Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho
Why Hacker News recommends it
The go-to recommendation on game feel and polish, cited by HN as one of the best talks for anyone making interactive things feel good.
What it is
Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho take a bland Breakout clone and add layer after layer of 'juice' such as easing, particles, screen shake and sound until it feels alive. A live demo makes the effect of small feedback details obvious.
Recommended by 12 HN commenters across 12 different months, 2013 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec glitchdout · 2013-04 · on “Show HN: Four months of indie game dev”
"Juice it or lose it" is the best presentation I've seen on the matter. It's really funny and it clearly show how adding some bouncing or some particles can completely change the feel of a game (or UI) [this video]
Strong rec arcadius · 2014-03 · on “Ask HN: Show us your work in progress”
[this video] Here's the presentation. It's a pretty fantastic watch that shows what just a few small design decisions can do for a product's impressions on an audience.
Strong rec akilism · 2016-06 · on “It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app”
The talk juice it or lose, by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho, is all about this. Gotta be one of the best talks for anyone trying to make things interactive that also feel good. [this video]
Strong rec whatever_dude · 2017-02 · on “The Cool Cam (2007)”
People normally call that making it "juicy". There's this awesome presentation on YouTube showing how a boring game can look awesome with some "juiciness", even if the core gameplay is unchanged: [this video]
Recommends niles · 2013-05 · on “Google Celebrates the 37th Anniversary of Atari's Breakout”
Looks like google needs to watch this video on how to make a good breakout game: [this video] -- Juice it or Lose it.
Recommends woko · 2021-02 · on “Making Games on Your Own as an Engineer”
Regarding your second point, there is this talk by Petri Purho (Noita) about making a bland game feel fun to the user: [this video] As for your first point, I would suggest aspiring devs to try to prepare themselves to take part in "game jams". The constraints (including a time constraint) help focus on important parts. [LINK]
Recommends jedimastert · 2021-05 · on “Show HN: I open sourced a game I just released on Steam, written in Lua”
I'm reminded of the talk "Juice It of Lose It" < [this video] >. This looks like a very juicy game. There's also an excellent video by Mark Brown, a fantastic resource for game design discussion < [LINK] >
Recommends p1necone · 2022-11 · on “A lobbying blitz made sports betting ubiquitous”
I had periods of time where I played nothing but a single game, though those were never more than a few months. Definitely seems like it would be good for your son to broaden his gaming horizons somewhat. Re: "Juicing" - I saw the word and immediately assumed you were using the definition from this classic gamedev talk, well worth a watch: [this video]