Including only what is needed - Lessons from Castle Dice
Including only what is needed - Lessons from Castle Dice
Including only what is needed - Lessons from Castle Dice
September 14, 2020
Summary
At the moment, my absolute favourite game in the whole world in "Castle Dice".
Being in the business of making games myself, I really have to be able to work it out.
Each element in the game serves a definite purpose, which in turn contributes seamlessly to the theme of the game.
Nothing feels like it has been spliced on at the end to make the game more 'castley' or anything like that.
There are many examples of these circular co-dependent relationships between game elements, which give the potential for many different, and quite complex, strategies to be played.
The balance within the game, whereby none of these capabilities is more powerful than any other, but can be played in many interesting ways, speaks of extensive and very thorough play-testing, and game designers who really care about the experience they deliver.
To come up with a first draft for the Mechanics for the game was a little more challenging.
In the end, I just took the whole list and picked out the ones which 'felt' right for my game given the theme and the learning outcomes.
Half an hour later I had a pile of more than 50 game mechanics in front of me - clearly far too many.
The last one is not really an experience category, more a category I included to help myself, the designer to think about the structure of the game, the glue that will hold the experiences together.
Reference
Including only what is needed - Lessons from Castle Dice. (2020, September 14). Retrieved October 03, 2020, from https://www.ludogogy.co.uk/article/including-only-what-is-needed-lessons-from-castle-dice/