TL;DR
Make fun games that are fun.
Ready + AIM = Fire 🔥
For me build a business that is sustainable and achievable in the long run, I believe that I need to develop products that fulfill three principles:
- They need to be games I enjoy.
- They definitely need to be games other people enjoy.
- They need to fit the TSH&THB philosophy of games that:
- Challenge the mind
- Lighten the heart
In order to take aim at this target, I’m going to try to outline a generalized game design roadmap with waypoints I want to hit in future games that I design, and in any future games I might publish from other designers.
1. Clear, Achievable Goals and Feedback Loops
- Many short-term milestones
- Every turn or action should feel like progress
- Collecting a resource, placing a tile, scoring points, et al serve in building toward an ultimate goal
2. Meaningful Choices with Tension and Release
- Every action should either build or relieve tension
- Players should face interesting choices and dilemmas
- Allow for gambles that leads to either a satisfying payout or a delightful failure
3. Lucky (But Fair) Randomness
- Just enough luck; dice rolls, card draws, bag pulls and all that
- Mechanisms that allow for luck mitigation and create more interesting choices
- Allow for a certain amount of control within the chaos
4. Social Interaction and Shared Moments
Me, personally? I love multiplayer solitaire games. There's nothing wrong with a satisfying multiplayer solitaire game. But I do believe that games serve humanity better when they create a shared space of fun, laughter, memories, and stories. Forcing people to socialize in ways they do not prefer is not the way; but creating a space that allows for the exact level of social interaction that the table prefers—whatever that might be—is ideal.
- Collaboration or light conflict
- Cooperative challenges within competitive games
- Shared victory, shared defeat and light-hearted betrayals
- Mechanisms that encourage table talk, alliances, bluffing and negotiation
5. Sensory and Thematic Immersion
I'm terrible at this part
- Strong, coherent theme without ludonarrative dissonance
- Satisfying components and art
6. Replayability and a sense of discovery
- Synergies between mechanisms, rules and components that allow for emergent strategies and struggles
- A-ha! moments
- Easy to learn, difficult to master
- Inherent Turbulence: Elements of setup that shake up the status quo and keep the game from feeling samey between plays
7. Challenge the Mind & Lighten the Heart
- Fun, approachable, comforting themes
- Relatively easy to learn; relatively quick to setup
- I don’t want to push this ideal so far that the only thing I make is 18-card games, but we don’t need any fetishistically abstruse games up in here. Keep ’em moderately accessible.
- Burn that brain! 🔥🧠
- Even within simpler ruleset and cozier themes, I definitely want to see some crunch and agonizing decisions. I often push this too far, but I still want to keep ’em thinky.
Yeah, Good Luck with That
Admittedly, this is quite the list. A tall order, and it’s not how I’ve approached game design in the past. I think, though, that by having guiding lights along the trail, I can aim to achieve greater things.
Things that I love, things that others could love.