@Grahams Any designers i can hear from that are free? Sorry, i am an EXTREMELY amateur game designer and i only think of ideas yet i don't know how to execute them.

I don't have any money, and i currently don't get any income.

@JoeJ P.D:

The game has Metroidvania traces. I'm not saying it's a game revolving on getting lost or grinding on 66 long stages and simultaneously playing hide and seek and lasting about 1 day to barely complete a world.

It's more of a Kirby game. It should be kinda linear but have its secrets and hidey stuff, while still leaving room for exploration.

Catomax26 said:
I chose that as a last-resort option because i'm honestly afraid if players are gonna bomb me for saying the game is too long.

If you get so many players you'll notice their bombing, i'll congratulate you. Then you already made it. Success!

The problem is not to get good ratings from players.
The problem is to get their attention at all, with hundreds of games released every day.

And the complaint about games being too large or long is rare, and really a very minor issue if so. If that's all you'll do wrong, again: Congratulations!

I think you should not worry about what some imaginary players might think. Make the game so you like it. Chances are some others will like it too, for the same reasons.

Ideally you can show it to friends, observing their reactions. That's proper feedback.
Eventually they even play through it, and if they get stuck, that's a real problem you'll want to address.
Currently you make up imaginary problems which do not yet, and might never, exist.

Catomax26 said:
Checked characters, checked lore, checked everything- IT ONLY FAILS IN LEVEL DESIGN!!!

You've asked for engine recommendations in another thread, iirc.
So do you already have a playable prototype?
If not, why do you think levels might be boring, or somehow bad, already now? What precisely is the fail you see or expect?
From the information you give i did not see any failure. My speculation about a potential flaw was just a guess, assuming you do feel your game is boring but you don't know why.

Other responses, proposing you'd need an expert, are just spam.

Catomax26 said:
IMPORTANT: I am a really amateur game designer. I am not aiming to be a designer for other games. I need help because this is the FIRST game I'm actually developing.

Great. This is mainly a hobbyist site, and this is how you become a game dev. You're not alone, and this is how it should be done. Maybe you will become an expert game designer with time. ; )

Catomax26 said:
Any designers i can hear from that are free?

You can recruit in our Hobby Project Classifieds board. Click Forums in the left navbar, then click the Browse tab and scroll down through the list of forums to the Community section to get to the HPC link.

JoeJ said:
why do you think levels might be boring, or somehow bad, already now? What precisely is the fail you see or expect?

He hasn't designed any levels - just has an outline of how many levels and what features he wants. (He misunderstood what Level Design actually is.)

JoeJ said:

So do you already have a playable prototype?

Na. I'm actually wondering the best engine i can use and start learning. I've seen people ALWAYS going for Unity or Godot, but i think i should give it a refresh and use another engine. I'm interested in Paper2D, but i have heard it's lame. I also haven't even started learning code. I'm just on the planning and ideas side for now.

(i also don't want the game to be developed by a team of strangers, it's more like what can i do alone)

P.D: I don't trust Godot, it's like a hivemind and i don't like that. I have seen people all over the world saying “Unity is dead, Godot supremacy”. Just… i don't trust it, i think game engines are variated just so you don't have to use the same 2 every time (3 including UE).

Catomax26 said:
P.D: I don't trust Godot, it's like a hivemind and i don't like that.

hmmm… the hivemind. I've used this word too, some times recently.
But the way you put it, it gives me an interesting turn around…

Right now it's clear the hivemind was created by us, at free will.
It is the result of building a network, connecting anybody to everyone, across the whole world.
You and me, we contribute as much as anybody else, even if there are many. We all form the average.
Thus, if we don't like the hivemind, we could just… change it?

But i'm diverging from the topic ofc.

Catomax26 said:
Just… i don't trust it, i think game engines are variated just so you don't have to use the same 2 every time (3 including UE).

Assumptions. Once you learn programming, you'll also learn how useless they are.
You need better data.
No way around of trying all of these engines, and finding out which one feels best to you.
Make something like Pong with each engine. That's quite some work for a beginner, but that's how you get the data you need for a good decision.

Btw, i have never used an engine in any of the games i have finished and released. Not even my own engine. I have just coded those games from scratch, and i don't think it was a lot more work because i had no engine.
Programming skill must be higher for this route, but it is an option still today.

JoeJ said:
Once you learn programming, you'll also learn how useless they are.

I don't think it helps. You can't make a game without a game engine- specially one of an objectively small scale as mine.

I think you mean it works for large scale or AAA games, which use their own engine.

However, it's almost impossible for indie developers to build this much knowledge for making their own computer code itself.

Programming skill must be higher for this route, but it is an option still today.

If i had the time, yes. I am just reaching adulthood, but i don't think learning C++, Java, Python or VSCode for a mildly long metroidvania helps. As i said before, it only works on vast scale projects (such as Elden Ring or Skyrim).

Catomax26 said:
However, it's almost impossible for indie developers to build this much knowledge for making their own computer code itself.

To clarify, what i meant was that your assumptions about various game engines are based on baseless prejudges. For example, hearing Unity wants to take an install fee, so it must be a bad engine. Or hearing that many now switch to Godot (due to Unitys fee), so it can't be good because ‘everybody’ is using it, etc.

There are valid arguments in this, but it does not help you to pick the engine you personally like. You have to try multiple options to make a good choice.

Catomax26 said:
If i had the time, yes. I am just reaching adulthood, but i don't think learning C++, Java, Python or VSCode for a mildly long metroidvania helps. As i said before, it only works on vast scale projects (such as Elden Ring or Skyrim).

Do you mean custom engine is worth it only for larger AAA 3D games?
Not really. More than half of announced AAA games uses UE5, according to Epic. So those guys mostly use off the shelf engines too, and the amount of custom in house engines is declining.

Personally i have no real experience with game engines.
But thinking of a 2D metroidvania, the time spend on learning such game engine would be more for me than the time spend on coding the whole game from scratch, no doubt.
This is because i am already experienced with programming, but also because 2D games are technically very easy to make, compared to 3D games.

Personally i really wonder why people use off the shelf game engines even for 2D games.
I would not pay anybody just to have sprites and tiled backgrounds, collision checks and playing some audio samples. I can implement all this in a single day. It's trivial and basic stuff.
And since you need to learn programming anyway to implement movement, game logic, etc., there is not so much to spare from using an engine as you might think.

However, i'm well aware that's a generational difference.
Jensen just said young people should no longer learn programming at all, since that's now the job for AI.
If he's right, typing ‘Make me a game like Metroid, but with gfx and setting like Golden Axe, with 8 worlds and 4 levels each.’ to the prompt of AI driven Unity is all you need to do, pretty soon.
Though, then everybody will just generate the game of his dreams himself, not requiring any skill with programming, art, level design, and no creativity in general at all.

Well, probably not everybody will be happy with the AIpocalypse and its flood of generated, recycled crap.
We will continue to see some manually created code, art and stories to counteract the downfall of culture.
We will also see higher variety in the ways and tools various people use to generate good content.

That said, i think what you should do now is getting to work.
Don't plan a whole game on paper, regarding number of levels, special character traits, etc.
Implement the core gameplay loop first. Movement, camera, enemy behavior, combat.
The outcome will change your plans almost certainly.
So you better invest your time in trying multiple engines right now, to see what works for you to do this.