Apr 22 | 2017Minions of Mordak Design Pillars
I love RPGs (Roleplaying Games). Ever since I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time, I mined the gaming world for a wealth of great RPG games! As I aged slightly, my time became too limited for some of the really involved games I know and love. And so I became really into the idea of an “RPG in a box”: A game that could capture all those things I love about a satisfying RPG experience and deliver them over a time commitment that could suit my busying lifestyle.
My interests shifted from the slew of time intensive RPGs to lighter ones. This is also what set me down the path of creating my own game. And so I came up with Minions of Mordak, in an effort to try and capture aspects of what I found so memorable about my RPG experiences and bring them to the table in a fun, fast and flavourfully thematic game.
As I set about making this game I jotted down some of the things I love about the games listed in this posts header image that I really wanted this game to capture. I’ve stuck to these pillars and used to guide all of my decisions as I’ve worked on and iterated through the game’s design.
Minions of Mordak focuses on:
- Gratifying and constant character progression with every passing turn
- Strategic Battling / Interesting combos / Multi-Player assists
- Exciting loot drops
- Comedic & Memorable Moments
- Quests – Mini missions belonging to each character
I will elabourate on how I achieved these aspects in the game’s design in future posts. This post is mostly to explain how I set about making this game, what it’s trying to be about, and also to encourage game designers to create a vision for their game in a similar way. By outlining a priority of goals for my game early, I was able to decide if a new mechanic I was toying with was serving to add to these core pillars, or instead just to bloat the game or veer it off track. Many mechanics have been abandoned in development if they did not serve to enhance these core pillars.
Games that try too many things, can easily become over complicated, or feel disjointed and half baked. Games that have a clear grasp on the feel they are trying to achieve can accomplish a very tight play experience, where every mechanic plays nicely together, and each piece serves to better the whole experience. This is where I set my aim, and why I felt it important to have clarity in my goal early on.
Anyways, that’s all for this post. Let me know if you have any thoughts in the comments below. Thanks for reading!