Discovering a game is fun; finishing it is boring.
Don't tell all the rules. Don't tell what's practical, what's most efficient, what does what.
Allow for crazy ideas and stupid epiphanies. Let people be invested enough to make connections between elements and try weird things -- even if they don't work -- especially if they don't work.
Build contraptions people are not used to. Hide the cogs, don't let people tear apart individual, understandable components. Make a big black box full of fog.
Or lay bare all the ingredients, let everything tell precisely how it would taste in isolation, then mix everything into a big pot. Confuse people with dynamics and interactions they couldn't foresee between these things they thought they understood.
Make rough things. Don't over-polish. Smooth things are too predictable.
Change the rules at some point. Create crevices and wrinkles that break up the landscape of the game. Create rivers of play that flow in unexpected ways.
Prevent access to parts of the game. Don't let people witness everything.
Open gates and passages silently. Let people stumble upon a cleared path and let them wonder why they can go that way now. Don't tell them why.
Make games that surprise people. Make games that deceive people. (make games that cheat if you need to)
We can never really master the world we're in. Unlimited control creates harm to other parts of our ecosystem and would become boring for us anyway. We need to come to terms with the beauty of being small and having to adjust to suprising occurences.
Games don't have to simulate absolute, capitalistic control over the environment. They can help us accept the unexpected in our lives by refusing to be conquered.
Mastery isn't the point.
Poetry and fun lie in the mystery.
Initally written for the Manifesto Jam 2022 on itch.io