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+--- Forum: Outwitters (/forumdisplay.php?fid=11)
+--- Thread: Praise for Outwitters design (/showthread.php?tid=941)
Praise for Outwitters design - garcia1000 - 11-22-2012 06:43 PM
Hey guys. As a professional designer, I want to say that Outwitters design concept is amazing! It is by far the most elegant turn-based combat I have seen so far and its depth is really high.
What do I mean by elegance? Elegance means that it accomplishes its goal with the minimum of superfluousness. Here are some ways that it achieves this:
1) No abilities. The five core units do not have any special abilities. It would be really easy to give every unit an ability (which most similar games do), but the Outwitters designer resisted this temptation.
2) Similar units. Each team differs only in its special unit. All the core units have the same stats.
3) No terrain. They just totally said screw that, we are manly and do not need puny terrain modifiers.
And the biggest one of all is: wits!
Wits are used for:
- attacking
- moving
- spawning units
Now the first thing I thought is that the wit resource is overloaded. That means that it performs too many functions, and it's too interconnected. Changing one small thing about wits changes the entire game system in unintended ways. But somehow, it still works.
These are all indications of a very elegant game. Great job!
Just being elegant is easy if you sacrifice depth. BUT this game also has a large amount of depth! And incredibly, it manages this without randomness. Usually, it's easy to increase design space and depth by adding randomness, such as a to-hit chance, range of damage, and so on.
However, Outwitters only uses fog of war (i.e. hidden information) to increase depth by a lot. Players always feel they are in control of their actions, which makes losses feel more fair and wins feel more satisfying.
It is extremely hard to design a game with both depth and elegance. I approve 10/10
RE: Praise for Outwitters design - =) Random Task (= - 11-22-2012 07:39 PM
Garcia1000, I couldn't agree more. The overall concept is extremely elegant and well thought through.
I believe that the simplicity (no modifiers for special abilities or terrain) actually improving the depth of the game as all calculations can be made by the human brain of the player without the help of a calculator actually enabling us to plan the turns in our mind only.
By the way we have terrain. There are the holes and barriers in the map. Again a good example how you can introduce some complexity in a simple yet elegant way without overloading the ruleset.
RE: Praise for Outwitters design - Hunter - 11-22-2012 07:53 PM
This game is work of art and should be top of the AppStore because it is simple to understand but very interesting to find strategies or test yourself against players of the same skill as you. I commend OML for such amazing work
RE: Praise for Outwitters design - Jacs9 - 11-23-2012 12:37 AM
I agree with Garcia. This is a great game. I love abstract strategy games and this is really one of the best around. Other more common abstract strategy games are like chess, othello etc etc.
But sadly, this genre of game doesn't attract the majority of the gamers out there. I somehow feel that most casual gamers prefer games that don't require much thinking skills. I don't know of many friends who still plays chess. These are the games that help develop our cognitive abilities especially among children. While chess may no longer appeal to children, this game should be introduced to them instead as it is definitely more appealing.
RE: Praise for Outwitters design - blckace - 11-23-2012 12:43 AM
Great post garcia
just how good is outwitters to me? it's the only ios game on my ipad, everything else gets tried and deleted
RE: Praise for Outwitters design - Eijolend - 11-23-2012 05:48 AM
I totally agree! Combining simplicity and strategic depth is a great thing to achieve. The wits are an unique mechanic, that I haven't seen used in all these ways at once in any other game.
While it may seem like an obvious thing, that we who spend so much time on the forums like the game, but I think it surely doesn't hurt to repeat it sometimes: This is such a great game!
RE: Praise for Outwitters design - sam dicruj - 01-15-2013 02:11 PM
The wits are an unique mechanic, that I haven't seen used in all these ways at once in any other game.
RE: Praise for Outwitters design - topvideoguy - 01-17-2013 10:58 AM
I completely agree this is just full on strategy no chance critical-hit or anything this is one of the great masterpieces of iOS