The goal of a game designer is similar to that of a sculptor: chip away at all the excess until only elegant beauty remains. Here are five simple rules to make your designs more elegant:
1. Have as Few Rules as Possible
The pleasure of seeing a depth of strategy emerge from simple premises is at the heart of great game design. Scrutinize each rule in your game closely, cutting away any excess to let the core mechanic shine through.
Perhaps the greatest example of elegant design is the classic strategy game Go. The rules for Go are stunningly simple:
Black goes first.
Take turns placing stones.
Surround the most territory.
There are a few more rules to deal with special situations that arise, but there is hardly an easier game to explain. Yet, Go has far more depth and permutations than complex games like chess. This depth of play is astonishing for a system of so few rules.
Digital games can achieve this same goal. In the game Katamari Damacy, you roll a ball around, trying to absorb things smaller than you and avoid bigger things. You start at the size of a mouse but eventually roll up the whole world. This sense of relative growth and advancement creates an engaging experience almost by itself.
Similarly, in the game Portal, the player has one basic innovative tool that allows them to create portals from one area to another by shooting first one location, then the second location. Portal succeeds as an elegant game because it takes its one core mechanic and presents it in various contexts. Through creative exploration of the various uses of that device—moving objects, using gravity to generate velocity and change directions, trapping potential threats, etc.—the game creates a series of fascinating puzzles for the player to solve. This illustrates one of the key tricks to making elegant games: look closely at the core mechanic you have for ways to “context shift” and get more value out of the same mechanic. What properties does your core mechanic have that can be utilized in other ways?
2. Have as Few Components as Necessary
Have you ever opened up a boxed game and dumped out dozens of pieces, tokens, tiles, etc., that had to be organized and sorted before play could begin? Not fun. Similarly, in a digital game, a screen presenting an overwhelming number of units and options can immediately turn off a player and prevent them from meaningfully engaging with the game.
Always try do reduce so that you’re doing more with less. Ask yourself whether if a rule or component needs to exist and experiment with removing them just to see the outcome.
You can use the same “context shifting” strategy to help use your game pieces to their greatest effectiveness. For example, the Star Wars Customizable Card Game uses cards for various purposes beyond shuffling and drawing. Cards in the deck represent a resource you can spend to play other cards (set aside as a separate “Force” pile), serve as a victory condition (you lose the game when you run out of cards), and act as a combat randomization mechanic (each card has a “Destiny” rating that influences combat when flipped off the top of the deck). Similarly, the card game for Eve Online uses card orientation to indicate the “build time” for a ship, rotating the card once each turn until the ship is built. Compress more play into fewer components.
3. Have an Uncluttered and Intuitive User Interface
The core goals that every good User Interface (UI) must accomplish are:
Make what options a user has obvious.
Make it easy to find the option a user wants.
Make a user want to interact with it.
Building a simple and intuitive user interface is a complex and time-consuming design task, requiring its own Core Design Loop. Take the time to iterate and learn what works and what doesn’t.
To help develop your intuition for good UI, pay attention to interactions you have throughout your life—not just in digital and physical games but also interfaces in your kitchen, car, work, etc. Notice how some things seem obvious and direct while others require learning and training before they become clear. Some interfaces draw you to them, while others subtly repel you. Ask yourself why things are designed how they are to help train your instincts for making beautiful and intuitive interfaces.
4. Find Ways to “Chunk” Information
Very complex concepts can often be combined or “chunked” in ways that make them feel like a cohesive whole. This serves the purpose of making your game more elegant, more intuitive, and easier to learn. If you want to make complex games with lots of mechanics, chunking information must be your go-to strategy to maintain elegance. The key is understanding what the player is likely to believe and using that to your advantage.
In games, the theme or story is one of the best tools to help chunk information. For example, calling a character in a game a Wizard will automatically create associations for the player. A player may expect this character to cast spells, have a mana resource, have little to no armor, etc. You can use these preconceived notions to your advantage to make a variety of mechanics feel like a unified whole.
Beyond story and theme, information can be chunked based on how it is presented. In most first-person shooter games, players understand that they can get a variety of weapons, each with slight variations. All of them, however, typically have range, damage, ammunition, etc., and are usually controlled by the same button. Thus, when I encounter new information (a new gun), I can understand it more easily in the context of the information I already have. Similarly, if I see this disk icon:
I likely already assume I can save the game if I push that button. It's amusing that this association holds even though most modern gamers have never used the actual disk this icon represents. Consider the associations your players already have to make complex systems elegant.
5. Teach Information in Steps
The human mind can do incredible things, but throwing too much at it at once will cause it to become overwhelmed. The best games have a smooth ramp-up where new skills and information are slowly acquired and mastered.
We encountered this challenge with our Shards of Infinity Saga Collection, which includes every expansion we’ve created for the deckbuilding game Shards of Infinity. Each expansion introduces new rules and cards that could overwhelm new players if presented simultaneously. To address this, we developed “Saga Mode,” a narrative-driven approach that guides players through the rules of every expansion. This mode teaches the lore while gradually introducing new rules, one set at a time. Our goal is for players first to learn the base game and its story, then sequentially add each expansion along with its story and new mechanics. As the story unfolds, players learn all the rules, enabling them to fully enjoy everything the game has to offer.
Note: By the way, If you're attending Gen Con this year, you can meet me at the Stone Blade Booth 3019 to try out this game (and others) that I’ve designed.
By embracing the principles of simplicity and elegance in game design, you can create experiences that are both fun and accessible. Whether you're stripping down rules to their essential elements, minimizing components, designing intuitive user interfaces, chunking information for easier understanding, or teaching players in gradual steps, each approach contributes to a smoother, more enjoyable gaming experience. The goal is to craft games that are easy to learn yet rich in depth, allowing players to create the best player experience possible. Remember these principles as you develop your next game, and you'll be well on your way to creating something truly memorable.
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It's interesting how Game Design evolved over the year. Because every time I see a section dedicated to intuitive UI, I always tend to think about WoW 😅