THE COMMANDMENTS OF GAME DESIGN
By VikingBoyBilly and Paramultart
NOTICE: Not a lot of effort went into this list as of yet... This is still a WIP. - Ry
- 1. Thou shalt not have unskippable cutscenes!
- 2. Thou shalt not have invisible walls!
- 3. Not all things need to be mandatory, but all things should serve a purpose, and non-mandatory purposeful things should be discovered by the player, not forced upon them.
- 4. Decisions made by the player should have ambiguous outcomes, and the game's reaction to those decisions should be predictable, but have enough variance in all of it's mechanisms to not be absolute.
- 5. The game should do it's darndest to make the player feel immersed in an active role in the game and keep them unaware that they are in front of a screen in RL. If there is no fourth wall, it should entertain the player, not reach out to hold their hand.
- 6. The only sinful failure of art is art that fails to communicate what it represents. This applies to art forms not only visual, but also in written, auditory, and gameplay form.
- 7. Everything a player needs to do to overcome challenges should be communicated to them, but in a way that makes them feel like they solved problems using intuition, not informed of the solutions.
- 8. Adversaries pitted against the player should not act stupidly to accomodate the player and it should be in their best interest to defeat the player and protect themselves. If something is unbeatable until it does something stupid, that thing should not act stupid, and instead the player should be given tools to overcome it.
- 9. All boundaries restricting the player should have plausible excuses and seem as though it was put there for purposes other than restricting the player.
- 10. Games should be interactive, dynamic, and most importantly, FUN!