Chasing the Strange: Designing Beyond Realism

When a game pulls that off, I’m hooked.
When it doesn’t, my interest fades faster than the opening logo.

It’s not that realistic games are bad. A lot of them are beautiful in ways I’ll happily acknowledge. But when a studio pours a mountain of money into making sure every bead of sweat on a soldier’s eyebrow reflects exactly the right angle of sunset, I start wondering if we all collectively forgot what makes games exciting in the first place.

For me, games shine when they give you something you can’t get anywhere else.
Not necessarily something louder or more cinematic.
Just something… different.
A change in how you think. A rule that bends. A moment that could never exist if the world weren’t made of ideas instead of atoms. If you can do something in reality already, just do that. No need to actually play a game that mimics it.

Idle games, for example, rarely grab me. Nothing against them; they’re built for a different kind of mindset. They’re designed as a comfy loop. But comfort isn’t really what I look for when I sit down to play. If I wanted to watch numbers grow all day, I’d—well, I wouldn’t.

Here’s the kind of thing that excites me: imagine a shooter where you can travel to different dimensions and each dimension the rules are different. In one dimension, bullets heal. In another, gravity is inconsistent. And rather than the game being a simple "make the other guy dead" it's constantly in flux and there's enough chaos to make it fun.

Not weird for the sake of being weird.
Just a different lens on the same genre.

AAA studios could chase ideas like this. The talent is absolutely there. But most of the industry seems locked on recreating reality with slightly prettier puddles. Impressive, sure, but it reminds me of someone polishing the exterior of a car that doesn’t have an engine yet. Beautiful surface, no movement.

There are, of course, exceptions. Kirby Air Riders looks like an honestly interesting game that's more than a racer. I'm curious to see what comes of that. And I'm not here to bash on AAA games. But the thing is, you get a bunch of people working away at a studio and the magic can easily die if you aren't careful. It's why I like indie games so much, and why I like being an indie game designer, even if I haven't finished ahem - my first game yet.

What I love—what I want to build—are games that take advantage of the fact they don’t have to behave like the real world at all.
Games that feel like dreams you can move around in.
Games that operate like metaphors you can interact with.
Games where the rules themselves carry meaning.

That’s the kind of world I want to create with my projects.
And honestly, the kind I want to play.