Simplicity Vs Depth

May 14, 2023 - Published

Most people who've talked to me about game design know that elegantly designed mechanics are one of the things I value most in games. It's the thing that gets me the most impressed, the most excited, and something that I've been attempting to capture in my own games. Well, first of all, what do I mean by "elegantly designed"?

In short, I consider a game mechanic to be elegantly designed when it's both simple and deep. It's one gripe I have with the fighting game community, where certain groups seem to believe that in order for something to have depth, it can't be simple, when that's not exactly the case. My design process on DracoFighter was largely directed at countering that notion. A game can lock every move behind a pretzel motion which would add "complexity", but that doesn't add to the game's depth, it just adds a mechanical barrier that rarely affects decision-making. 

True depth in a game challenges the player to make complex decision-making, and this is rarely incompatible with simple mechanics, which can often have a lot of complex consequences.

One example of a game having simple mechanics but deep gameplay is… the original Super Mario Bros.! Even though we take it for granted now, the simple act of jumping was turned into a sort of Swiss Army knife, where it could be used to dodge hazards, jump gaps, hit blocks, and defeat enemies, all while feeling intuitive with literally just one button. However, in the chaos of a level, this will often lead to complex decision-making on the fly. Is it better to duck under or jump over a projectile? If you jump over it, will you run into a second enemy? Can you dodge both by letting go of jump halfway through, or risk trying to jump on the enemy mid-air? Due to the game's analog physics, certain maneuvers can be surprisingly precise, and dependent on how much momentum you created beforehand. The way players decide to move around the level and use their momentum makes the game surprisingly self-expressive. While it has aged, its sequels (and most other platformers in general) take the same principles and apply it in varying ways.

What about a more modern example? Orianna is a character in League of Legends, where all of her active abilities revolve around her Ball. The Ball can be repositioned, attack/slow down enemies, shield/speed up allies, and for her Ultimate, it creates a shockwave that stuns and pulls in opponents. That's her entire moveset in a single sentence! However, people often call her a very demanding and difficult character. Her Ball is always visible to the opponent, and her immediate range isn't incredible, so Orianna players have to constantly position themselves and The Ball while staying in range to poke down the opponent. It's a constant dance that has to be played precisely, and with the foresight of a character that can be punished very heavily for making mistakes, so any good Orianna player is definitely a force to behold. Despite this, she's been a staple character at many levels of play due to how easy she is to pick up and how engaging she is to play. 

What about a fighting game character? One I think many people will be familiar with is Marth in Smash Bros. He has exactly one gimmick: the tip of his sword does considerably more damage and knockback than the rest of his sword. He's a very simple character and also easy to pick up, but he's very difficult to play consistently at a high level. His gimmick naturally leads the player to space themselves to hit the tip of his sword, but once people start spacing around this, you're forced to utilize his movement much more precisely. On top of that, non-tippers can be used as part of combos – due to the lower knockback, it can lead into followups more easily, so Marth players have to hit precise points of his hitboxes all while dancing around the opponent. While his popularity has declined with the introduction of Lucina (who has essentially the same moveset without the requirement of precision), he's a staple in Melee and is still the face of Smash Bros swordies.

I can bring up more examples of elegantly designed mechanics (Celeste's dash and Ori's Bash are some of my favorite mechanics in any video game), but I think this is a pretty good set of familiar characters to get the idea. As an obliged disclaimer, I don't think that every mechanic in every game needs to be simple but deep. On one end of the spectrum, I've been enjoying Annie in League despite being one of the most shallow characters in the game, but she helps you grapple with the game on a very fundamental level and plays well into the satisfaction of landing those huge spells. On the other end, Tekken is an extremely complex game, and I think that if it were reduced through something like DracoFighter's philosophy, then it would completely kill so many of the things that make the game fascinating. Elegantly designed mechanics just happen to be my favorite as a game designer! But as a player, my enjoyment of the game often relies on different things. I am a filthy Yoshi main, after all.

• Vecderg