The underrated simple pleasures?

[SJ Zero]

My first game was the ridiculously complicated RPG Quest for a King, which is still in development. My second was a smaller, but still hugely complicated RPG called Nietzsche. These games tried to take huge amounts of data to create huge worlds and complicated datasets where there's a huge number of characters with different skills, stats, etc, and have only had mixed results.

My last two games, Star Phalanx and Rambo vs. Kitty Cat, the game design is incresibly simple. There are three enemies in Star Phalanx, five in RvK. Everything you can do is bound to a key. In Star Phalanx, you move in four directions, and shoot two kinds of projectiles. In RvK, you can jump, move left and right, and shoot your gun.

Even though the world of Quest for a King is expansive(compared to the others, certainly), it's not as consistently fun as SP or RvK, in spite of all the work put into the design of the game and the world.

So maybe, before we start looking at the layers under the layers, there should be more concentration on fundamental game design at the lowest level, concentrating on discovering a design which pulls in players before you add a complex market system, six billion unique NPCs, or a multi-tiered story system with 312 unique endings.

Any thoughts?

[aetherfox]

Well I definately agree with you on that one.

I've never properly gotten even halfway through my "groundbreaking" projects...it's a mixture of time, and the fact that it bores me.

Simple, fun games are the way to go.

[adosorken]

Without setting limits ahead of time, nothing gets accomplished because you will simply continue to push the envelope. So you have to lay the foundation and make sure it's rock solid before proceeding past it.

[Radical Raccoon]

Hey! That's why LD3 isn't finished yet.

http://killfest.sytes.net/deltacode

I got a new screenshot on the homepage. We we wah!

[Z!re]

Ya, small simple games are good...

They make you feel you've completed something..

While larger projects can drag out, and make you feel you'll never finnish it.. Making you abandon it..


Most sucessful games are really simple if you think about it, the first Zelda wasnt that advanced..
Mario..
Even Doom and Quake are actually quite simple..
Tetris anyone?
Snake/Nibbles?
PACMAN!?




Although, a large advanced feature rich game will give you a greater feeling of accomplishment, and will generally be played for a longer period of time.. I mean, it takes longer to complete, and hopefully wont become boring..

Supermario, while fun, easily becomes boring..
Same with most other games..

Modern games have the same problem, just take Halo.. It's the same repetetive layuts all the time, and the outdoor levels are cool in the beginning, but gets boring when you play it again..


This is where a branching plot game would win ground..


RANT RANT RANT! :lol:

[Mech1031]

if anyone has played "Zookeeper" for the DS or "ZOOO"(japan release only for the GBA) they'll know how fun and addicting the simple ones can be. i went over to a barbaque, spent more than half the time playing it, and if anyone bothered me, i got real nasty about it.

for anyone who doesn't know, it's like bejewled, but better....and more addicting.