So you’re done Choosing your Game Idea
The next step is to think about what mechanics will best model this idea. There are a lot of decisions to make that will inform your decision on which mechanics to implement, many of which may have already been decided by the Game Idea or be a short step away from it.
- What resources does the player have?
- Is there interaction between the actions of players?
- How is victory determined?
What resources?
Do players need to manage resources? Do they have money, or building materials, or people, or other assets that they need to expend to achieve things? Do they have a limited number of actions they can perform on their turn? How do you represent these?
Once you know what the players have access to, how do they get them? Is it most fitting that the player gets these resources regularly, say automatically taking some each round, or is it an action that the player needs to perform? Does it cost them other resources to get them? If so, where does it all come from?
Is there interaction between actions?
This applies equally to cooperative and competitive games. In cooperative games players are more inclined to take actions that complement one another, but the question of how actions affect each other still applies.
Are options available to whoever gets there first, so one player getting there denies the others that option for the game round? Does taking one action affect how other actions perform? Do actions directly affect the resources of other players?
How is victory determined?
How do these resources and these actions come together to make victory? How do you convert your results from the game into a measure of victory? Do they need to collect something, build something, destroy something? Is it a combination of different factors, and if so how important are each of them?
The next step
Once you’ve answered these questions and start to define the problem of what you are trying to represent, mechanics may start to fit as a good solution. If players handle trade goods, tokens to record those might seem the best idea. If players get a random selection of resources every round, cards or dice might provide the solution. If players can get in each others way worker placement or area control might work well.
But if nothing immediately seems like the obvious solution, try an idea and experiment with it. Keep in mind that the fact that an idea worked well mechanically for another game doesn’t mean it’s always a good mechanic, there might be something different that works better for your game. Try new mechanics, improve on old ideas, create something new. Without that, your game wont stand out.
Seph North 