Gameplay Styles - Game Design Essentials - page 34

Simulation games try to mimic real situations and tend to fall into one of
these categories:

management/Construction SimCity, developed by designer Will Wright, is an
example of a management/construction simulation game. In this game, you
design whole cities. You also place inhabitants in the cities and look after their
wants and needs .

L i f e Wolf, developed by Manley & Associates, Inc., allows a player to live like
a wolf. The player uses the wolf's senses to make decisions about how to evade
hunters, or track down and kill prey in order to survive.

Vehicle Abrams Battle Tank, developed by Dynamix, is a somewhat arcade-type
game that allows a player to simulate driving a tank and deploying on missions
to bombard the enemy or escort friendlies.

Other types of simulation games focus on medicine, politics, science, police
work, exploring space, diving in the ocean, and so on. The premise behind their
design is that the player is the one making the decisions that affect not only his
own outcome but also the outcomes for any virtual inhabitants of the world and
often the environment itself.

Simulation games,
although designed
to represent reality,
can be used to teach
or are played for fun.

strategy Games
Chess is a classic example of a strategy game; as discussed in Chapter 1, “Game
Design Origins,” so is the game Go . In this game style, the primary goals for the
players are to determine methods for overcoming conflicts through planning
and tactics. Strategy games tend to be designed for two players and are known
as turn-based games —one player takes a turn and implements his strategy, and
then the other player gets to play.
Sample strategy games include Silent Storm, The Battle for Wesnoth,
Civilization, and Age of Wonders. The game Civilization, created by Sid Meier
and released by MicroProse, is often referred to as Civ . The object of the game is
to build an empire that will last; however, this empire is in competition with other
civilizations. These civilizations compete for resources and technology and can go
to war with each other for territory and other goods that can help them thrive.

Gamers can play
against each other
in a strategy game
or go head-to-head
with a computer. in
1996, chess cham-
pion Garry Kasparov
lost to the computer
Deep Blue.

Clustering Game Types

So far in this chapter, we've looked at ways games can be categorized by their
style. We can also categorize games according to their purpose and who the
game is intended for.