Blog Featured | The game design overdesign trap

I've played a lot of video games now, and when it comes to originality in design, you can find it in the indie space, especially from novice developers. The thought of being the first to create X or take genre Y in a new direction is a promising concept and goal for many designers. However, it represents one of the easiest traps you can fall into as a developer; new or veteran, when over-designing a concept.

Make a triangular wheel

When I talk about overdesign, there are two distinct areas that designers will focus on. The first is to do something completely out of the ordinary with a genre to set it apart from everything else. I've already said this phrase: originality for the sake of being original. Game genres, regardless of which ones we're talking about, have core elements: a platformer is about jumping or some kind of movement, shooters are about shooting (duh), and we can move on. There are elements you can bend to create a different twist, but there are some you can't break without breaking the concept of the genre.

If I say I'm making a first-person shooter, and the goal is to fly around collecting gems in first-person, then I haven't made an FPS. Many games have tried to do the “my game is a combination of genre A and genre B” design style. They often don't realize that you're not making a game for fans of A and B, but of A+Band this is a completely different audience.

You can't work in a genre you don't understand, which is why I insist designers reproduce as many examples of the genre as they can find; all the good and all the bad. Remember, complexity is different from depth: having a complex game doesn't mean it's deep. Some of the best games released in 2024 were the ones that figured out how to sell a simple idea or a game that seems simple but there's so much more to it.

It's a very tough line to walk as a developer, especially a new one, trying to create something original, but still having to color within the confines, so to speak.

KISS Design

The other way developers can overcomplicate their games is a literal example: taking something that's simple and easy to play and adding more and more to it. A good example of this I've seen is the evolution of action controls in games. The action command, which is where the first case I can think of comes from Super Mario RPGit was a way to provide more interactivity in turn-based combat. The benefit was to give the player the opportunity to reduce incoming damage and increase damage dealt to speed up combat.

What I saw from indie developers was an attempt to elevate action controls and turn-based combat as a whole by making them more involved, adding more systems and interactions during a fight. When I checked games like Locker with key and Ikenfell, are both very charming games that have horrible abandonment rates from people who have played them.

One of the hardest lessons designers must learn is that more is not always better in the eyes of consumers. A downfall of good UI/UX is repetitive actions, something the player must constantly do in order to play the game. Having combat heavily involved is fine; having all the random encounter balloons out because of these mechanisms is not. There should be a reward for understanding a game, and just being able to play it normally doesn't count.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: depth is not the same as complexity. If something takes five minutes to work versus something that takes one, people will prefer the faster option. To compare projects, when I tried the demo of Metaphora lot has been done to speed up the game's press turn combat and even reward the player for finishing fights without taking damage. The difference between Metaphor and the other RPGs is that Metaphor it wants the player to get through combat as quickly as possible while maintaining the depth of its design. Other RPGs create depth by slowing it down without providing anything else as an advantage.

I've talked in the past about when complexity can work with the concept of a “good joke” as in Get over it. There are some surprisingly satisfying games that aim to do something beyond what other games would do, for example Pacific Drive. What's important to understand is that even if you're looking for an immersive experience, playing the game itself shouldn't be difficult. A good jank relies on only part of your gameplay to be wacky, if the entire game is difficult to control or confusing then you've missed the mark.

Balanced design

It's often difficult for designers to achieve great game design. There's always the allure of “going big” with your idea: creating something no one has ever seen before that will earn you fame and fortune. When we talk about sustainable game design, it means knowing what you're capable of and building a game around that. I fear that the time when designers could spend 5-10 years on a single dream project is now behind us. Likewise, someone who spends hours on a game and then decides if it's for them is also gone. You have a maximum of 2 hours to refund; at a minimum, within 5-10 minutes of starting the game.

The gaming industry continues to move quickly, and genres that are intentionally slow to play find themselves with an increasingly smaller consumer base. The fans are still there, but you can't just throw money into a genre to create more fanbases. Speaking of fans, this is also why playtesting is important when you're experimenting with something new because in the end, it doesn't matter if you love your idea and think it's perfect, when no one else can figure out how to play your game.

If you would like to support what I do and allow me to stream more every day, be sure to check out mine Patreon. My Discord is now open everyone to chat about games and game design.

Comments

No comments yet. Why don’t you start the discussion?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *