Dissecting games #1: Why Balan failed

 This will likely be updated/ looked over again. I am making this because in the past I wanted to make something similar to this. Now in a 2D format mind you. The Balan world concept was a good concept, however failed to do the idea.

The idea of having different powers within different costumes, not a bad idea; however it failed in this area due to the lack of giving the player a time and place for suits but rather a whole selection of them, when ironically enough they wanted to make the game super simple but in turn accidentally made it hyper complex and overly choice complex at the end.

Let me explain; you have it where you can go through and pick a costume and mind you that said costume can only be picked up once you have collected it, because of this you had it where players were given a very broken concept to work with when it came to puzzle designing with an overly simple puzzle system.

The usage of the puzzle system being down to a single button, now single button puzzle systems can work but the question is how does the power interact with the environment.

You see you have a number of variables to work with; for Breath of the Wild for an example, the puzzles were much more open ended with how you could solve things, making it where solving it the unintended way just as valid as an answer with you being rewarded for being creative. In this same vein more closed puzzle systems where the rule sets are more limited for game mechanics and logic would be things like chess puzzles.

For a game like portal where it's balance between being creative and open ended creativity wise to solve something showing the usage of two game mechanics, portal 1 and portal 2 being a very simple but great concept with that game relying on how you use your portals to a great effect with the objects in the environment to beat the levels.

What did Balan world do? Overly simple one button pressed, you lose the ability to jump. Yup it failed at the idea entirely of doing anything creative or anything more closed as a puzzle system. Look, you need some form of depth for a puzzle system if you want players to engage with it and make the rules of that system clear as can be but with going this hyper simple route you lose what makes puzzles great in the first place.

Conclusion

Choose what kind of puzzle system you want to do; open and creative or more closed off and logical or you know; anything in between if you don't want to fail like Balan world. Yes I know only one reason why it failed but I don't want to go over a mountain of things in one blog post.

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