DEV Community: Zunattang

I built the systems, but I couldn't feel the fun

Zunattang — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 04:46:29 +0000

In post 1 I narrowed the genre, and in post 2 I set the world's core axis. Next in order comes the game's heart — the systems that actually create fun. The stage (the world) was set, so it was time to decide how to play on it.

So this time I designed systems. Several of them. I ran them in my head, I dissected successful games. But honestly, this post isn't a success story about "how I found a fun system." I haven't found it yet. This post is that floundering, as it happened.

It works on paper, but my body doesn't move

The systems I built go like this. Combine units by five-element affinity, use placement to leverage type matchups, give each unit a unique ability, evolve them as they grow... taken one by one, they all make sense. Run a match in my head and I can logically confirm "if these combos overlap here, depth emerges."

The problem is it stops there. On paper it says "there's depth," but my body didn't feel "this is fun." That gap gnawed at me through this whole stage.

At first I didn't even understand what was happening. The systems were clearly well-built, so why the flatline? Thinking maybe refining them further would make it fun, I stacked on more layers. Chain bonuses on abilities, role synergies on top, then evolution. And sure, stacking layers made it "look simple but play complex" — but that didn't translate into fun. Sometimes the complexity felt like fatigue rather than fun.

Two things were missing

After a lot of floundering, I realized the missing fun came down to two things.

One was that the early game was flat. The first few minutes after starting were dull. The systems need a certain amount of board built up before they really interlock, and until then it was just a string of unremarkable fights. If a player can't get past this early stretch, they leave without ever seeing the game's real fun.

The other was more fundamental — I didn't know what "this game's core moment of fun" was. This was the real problem. Every fun game has a decisive moment you play for. My game didn't have one. It had systems piled high, but I couldn't answer "so what's this game's best moment?"

Once I realized this, the early-game problem turned out to share the same root. Because the core moment of fun wasn't defined, the early game couldn't be designed to lead toward it. With no destination, the early game didn't know what path it was, so I was just fiddling with systems.

What did successful games pick as that moment?

So I started researching. I dissected the games I love and that succeeded, to see what they chose as their "core moment of fun."

A common thread emerged. They all had a moment where what you'd built up erupts beyond expectation. Every single one.

One roguelike deckbuilder's core was the moment small elements chain and the score explodes beyond imagination. "This should've been enough — why is it blowing up this much?" That excess was the thrill. Another roguelike's climax was the moment a carefully built deck melts a boss in an instant, or the moment you should've died but the combo lands perfectly and you survive. The auto-battler I used to play was all about the moment a synergy you'd been chasing completes and overwhelms the opponent.

The pattern was clear. All of a game's systems actually exist to create this one moment. It's not fun because there are many systems; it's fun because every system converges on one decisive moment. The reason that roguelike I love is great isn't that it has many systems — it's that a few systems interlock perfectly toward one moment.

Here my mistake became visible. I'd made several systems and tried to make each of them work "with depth." But which single moment they were all aiming at was blank. That's why the logical depth was there but my heart didn't race — each system was playing on its own.

So, right now, I'm still stuck

What the research gave me wasn't an "answer" but a "question." What I need to find became clear — what is this game's core moment of fun? The one moment a player reopens the game to feel again, the one all the systems exist to build.

Once this is set, the rest follows. The early game can be designed as "the path that lets you taste that moment quickly," and every system can be realigned as "a part that builds that moment." But I haven't nailed down what that moment is yet. A few candidates came to mind, but I haven't picked the one that makes my heart race with "this is it."

Honestly it makes me a little anxious. The world is set, the systems are built, yet I'm stuck at the most important question of all — "why is this game fun?" But part of me also thinks this is the right order. If I'd glossed over this and drawn art and wrote code, I'd have ended up with a pretty but unfun game. One whose heart of fun was never found.

So for now I'm trying not to rush. No art, no code yet. The first thing to lock down isn't the graphics or the yokai designs — it's "which moment in this game makes a player open it again." Until I find this, I can't move on.

