Practical Game Design

Some things are best left unexplained

We spoke at length about how to explain the complexities of your game to the average player, yet, we need to acknowledge that some games are at their best when players try to figure them out entirely by themselves. Deep, innovative game systems can often be much more interesting if left as a puzzle, and discovering how things work can be a crucial part of the experience. There is also a segment of the population, however small, for whom a certain level of inaccessibility is a big draw. They feel pride in mastering an infamously difficult game, at being in the tiny minority of people who get it. This looks like a very niche approach to game design, one that is rarely fitting in the commercial market, yet ...