Links: Balancing Designs, Testing Art, and Staying True to Your Work

Pandemic, Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride all list their creators on the box, and sometimes even the title's artist, and it makes sense. The games are closer aligned to literature in detail and the audience for these sorts of games are passionate fans who, and I'm generalising here, are more invested in these titles than casual gamers are for something like Hungry Hungry Hippos.

This sounds obvious, but I think a lot of publishers don't do it. There are too many games out there where the art seems to interfere with playing the game. And sometimes you just can't see the problem on the computer screen.

Firstly, you need to understand what your game is trying to accomplish. I think far too many designers are hyper focused erroneously on mechanism or theme. Noting you wish to make a worker placement game isn't sufficient. This is a well-established formula. A far superior goal would be to focus on a unique worker placement experience, and to hypothesize how that will come about...

Many years ago, I was trying to make a deck-building game. That was my goal. Guess what? I accomplished precisely that, and relatively quickly, too! But I also realized I had made a lousy version of Ascension.

For Gaia, I wanted to make a game about pre-constructed decks that felt satisfying in a limited card pool. I wanted a head to head experience that had a strong spatial component, particularly leaning towards tiles...

For Gaia, I needed to slowly verify the following elements:

• A limited card pool can support a variety of play styles.
• The spatial element is integral to the experience.
• There is sufficient complexity to provide legs, but not so much that people cannot dig through the pieces.
• The victory condition drives interaction.
• As a player's deck is limited (9 cards), how you play your cards is compelling.