
Tonight in the New Yorker (or at least one of its electronic proxies) is an article about the legendary toils of our prodigal son Steph Thirion, and his longsuffering iOS game Faraway- 2011 Fantastic Arcade grand prize winner, yet still not in our hot little hands. It’s such a shock and a joy to see any mainstream press of such a small and beautiful struggle
(and with an animated gif of the comet to boot!)
There’s an open problem in skill-based game design about the razor-thin line between simplicity and complexity. Too simple, and games become boring over time, converging on the anodyne safety of Candy Land. Too complex, and they become arcane mechanical labyrinths, glorified spreadsheets that molder even in the closets of obsessives. The zone of perfection between those extremes is a moving target, especially if, like Thirion, your role-model games have been played for centuries. “If I were to design Go, or chess, it would take many, many, many years to get that game right and balanced,” he explained, “so there’s a component of getting the gameplay right that took a long time.”