Hi folks,
We've been doing lots of concept iteration with the game this summer. Let's share one of the lessons from our process!
Complexity and Depth
For any new lane-pushing game to find success in the market, we believe it must satisfy three properties:
- Be fresh — enough to attract new players
- Be accessible — enough that they'll bring their friends
- Be deep — enough that expert players stick around
This is the minimum requirement to "sit at the table" in our genre. There are many other ingredients to success — but today I want to touch on "depth".
In terms of philosophy, achieving depth in Causeway can be done most elegantly through well-crafted complexity. (For more on that topic, do check out my favourite article on the internet.)
We feel that on our imaginary ruler📏, Causeway's complexity (the number of mechanisms, and how tightly they interact) should rest a notch or two above that of Heroes of the Storm, and a few notches below Dota 2. This is intended to let us stay accessible, while also allowing for a rich level of mastery.
Tailoring for a 'Medium' Fit
Knowing where we want to arrive — I have leaned towards adding "medium complexity" mechanisms to the game, in anticipation that their combination would produce the right result.
It came as a surprise that this hasn't worked out so well!
For an example, one mechanism in Causeway's alpha is 🍟Chips. A Chip is a semi-permanent debuff. It stacks up to 3 times, increases damage taken by 5% per stack, and is only cleared when visiting your base.
It's hard to apply them quickly, so they're part of a longer-term attrition game. Several Counsels (our twist on items) have bonus effects when the target has 3 Chips. One character has a permanent Chip on their shoulder (yes, it's a term we use playfully!)
However, Chips aren't quite a big enough part of gameplay that players wanted to allocate attention to them. Since the underlying idea is "a long-term debuff whose impact you can shape with your build", we didn't want to simply buff them into relevance.
Perhaps more importantly, they were tied in with another medium-complexity mechanism. We were giving players competing priorities before they might even begin to think about Chips.
Personally I enjoy designing a medium-complexity armour system and shaping characters to fit it. But sometimes a 'neat idea' is really a solution looking for a problem! We are learning, slowly, that starting simple and building up seems to be the better approach.
As one of our community members reflected...
“The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.”
— Kevin Kelly
Stay tuned,
Softmints
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