How do you make a game like Thronefall that's simple AND complex?
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- In this game design deep dive, we use Thronefall, an RTS meets tower defense game as a case study to discuss various methods for creating a game that appears minimalist and appeals to a broad audience, yet contains depth and replayability. Check it out, and let me know if these help your game development process.
Thanks to @JonasTyroller and his friend for making such a great game!
00:00 - Start
00:42 - Minimalism & Complexity
01:39 - Teach through Curiosity
04:02 - Leverage Progressive Disclosure
05:43 - Embrace Extrinsic Motivations
06:59 - Wrap it Up
#thronefall #gamedesign #games 
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Would love to hear your thoughts on this one!
This video popped up in my feed, and I really enjoyed it. Thanks! And thanks to the almighty algorithm. +1 subscriber
Really loved this analysis! Made me think that tutorials shouldn't be just a first level with some blocks of text, instead they should be spread through many levels, being intrinsic to the progression system. Pushing players to discover things for themselves is super powerful, I'm gonna keep that in mind when designing my games! Recently I played a game that overwhelmed me with text for everything at the start, I hated it. I just wanted to test all controls by my self, and explore the map without being interrupted by a text every 5 seconds. Ended up quitting the game for good.
I wonder if these can also be applied to board games...as they are inherently games that require you to thoroughly study the guide before you even start playing.
I can imagine each card having a piece of instruction relevant to its use, in either written or pictogram form.
Or tokens with shapes that fit into their respective places on the play map (health, win tokens, resource tokens, etc.)
It would be amazing to unpack a board game, realize there is no guidebook, then piece together information on how to play it with other players!
I LOVE this train of thought, and how you’ve leveraged the concept and applied it to a different medium. Yes, I absolutely think it would benefit. I was talking to my friend at D&D about this on the weekend and how the new player experience for that game is so challenging. They’d definitely benefit from this approach as well.
Some of these points translate well, but I imagine a few of them are near impossible. On demand information would be player driven (no computer) looking for results, long term disclosure and replay potentials absolutely, but without a curiosity feedback system for trial and error to discover something novel (outside of convention or experience) maybe not. I do think it's amazing when the board game design is so strong that learning it isn't a chore due to awesome pacing...the simple seeming game reveals its nature the more turns you play. This might be the ticket :)
Will be scratching my head for the most minimal game now though...old physical based games perhaps
@@AndrewChambersDesign if possible, I'm sure a lot more folks wouldn't be so turned off by the 'nerdiness' of how complex it all is. Perhaps this is why we have many social 'lite roleplaying' games now akin to Secret Hitler or Republic (I think it's called) as it's not possible in D&D without a guide, even with premade character sheets and stories
Legends of Andor does this really well -- the game is taught through a deck of cards, read the next card only when you fulfill a condition! Basically a video game tutorial for a board game.
A better one is LOK -- the point of the game is to find out the rules, unprompted! You learn it entirely through your curiosity. You can play it online too, look it up.
@@jotaf98 Just wanted to say thanks for prompting me to check out LOK. I love the idea of a self-teaching physical game. Cheers!
This somehow reminds me of Kingdom but isometric, even the dots above the structures looks similare. Loved Kingdom, gotta try this one too.
I've been recognizing this phenomenon recently when playing games. How they introduce me to their world and mechanics matters a lot. How they relay their game information. Great insight.
Loved this breakdown! Great analysis
Great points, well organized, well thought out, and well illustrated!
Thanks my friend!
Hi Andrew, your analysis was very convincing. Thank you. Looking forward to more videos on Game Design.
Excellent video! I'm enjoying these series. The principles mentioned are fundamental to the free to play games I've worked on, although the 'teach through curiosity' concept hasn't been as prevalent. I totally agree with the idea as it fosters a more enjoyable experience when effectively implemented. However, often the urgency to mitigate churn necessitates a quicker player onboarding, resulting in a blend of text instructions and fostering curiosity for learning.
Looking forward to new videos!
Thanks Piero. Yes i agree, these are an ideal. The realities of game dev inevitably may require exceptions.
excellent deep dive sir, i'm currently aspired to be a game ui designer. Bit late to start then my colleague but really appreciate this kind of video for my own research & all in all nice video
Thanks Kevin, appreciate that. Never too late to start mate.
Solid. I've been looking for good design focused videos. One suggestion would be to let your text linger for a bit longer when it comes up (i.e. Reviewing you're three points at the end)
Glad you found it useful, great suggestion, will definitely try to do that.
Really great.
