So right now, in my free time, I’m making an arcade racing-shooter game (like Twisted Metal), and sometimes I just need to switch my brains into something not so hard and complex.
I always wanted to make a game with simple mechanics like 2048, and yestarday I was watching a Gypsy Knight’s stream and he suggested an idea of “tetris dungeon”. It actually works like original Tetris, but instead of figures you have a monsters and weapons, falling on each other, which reminds me about table-top “Munchkin”.
But it’s just an idea, and I dunno how to make a gameplay, using it. Like, what’s gonna be a win condition, what geometrical forms of monsters and weapons should I use, etc.
In doing this exercise the biggest value is actually figuring out the answers on your own. That said, the idea sounds confusing IMO.
Work it out on paper.
Seriously, we can’t hand you the answers.
The best game design tools for something like that are markers, index cards, dice, poker chips, graph paper, monopoly money.
Start coming up with rules for your game, and build them with the paper tools. If you can’t play your game on paper, you don’t understand it enough to make it.
I just don’t understand a mechanism of inventing small and addictive games. I can imagine and work out every little aspect of big game, because I have a lot of experience playing AAA-projects, but I suffer casualties when thinking about something easy.
I will try the paper trick, thanks.
Games are based on sets of rules. Small addictive games have simple rule sets that are easy to grasp by difficult to master. A good practice is to determine the list of rules for existing games, and try to describe them in exact detail.
For instance, try to list every rule required to play Bejeweled if it were a card game.
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Then play something small and addictive.
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Play card games and board games. The rules for these games have the level of simplicity you are looking for by necessity.