DGS | Blog | 2]The Anatomy of a Game Concept

The Anatomy of a Game Concept CrazyAmphibian - 28/may/2023

Making games is hard. For me, one of the harder parts is the initial idea. I'm rather slow to generate new ideas.
Of course, there's some tricks you can employ to make the process a bit fasater, and there were tricks that i employed.

For me, what i like to do, is think of an existing game that i find fun and enjoyable, then deconstruct that game into it's component mechanical components. Then, with those components, figure out what you like, what is fun, and what is engaging - easier said than done.
one classical thing to do is a fusion of games that you enjoy, but one must take care to not draw too heavily from the source as to not be original, but also to keep your ideas in check to not be too outlandish to work. It's a delicate balance, not to mention some games will be more compatible with the other.

the next step is to then make it your own game. put your own spins on it, had a good idea? write it down! this will further help differentiate you from the rest, an especilly important thing to do in the saturated market we have today.
to put this into practice, take the currently in prograss game i'm making - SSTD, as i abbreviate it.
it, quite obviously, draws from 2 games, but does not directly copy.
those 2 games i really enjoy - noita, and gemcraft.
the idea struck me, "what if a tower defence had a spellmaking mechanic like noita?" (a question i ask about a lot of game genres, noita really did that well.), and well, i started to elaborate on that. being a TD compared to a roguelike leaves a lot to change on my end to make things make sense, but also remain unique.
some things are simply not possible in a roguelike that is possible in a TD, and vice versa.

as for how things were differentiated, let's take a look at noita. in noita, spells go in wands, and those wands have various stats, dynamic and static. Mana, mana max, mana recharce, cast delay, recharge, capacity.
now, in a game where you do things 1 wand at a time, that is fine complexity, but for this game, where there could be several towers at once, things had to be simplified.
in SSTD, spells are stored in gems, and gems have far fewer stats, only capacity, power, bonuses (which might even be cut), and fire rate (derived from the others). this is good for readability, but also imposes certian contraints.
in noita, balancing can be done to spells in several ways, due to all the stats they have. but not so much here.

there's also the gemcaft inspirations to talk about. a beloved franchise of mine that i remember playing with flash (07) a lot. in both games, there's gems, gems go in towers, gems can be fused.
but that's where the differences emerge.
gemcaft has unique attack bonuses on gem types, fusing gems merges those while also making them more powerful, additionally, there's multiple tower types. amplifiers cannot attack but boost adjacent towers, and traps, which are faster and proc their bonuses more, but are weaker in damage.
i decided not to replicate many of the mechanics to preserve identity, but also for simplicity. as much as i love gimmicks, they can go overboard. sometimes you just want a simple game that does 1 thing and does it well.

and of course, there's other nuances of differences that could be talked about, like pathing, or spell casting mechanics, but i'll tackle that later.