Shrapnel Games Blog

I suppose an introduction is in order, since this is my first post. My name is Scott Lantz, (though I often am seen using the moniker “Hiro_Antagonist”,) and I am the main designer/developer/producer guy at Tiny Hero Game Studios. As you may have heard, Shrapnel recently announced that it will be publishing our first game, Land of Legends. We’re very proud to be partnering with Shrapnel for this title, but the mix may seem a bit unintuitive on the surface. After all, Shrapnel typically publishes war games or ‘hard-core’ strategy. And Land of Legends is a self-professed ‘casual strategy’ game with cartoonish graphics. Will Shrapnel’s audience have any interest in Land of Legends?

My answer, of course, is a resounding “Yes!” As it turns out, Shrapnel and Land of Legends aren’t as contradictory as they might seem on the surface. Even though Land of Legends is a ‘casual strategy’ game, that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic or shallow. Though I guess the best way to clear that up is to explain what ‘casual strategy’ actually means, and to compare that to better-known ‘hard-core strategy’ elements.

‘Hard-core strategy’ games usually feature very long games (many hours or days), complex rules that take many hours to fully learn, and so much content that any given player can rarely be aware of every factor in play. Often times, the rules are so complicated and numerous that players don’t even know them all.

‘Casual strategy’ games have a number of elements which are fundamentally different from ‘hard-core strategy’ games, though they can be equally deep and challenging. They tend to be simple to learn, and have a manageable amount of rules and elements. They tend to play more quickly, and they tend to appeal to more people.

So which is better? Casual strategy or hard-core? Well, the answer depends largely on your personal taste, but I believe that most gamers would enjoy both, at different times and for different reasons.

For example, the complexity of hard-core games is often perceived as a blessing — after all, a game with that much content and complexity offers seemingly endless opportunity for exploring the game. However, such complexity also comes with costs: if a game is too big for a player to know all of the rules and elements in play, how can a player make properly educated decisions? And if the game rewards players that have simply played (or studied) the game more than other players, then the game starts being less about skill and dynamic problem solving, and more about memorization and study. I’m a big believer in the idea that game should reward the *best* player, not just the player with the most experience playing it.

Also, while hard-core games tend to be longer and give more of an epic feel to each game, this can really impact a player’s ability to just sit down and have a complete and satisfying game experience in a short period of time. When games are so long, they tend be started far more often than finished. It can also be a pain to get a multi-player game going, since all players have to make huge time commitments before they even start, and if any given player has to leave for whatever reason, that can ruin the game for everyone. The more players involved and time required, the harder it is for everyone to be available and willing to play at the same time. With casual strategy games, playing a game isn’t a hugely complicated affair. And if the game offers a centralized matchmaking lobby (like Land of Legends does), it’s very easy to find opponents to play a quick game.

Another issue with hard-core games is that they tend to only attract a hard-core audience. More mainstream gamers tend to be alienated and mystified by giant, complex games. This can be a problem when you’re trying to get your friends or family excited about a game, so that you can all enjoy it together. But casual strategy games are typically designed from the ground up to be accessible and appealing to a much wider audience, just like most card or board games. (Card and board games are, after all, casual turn-based strategy games!)

And then there’s the myth that hard-core games are always capable of deeper strategy than casual games. But in reality, I’ve found that players usually just end up focusing on micromanagement issues, or the maps are so big that the player is functionally playing many smaller games at once. Sure, casual games *can* be more shallow (checkers or tic-tac-toe for instance), but they certainly don’t have to be. As anyone that’s played Chess or Advance Wars or Slay or Go can attest, simple rules don’t always mean simple strategies. A properly designed casual strategy game should be just as impossible to master as a hard-core game, and should always allow for the more clever and adept player to get the upper hand.

Don’t get me wrong — I love hard-core strategy games like Dominions II and Space Empires IV. *LOVE THEM* (In fact, those are the games that first introduced me to Shrapnel.) But I think that many gamers (and developers) have gotten bogged down in the philosophy that bigger is always better, and I’ve started leaning the other way. I don’t always have 2 days to play a single instance of a game. I want to play something fast, fun, and furious. I want my strategy lean and mean, with all the fat trimmed off.

Land of Legends is my answer.