screenshake, zooming, tilting, wiggling/wobbling (hand-held camera)
tweening everyhwere (donât be afraid to use lerp, sometimes it looks good), numeric springing
make stuff that doesnât have to be static dynamic - like decoration and backgrounds
post-fx - filters, shaders, overlays⌠go wild (moderately)
randomisation everywhere! - sound pitching, different sfx variations (where itâs suitable), particle effects, colour tinting, names for stuff, dialogue, game over screens⌠again, just go wild with stuff you canât possibly break gameplay with
audio panning if youâre doing action games
pretty UI elements - score interpolation (have a separate variable that slowly tweens to actual score and draw that), you can also prepend zeroes to it (this works best if you use a monospace font)âŚ
speaking of fonts, use your own if youâre trying to include yourself more into your games
transitions (fade in/out, etc⌠DONâT MAKE STUFF STOP MOVING IN-BETWEEN TRANSITIONS, IT BREAKS THE IMMERSION), this also applies to audio, donât just suddenly stop your music/ambience
procedurally generated stuff can be awesome if you know what youâre doing
choose a colour scheme and/or palette and stick to it
audio/visual cues are better than tons of text
Basically, the bare minimum you need is tweening and variations.
Feel free to add to this list, I canât think of anything else right now.
Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho
Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - âThe art of screenshakeâ
Rapid Game Design by Cactus
Moleman 2 - Demoscene - The Art of the Algorithms (2012) - making art with code