I’ve been working on Educational Family Games, a 4-player local co-op for families. The ‘quick games’ mode has 80 mini-games, and honestly? They took two years from first prototype to final polish.
Not because any individual game is complex, but because:
- They need to work for kids (5+) AND adults
- No elimination mechanics (everyone plays every round)
- Has to hold up to 100+ plays without getting stale
- Controller-handling edge cases you wouldn’t believe
Full list with descriptions: https://www.crazysoft.gr/all/educational_family_games_quickgames.php
Curious—how long do your ‘small’ features actually take to get right?
The classic adage of “The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time” comes to mind.
Its always all those “little touches” that eat up so much time, because you know that your audience will expect them, and you yourself feel that they should be there; a smoothly-moving cursor for menu selections, playing little sounds when selecting or cancelling, a puff of dust that jumps up when the player character lands (but keeps animating in place rather than sticking to the player), text sliding or fading in and out instead of just appearing and disappearing… All the individual “little” things that add up to quite a lot of work.
I also sympathize with you on a lot of the points you raised about “family-friendly” games. I’m a teacher, and when I make activities and games for my students, I face a similar set of constraints (must be enjoyable for the weakest students but still engaging for the most advanced students, little to no player elimination, high replayability/reusability, has to actually reinforce the target knowledge/skill and not just be fun with the material tacked on as an afterthought).
