Another useful way to categorize game designs is by their approach to content. Some types of games (such as adventure games) are completely “sculpted” by the designer: every bit of the content has been planned out beforehand. The traditional match-3 game, on the other hand, is “freeform” — a large portion of the gameplay comes from randomness. That doesn’t mean the designer didn’t work hard on the balance — they likely spent a long time making sure the randomness felt fun — but in general it’s still a lot easier than making sculpted content.
As casual games get ever more elaborate, we’re seeing sculpting become a requirement rather than a choice. These days, even match-3 games have pretty significant “sculpted” aspects: it’s not unusual to have unique board layouts for each and every level of the game. You might call this “mini-sculpting” because that the designer still relies heavily on randomness, but they limit the randomness to ensure a fun and constantly-changing experience.
What are the advantages of sculpted content?
- The pace is exactly as the designer wants it
- The designer can create obstacles for the player to overcome; these are often much more fun than just playing randomly-generated levels
- If the game has story, it can be tied intricately into the sculpted gameplay.
But what about the disadvantages?
- Even the longest sculpted game is shorter than an infinitely-long random game. The user has less content.
- A game that’s unfettered by tight sculpting can adjust its difficulty upwards or downwards to better match the user’s ability. (Sculpted games can do that, too, but of course that means you have to sculpt an easy mode and a hard mode and so on.)
- If the user gets stuck, they are stuck forever. They can’t try again and hope that the board is different.
More and more games are going the sculpted route, or else combining sculpting with some randomness, even though this shortens the game. Not really surprising. Sculpted content feels more “polished”, and polish is much more important to a casual game than play duration!