Looking back, this stage wasn't about finding an answer — it was about finding the question I need to answer. That building systems and building fun are different things, I only learned after floundering. In the next post I hope I can bring an answer to this question. For now, I'm still thinking.

Building a world core solid enough to actually want to make it

Zunattang — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 06:17:47 +0000

In my last post, I narrowed the genre down to "cute auto-battler." That was really where two things overlapped — a genre I love, and something I wanted to build. It sits where taste meets feasibility, so that's where I landed. But a genre doesn't make a game. "Cute auto-battler" is an empty bowl; without a world and characters, the units are just meaningless names like "bear, rabbit."

This time I'm deciding what goes in the bowl. The goal was one thing — build a world core solid enough that I actually want to make this. Not every detail, just the heart that would move me.

Turns out I'm someone who needs the world to stand first

At first I got the advice "just build a prototype and see if it's fun." An auto-battler can be tested on paper with only rules, so that's fair. But it didn't work for me.

Trying to run fights calling units A, B, C, my hands wouldn't move. Why is this yokai strong, why do these two have synergy — that has to come from the world, and with the world empty, everything felt arbitrary. That's when I realized: I'm someone for whom the world has to be solid before anything else appears. Some people lock the systems first and paint a world on top; I'm the opposite. The world is the power plant, and units, story, and concept all grow out of it.

So I flipped the order. World first. With one rule: a solid world isn't about volume, it's about a firm core axis. Not fifty pages of lore, but one heart — "what is this world, and why is this happening" — standing without a wobble. The rest can grow while I build. Break that rule and you spend months only planning, too exhausted to make the game.

The stage: I started with somewhere familiar

When building the world, I didn't start grand. I started with the place I know best — a modern city. Inventing a strange other-world or a fantasy continent is harder to picture; a familiar modern city is easy to imagine and the details come readily. I just made it a fictional modern metropolis rather than a real one — borrowing the texture of real Seoul but inventing the name. That keeps the "wait, isn't this Seoul?" real-world chill while dropping the burden of being wrong about facts. Start from the familiar and twist just one step — that was the safest, fastest start.

And I decided to mix East and West yokai. At first I thought "keep it all Eastern," but then it hit me: a modern city already mixes everything. Just as Seoul holds cultures from all over, yokai living mixed in isn't weird at all. If anything, "why are they mixed?" became the seed of the mystery.

The cataclysm and the mystery — setting the core axis

Chose the cataclysm by elimination. First I thought of eco-collapse / redevelopment. But that's a cataclysm whose cause is already known — no mystery. "Humans bulldozed the city" is fine as commentary, but there's nothing to dig into. I considered a broken seal, but it was too much of a cliche. I ended up at "an unknown entity." "Something came, and we don't know what it is" — that itself is a giant question mark, so the whole game becomes a chase for its identity. The dread of the incomprehensible is far more immersive than a disaster you fully understand.

Then I tied the core mystery to the East-West mix. This is the heart of the world right now. Digging into "what answer best pays off the choice to mix East and West?" produced this: every yokai in every mythology split off from one single origin. As that origin (= the unknown entity) stirs awake in the city, its scattered children (East & West yokai) are drawn to gather. Now the answer to "why is everything mixed?" is "because they share one root," and that ties straight into the mystery's solution.

Only after building this far did I finally think "I want to make this." That was the goal of this stage — a core axis strong enough to move me.

And once the world stood this far, the core actions started having reasons too. Why tame yokai (to them, the hero looks like a shard of the origin, so they're drawn in); why combat is automatic (the hero is a human who can't fight directly, so they only place and direct). Because the systems grow from the world, story and gameplay stop drifting apart.

But a lot is still deliberately blank. How the affinity system works, how unit rarity and growth are defined — left undecided on purpose. The core axis only just came together, and if I nail down system rules now, the smallest shift in the world later would force me to redo everything. For now I keep only the direction ("systems like these could grow from the world") and fill in concrete rules once the world is fully set.

