Jank isn’t necessarily bad in games. Depends on the game. It’s like going to a hole in the wall restaurant where all the furniture is mismatched, the menus are laminated, and then the 68-year-old owner chef brings out the best food you’ve ever eaten on a chipped plate
Comments
Every Resident Evil game up thru 4 was like this for me. Tough to get into at first for me, but once it clicks and you “master” it, the experience is amazing.
Lies of P speed run can miss like 85% of the game just by glitching through some barriers it's so fun to see the creativity! 😂
Let me slum it in the game equivalent of dive bars.
might be delicious and perfect on an objective level but it feels off to eat something so designer made of something that still tastes better at a takeout window at 1am when you're shitted
like, the left is more unsettling specifically because it couldn't look good / smooth
Does Hollow Knight have jank? I’m sure someone can quibble on this, but it feels jankless
Good jank is knowing your limitations and making them work
I bet if people didn't make that term popular a lot more people would have a much more open mind about game design.
My loose definition is “Lack of polish that doesn’t prevent you from playing.” And whether it’s intentional, accidental, or reluctantly left in affects whether it comes off as charming, unimportant, or a minor annoyance
So if you're making a game, and trying to remove the jank, think of SummoningSalt. He needs video topics, too.
I will always have a soft spot for eurojank RPGs for this reason. Gothic 3 is on the top of that list.
I reserved that term for Helskate, where I fell out of the world six times in the first hour and the UI repeatedly exploded.
“Arms are hard to animate so the amonguses have floating hands” is a charming form of jank because it’s a design choice
Where would be without all those years of Bethesda engine jank?
We never would have scaled to the heights we did!
It can be when a Rube Goldberg series of mechanics lines up perfectly and you can extend your turn into infinity and kill the final boss without them getting to act.