past the lack of voice chat and little content upon release with a game as creative as this.

Bloodborne

Two games that were loved for the amount of challenge they offered last console generation were Dark Souls 1 and 2. In a time when people thought gamers wanted lengthy dialogue scenes, complex cut scenes, and moderately difficult gameplay, these two titles by FromSoftware sucked players into worlds where you were expected to die…a lot.

Bloodborne builds upon those two games by providing a gorgeous world to explore. In this world, players will find incredible challenges, captivating mysteries, and an incomparable sense of accomplishment. From addicting combat and excellent level design, to memorable boss battles, Bloodborne is sure to be a contender for Game of the Year in 2015 despite the heavy competition coming soon.

Rocket League

No one could have guessed that a game where you basically play soccer with vehicles would be such a hit. Rocket League is the perfect example of a game that takes a ridiculous idea and turns it into an exciting and captivating experience.

There’s just something about blazing across the field at full speed to block an opponent’s shot, then delivering an awesome pass that leads to the game-winning goal. From easy to learn controls and fast-paced matches, to tons of unlockables and a surprising amount of depth, Rocket League is without a doubt one of the biggest surprise hits of 2015.

Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D

Depending on who you ask, today’s trend of remastering games is either awesome or ridiculous. While some will say it’s silly that we’re getting remakes of games released in the last five years (or just one year like The Last of Us Remastered), others are excited to replay great titles with updated visuals.

Majora’s Mask 3D, however, is a remake that fans have been begging Nintendo to make for years now. Despite being perhaps the most polarizing Zelda title for having a darker world and time limits, it is still regarded as one of the best games ever made, and was certainly welcomed when it released in early 2015.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain was not only one of the most anticipated titles of 2015, but is also now one of the highest rated games of the year. In fact, as of this writing, it sits at the #1 spot on Metacritic’s list of top scoring games.

Why? Simply put, it is a masterpiece that embodies why we love games. It has captivating gameplay, plenty of different gadgets and weapons to use, and offers a near-endless list of options. As a sandbox action game, it is easily one of, if not the, best ever created in the genre. Of course, we expected nothing less from the last Metal Gear Solid designed by the legendary Hideo Kojima.

Super Mario Maker

The more people rave about Super Mario Maker, the more we’re left wondering how different things would have been if the Wii U had been released alongside this amazing title. While Nintendo Land and the other launches weren’t so great, they just didn’t demonstrate what the Gamepad was capable of in the same way Wii Sports showed us with the original Wii remotes.

Super Mario Maker, however, is a game that feels perfect with the Gamepad. More importantly, it offers an intuitive interface and fantastic design tools that have countless players across the globe making their own levels. There was really no better way for Nintendo to celebrate Mario’s 30th birthday.

Honorable Mentions

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Batman: Arkham Knight
• Mortal Kombat X

[su_note]Click here to learn more about: The School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy.[/su_note]

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It cannot be stressed enough how important it is for a game developer to playtest their game. We have even provided some advice on how to get the most out of playtesting since you want this process to not only go smoothly, but also be as beneficial as possible.

The purpose is, of course, clear: catch any problems that will ruin the players’ experience and lower the quality of your game before it actually releases to the public.

What exactly are you looking for, you ask? Some would answer this question with a generic “bugs and glitches” response, but there’s more to it. Here, we’ve covered some of the biggest problems you want to know about, whether it be you (the game designer) doing the testing, or someone else.

If any of the following are left in your game at launch, you may just have people calling your game two things you should dread to hear: nonfunctional and/or incomplete.

Loopholes

Loopholes are problems in the game that players can use to gain an unfair advantage. These exploits must be taken care of if they cause the entire experience to be ruined for every player except the one “cheating.” With so many games releasing with such loopholes that eventually require fixing, it’s no secret that detecting these can be quite a challenge.

A good example is a serious glitch that occurred in Jagex’s RuneScape MMO. Now known as the “Falador Massacre,” this exploit allowed players who achieved 99 Construction to create their own house and invite other players. The problem was that people who engaged in combat activities inside the house were still able to attack other players outside of PvP areas once they left.

Those affected were free to kill unsuspecting players in areas you normally cannot be attacked, which is a big problem in a game where getting killed by another player means you permanently lose most of your equipment.

The biggest problem about this glitch, and one you desperately want to avoid, is that it was all unintentional. The game provided a loophole that players happened to come upon and exploit—so who is to blame, really?

Gameplay Problems

While finding game-breaking bugs and glitches is important, it is a very good day of testing when you discover a problem with the rules of your game that might frustrate players.

Since games are very complex systems, a designer shouldn’t be surprised when they act in ways you could have never predicted, simply because a new condition was introduced. In other words, you want to know if players are doing something you weren’t expecting (while still following all the rules of the game).

A perfect example is spawn camping, the bane of every competitive shooter player’s existence. Teams that are either very organized, or simply superior in skill, can eventually remain near the opponent’s spawn points and kill them as soon as they appear.

This, of course, causes extreme frustration for the players being camped since, despite the fact that the other players are not cheating or bending the rules in any way, they are now at a severely unfair disadvantage.

Your job as a designer is to figure out how to minimize the problem. Do you give the spawning players temporary invincibility, or maybe a shield that blocks incoming fire but still allows the player to shoot? Take a look at some of the top shooters today and you’ll see how they have attempted to solve this problem. For example, Uncharted 3 gives you the choice of spawning either on a spawn point or next to an ally who isn’t in combat.

