So I was explaining the weird history of my Tinselfly mechanics to someone at last night’s game developers get-together, and something just sorta clicked.

I’ve been hesitant to start level design, even though everything’s finally in place for me to do so, in part because I’m unsure about the fitness of my core mechanics in this project. My rationale goes something like this:

• My current mechanic was designed from beginning to end to be a fun combat system.
• Tinselfly will include very little combat.
• Therefore, I should pick should a mechanic more appropriate for Tinselfly and use my combat mechanic in a game set in a universe with random combat encounters or something. Both Tinselfly and said combat-based game would be more fun because I did this.

However, I think this is a logical fallacy. The mechanics suitability for a combat-based game does not necessarily make it unsuitable for Tinselfly.

Instead, I could be thinking this way:

• My current mechanic was designed from beginning to end to be a fun combat system.
• Compared to combat-based games, non-violent games can often be lacking in that hard-to-describe fun factor.
• Therefore, I should adapt my mechanic to Tinselfly, since I’m already confident it’s will be fun, and I because non-violent games deserve that same fun factor too.

The story for Tinselfly is pretty bleak in parts. And while there are certainly games out there — great games — that you feel compelled to play even though they’re not what you’d call ‘fun’ at all times, I don’t ever want the players of this game to see the moment-to-moment gameplay as a drag.

* * *

Part of the problem with adapting this mechanic is the inherent absurdity in many combat-based games, absurdities that have to be there to make the game sustainable.

Take dungeon crawls. Where did all those monsters come from? More to the point, why do the keep coming back after you slaughter them by the hundreds? What do they eat? Why does everyone’s discarded armor fit you, regardless of species or body type?

If I’m going to have constant, fun challenges for the player, I might do well to think a little less about where those challenges are coming from. There should be an inexplicably inexhaustible supply of people to help. An absurdly dangerous trek to the grocery store. Bureaucracies that are puzzle-like, not just in terms of paperwork, but in the layouts of civic buildings.

The Tinselfly universe, the version sitting in my head, is very real to me. It is nuanced and detailed and believable.

That could be a problem.

I can’t just gamify the player’s path through a naturalistic universe or the player’s perception of a naturalistic universe.

I have to gamify the universe itself.