Paper Apps DUNGEON: Game Design Minimalism
Paper Apps DUNGEON: Game Design Minimalism
Paper Apps DUNGEON: Game Design Minimalism
By Parker Scott Mortensen
October 4, 2023
Summary
Paper Apps DUNGEON is a notebook-based dungeon crawler that you can play anywhere at any time-it only requires a pencil and a die.
While DUNGEON is but one of Brinton's many games, DUNGEON's elegance in its game and product design attests to Brinton's ability to create.
Broadly, the game is simple and harkens to the roll-and-move design of games such as Monopoly or Sorry! that make up most board game closets.
For Brinton, designing the game was an exercise in stripping away the ideas and mechanics that many newer games have added to the classic dungeon crawl design based around the 1980s computer game, Rogue.
DUNGEON seeks to answer the question, "What if you went the opposite way and went to the bare minimum of, 'what does the game need to have to be an RPG or roguelike?'" Brinton says.
" DUNGEON is one of several Paper Apps series that the Brintons have made, and their physical product design is a large part of what makes each individual game's design sing.
" For Brinton, creating DUNGEON and each of the Paper Apps has been an exercise in minimalistic design, paring down to the essentials and finding the fun therein.
Reference
Mortensen, P. S. (2023, October 4). Paper apps dungeon: Game design minimalism - slug magazine. SLUG Magazine - Salt Lake UnderGround. https://www.slugmag.com/arts/art/paper-apps-dungeon-game-design-minimalism/