From week 6, I had received information that I didn’t consider about implementing in my game, one of the things I had learnt was game pillars. In Venny’s lecture, she had emphasised that game pillars are a set of core principles and outlines that are fixed at the beginning of a game. and it usually consists of 3-5 pillars; However, seeming as this is our first time creating our own pillars, we needed to stick to the minimum, which is 3.
Whilst researching this topic, I was scanning different websites to help me collect information, then I found some resources from GitHub. On this page, it explains what game pillars are and it lists the game pillars of the most popular games. In the tables below, I have shown what the game pillars are in these games.
The Last of Us
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
GitHub (n.d.)
What makes a bad game pillar?
Empty words: For your game, do NOT make a concept like “make a funny game” or “a game that sells itself”. To fix this problem, you need to be more direct with what you want in your game.
Tasks: When coming up with your game pillars, do NOT establish a task as a game pillar. Your game pillars need to be a simple concept or word(s)- never a task. E.G a pillar that describes an “accessible mini map” direct the attention on that game mechanic.
Technical concepts: Similar to tasks, technical concepts are bad examples of game pillars.
GitHub (n.d.)
Things to remember when making the game pillars
Loyalty: When you establish your game pillars, you need to remember them, and stick to them. Otherwise, you can completely de-rail from the original concept completely.
Enough is great!: If there are too many changes in the design, there won’t be enough time to execute the product.
Relevance: If you’re adding a new concept just because you think it’s “cool”, stop and think; si this relevant to my work? If not, it might be a bad idea.
Don’t mess up something that works: If you already have working game pillars and thinking of adding or completely changing it, you may ruin the game play.
Ask two questions: Will this mechanic fir the idea? Does it satisfy the game pillars? If the answer is no to both of these questions, it’s best not to put them in.
GitHub (n.d.)
Developing my game pillars
Before I dove straight into making my game pillars, I listed down the main principles of my game:
Eventually I settled with the following 3 pillars: Rich plot and character driven story telling, explore and unlock, psychological horror and deceptive tones.
