Really cool video by Keith Burgun about how strategy game designers can use design patterns from Legacy games (like Pandemic Legacy) to incrementally introduce complexity to players, and therefore enable them to make a more complex (and more deep) game without sacrificing initial accessibility.
Considering something like this for Solar Settlers now… :thinking:
Played the #1 game on BoardGameGeek ( :O ) last night and got to name this fine fellow “Bisu” which gave me quite a chuckle. The legacy mechanics are exciting and have made me want to play Pandemic really badly again, which is something I would have found hard to believe before playing.
Is this a good thing? Am I being psychologically manipulated to find out what is behind door #2? Dunno and yes! Enjoying it though!
Also quick notes on some reasons I think it’s working so well:
a) Pandemic is a simple enough base system to leave room for all the legacy stuff in your head.
b) The real-world setting really works well with the persistence/stakes (Chicago is in bad shape man…)
c) The legacy stuff (obviously) gives a hard limited shelf life to the game. However, I’m pretty sure my interest in base Pandemic waned before this hard limit anyway. So if you’re making a game where the depth might not outstrip 12-18 games, Legacy stuff seems like it works great. (So basically at some point during design you should decide what number of games of exploration your system has in it, to compare to see if adding persistence stuff makes sense).
