Dev Take Tuesday – Be a Star Baker

Can’t say I thought I’d ever get into a reality TV show again. Can’t say I’d expect that show to be about baking. But my wife and I just started the third season of the Great British Baking Show on Netflix. I’m not much of a baker specifically, but I do most of the cooking in our home. I know I’m overly cavalier when it comes to following the recipe, and one thing that has stuck out to me on the show is the need for balance between adherence to formulas and a creative touch.

Image from PBS via Collider

With cooking at an amateur level, I think you can get away with simply knowing some basic cooking principles and then putting stuff together that tastes good. But baking is more precise, more scientific. If you decide not to include the eggs this time around, you’re going to end up with a vastly different texture and taste. Still, on the Great British Baking Show the “star bakers” tend to be participants who find those little ingenious flourishes that wow the judges.

While some game developers do take my make-it-up-as-you-go approach to cooking, I think the best approach is usually the star baker technique. As a designer that means looking at what’s expected in the genre and fulfilling those expectations. That’s why (thoughtfully) playing games is imperative if you want to design them. Once you’ve learned how to follow the recipe, you can then add your own flourishes that will wow customers and critics. As someone who studied writing, I heard some iteration of “you need to know the rules before you can break them” in almost every creative writing course I took. I believe that’s solid advice for game design as well.

For Alkanaur, we’re aiming for that star baker tactic. From the early stages of design, I knew I wanted to make a tactics game that was faithful to the genre’s predecessors. In my opinion, there were three things our tactical RPG needed, no matter what: an empowering sense of progression, skillful use of positioning and abilities, and a robust class system that encouraged diversity. I’m excited for the creative flourishes we’ve added to Alkanaur, but I’m also excited to simply showcase how our small team can deliver the exact experience our audience is looking for when they hear the words “tactics RPG.”