One thing I've noticed a WHOLE lot of in pico8 games is screen shake and extreme overabundance of particle effects.

I think these are both useful in providing presentation flourishes and I love them both but, especially with screenshake, some designers seem to want to 'flex' their knowledge of special effects without thinking about the actual point of the effect itself.

I will not pull up any specific examples so as not to offend any one in public or make them feel bad. What I will offer is some advice, and this advice is very generalized, but is a good principle with any kind of creative endeavor. I know some people are thinking at this point I'm going to say 'less is more', but instead, what I want to say is 'consider dynamics'.

So what I mean by this is the peaks and valleys of your presentation, your art, your game, your sound, anything. The idea is that without the quiet, there's no such thing as loud. Without the still, there's no such thing as the movement. Without the weak, there is no such thing as the strong, etc. The idea is that when presenting your game that uses a screen shake, for instance, if literally ever tiny explosion causes a screen shake, then when a boss blows up and it also screen shakes, it's impact has been lessened by the fact every other little explosion causes the screen to shake. If every little tiny flame has a ton of particle effects on it, then when there's a need to dip into particles for a huge explosion with smoke and all that, then it will just look like yet another flame in your game.

And this goes for any kind of gimmick used for presentation, whether it be as simple as 'speed lines', close ups, slow motion (with obvious exception to Super Hot style games!), it makes a huge difference on how the game feels when using special effects and limiting them so that when they do happen, it's like, 'WOW!' or 'WHOA!' or 'OH NO!' Their best uses are for visual underlining of the events on screen.

I hope this makes sense and those who read this will take into consideration how and when to use effects like these for maximum impact and not just 'flex' their programming skill for the sake of it.

Thanks for reading and keep on keepin on!