Solar Panels

There's an old talk by Jonathan Blow I keep coming back to over and over again. Truth In Game Design. It's my favorite talk ever, truly the talk that inspired me to make games.

He describes a design process that's almost like meditation. It's so simple. You just play your game with an open mind, notice what's happening around you, and design your game so as to be aware of its own rules, patterns, and second order consequences of the rules.

He designed Braid and The Witness this way. It's the reason they are such coherent works of art, so clear about what they are that it's like they are a devotional to God.

But Jon isn't the only designer doing this. I see a similar kind of attention being paid to the design of another game I love, Factorio. Its designers don't get enough credit for their ability to perceive and understand so clearly what their game is about.

Today, I came here to talk about solar panels. But I can't talk about solar panels without talking about the deeper patterns I have noticed in Rogue Deck Builder which lead me to believing they are a necessary component in the game's design.

When I first started playing this game, I noticed a simple consequence of its rules.

You can place postholes next to existing postholes, and you can connect them together with joists. When you fully enclose any rectangle, the section gets an interior joist, and then you can place deck panels to walk around.

You usually aren't given enough of the manpower resource to fully construct a new deck panel in just one turn, and that is intentional. You spend a large portion of the game defending sections of the deck which are under construction.

This is okay if your player character can shoot far enough to hit enemies which attack the furthest posthole in the part that is under construction. But if you can't shoot far enough to get the guys, they will destroy your construction.

You have to be careful about how big you build your deck panels. Too small, and it's less efficient with the manpower resource. Too large, and you might not be able to defend.

Here's another way of putting it. There is a natural risk/reward tradeoff inherent to the building of deck panels. If you go big, you take a bigger risk and reap a larger reward. Smaller is more defensible, but you don't get as much bang for your buck.

This is simply true. I can't make it up. It's true in a mathematical sense. It's as true as anything can be. It's the kind of truth Jon talks about in his lecture.

This truth sits at the core of Rogue Deck Builder. Everything else must interact with and hang off of this truth. You can see I take my jokes very seriously.

Therefore, if some kinds of turrets need a power source, the sort of power source which most closely relates to the core truth of the game must be solar panels.

What if you had a way to upgrade a deck panel to a power generating deck panel, something like a solar panel? What kind of consequence would it have on the game's gameplay?

For one, the player shouldn't be able to walk on top of solar panels. They restrict motion, and this has consequences. If you convert a walkable deck panel to a solar panel, you won't be able to walk on it and shoot the guys coming at it.

If you want to defend it with a turret, you will need a turret with sufficient range, or you will need to build another deck panel around the edge of the solar panel where you could place the turret. A number of strategies begin to emerge.

Now the decisions you make to power the deck actually matter. They have a kind of geometrical truth about them which relates to your ability to defend the deck. 

Because of this, there is an inherent risk/reward tradeoff to powering your deck. If you build larger solar panels which are harder to defend during construction, you get a much larger energy production than you would if you build a much smaller solar panel.

That's why solar panels take over the whole deck panel. It's the reason you don't build them one by one.

In this design phase of the game, I'm looking for more things which have this risk/reward quality. The new turrets will work towards a similar geometric truth. Keep watching as more of these ideas come to life.