Effects

I noticed a lot of people using, or having difficulties with effects. I was wondering why people use them so much? Yeah, they are really cool, and we should have some in our game, but remember games like Angry birds. Look how well they did, and I don't remember them having any effects.

Effects aren't just about presentation but can be important visual queues that something important has happened in the game. A good designer will also use them to communicate information to the player or emphasise that they are doing good or bad etc.

Effects are used to give the player feedback. A bomb that causes a powerful explosion will feel better than a bomb that just makes the screen go white.

Visual effects are as important as sound. A game with no sound feels empty

It depends on how you define effects, I suppose. I agree that feedback effects are really important and can really add a sense of quality to a game. Hence I tend to spend too much time tweaking in that area if truth be told. However, I try and steer clear of webgl shader effects because my target audience are probably playing on ancient laptops without dedicated graphics cards (my own laptop was once high end but now can't cope with rendering them).