10 Simple Video Game Features (That Are A NIGHTMARE To Develop)
7. Swimming
When I was at Rare, a fresh-faced newbie with nothing more than a notepad and a ton of legends around me to ask endless questions to, one of the tips a senior designer gave me was “avoid underwater levels if you can help it. You either end up just slowing the player’s normal movement down, or worse - you try to make swimming feel fun.”
At the time, it was a bit of a laugh, but it’s true - when was the last time you truly loved a swimming section in a game? And I mean, loved, not just tolerated? I think, for me, only Abzu, but even then, it still had its control struggles... or Subnautica, and that game had vehicles to make the pace feel less glacial.
The problem is that you need to move on all three axes without just doing the “flying underwater” thing or resorting to a really slow noclip movement style. The alternatives all suffer from the same issues - overly sluggish, awkward, unrealistic, or even just plain... boring.
For something that’s so fun to do in real life, naked, in the city centre fountain... translating that to game fun is an entirely different cup of aqua.