Design by Subtraction: Less but Better

How to craft a meaningful experience

Hi all,

This week, I learned about a new game design philosophy called "Design by Subtraction". Let me share what I learned.

"Design by Subtraction" is a philosophy in game design introduced by Fumito Uedo, the mind behind Ico and Shadows of the Colossus. In simple terms, it means getting rid of anything that doesn't contribute to the core vision of the game.

Think about when Todd Howard mentioned Starfield having over 1000 planets, and the mixed reactions it received. Most people prefer quality over quantity, and that’s what this approach helps you achieve: Doing more with less.

This approach helps you craft a cohesive and thoughtful experience because once you remove everything unnecessary, what’s left in the game will work towards the same goal: enhancing the desired experience of the game.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Examples

1. Ico: Playing as Ico, your main objective is escaping from a castle with a girl, Yorda. You solve puzzles by interreacting the environment, help Yorda, and fight monsters with your sword. And that’s about it. ****There is no intelligible dialogue, no UI or any fancy mechanic. Only two characters who are solving puzzles and bonding along the way. Nevertheless, the game is considered a timeless cult classic.

2. Fez: The central idea of Fez can be summarized in one line: "Reality is perception." Every element in the game, including its well-known core mechanic of rotating the world in a 2D camera angle, revolves around this central theme.

3. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons: By assigning each brother to a separate thumbstick, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons delivers complex emotions and relationships without the need for extensive dialogue. All you do is to complete small tasks with your brother using a simple control scheme.

4. Journey: There are only two mechanics in Journey: sing and jump. These two mechanics enable players to solve puzzles, interact with environment and continue towards the destination. No dialogue, no UI. Only a sense of journey.

As you might realized, these games share some common features like:

• Small variety of mechanics

• Minimum UI

• Few characters & minimum dialogue

• Focus on objective

Of course, this doesn’t mean you need to tick all of these boxes to create a minimal and cohesive design. You can have an extensive UI, complex mechanics and still have cohesive game if all the elements are working together towards the same goal. This is just to prove that you don’t need more than a small number of characters and mechanics for a creating a great experience.

How to apply

Let’s get practical: How do we wear the lens of subtraction?

1. What’s the intention of your game: First, we need to know the intention of our game. Remember the design pillars we talked about some time ago? Those pillars are really helpful when deciding on what to remove and what to keep.

2. Kill your darlings: Evaluate each element—mechanics, storylines, visuals—and ask, "Would my game be better without this?"

   Since implementing each element takes so much time and effort, your brain will probably convince you to keep it. But be honest with yourself and listen to your gut. Act as if someone else created this game, and they are paying you to trim it down to most essential parts.

3. Ask yourself:

   • If I have to keep only one single game mechanic, which one would it be?

   • How would the game feel like if I removed all the UI?

   • What’s the player’s main objective through the game, and do the other elements emphasize that objective? Which ones do not?

   • If I removed the dialogues, how would I convey the narrative?

In conclusion, being an indie developer means having restrictions but also the freedom to remove unnecessary weight. We don't need to reach great heights to deliver an enjoyable experience.

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To-Do List

Read: Postmortem: Chants of Sennaar's Story & Road to Success

Watch: The Design Philosophy of Fumito Ueda

Learn: *Ma* (negative space)

Check out: Build Your Fantasy World With KatBash3D’s Enchanted Collection (3D asset bundle)

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Me

Reading: The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. Great read so far.

Watching: Still Blue Eye Samurai.

Playing: Mafia 2. Feels good to play a linear game time to time.

Listening:

Thanks for reading!

And that’s it from today’s issue of GameDev’s Journey. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. If you did, please like and leave a comment. Reach out for suggestions, objections, questions, or just say hi.

But regardless, thank you so much for reading, and have a great game dev journey!