Practical Game Design

Investigating actor removal

Strategy games have a natural pace based on the slow accumulation of power and the results of exercising it. In many cases, the intensity grows as you amass the army, peaks when you go into battle, and either raise through a lost encounter (as you scramble to recover and are left feeling exposed) or lowers with a win (as the threat is reduced).

Moreover, the higher the number of cards, units, or resources under a player's disposal, the more actions and choices they have to make or at least consider. Having little to do is far more relaxing than having to analyze hundreds of combinations and spread the attention across multiple actors and possible locations.

In team-based games, player elimination is sure to put ...