This week I’m crafting a playable prototype of last week’s random game idea, Doomed Colony. Today I’d like to offer a peek into my process. Again, this is just what works for me. Other designers have their own methods, and you need to find what works best for you.
For me, there are four main steps:
- Inventory the Game Components
- Do the Math
- Process Play Procedures
- Check the Vision
Inventory the Game Components
For Doomed Colony, the pitch already has a list of components, but this step calls for getting very specific: exactly how many action cards are there? How many colonist counters? How many of those colonists are in each color? How many of them are Aliens? Workers? Security officers?
Do the Math
This is where we think through the numbers in the game. (“If there are four players, 110 action cards in the deck, and each player starts with six cards but plays and draws a new car each turn, how many rounds will there be until the deck runs out?”)
Process Play Procedures
By “process,” I mean mentally walk through each step of the game play to make sure the components do their jobs, then write the steps down as they change in order to create a draft of the rulebook. By systematically going through each turn and each round, you can find and address issues before actually constructing the prototype. (“If we’re flipping a countdown counter every round, the game could end after four rounds. That’s bad.”)
Check the Vision
The other three steps tell you what the game is, but this is when you check to see if that’s what you want the game to be. (“It looks like we’ll only have a quarter of the colonists on board rockets when the game ends. That’s not as much fun as having full rockets.”) If the game doesn’t match your vision, you have the math, the inventory, and the rules already exposed and ready to be tweaked. Tweak away, and try it again. (Or alternatively, adjust your vision to match the new reality if it turns out that reality makes for a better game.)
While these steps are sort of listed in order, the truth is that they’re thoroughly intermingled. You can’t do a full component inventory without some math. As you think through each step of the game, you’ll realize you’ve overlooked some components. And while you’re focusing on the different game elements, you’re at least unconsciously comparing them to your initial vision. Furthermore, it’s totally an iterative process: once you adjust one variable, you have to go back over everything else and update or confirm everything else. You can’t just “do the math” once and be done with it.
Again, this is not the One True Method of Game Design, but just an overview of What Works For Me. I hope you find it entertaining, if not actually useful.
