Daniel Benmergui

This is the second article about the demons that plague the path to successful experimental gameplay. This time we’ll be dissecting the behavior of a creature even more dangerous than the Programming Succubus:

The feature gremlins offer small mechanics that pile up over the core gameplay while not being an integral part to it. Usually these features are known (non-experimental) mechanics, proven to work in other games. The misconception about them is that they just add richness to the gameplay and can be easily removed, making them harmless. But this is bullshit.

Features will add kipple to your game making it heavier and unwieldy in the best of cases. But in the worst case, they can take over the core gameplay, eating it until the experimentality is expelled as a peripheral feature itself.

As an example, while I was trying to work up something with Shrink, I considered adding session time to limit the amount of guessing you could do. But fortunately I realized that most of the time, the game would be about resource management (time), which is nothing like what I intend of Shrink.
That feature could have transformed Shrink into a time racer instead of a psychotherapy game.

Some signs of the Feature Gremlins:

• “The game consists of a bunch of minigames…”
• “It’s dull because it’s too easy: let’s make it harder by resource-limiting options”
• “Maybe if we put powerups…”

Telling apart useful features from dangerous ones is too hard to risk it. The experimental is on the core gameplay. When in doubt, skip the “standard” features or your game might end up buried in a pile of Feature Gremlins.