Seth Johnson stops by and we talk about Mechanical Cousins. Different games based around very similar mechanics producing different dynamics and aesthetics.
Mechanical Cousins
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Eduardo Baraf is a game maker from Mountain View, California. He is married with two boys (5/8) and loves playing games with his family and friends at home. He owns Pencil First Games (Lift Off! Get me off this Planet, The Siblings Trouble, GemPacked Cards) and runs the YouTube channel: Edo’s Game Reviews. Professionally his career spans Video Games, Startups, and VR technology.
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2 Readers Commented
Join discussionHistory of the World is similar to Risk or Smallworld? That’s a comparison I’d expect a non-gamer to make, but not experienced gamers. Mechanically there’s no similarity, but yes, they’re all “dudes on a map” games. That’s a *genre* similarity perhaps, but not a mechanical similarity. Tsuro and Metro have a mechanical similarity (though perhaps not a genre similarity). You can find wargames that use the same system, with great mechanical similarity, but not these three.
Simplifying:
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Another form, about Japanese gardening actually, is “Your garden is not complete until there is nothing else that you can remove.”
Feedback appreciated, Lewis. Thanks for the quote too!