Approaching mechanic design
When designing game mechanics, there are two approaches:
- Adapting existing game mechanics
- Inventing new game mechanics
As we have said, the first approach is the most common, and for valid reasons! Hundreds of mechanics have been designed and used already, and there is no point in trying to come up with new ones for the sake of innovation.
Most of the time, your job would be about selecting the right mechanics from the ones you know and adapting them to the context of the game you are working on.
This doesn’t mean that you won’t be facing the challenge of designing new game mechanics from time to time. Also, sometimes, what makes a mechanic new or adapted is not clear.
Let’s take PUBG: Battlegrounds (PUBG), for example. This is the first Battle Royale game that featured a shrinking map as a circle closing toward the center of the map (to be precise, the first one was DayZ: Battle Royale, a mod by the same...
