Article on Reductive Design

Read a great article from Rodian Joubert today on Gamasutra called Minimised Game Design For Indies: Yes Or No?. (the article is a republish from this site)

This quote from the article by Anna Anthropy sums up the point well;

"contemporary game design is a victim of clutter," says Anthropy. "because the games industry is hit-driven (big budget games need to sell huge amounts just to recoup their costs), games are designed to be everything to everyone. unfortunately, the result is a game full of features which all tug in different directions, and which stretch the idea of the game thin beyond recognition ... they stretch an hour's worth of ideas over eighty hours of filler."

This reminds me of conversations we had about the Lucidity gameplay during early prototyping. We started expanding the core functionality of the game, adding a much wider range of different pieces and also power-ups. We decided in the end to strip it back because we felt that the additions really didn't add anything.