A famous quote says that "A design sis finished not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove"
When I design board games, I seem that have the tendency to start with a concept, abstract it with mechanics and remove unnecessary elements. That could be called subtractive design.
When I design video games, I start with nothing, then add a mechanic, check if it works, then add more, until I get a working game. This is what I would all additive design.
Now in video game it is more logical to use additive design because when you program, you add features one mechanic at a time. While in board game you have a thematic idea and try to see how that could fit into mechanics and components.
Additive design could be seen as a concrete approach to problem solving while subtractive design could be seen as the abstract approach. The same dichotomy exists between programming and mathematical approach. So we get the axis:
Additive, Programming, Concrete
VS
Subtractive, Mathematics, Abstract
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Now my problem is that I sucks with the Abstract approach, this is why I had problems designing board games. Now I am wondering if it could be possible to design a board game from an Additive/Concrete approach.
The concepts would be to start with nothing then gradually add elements to the game. But at each step of development, the game must be playable. Similar to software that must be functional after each feature added.
So I am wondering how that could possibly be achieved in board game design. How to make sure I am constantly using the additive approach. A few solutions I thought so far:
1- Make each step of development playable.
For example: I use an hex space map, with a ship token. I move the ship around the map. The mechanics works but is kind of dull. Then I add distance restrictions, like move 5 space max per turn. Then I add cards that has a distance value which must be played to move the ship.
2- Use unthemed mechanics. This is to make sure I am not tempted to abstract a thematic concept.
For example: You have a hex map, and you have a mechanics that place cube on various place of the map. But you have not idea what those cube represents. It could be population, a virus, cash investments, etc.
Do you have other ideas?
Else do you think it's possible to design a board game using additive design?
The way I see things are going, It's really hard for me to design new board games. So I might focus more on designing systems that could allow the creation of multiple games. New games would have different theme and twist while keeping the same core mechanics.
New games, would actually be adjustments of systems I already designed. This way, the design process will be easier. The drawback, is that any new design will be close to another game.
I always wanted to design theme first in mind, but I'll reserve that for video games instead. Instead I'll do mechanic first and find themes for it.