Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
I don't think that that has to be true at all. There are plenty of fantastic
games that are just about managing resources—you just need to have
some interesting things you can do with the resources (such as bidding
on them or trading them). But secondly, if you know that something is
uninteresting and the reason that it's uninteresting, then why is it in the
game? Things that are trivial or uninteresting can probably be removed
safely.
Consider Turn-Based
A strategy game is ostensibly a game about making
strategic decisions
.
It
is not a game about timing, or precision. Of course, you're welcome to
have an execution element in your strategy game, but I can't see a good
reason to do so. Although a real-time game doesn't necessarily have to
include an execution element (or if there is, it could be negligible), it's
worth considering making your strategy game turn-based instead.
Turn-Based Strategy
Examples:
Advance Wars
,
Fantasy General
,
Final Fantasy Tactics
,
X-
Com: UFO Defense
,
Civilization
The story of turn-based video games is a strange and sad one. Even
though video games take inspiration largely from board games and
D&D
—both of which are turn-based—video games have largely made
turn-based
into a bad word over the last decade or so. This is probably a
byproduct of the video-games-as-fantasy-simulators movement and the
idea that video games should be as cinematic as possible. Turn-based
games are anything but cinematic—they
dare
to be shameless about the
fact that they are games.
Early on we had many turn-based games, particularly in the world
of PC gaming. The developer and publisher SSI was well-known for the
Panzer General
series of computerized war games (as well as the fantas-
tic, more game-like and less simulation-like high fantasy spin-off,
Fan-
tasy General
). We also had a big movement featuring so-called 4X games
(which stands for e
x
plore, e
x
pand, e
x
ploit, and e
x
terminate) like Sid
Meier's
Civilization
,
Master of Orion
,
Master of Magic
,
Heroes of Might
& Magic
,
and later,
Age of Wonders
. The options were more limited for
consoles, and many of the most popular turn-based games were JRPGs
(Japanese role-playing games), such as
Final Fantasy
or
Pokémon
(we'll
get into those more in the upcoming section on RPGs). The gameplay of
4X games was really nothing special, and they may have had something
to do with the decline of turn-based digital games.
