Game Difficulty

STRIKENSUN41

I took a look around to see if any topic of this sort has already been discussed, but I didn't really see much.

But I was just thinking about something that might be useful information for us lone developers, and that's about making the games difficulty. When you think about a games difficulty setting, you'd think of easy, normal and hard. But what really constitutes it being easy, normal and hard? I can see a challenge in making games that might be either too easy or nearly impossible.

Since being a lone developer or a group, we can produce our games and test the difficulty by hand testing it out ourselves. And if we can't beat it, does that mean scrap it altogether or alter it? I feel this might be the challenge itself--just producing a game with difficulties that people who want a challenge even though we can't beat it ourselves. There's different skill levels each person can have for playing a game, which is why I thought this would be an important thing to discuss.

I feel that a games difficulty is one thing most people remember from a game as it's the challenge the game offers, which is essentially the game itself. So how would you go about the difficulty setting in the game and what advice can you give others about this? I feel this might be an important topic for those of us who may want to incorporate some sort of difficulty setting in our game as well as for those of us making a game (since we don't want to just have a game where you touch to win, meaning there's some degree of challenge which is the game).

mhedges

@STRIKENSUN41 ,

If you're unsure if the game is too difficult off the bat, have a games-oriented friend test it on your phone/tablet. His/her opinion will serve as your barometer. If my friend says it's too easy, I'll ramp it up a bit.