Limitation, innovation, and the Dread X Collection

In the modern day of game development there are fewer limitations on what can be put into each game, with more tools and development kits being readily available for indie level development to easier create small-scale projects. While making a game is never an easy task the amount of choices a developer has whilst making one is exponentially higher than it once was, which, in fairness, does lead to more ideas being put out into the world.

However, something does get lost in the lack of limitations, and that is innovation. In the case of classic games it was the goal of developers to try and make the most fun they could with the limited resources they had; no doubt you've seen some kind of asset re-use in these classic games, maybe an enemy sprite doubling up as a friendly NPC or the case of Super Mario Bros' bushes being re-coloured variants of the cloud. The main goal in these early days of game development was to create an interesting enough core gameplay loop in order to make games worth playing and re-playing and therefore worth the price of admission.

This much has been somewhat lost at AAA games development as the games on the highest end of the budget spectrum can now be filled with so much content that it's difficult to notice that the main gameplay is pretty standard and doesn't really carry the enjoyment of the game. Not to say that games are awful because of this, but games that impress me or hook me with their gameplay are regrettably few and far between and are mostly indie titles that need to have an interesting gameplay hook to stand out among their peers.

Summer Night, from the Dread X Collection, takes inspiration from LCD handheld consoles

It was with the Dread X Collections that I found how intriguing a game could be when made under limitations. The crux of these collections is that they are a series of horror games made over ten days by different developers, like a games jam with a longer time limit and more experienced devs. Currently there are 3 Dread X Collections on Steam and each one contains about ten to twelve short games based around unique concepts, gameplay ideas, settings, and themes, including genres ranging from first person shooters and fixed camera-angle games (a la early Resident Evils) to isometric turn-based strategy and even a Game-and-Watch styled LCD handheld game (with a twist of course); the sheer variety these devs achieve when given the same objective of a horror game within ten days is a testament to their individual skill, however it is also a fantastic case study of how limitation can be an absolute boon to coming up with ideas.

With such a strict time limit, devs included in the Dread X Collections had to find intelligent ways of making a sufficiently enjoyable and scary game without the option to fill it with content, forcing them to use their time effectively and lean heavily on the core systems they create to carry the experience. In the Dread X Collection III, one of the games, Sato's Wonderland, has you putting together two topics to get a response from an AI-powered theme park mascot which blends great writing and the dichotomy of a cheery mascot for children in a dingy, almost clinical AI repair room. While not a long game, Sato's Wonderland was a deeply memorable experience that used a simple gameplay mechanic of fitting two conversation topics together to create an intriguingly unsettling narrative that I would love to see expanded on.

Sato's Wonderland manages to create an unsettling atmosphere with retro polyigonal models and warping textures

That might seem like a contradiction of my point as I'm now calling for less limitations on development after advocating for more just a minute ago, however I think this process could be an excellent exercise in creating core gameplay mechanics and then expanding them into a full game that explores everything that can be done with these mechanics.

For example, the first Dread X Collection has Hand of Doom, a game that is styled after retro RPGs and gives you four words - TAL, ETH, IST, and ORT - which you string together in different incantations in order to cast spells. Since the game is short, there aren't a great deal of incantations you can make, however the possible variety for this system makes it one that can be expanded upon to a staggering degree, especially once the blood sacrifice gets added to incantations which takes away some health in order to cast the spell, adding a drawback to some spells that you have to use to advance. There are so many possibilities with this incantation mechanic that a lot of me hopes it gets taken and developed into a full game, perhaps with some powerful incantations hidden as secrets within levels, or some kind of combat with the more lethal spells requiring multiple blood sacrifices to make them more dangerous to use but worth it to pull off.

Hand of Doom's incantation system has a lot of potential to be expanded on

It would be impossible for every game made from this point to be developed in 10 days or less, but I believe more developers should start with limitations to ensure they have a solid gameplay idea before they expand on it. Starting at a point with a fully formed gameplay idea means every other part of the game can be built around those core systems to use them to their full potential, making it more interesting as a result and fully realising the potential of how fun the game could be made because, after all, the most important aspect to a game is its gameplay.