Sim/Strategy Game Analysis

Since putting down my cogs prototype this week, I wanted to turn my attention to a different genre that I’ve had my eye on for a while: puzzle strategy, or puzzle simulation. This post is about that generally, and next I will post more specifically about the plant idea.

I’m not much of a hardcore strategy gamer, but I’ve had many hours of fun out from games with strategy elements, such as management sims, tycoon games and citybuilders, and more recently casual strategy games like the Mini Metro series.

There’s a few reasons I’m drawn to these games:

• They are gentler than hardcore puzzle games - These games don't stump you, as the puzzle is more about how to optimise your strategy over time than overcoming an immediate obstacle 
• They have more of a sandbox feel - There are many ways to deal with the challenges presented to you, and gameplay is very varied
• You get into a flow state - I just find these games extremely absorbing and relaxing!

As a game designer, this genre is out of my comfort zone - I don’t feel well equipped with terminology and lenses for interrogating the design of such games (compared to how well I could analyse, for example, a free-to-play system). 

So, I am taking some time to research and learn what I can. I started by analysing a couple of my top games in the genre (Mini Motorways, Outlanders on Apple Arcade) as well as look into some new ones (Dorfromantik, Islanders).

I sketched out some criteria to compare these games and tried to think about what kind of problems they present the player with, and where they sit on the simplicity vs complexity scale.

The questions I asked:

• What problem am I (the player) trying to solve?
• What do I have to factor into my solution?
• How much info do I have to retain?
• How restricted are my choices?
• How does the puzzle change through the game?
• How easy is it to anticipate the changes?
• How easily can I undo my decisions?
• Do I have to factor in time?
• Do I have a set goal?
• How does the game end?
• How do I progress through the game?
• How is variation added to gameplay?

Here's a capture of some of that analysis!  (As a disclaimer, some of my observations are more from memory than recent playing, so please excuse any inaccuracies!)

I also watched any videos I could find on these games. So far, I’ve found a few concepts that I’m drawn to:

Evolving puzzles

In each of the games, the challenge is constantly changing and needing re-evaluation. There are different ways of doing this - sometimes more driven by the player’s previous choices (such as the board of placed tiles) and sometimes by randomness (such as new goals or challenges coming into play midgame). Sometimes it’s as simple as presenting the player with the next random object that needs placing. The games I looked at mix these elements in different amounts.

Out of these games, I think Outlanders has the fewest random mid-game elements. It’s therefore technically the most predictable, but it’s also the most complex game and has many moving parts to the simulation. Even the few random elements (e.g. population increase, resources regrowing) are relatively easy to predict. In theory, if the player was armed with enough information about the system then they could work out an optimal plan at the start of the level and achieve a fairly reliable outcome, but of course the number of moving parts and the time it would take to learn exactly how long each building takes makes this impossible.

In short, these games are always about weighing up risks and possible results, and that requires unpredictability. This can come from the outcome being obscured in complex systems, or simply random chance in the gameplay.

Wuselfaktor

I want to mention this term which I came across in a talk from Dino Polo Club. Its literal translation is “bustle factor” and in this context it describes the impression of lots of tiny things bustling about on the map. It’s a really on-point description for that highly enjoyable element of simulation/city building games. While other types of puzzle games feel rewarding when you get that eureka moment of finally seeing the solution, in these games I believe the satisfaction comes from sitting back, admiring your creation and enjoying the wuselfaktor build up.

Placement

When I previously tackled the idea of light strategy games, my ideas were often more in line with mobile tycoon or even idle games. Usually from wanting to keep scope down, I’d focus on ideas that were more focused on choosing upgrades and allocating resources (like Game Dev Story), and avoid needing to implement maps.

But I’ve not yet made a prototype of that style of game that didn’t hit a dead end. Whether that’s because I was simplifying too much, or just because I struggle to stay inspired by the abstract data, I could never pin down the exact nature of the challenge I wanted to present to the player.

Now, looking at these inspiration games, positioning is clearly a core part of gameplay, and the rules are very specifically tied to the proximity of objects. I think this is a useful area to shift my focus to, as it I can take more inspiration from board games and paper prototyping, and potentially find the fun quicker.

That’s all for now, my next post will be about how I attempted and failed to make a plant sim prototype!