Guidelines for Strategy Game Design

Whatever else they are, strategy games are about victory.

A discussion of input and output randomness.

Randomness is not innately wrong, nor is it to be avoided.

The only point of a resource is to limit something.

A game’s decisions and mechanics should naturally lead to an increase in potential choices and strategies as the game goes on. At the start of the game, there are a few decisions to make and a few strategies open to players.

Risk and return are the key balances of an economy.

Interesting play requires meaningful decisions. Meaningful decisions require a balanced economy and information to leverage that economy in order to pursue a strategy.

The skills your game tests and the moves available to players must be aligned.

When all information is known, it should be clear what moves are available to each player. When there is some unknown information, it should be clear what moves are potentially available to each player.

A game needs to be forthright about what happens when an action is taken.

Discovered play, (I like to call it “cleverness”) is a term to describe when a player finds a new way to use the game’s tools. This is the euphoric feeling players experience as their skills advance mid-game.

All strategies need to be beatable. Otherwise, the emergence of a master strategy will render the game solved very quickly. Games with a master strategy are all about execution—whoever can implement the master strategy best will win.