1) Identify the basic elements of the game.
I’ll think of chopsticks, the hand game, for this example. Chopsticks can only be played with your hands. The most basic set of rules is starting with 1 finger extended on each hand, and transferring that number of fingers to your hands or to the other player, aiming to get 5 fingers extended. Players need to think about how much the current fingers in play can add up to, and if they can “knock out” the other player or be knocked out before they can make a strategic play.
2) Swap one element between two games and imagine how the play experience is changed.
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, after progressing through most of the base game and unlocking abilities, players have the opportunity to shape their physical home island by using a variety of landscaping tools. They are tedious to use, since you can only change one tile on the grid system of the island at a time, but players have re-imagined their islands in incredibly beautiful ways, including through secret mermaid gardens to cityscapes to little theater shows and more. The Sims is a series of simulation games that have done a really good job of developing software for building in-game. If Animal Crossing could take on some of the more convenient, free-form building tools from The Sims, it would make beautiful creations so much more accessible for players who otherwise would not spend the time or energy to plan out their builds. That said, The Sims let you build complicated structures right from the beginning of the game. Animal Crossing, like all of the entries in its series, is based on real-time play, and intentionally gatekeepers certain features behind how much money you’ve collected in-game. Animal Crossing is more of a collecting pass-time kind of game, whereas The Sims emphasizes player control and sandbox elements right from the start.
3) Try to map out the game’s space of possibilities.
It’s tricky to draw out each and every one of Chopsticks possibilities. See the attached media for a truncated depiction of possible game states with two players.
4) Pick a real-time game & a turn-based game. Observe players. Make a log of all game states. How do the space of possibilities interact with the basic elements of the game?
Because of how huge the games I’ve chosen are, I’ll keep my scope focused to the combat systems of each game.
Final Fantasy 7 is a classic turn-based role-playing games. You move characters on a grid system, gather a party, match up certain enemy types to certain party member types to maximize your chances of winning, earn and lose experience points as you battle, and customize your weapons and spells as you progress through the game. It’s fairly quick combat for a turn-based RPG.
Breath of the Wild is an open-world role-playing game. You navigate around a huge map of Hyrule, solving puzzles and completing missions in order to acquire weapons, gear, and progress through the main storyline. Unlike turn-based RPGS, players can choose whether or not to engage in combat. Encounters are based on proximity, and combat is easily avoidable if the player can dodge and escape well enough. Much of the actual combat is based on how well you take hits, dodge attacks, and hit enemies.
In FF7, most of the possibilities come from which characters you have in your party, and which weapons and abilities you assign to the characters. You can choose what spells they use, how strong their weapons are, and what order they attack in. In BotW, the possibilities are emergent based on location and current inventory. Do you have an item from an Ice ChuChu? Throwing it at an enemy means they freeze up, and give you a precious few seconds to dodge away or plan your next attack. If they’re frozen and you happen to be by a cliff, you can give them a good strong whack with the Korok leaf and knock them right off the map. Same thing can happen with water nearby. Some of the enemy camps are around campfires, which are also often close to fuel barrels. One well-aimed arrow can set off a series of bombs that wipe out the whole enemy encampment before you even step into the arena.
I think the differences in these combat systems speak to how the game was intended to be played. FF7 focuses a lot on its story, and so the combat system is very tightly bound to the flow of the narrative. BotW is an open-world game with plenty of sandbox elements, and lends itself well to exploration and experimentation as core aspects of its gameplay.
