The Advantages of Prefabrication

One thing that makes games fun is player creativity. Designing something in-game creates a greater sense of ownership and emotional attachment. But design can be a lot of work and sometimes matters only superficially. The trick is to determine when choices start to matter and prefabricate everything below that level.

The classic video game Dungeon Keeper 2 asks you to build and defend a dungeon. You decide where to place rooms, what shape to make them, and how to connect them. You place traps, manage monsters, and cast targeted spells. You control every aspect of your dungeon.

Dungeon Keeper's spiritual successor, The Wratch's Den, takes a different approach. When you build new rooms, it presents you with a list of options. When you choose one, the game randomly places it, fully formed, somewhere in your dungeon. When you craft traps, it also places them randomly.

Even though The Wratch's Den gives you much less control over your dungeon's layout, it doesn't lose anything. In fact, the unpredictability creates interesting challenges. The prefabricated rooms also have more character than Dungeon Keeper's rooms. Without needing to adapt to a layout, they can be handcrafted with lots of detail.

Thronefall is another video game that benefits from prefabrication. It is a strategy game where you build a kingdom by day and defend it by night. However, it predetermines where you can build. The map has specific building sites, and each allows only specific buildings. For example, a site might let you build either a farm or a watchtower.

Most city builders and tower defense games give you a building menu and let you build anywhere. Thronefall trades this creative freedom for radically simpler controls than its peers. You don't have to page through menus or drag a build outline around; you travel to a node and choose between two or three options.

Prefabrication matters because player input in video games is expensive. Prefabrication allows you to present a simpler interface to the player. If you can do that without sacrificing gameplay, it is a trade well worth making.