An image of the Iron Cogs Games LLC logo. Design Approach

This is essentially an explanation of our own self-imposed guidelines for creating games. Perhaps others will find them helpful or inspiring. What we hope to do with our games is simply create an experience that you love. We mean that you literally love it and want to spend time “being in it”. We haven't done our job if you aren't loving your time experiencing our games, and not only do we want you to love them while you're playing them but when you think back on them years later we want you to feel that pang of nostalgia and wonder you get when remembering your favorite games.

So here's how we go about doing that...


Experiential Theme

Playing a game is basically just an experience. When you play an RPG you experience that role, when you play a hunting game you experience hunting, and when you play a building game you experience resource gathering and building. We start out by choosing what experience we want to share with our player. This sounds like a pretentious way of saying, “pick what the game is about”, but there's a difference. If you're thinking about an experience you love, you're thinking about everything that made you feel a certain way about it, not some abstract game concept. Suddenly everything you love to do or wish you could experience becomes potential for a game, even remakes and improved versions of old gaming experiences.

Some examples of Experiential Themes are:


Uh, these aren't hints. We aren't making any of these (yet).

When we choose our Experiential Theme all we need to do is ask ourselves, “What's an experience I love to have?”


Atmosphere

Once we have an Experiential Theme, we immediately start considering everything we love about that experience. Sights, sounds, all of the immediate sensory input that contributes to how it feels. The atmosphere of a game is comprised of all of the artistic elements that inspire us to feel a specific way about a game, all the features that come together to create the overall mood. Our art is completely shaped by the feelings we want to convey.

Click Here For an Example

For example, if “bar tending” is our Experiential Theme and all we have is a few different bars and some customers, along with the ability to learn recipes and mix drinks faster as we level up... that's the basis for an okay game, but not one you love. … We ask ourselves what would we love about that experience. How about the glow of the jukebox, neon signs, and colored lights over the pool table? The “clack” of pool balls, the jukebox playing music that matches the bar's theme, or the TV playing sports? The audible calls for drinks? Playing bar games and drinking games? Customers leaving big tips if they get their drinks fast? Getting drunk? Perhaps the bar gets musicians and the night gets mighty busy so they bring in a second AI bartender you can learn drinks from or teach drinks to (making you both more efficient). These are the details of the experience that make you love it, and they should be reflected in the game's art and systems.


Immersive Systems

After we have the flavor of our game figured out, it's time to address how the game will actually be played and function.

Here, we need to ask ourselves what we want to do inside that experience, what actions will we be taking in the game. We want to start with the most relevant actions to our Experiential Theme, perhaps making a list of things we want to be able to do in the game and then ordering it by how much the action would make us feel like we are “in” that experience. We then work our way through the list, building systems in order from most impact to the least until we feel the game is complete. By giving the most attention to the systems that are most relevant, our design should be efficient and automatically facilitate immersion.

Click Here For an Example

Let's continue our bartending example. The most relevant action is mixing and serving drinks. So we create a game mechanic/system where a customer asks for a drink, the player selects a glass and the proper ingredients, then holds the bottle of each ingredient over the glass as the liquid fills it just a little too rapidly to easily manage. The fun, then, is trying to mix the drink accurately and quickly enough to keep the customers happy. Once that system is worked out, you can elaborate on it... does the liquid spill inaccurately until you level up a skill? Can you slide an ingredient over multiple glasses? Add in soda guns for sure. We can always return to the system later and have it affect later systems.

What is the next most significant thing we would want to be able to do in a bartending game? Probably play bar games... meaning we would use the same method to create mini-games. Maybe some of them are drinking games, so we need a system for being drunk, which would affect our system of mixing drinks by making it harder (perhaps a filter blurs vision and the bottle sways while pouring). This is looking like a pretty good core for a game.

So now we start thinking about the long term structure of the game. We need to think about what we want to be able to do overall. We want to improve our bartending abilities so we can add a mixing journal that keeps track of recipes the player learns and multiple ways to learn them, probably from customers and AI bartenders. Perhaps both the bar and player have reputation ratings which combines to attract customers. The higher the bartender's reputation, more reputable and higher paying bars are interested in hiring them. Maybe the player is earning money to buy their own bar they can name, buy furnishings for, and hire attractions for.

Even after this point, we could go back and add more systems, but preferably ones that are still relevant to our Experiential Theme.

With this example you can see how thinking of game mechanics and systems from a point of relevance to the Experiential Theme first serves to naturally create a game that feels like you're in that experience.

Part of creating fun systems is the need to give the player a challenge. And while it's true that different players enjoy different degrees of challenge, ANY degree of challenge means a game designer has to have a certain willingness to upset and aggravate their players. All challenge is inherently stressful. There are three primary factors that make a stressful challenge fun. The mechanics used to overcome them, the satisfaction of crushing them, and the reward for having done so. A game that is all challenge and little reward becomes frustrating in a not-fun way, whereas a game that just doles out rewards to anybody undermines their value and robs the player of feeling the excitement of risk. So the risk and challenge should equal the reward, and the more extreme each is... the more intense the experience will be.



This is the method we use to put you in a game we hope you'll love.

An animation of floating embers.