Dead Ends

The last problem on this list, and perhaps most obvious, is the dead end. This, of course, ruins the gameplay experience as the player can no longer progress because the game doesn’t allow them to. Action-adventure, RPG, first-person shooter, real-time strategy—any and all genres—are susceptible to this problem. And it might just be the most devastating one on this list.

Of course, a dead end doesn’t just mean that the player fell inside a hole they can’t get out of. An example is one found in some copies of Twilight Princess, which is surprising since Nintendo is pretty good at releasing games without such problems. Basically, players would enter the Cannon room and save their game while inside. Upon restarting the game, a character name Shad would be gone, but Midna will act as though he is there. This means the player can neither leave the room nor warp out, forcing players to erase/restart a file.

Even if the glitch doesn’t cause a dead end, it can still cause frustration and should be fixed. When the acclaimed Banjo-Kazooie was re-released on Xbox Live Arcade, an infamous now-patched glitch was discovered where the player could not collect every Note in the game if they first completed a puzzle game. While it didn’t prevent players from finishing the game’s story, they could no longer collect all 900 Notes.

Make sure to look for these major pitfalls and glitches when playtesting, and keep games happy with your creation.

[su_note]Learn more about the School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy, with campuses in New York and Los Angeles.[/su_note]

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When you think about video game design, you can think of it in terms of a jigsaw puzzle. Not only does each piece need to be placed in the correct location, but they all eventually have to fit together. The end result is, of course, some kind of image that is now only visible because all the pieces of the puzzle are there.

While some people think the gameplay puzzle piece, or the story puzzle piece, is the most important, most would argue that the last puzzle piece you can’t do without is the level design piece. Good level design is in many ways the heart of a game; without it, everything else doesn’t work.

This holds true whether you’re talking about a high-profile action adventure game like Uncharted or a simple 2D platformer like the original Super Mario Bros. While good visuals are great, and breathtakingly detailed environments are cool too, all that will matter to players is how fun the levels are.

The following are a few tips you’ll find useful if you want to captivate players with not just your visuals, gameplay, and story, but level design as well…

Give Players Something New To Look At Once In Awhile

One way to guarantee that players get bored of your game’s levels is to make them look at the same things over and over. We know creating new objects, enemies, and other content takes time, so we’re not asking you to make every single thing in your game unique. However, players catch on when they kill the exact same enemy a thousand times, or see identical trees spread out throughout your game.

The fact is, gamers these days expect to see more variety simply because technology has advanced. However, offering players different scenery has always been important. Nintendo only had bits and pixels to work with, but that didn’t mean they made every world in Super Mario Bros. 3 the same; you have desert, water, clouds, ice, etc.

When it comes to story-driven games, changing the scenery is necessary to make players feel like they’re actually progressing or getting closer to a goal. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves did this well by having you go from the rain forests of Borneo to the war-torn streets of a Nepal city, eventually ending up in the snow-covered Himalayas.

Give Players Direction Without Holding Their Hand

One of the difficulties of designing levels is finding a balance between making sure players can figure out what to do (or where to go) next without forcing them. In other words, just as many players are likely to get frustrated over getting lost, as there are players who will get bored if the next step is always laid out for them.

Good level design means the player went down a certain path, or toward a direction, not because it was the correct way to go, but because something caught their interest. A good example of this is Banjo-Kazooie, a game that nearly twenty years later still boasts some of the funnest worlds of any 3D platformer.

No matter where you go in any of the nine words in Banjo-Kazooie, there is always something intriguing that urges you to explore. From a giant crocodile head in Bubblegloop Swamp and a haunted hedge maze in Mad Monster Mansion, to a dog-shaped Sphynx in Gobi’s Valley, you always want to investigate what each area has in store for you.

Reward Players Whenever They Deserve It

When your average player discovers a hidden path that’s easy to miss, or a tall object that took time and skill to get onto, they expect some kind of reward. It can be more health, ammo, an extra life…anything as long as the spot isn’t empty.

That is why a lot of games feature some kind of collectible that isn’t necessary to complete the game but still makes players feel accomplished for collecting them. Some examples are the Green Stars in Super Mario 3D World, feathers in Assassin’s Creed 2, and all the extra spaceship parts in Pikmin.

You can even go the extra mile and offer special rewards like a secret room, optional boss, or something that adds to the story. The Bioshock games, for example, have audio diaries hidden throughout each area that aren’t needed to complete the game, but offer narrative details that you otherwise would never learn about

Don’t Throw Your Levels Together

One of the easiest things to do when it comes to level design is just start placing random content in hopes that it turns out. You start grabbing whatever looks neat from the built-in library of the game engine you’re using, and start dropping rooms, corridors, enemies, and more.

Like anything else that just gets tossed together without any planning, your levels are going to be less than stellar if you do it this way. Since the purpose of levels are to move the game forward and keep players interested, you should always create them with the utmost care and thought.

You can tell a level was carefully designed when it offers different paths for players to reach the same goal and gives players various options to choose from. Even the very first world of Super Mario Bros. has moments where you can either continue forward or go down a pipe; hop across a gap or take the high ground by jumping on blocks.

[su_note]Click here to learn more about: The School of Game Design at the New York Film Academy.[/su_note]