Less Buttons and More Fun
If you are a game designer reaching for your game’s highest potential, or a warmongering strategist, look no further. We’ll be taking apart a strategy game, and improving it.
Religion Inc. has a straightforward idea: play god and get as many followers as possible until you reach a limit and the game ends. It seems simple and mediocre! Right? Well…yes…but…
This game totally hooked me. You start by picking your first kingdom and then you have to build it up. There are three main ways to grow your religion: figuring out your beliefs, spreading the word to others, and working with the government and schools. What's really cool is how different places with different people and weather affect how your religion grows.
Religion.Inc
Everything I said was a lie...
Everything I said was a lie...
…and hopefully, there’s an obvious reason why. From the top left to bottom right: there are so many damn controls (which are all useless)!
Dear god, this game is as detailed as my world history book.
Simplicity is the concept that this game didn’t understand. Look at the sheer amount of buttons in the picture! Every successful game finds a balance between difficulty and dynamics. Religion Inc. is nowhere on that rope.
The three main Stats of your religion are it’s Popularity, Austerity (what is austerity bro), and Fanaticism. If the game had stopped here, the game could have been saved, but the creators stuck their tongues out and laughed: “let’s put as many controls as we possibly can”, and so they created the Religion book.
The religion book is a window in the game that shows you your religion’s level-ups as a web. There are three main tabs, but you don’t need two of them. There is Preaching (virtually) useless, Ideology (the only useful one), and Intervention (the most useless game tab I have ever laid my eyes on).
You might be like: “Why would you say such a thing?”.
When you honestly review the game, Preaching and Intervention don’t impact your levels of people baptized half as much as ideology does.
As a game designer, I know what it's like to try and stuff a game full of controls to make it fun. But the truth is, the best games are fun because of their main idea.
Before we change Religion Inc., let’s take a look at a strategy game done right.
Polytopia: a Strategy Game done right
I’ve been playing Polytopia for the past year, and I never get tired of playing it. Much different from GameFirst1’s slop of a game (Religion Inc.), Polytopia is a pretty easy game to learn, and it’s really smart about how it handles different tribes and how they work together. Put simply, Polytopia knew how to hook its audience where Religion Inc. didn’t.
That special place is each web of achievements. You’ve seen Religion Inc.’s, so take a look at Polytopia’s:
This is the Polytopia Technology tree. Call it the Tech Tree or Preaching, Ideology, or Intervention, they all signify growth in each game.
Observing a good game’s layout versus a bad one’s the difference is crystal clear: Compared to Religion Inc.’s three-dimensional chess of a web, Polytopia’s web is simpler, even though it still dives into deep subjects like diplomacy and economy.
Polytopia is an example of a simple gameplay, so that there is less time playing with the controls, and more time trolling your enemy.
Now let’s fix Religion Inc.
I can’t roast this game and leave!
Given that the controls are too complicated, I would make two major changes before moving to the nuances of Religion Inc.
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To dramatically improve the game, It would be best to move Preaching under Ideology. Why? Well, preaching is defined through a religion's ideology or thought process, so instead of making Preaching a different component, it's best to make it a subgenre. I would also dispose of intervention: it's best to get rid of components that don't make a big impact so that the strategy is the focal point (a nice way of saying that it was one of the most stupid things I have ever seen in my entire gaming experience).
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I never really cared about terms like Popularity, Austerity, and Fanaticism. Neither did I care about the difference between my Believers and Fanatics. I just wanted to grow my religion. To make the game more about strategy, I'd suggest two new things:
Influence: This shows how much your religion will grow if you expand your beliefs.
Followers: A real-time count of how many people believe in your religion. This number goes up when you expand your beliefs.
If you're a gamer looking for a new game, one of the first things to check is its easy use. Does it take forever to get around? Can you figure out where to go to change your stuff? Good games let you find what you need quickly and easily so that there is less time sifting through stats and more time battling it out with the opponent.
Game makers who are finishing up their games should focus on gameplay. I think gameplay is way more important than how you control things. If you need help, just ask me – it's free!
Blanket Fort Boss logging off…
THe best part ? religion inc. has 4.4 stars on google . don't trust ratings . that's what im here to do !