Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho

Resources which helped me get started: "Challenges for Games Designers" by Brathwaite & Schreiber. This was by far the most helpful, as it laid out a process of finding & refining fun game ideas. "Game Feel" by Swink. Examines why jumping feels better in Super Mario than Donkey Kong, why Street Fighter feels the way it does, etc. This way of breaking down & examining mechanics was eye opening and can be applied to other kinds of games. lostgarden.com, especially link which describes a process for rapidly iterating on ideas, and link which introduced me to some of the fundamental building blocks of game mechanics. Resources which helped me later: I found "Art of Game Design" to be helpful later, when working on making a good game into a great game. The different lenses were great for finding areas where I could improve a game. ▶ this video really drove home how important polish is. This was useful after I had a game which was already a bit fun. Finally, an observation & a suggestion, if you're open to them: You admit that you don't know game design, yet you're attempting to innovate by removing limits. This seems like an enormous challenge for a beginner, like someone who doesn't know how to play an instrument attempting to make a new style of jazz. I think you'd have more success if you learned to play the instrument first: Practice by making a lot of small games. Spend 2-4 days on each, no more. Learn to use prototypes to explore the design space, searching for ideas with a glimmer of fun. When you find one, iterate on it to see if you can refine it into something more fun. As your game design skills improve, your ability to innovate will improve too.

True, but I like how impressed he is by certain parts of the graphics/meshes :) The procedural generation technique, apart from saving tons of space, also allows for some pretty good+realistic tree trunk and rock objects (or "effects" as they'd be called if this had been a regular demo instead of a game). I do agree with him about the lack of gore. It doesn't necessarily have to be bloody per se, but there's a great short gamedev presentation called "Juice it or lose it"[0] with loads of basic little tricks to make a game "juicier". They already hit a bunch of them, but there could have been some monster bits flying from the explosion. [0] ▶ this video (15 mins)