Quote:...Never make jump scares, it's not cool...
Quote:...Jumpscares are cool if they are used in it's places...
I thought to tell that nothing, absolutely nothing is cool if it doesn't work on the story and it's characters. Even fantastically beautiful level design (for example) is just a pointless shit if it's beautiful just for being beautiful. All the great puzzles or innovative scripts or new animations - all is just a useless shit if it was made just because you can. You should do what the story needs, not what you can. Everything is bad when it's not connected (directly or indirectly) to the story and it's characters.
Of course, it's real hard to make EVERY DETAIL meaningful. Why? For example, right now you're choosing a fucking candle for a table. What could be easier? But if you want to work on a real hi-level you should know why that fucking candle is of that design type, why it stands there and why it's lit or not. Really. Another example, you're placing stain of dirt decal on a floor for making texture tiling less visible. Just put it somewhere where that decal looks fine and that's all. Your goal is to hide texture tiling. Right? No. You should know why a stain of dirt is there. And it's not about realism. It's about the background story of a place where your main story goes on. What happened here? Why the stain is still here? Etc... well, I hope it's clear what I had to say. It's maximalistic vision of how to make truly good things. I know that. That way of making things draining time real fast and work flows real slow. But... that's the ideal way. And we all at least should try, just try to do all and everything that way.
P.S. By the way beautiful but meaningless level design is the most common mistake. Most of games, I mean pro games, are feeling "sick" with that mistake. Beauty is very strong "virus" )))