Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Goals of Core Mechanics Design
Before looking into the question of how to go about designing the core mechanics,
remember what you are actually trying to achieve with your design. Never forget
that your ultimate goal is to create entertainment for the player—that's the point
of the quote from Molière at the beginning of the chapter. But in addition to this
overarching objective, certain principles help you design an enjoyable game
efficiently.
STRIVE FOR SIMPLICITY AND ELEGANCE
The most elegant games operate with the smallest number of rules. Some of the
greatest games are those whose mechanics are extremely simple yet still manage to
offer interesting variety. As the quote from William of Occam suggests, try to avoid
making your mechanics too complex. Simple games are easier for players to learn,
and that gives simple games a broader appeal than complicated ones.
You can maintain players' interest with a variet y of content that explains a small
number of mechanics in a large number of ways. As mentioned in the sidebar “The
Rules and Core Mechanics of
Monopoly
,” the general rules of
Monopoly
are simple,
but the Chance and Community Chest cards create additional interest. The major-
ity of these cards concern the transfer of money to or from the player who draws
the card—a simple mechanic—but each card gives a different explanation for why
the money is being transferred (such as “Income tax refund, collect $20”). The
explanations are purely cosmetic, but they add variety. You can build similar fea-
tures into your own game while still keeping the rules simple.
LOOK FOR PATTERNS, THEN GENERALIZE
Learn to recognize patterns in your ideas for your game and to convert them into
generalized systems rather than trying to document dozens of individual cases. Here's
an example. Suppose you decide that swamp leeches really belong in water and that
a swamp leech should lose 10 points of health for every minute that it's out of the
water. Later, you decide that a salamander (a mythical fire-loving creature) should
lose 5 points of health for every minute that it's out of the fire. A pattern emerges:
Certain creatures are dependent upon their native environment, and they lose
health at a specified rate when they leave it. Instead of describing this mechanic
over and over for each creature, explain the general case only once, for all environ-
ment-dependent creatures
.
Note that each creature in the game will need two
attributes to support this mechanic: a symbolic attribute indicating what the crea-
ture's native environment is (water, fire, and so on, and be sure to include a special
value to use if the creature is not dependent on any environment), and a numeric
attribute stating the rate at which the creature loses health when out of its environ-
ment (the value should be zero if the creature is not environment-dependent).
Then, as you design each creature in your game, you can decide what values these
attributes should have without having to document the whole mechanism again.
