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PRACTICE 2013: The Art of Strategy

PRACTICE 2013: The Art of Strategy

Awesome talks by three strategy game designers. Nice range of approaches/opinions. Keith and Soren seem to agree that transparency of mechanics (like in board games) is very important, but Keith takes it a step further with the Core Mechanism reductionist model, whereas Soren seems more comfortable having a potentially more loosely related systems. 

And Brad is a self proclaimed “Sauce” designer at a “Sauce” studio.

Also really interesting to hear the perspective that Keith’s approach “fetishises mechanics over experience” which seems to me to say you can’t have a great experience solely through mechanics. It isn’t true, as is demonstrated by many board games that simply use theme as a way to get you in the door (Bohnanza, RFTG, Love Letter, et al.), but it certainly can SEEM true (rules seem very dry for some reason, even when they can very easily be the most interesting part/exiting/engaging/suprising part of the experience).

Day 9 – Another simple, (but important) update. Warriors now can target any of the 4 directions to cleave. To make them attack without moving, you now have to click on their same space. this seems to open a lot more flexibility in how you can use them, and incidentally makes it so you must attack with them each turn, giving a bit of a berserker feel. 

Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally get to the Mage…

Strategy Prototype Solo-Jam

Figured I’d explain the images and progress updates I’ve been posting for the last little bit. I’ve been designing one or several turn based strategy game(s) in my head for a while now, and been coming up with a bunch of mechanics that may or may not be interesting for a series of design ideas including:

1) A game in which you control a single unit with 4 spells that have turn-based cooldowns

2) An Advance Wars like game where you control various units through the use of “order” or “command” cards from a deck that you build over the course of the game by building units and capturing locations (more cards=harder to command any particular unit)

3) A game where you manipulate an environment of blocks and holes to give strategic advantages (block stops movement and projectiles, hole stops movement, block + hole = regular terrain)

So basically I have decided that I want to break down the various mechanics from these ideas, and implement them all, seeing which “stick” or feel deep or fun or just interesting! The mechanics include:

Active Time Battles
Control Points that Confer Advantages
Units with/without health
Various unit movement abilities/attack patterns
Archers/Counterattacking dudes
Deckbuilding
Blocks + Holes
Spell cooldowns
Command whole army VS command x units VS decided by cards/hand limit
…and a bunch more that I have written in a notebook somewhere.

So that’s what I’m doing/what I’m going to be updating this blog with whenever I can until I latch onto an interesting mechanic (or set of them!)

TL;DR I’m trying a bunch of turn-basedey things and seeing what sticks.

Throw down a quick comment if any of this stuff sparks an idea.

Superhot Is The FPS Made Cool Again | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Superhot Is The FPS Made Cool Again | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Superhot is starting to look really awesome! Continuous space and continuous time, but with a turn-based type feel. Really interested in seeing where this one is going. This type of design seems like pretty fertile ground.