Your game now effectively contains only a few usable items. Now where did your complexity go?Īll of that effort designing, creating and implementing those features was wasted. If the game is not balanced, then a dominant strategy emerges - that one weapon or unit or move that everyone uses over and over. When adding "more" to a game you decrease the likelihood of being able to balance the game. I think that this negatively affects almost all modern video games, and with DLC and in-app purchases, the problem is certainly not going away (to put it lightly!)īut more is not always more. In fact, such great advantage has been taken of this ability to continually add more complexity to games, that we're now completely taken in by a sort of "more is more" philosophy. If we need 12 different types of balls, several goal-types, and lots of other equipment, we're just less likely to go to all of the trouble.Ĭomputer games, however, do not have this limitation at all, and developers really take advantage of it. For example, if you want your sport to catch on, it's very nice if a few friends and I can play with nothing more than a ball and a field. However, before computers, games had to be simple for practical reasons - they were limited by the physical realities of the medium. Over-Complexityīefore video games, there were still games, of course board games, card games, sports, word games, and little "don't step on the black tiles!" type-games created by children. The problems as I see them with roguelikes are issues that face most video games: over-complexity, unfocused game design, and temporal inefficiency. The fact that these games are challenging, and your choices actually matter (because if you make a wrong choice, there are consequences that cannot be undone - imagine that!) are exactly what make them fun and interesting. Actually, though, I think that's one of the main things they do right. Some are probably thinking, "Yes - they're too hard and unforgiving". However, I also think there are inherent problems with the genre. Not that it really needs to be said, if you've played 100 Rogues, but I'm a huge fan of roguelikes Dungeon Crawl and Shiren the Wanderer are two of my all-time favorite games. Players will decide for themselves, of course, but by sticking to a philosophy, I think I've stumbled upon something entirely new. However, as you'll see, my design process and philosophy stripped away so many elements of these genres that when I stepped back, I realized that what I had on my hands no longer fit that title. Which is funny, because the game's original working title was actually " THE ROGUELIKE". Note that it's not a "role playing game", and it's not a "roguelike". To describe it in a line, it's a "turn-based, hex-based, dungeon-crawling strategy game". The new game in question is called Auro, named after the spoiled prince protagonist. While, on its face, it shares many surface-level things in common with 100 Rogues, I'd like to explain how and why I went back to the drawing board and looked at the fundamental aspects of the genre. My team, Dinofarm Games, and I have started working on a new game. In my previous Gamasutra article, " The Cautionary Tale Of 100 Rogues ", I described the process behind designing, developing and marketing of my 2010 iOS game, 100 Rogues.
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