Balancing a Game (part 1)

One of the most difficult--and time consuming--aspects of game design is making sure that everything is balanced. Balance is a crucial component for a fun and challenging game experience. If the game is too easy, there won't be a sense of accomplishment, but if the game is too difficult, only a few may attempt to play it (there are some types of gamers that actually enjoy punishing games, but they aren't in the majority.) Recently, we have made some minor adjustments to the rules in Solar Echoes to fine-tune game balance. Adjustments to existing games are common, such as with video games and the patches that are periodically issued to update the game. Designers do the best they can with the smaller test groups they have to work with, but once the game has been released to a much larger population of players, it is inevitable that exploits and flaws will be discovered. If designers don't address these issues, the game may tilt towards being too easy once these imbalances are widely known. Thankfully, Corefun can easily “patch” our digital rulebooks online with rules updates. With all the feedback we've been getting, it has helped us to make Solar Echoes a better game experience for players. This week, we'll discuss the discovery of an imbalance in Solar Echoes and the path we traveled to fix it!