Developing interactivity is effort and an investment. Most developers put up a simple loading screen, maybe some text like rotating tips, and a loading indicator. Until 2015 a patent on interactive loading screens may have made developers and publishers cautious and decide against developing interactivity.
High Hell, released in 2017, features fast gameplay, short levels, and interactive loading screens. (Linked Clip) (High Hell Steam page)
What’s the best kind of loading screen? Do you have examples of good or bad interactive loading screens?
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Dunno if it is good or bad, but Warframe has this loading screen where you see players’ ships and you can steer them a bit. No real point to it, but at least it’s something to do when waiting for someone to load in.
The joy of getting everyone to join in with your Liset dance.
They’re not interactive but Spec Ops: The Line’s loading screens stick out to be. They start out as pretty standard tips and lore info, but then starts giving you stuff like the definition of ptsd, a fun fact about increasing suicide rates in the military, or just telling you you’re not a good person. Occasionally the normal loading screen is entirely replaced with a ghostly image.
That sounds like great game design. Using the loading screen as an extension of the game direction and concepts, adding to it.
the worst kind of interactive loading screen is one that is fun on a game that loads quickly.
This is of course a problem that should only be complained about and never fixed, please don’t make your game load slower just so that i have enough time to press buttons
Maybe it should only finish loading after you beat the mini-game? 🤡
Splatoon 1 let you play five different minigames on the wii u pad, including a pretty solid rhythm game, while waiting, nothing else has come close for me
Phantasy Star Online Ep. 1 & 2 has two loading screens where you can manipulate the location or speed and angle of the visuals on-screen. Not super interactive but enough to make the loading times feel less long
I have a couple. For the Playstation 2 (and whatever other console) the game for Treasure Planet had a loading screen where you could manipulate how you flew passed starts.
Surprised to not see the Dragon Ball Z games mentioned.
There was another game I was trying to think of, but I got distracted and lost it.
Disgaea 3 on the Vita had a loading screen with a prinny spinning like a ballerina. If you tilted the Vita the accelerometer would make him slide across the screen accordingly, like a spinning top
Not saying this is a good one but Splatoon on switch you manipulate the music speed and pitch with the analogue sticks.
Speed sounds fun
There was an old Spectrum Game that actually loaded up Pacman first before the main game.
One of them had Space Invaders. I can’t remember for the life of me which one. It was apparently used on the C64 quite a lot, under the name Invade-a-Load.
Yeah I can’t remember my game either, it might have been something like Joe Blade 3?
What’s a Spectrum game? Is that a game series?
The ZX Spectrum was a home computer popular in the UK back in the 1980s.
Games loaded from audio tapes, and would frequently take 5-10 minutes to get into a state where you could actually play them.
Now get off my lawn!
The Sims 3 had interactive loading screens prior to 2015 when one of the first DLCs introduced them. They’re just “find the object” puzzles that earn you in-game points for the family you’re loading. They’re the only non-Namco game interactive loading screens I can think of that were around before the patent expired.
The first one I saw was by the patent holder, Namco, where you could play Galaga while Ridge Racer loaded. I always wanted to see it used more and was stoked when I read the news about the patent expiring.
The best loading screen is: none.
Load levels in chunks, preload the first chunk of the next level before the player reaches the end of the previous one, and either have a smooth transition, or at most put a skippable cutscene.
Loading screens are for poorly developed games.
