ezraszanton

Ezra Szanton

@ezraszanton

I make games!

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ezraszanton
@ezraszanton

Transformational game design

I'm learning about computer graphics right now, and there's a really powerful idea that I think could be useful for game design. The idea goes thusly:

  • Solve problems in the simplest case
  • Find ways to turn some problems into simpler problems
  • When you are presented with a new problem, transform it until it looks like the simplest case, and solve that.
  • (sometimes) keep a record of inverse transformations so you can go back to the hard case after you've solved it

There's already one game I've used this thinking to make. It's a sudoku-ish puzzle game. When I'm making the boards I make a simple board first and then use transformations which keep some special properties about the board to turn it into something more complicated.

Do you think this could be useful for more aspects of game design? Is it too vague? Too specific?

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orion-black
@orion-black

I'm not so sure about designing puzzles that way, but it sounds as a good way of exploring possibility spaces.

Also, I've never thought of doing playtesting backwards, it sounds like a weird proposition, but an intriguing one. Is that a thing? Not totally sure how to go about it, but I have to give it a go and see if something interesting happens.

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orion-black
@orion-black

It's not like a thing I think, just a random thought. You talked of going from solution to problem as a way of designing puzzles.

That idea reminded me about this kind of problem, where if you try to solve it forward it opens up to unmanageable numbers, so you have to solve it "from the back". Games can be a bit like that, where the three of possibilities grows so big you simply can traverse it all. So, could this kind of approach (solving from the back) be leveraged for game design?

In practice, what came to mind is how when playing FTL, Slay the Spire or some other roguelike is hard difficulties you have to take a look at the final boss and consider like how much hp, armor, attacks... and build your strategy around those "hard numbers".

So perhaps a process akin to that could be used to detect underused/unviable design space?

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ezraszanton
@ezraszanton

Ah I see what you're saying. That is interesting! I think I do this already some when designing. There's a certain amount of "designing forward" where I see what the game is currently and build from there. There's also a certain amount of "designing backwards" where I create statements about what the player should feel when they're playing and try to design towards that, like I would try to make my deck to beat the final boss in slay the spire.

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