Eric

I think what's important about this kind of differentiations isn't so much about doing "the good one", but keeping them as lenses to see what's happening in any given design.

Love this post! I have so many thoughts.

1. Would you agree with the slightly reductionist summary that "situational depth is the subset of functional depth that the game presents for you to explore?"

2. I think Spelunky is a fantastic example of situational and functional depth being very closely matched since the random nature of the levels put you in almost every situation the mechanics allow.

3. I really like the idea of starting with situations, I'm going to steal that! It reminds me of Jason Grinblat / Tarn Adams 's ideas about "story volumes." That comes from procedural generation simulation-y stuff but the idea is that you start with an evocative sentence and extrapolate mechanics that could make that sentence happen in the game.

4. I know this was probably meant as a hot take, and celeste doesn't need any defending from me, but I think that a small situational depth compared to functional depth is not a bad thing, it's just a taste thing. In my opinion, large functional depths can feel very generous as long as there aren't onerous control schemes to learn. It just feels nice to move around in celeste and that's a nice thing, even if the game doesn't require you to use all those options.

5. This might not be the definition you're using here, but this article on depth https://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=3124 has permanently wormed its way into my head as the definitive take, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it!

Been thinking about similar things as well this year. The game I'm making right now has a very expressive and wide set of moves and I kept running into problems when it came to actually building levels for it, because I didn't really know how complex I wanted the spaces to be that the players had to traverse.

The Levels for my previous games were very similar to Mega Man, meaning that you have a limited moveset and most of the complexity comes through distinct platforming challenges. I tried this approach for my current project but quickly found out that by giving the players means to stay in the air indefinitely, there isn't really a point in building all these elaborate stage gimmicks. The easy way out of this would be to just push the overall complexity of the platforming challenges, to match the moveset you have, but I didn't like that idea. After all, I build this movement system with the idea, that I wanted for players to find their own approaches and their own style of play. Limiting what moves can be used to overcome specific situations, means that you're putting a cap on this expressiveness.

I went back to look at the Gameboy Advance Castlevania games, since they were kind of the jumping off point for me, way back when I initially started building this game. One thing I realised was how simple the spaces in these games were. There are a ton of rooms that are just very simple horizontal corridors. Even the Enemies (as varied as they are), are all fairly simple. So I simplified my game's levels and they now feel much closer to what I want the game to be? The possibility space for players now is much larger, and I noticed that there's now much more room to improvise your approach, instead of having to plan ahead?

Obviously there is no right approach to do this, but I think making the distinction between situational depth and functional depth helps with being more deliberate in your decision making?