#BehindTheScenes

Emergent Shapes are a series of prototypes around the topic of competitive emergent systems.

I was trying to focus on finding systems that work nicely together and could be a backbone of a competitive turn-based game. My intention from the start, was to rely purely on mechanics, resources and relations between them. No fantasy, themes, story - just basic shapes done on iPad and mechanics. True meat. The essentials. The highest design truth!

[1] Mechanics revolve around relation between objects in space, space occupation, delayed simultaneous execution, generators and duplication, elimination and energy transition.

I tried... and failed rather miserably.

First of all, making completely fresh set of mechanics without setting any context is hard. Especially hard to balance. Something that sounds promising on paper turns out unplayable after couple of turns. And it is hard to get good feedback from the losing player, when he felt that the game cheated on him and was unfair.

Secondly, having no theme makes the game really hard to explain. Players need to keep all the rules in their memory. They cannot rely on common knowledge and analogies taken from the real world experience to make the learning process easier.

Also, having no restrictions in the game mechanics is a blessing and a curse. I believe it's a way to find something truly unique but at the same time EVERYTHING becomes a moving part. Nothing is set in stone. Having some kind of a theme gives you a form to work with, a starting point, a template. Working simultaneously on mechanics and fantasy can work back to back and support each other. One inspires the other, and the other way around.

[2][3] Different concepts for early game mechanics.

At some point, I tried to connect the existing game mechanics with several fantasies - the game started as game of triangles, then shifted into electricity game to finally ended as medieval road architect simulator. Every iteration showed me that I was simply too late. To merge world of fantasy and world of mechanics was too much trouble and the prototype code started to give up to all that pressure.

[4][5] Concepts for Electricity and Roads & Castles

Anyway, I was making a lot of paper concepts during long train travels between Łódź and Katowice, visiting Something Random office with fresh prototypes and coming back home with lots of feedback. On one of those journeys home I revisit all the paper ideas I had on my IPad and spontaneously make the first prototype of Tetra and left the divagations about competitive emergency for another time.