Practical Game Design

The less-is-more principle

Another fundamental principle of game design is called less-is-more. It is a call for minimalistic design, in line with everything we have said so far.

But how do you apply this principle in practice?

The answer is pretty straightforward: while designing or prototyping a game, instead of adding features or mechanics on top of what you have, try to take something out.

This is especially true when something doesn't quite work as expected. Usually, everyone is tempted to add something to the system to make it finally work. Most of the time this is a bad idea, as adding functionalities to something problematic at its core will never solve that original issue, and just hide it at best. In this case, it is a much better ...