Great video. I wouldn't call Slay the Spire's map a "world map" though - it's not really about choosing levels to play at all, just about choosing your next node on the path you're on. Anyway thanks for the video. It was interesting, and got me intrigued by Thronefall.
Give it a shot, great game.
Great video, and interesting channel! +1 sub
You got a new subscriber. I wish more to come. It is a great video. Straight to the point. Did you use the same technique? :D
Thanks for joining!
suprised you didn't mention Kingdom, it was the original creator of the "coin purse" system and is arguably even more minimalist than Thronefall since it's rogue-lite mechanics are much less explicit
curious! Gonna look that up
I would say this is almost the same game, but with an isometric view. Totally loved Kingdom
The POE passive tree just looks complicated when you choose a build there's literally barely any choice otherwise your build will be terrible because the game is balanced around perfect passive tree, cluster jewels, gems etc otherwise the top players would wreck bosses
Complexity has to be the worst game dev vocab as it can mean things that are fundamentally opposite.
The way I understand the definition of complexity is the "amount of processing needed by the player to make one meaningful move".
So, things that make it harder to play by requiring more stuff to be learned or calculated by the player. Be it rules, UI or even amount of possible moves.
And high complexity can lead to difficulty to project strategies, difficulty to have meaningful play, have to form heuristics, have emergent gameplay etc..
Whereas, the "good" kind of complexity we're talking about is simply called "depth".
Which itself has another definition: "amount of viable strategies available".
Which is related to the game space and its "topology" so to say.
Obviously depth is created by the combination of mechanics/systems (non-additive) where each added mechanic adds complexity (additive). Different audiences then have difference complexity tolerance thresholds.
And if you ratio both of these (depth/complexity), you get.....elegance.
Is that how designers understand these concepts too? Or is it completely different?
I'm pretty sure the OP meant the same thing, but I agree with your take on complexity vs depth as there is an important difference. Depth is indeed a combination of mechanics/systems, which is why I like the term 'multiplicative design'. Something should probably never be just simply 'added', but rather it should 'multiply' with another mechanic or system in some meaningful way. After all, a game is a system, so the elements better work together in some way to create a more unified whole.
@@ijidau I like precise terms and descriptions so I'm gonna bitch:
Depth is not a combination of mechanics/systems. It's a property of a game space. (it's a property of its Topology)
In the "MDA framework", depth is in D, not M.
About multiplicative design (speaking less formally here): I think it's pretty much what we call emergent gameplay. And emergent gameplay's conditions is that multiple systems are affecting shared variables (+intuitiveness +something else I forgot). So, in a way its system design: making the box bigger, rather than adding multiple small boxes (like content-based or feature-based "additive" design does, as you said).
@@TimmacTR "Obviously depth is created by the combination of mechanics/systems"... I agreed actually, but did not quite word it correctly and missed the 'created by' part, my bad. You could easily combine mechanics/systems and not get depth, but you will have more luck creating depth through the intentional relationships between these things. Emergence is ideal, but I think it's the 'multiplication' design approach towards mechanics and systems to form something greater than the individual parts that can lead to intreresting emergent dynamics. I like the box analogy, that is another useful way to look at it. I don't think we necessarily are disagreeing on anything, but you're right that language and nuance matters, so thank you for encouraging me to think it over a bit.
@@ijidau I agree.
Though, I prefer terms when they can be precisely defined. So, what is the precise definition of "multiplicative design", if not that it's basically system design that aims for emergence and depth to happen on the dynamics layer?
@@TimmacTR I'm not aware of a precise definitition, but here's Nintendo talking about it in relation to BOTW: ruclips.net/video/QyMsF31NdNc/видео.html
Keith Burgun (Disclaimer: he's a bit dogmatic in his views and opinionated, but still interesting) wrote a book called "Clockwork Game Design" in which he has essentially a pretty similar theory/approach. Here's a video of his explaining the concept: ruclips.net/video/V_-IrHkpkqk/видео.html
I found both these examples really helped to cement in my mind how important it is to recognise that games are 'systems' and that you don't design by addition, you design by considering how anything you introduce might 'multiply' with existing mechanics and variables to produce new and interesting dynamics.
So yes, you are correct. It's systems design that aims for emergent dynamics, no doubt something that is well understood and perhaps even has a formal name in a context outside of game design theory. I also see it as design principle that helps you make a concious effort to make something of greater depth, and to purposefully avoid 'adding' things without consideration for how they interact with each other. In a way, it's also similar in nature to the theory of 'Gestalt' often referenced in graphic/visual design and other design disciplines.
Clean presentation, but it's way too basic for my taste. I hope someone else will find it useful.
Thanks for the feedback!