Guidelines for Strategy Game Design
A functional and lightweight game design manual by Level 99's D. Brad Talton Jr,
on how to create tense, dynamic, decision-driven games.
A functional and lightweight game design manual by Level 99's D. Brad Talton Jr,
on how to create tense, dynamic, decision-driven games.
Pieces should move in a pleasant and intuitive way, without a lot of counting or fiddliness.
If resources are linked together (for example, selling a good lowers its price and buying a good raises its price), then the linked actions need to all be accomplished in a single, fluid motion.
The places where resources can exist (the player’s supply, the game’s bank, the discard, etc) should be clearly defined zones. It’s ideal for each zone to behave the same way for all kinds of resources.
When resources are manipulated as a stack, try to build mechanics that deal with whole stacks or bundles of resources, rather than counting them out. For example, suppose there are tokens with denominations of 1, 5, and 10. It is easier to tell the player “you can move one token of any size” rather than telling them “you can move up to 8 points worth of tokens”.