I Loved Xenon II on the Amiga.
I think the music track (Bomb the Bass I think) was nice and punchy, the decent choice of weapons for your ship and the feverish action to gather as many cash producing bubbles as possible all added to exciting gameplay.
Not to mention that the graphics were pretty outstanding and you really wanted to get just that little bit further to see how cool the next enemy would look.
So I would say the following (depending on the game genre)
1. A soundtrack that suits the mood of the game
2. Allow the player some freedom of choice/movement
3. Nice graphics dont hurt, but dont concentrate on them in leiu of gameplay.
4. Enough opposition to make the players goal difficult to achieve, i.e. more enemies, smarter enemies, faster moving objects, time limits etc the list goes on.
The idea of playability is different for different people I think, puzzle gamers are looking for something different to RPG'ers who are different again to Shoot em ups etc.
If you create a game and think its fun to play, then there will no doubt be others out there who will think the same.
Hope some of these ideas are useful.
I think the music track (Bomb the Bass I think) was nice and punchy, the decent choice of weapons for your ship and the feverish action to gather as many cash producing bubbles as possible all added to exciting gameplay.
Not to mention that the graphics were pretty outstanding and you really wanted to get just that little bit further to see how cool the next enemy would look.
So I would say the following (depending on the game genre)
1. A soundtrack that suits the mood of the game
2. Allow the player some freedom of choice/movement
3. Nice graphics dont hurt, but dont concentrate on them in leiu of gameplay.
4. Enough opposition to make the players goal difficult to achieve, i.e. more enemies, smarter enemies, faster moving objects, time limits etc the list goes on.
The idea of playability is different for different people I think, puzzle gamers are looking for something different to RPG'ers who are different again to Shoot em ups etc.
If you create a game and think its fun to play, then there will no doubt be others out there who will think the same.
Hope some of these ideas are useful.