Ludomancy

Genres are there to help us. By setting a boilerplate mechanic that is proven to work, it allows designers to focus on twists and gizmos to differentiate themselves from the rest. They even allow some room for small innovations.

But this incremental approach to game design shackles deep experimental gameplay. If you fail at achieving something new within a genre, you’ll be tempted to give up and fall back to the core mechanics that everybody knows.

To truly be in the wild, genres must be left behind. One way I found for doing this is the removal of essential features. Removing these features burns the bridges to safety. They force you to rethink mechanics to the core.

The recipe is simple: grab any genre you know, think about what is the activity you do most while playing, and remove it. In most cases, it will feel contradictory and ridiculous, but if you think a bit you’ll discover that there are interesting paths you never thought about.

Some examples:

• A FPS without weapons (no shooting)?
• A turn based strategy game without economic nor military aspects?
• A MMORPG without leveling?
• An action game in which time is more important than space? (like Braid)
• A RPG without any kind of physical exploration or movement?