A game I'd quit years ago came back to me

While building the world, an old memory surfaced. There was a game I'd played years ago and dropped partway because it got tiring on a systems level — Vivid Knight. "Wait, isn't that a lot like what I'm building now?" So I looked it up again. I didn't stumble onto a new competitor; it was a reference summoned from my own experience.

Digging back in, it overlapped a lot: cute characters + synergy combos + roguelike auto-battler. And it even had a sequel (Vivid World). That told me two things at once.

One is validation. The fact that I once "quit because it got tiring" means, flipped around, that the base was fun enough that I'd have kept going if not for that one thing. And a sequel existing is proof the genre sells. Confirmation that my chosen direction works in the market.

The other is that why I quit is exactly my homework. That tired-on-a-systems-level feeling — that's precisely what I have to improve. Repeat the same mistake and I'll wear players out the same way. Knowing "why I, as a player, left" is a rare asset for a developer.

I also looked coldly at the auto-battler market

My own experience isn't enough, so I checked the whole market too — I picked this for fit, not taste, so I had to see if it sells. The picture was clear.

The genre is booming, and therefore crowded. Auto-battlers and roguelikes are pouring onto Steam and itch.io. I had to accept that "making an auto-battler" is, on its own, not special at all. And one stinging fact — quality alone gets buried. I saw an analysis of a proven developer, whose past games netted over $1M, whose new title's Steam launch was "a colossal failure" despite positive reviews — only ~700 units in the first week. The cause was discoverability: with too many games, if you don't stand out, "getting buried is the default." That reconfirmed the "discovery decides revenue" point from my first post.

So what works? The successes that weren't buried share one thing — a twist you can grasp in a single line. Balatro is poker; one is blackjack; one flips chess pieces. A familiar frame plus one strong twist. That's what creates discoverability. There was reassurance too — async PvP (battling teams others built, at your own pace) and the tank/DPS/healer/buffer role setup are already proven genre grammar, so my choices were safe.

Where things stand, and what's next

What I did this stage is clear — I set a world core solid enough to make me want to build it. The stage (starting from a familiar modern city), the cataclysm (an unknown entity), the core mystery (East & West yokai split from one origin). System rules (affinity, rarity, growth) I left blank until the world is fully set.

And I checked the direction on two fronts. Inward, I mined "why I left" from a game I'd once quit; outward, I learned from the market that "quality alone gets buried, you need one twist." Both point the same way — the next task is to find, inside this world, my own one twist that answers "what kind of auto-battler is this?"

Looking back, this time what moved me came first. Whether it'll sell, and how to build it, come after. Now that a core axis I want to build stands, I just have to put flesh on it.

I decided to build a game with AI — the long story of just picking a genre

Zunattang — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 06:47:39 +0000

I wanted a hobby project. Three conditions were locked from the start: build it with AI, generate the art with Stable Diffusion, and it has to make money. I can't draw and I can't compose. So SD and AI aren't really "weapons" for me — they're more like teammates that do the parts I can't do alone. That was the premise.

But the moment I hit "okay, so what do I actually make?", I went in circles several times. I'm just writing that process down. The conclusion sounds trivial, but for me every wrong turn on the way there was necessary.

First I crossed out everything that looked plausible

The first idea was a visual novel, since it pairs well with SD. But then it hit me: visual novels get made just fine without any AI. That defeats my whole "made with AI" purpose. Cut.

Then I went toward what I actually love. I like games with great game-feel, like Sanabi. I enjoyed rage-platformers like Only Up too. But those live and die by precise action animation — which is exactly what SD can't do. SD gives you a gorgeous single character, but making that character move naturally frame by frame is hell. My teammate (SD) was useless here.

I looked at Roblox, since I've built jump maps before. But Roblox is 3D and my SD produces 2D illustrations. Mismatch again. And my research showed Roblox's algorithm quietly buries games churned out lazily with AI. I briefly considered RPG Maker, but I've used it — it's clunky, slow, and worst of all its closed structure means you can't get AI coding help. For someone whose whole plan is "let AI make this easy," it was the worst possible choice.

