Through the Lens: Video Games - Game Design Theory - page 109

Dokapon Kingdom or 100 Worlds Story: Tales on a Watery Wilderness
for very basic examples of how to start, and expand from there.
Does Leveling Up Make Sense?
As a game progresses, it should get harder, not easier, since players are
getting better at playing the game as they go along. If the challenges don't
increase, it means that after players have overcome one obstacle they
don't need to be too concerned about the rest.
The classic idea of leveling up, however, increases your character's
stats—numbers that determine your character's attack power, speed,
durability, etc. This necessarily means that on some level the game is
becoming easier, not harder. Of course, developers are wise to this, and
they increase the difficulty even more to compensate for the player's
additional power. This becomes a difficult two-axis balancing act, one
that becomes essentially impossible when you factor in the fact that the
player's leveling will be irregular. Not all players will level up at exactly
the same rate, or in the same way, and so the idea of balancing such
a game is insanely difficult Resolving this issue generally comes down
to making the gameplay slightly too hard, and then just letting players
grind as much as they want. Players then have to basically guess at how
much they should be boring themselves until there's a challenge ahead
that's roughly balanced. This “solution� is totally absurd and any game
that functions this way represents a total failure in game design. Players
should never have to do the job of the designer.
A High Fantasy False Choice Is Still a False Choice
Theme is no justification for false choices. If the player is doing some-
thing that is uninteresting, it doesn't matter if thematically, he's single-
handedly saving the world from dragons; the game will be uninteresting.
You can love the world, the characters, the music, and even think that
the game has some cool mechanics, but if you're being asked to perform
brainless chores, your brain can't help but see them as brainless chores.
A great example of this is the overmap in JRPGs. The overmap pre-
tends to be a continuous space, but really it's just a discrete space. You
could easily represent the overmap from, say, Final Fantasy VII in a
menu, like this:
* [Grind]
* Midgar
* Sephiroth's Barn
* Chocobo Castle
* Boss Monster Cave
* Menu