Taste and reality collided head-on

Here came the painful moment. I honestly listed the games I enjoy: Zenless Zone Zero, League of Legends. All of them are either big 3D action or real-time PvP. Every single one is impossible to make solo. I wondered how what I enjoy and what I can build could overlap so little.

Then another memory surfaced. I used to love short story indies like RPG Maker games and Undertale — the kind you finish the ending of in a day. And I've played a lot of TFT. Those two were the clue. The intersection of what I enjoy, what I can build solo, and what fits SD — that was the auto-battler.

Weirdly, the auto-battler passed every wall I'd hit. Combat is automatic, so no precise animation needed (dodges SD's weakness). Characters, synergies, and items are all data, so AI can generate content and balancing for me (my teammates finally have a job). And it's a kind of fun I already know I like, proven by TFT.

Waifu or cute — and why cute won

Since it's a character game, I briefly considered going the "waifu" route, since that's what SD generates best. But research showed waifu auto-battlers score right down the middle (one sat at 56 on Steam), and more importantly that space is basically a graveyard of F2P gacha exploitation and adult shovelware. Cute mascot-style games (the Chiikawa vibe), on the other hand, are a much healthier market — proven by Super Auto Pets. Safer floor, higher ceiling. So I dropped waifu and went cute.

I tore apart every famous auto-battler

Once I had the direction, I analyzed TFT, Hearthstone Battlegrounds, Super Auto Pets, Backpack Battles, The Bazaar, Mechabellum, Storybook Brawl one by one. I learned a lot here.

What to borrow was clear: async snapshots (fighting teams other players built — competition without a live server), synergy combos (data, so AI helps well), XP level-ups. Anti-staleness I learned from Battlegrounds — varying the setup each run so one "correct build" never hardens. The common complaint that Super Auto Pets gets repetitive is exactly this problem left unsolved.

What to avoid I learned too. Storybook Brawl was a fine game but touched NFTs and died; being server-based, it vanished entirely when the studio folded. The Bazaar had a great system but self-sabotaged its first impression with pay-to-win monetization, and its information was so dense you had to keep a wiki open to play. All of that was a textbook of "do this and you die."

I got honest about the money

Here I asked myself the most important question. "If I knew in advance it wouldn't sell a single copy, would I still build it?" The answer was no. So I admitted my real motive is money — not some vague "I do it because it's fun."

But that alone was weak, because solo game dev has low expected value (the median Steam indie earns the developer only a few thousand dollars). So I added a second motive — proving that "you can build a game fast with AI, without the grind." That way, even if it doesn't sell, the methodology remains. It gives me a floor.

And I redefined the goal of game #1: not a hit, but validating whether revenue is even possible. A low-cost test of whether I'm someone who can make something that sells. Framing it that way settled everything. Build fast to lower risk, and open up the dev process as both proof and marketing.

So this is what I check, every time

Once the direction was set, I needed a compass to return to whenever I got lost mid-development. So I turned it into a checklist.

It comes down to three questions: Does it sell? Can it be fast? Is it seen? Every time I want to add a feature, I ask "can the validation survive without this?" — if yes, cut it. If I'm grinding by hand, I hand it to the AI. Before adding any art, I check the fun with plain boxes first. Gameplay never goes behind a paywall; only cosmetics are for sale.

I redefined success too. Even if game #1 doesn't sell, if I learn why it didn't, that's a successful validation. Real failure isn't "no sales" — it's quitting, exhausted, without ever knowing why. So building fast and cheap is the whole point.

The next steps are set. Build a prototype with just the core fun → release a demo and open the devlog → read the signal of whether wishlists grow → if there's a response, launch. This cycle itself will answer my question: am I someone who can make something that sells?

Maybe it's a trivial conclusion. "I'm making a cute auto-battler" is all it amounts to. But the things I crossed out, the walls I hit, and the motives I admitted along the way — I needed all of it. Now I just have to build it.