You Don't Need Much Asymmetry to Make Resources Feel Different

One criticism I have heard of some games with many resource types is that the resources all feel the same. My own game, Sprocketforge, has four different types of mana that all obey the same rules. The earliest version actually had different rules for each of its resources:

• "Workers" were a reusable resource that exhausted when spent.
• "Steel" was a resource you gained whenever you trashed a gear.
• "Oil" was a resource you could use to pay any gear maintenance cost.
• "Water" was cheap to buy from the market.
• "Coins" didn't count toward your storage limits.

Having so many special cases ate up much of my complexity budget. But if you want resources to feel different, you don't need to make them all unique. Asymmetry is like a plague: it spreads through interactions. A small mechanical difference between resources grows into a larger asymmetry.

Slipway is a perfect example of how a small asymmetry can spread. Much like Masters of Orion, the game tasks you with creating a galactic civilization. You colonize worlds and construct interstellar trade routes between them. Each world has some resources that it needs and others it produces. The core challenge is ensuring every world gets what it needs to thrive.

All the basic resources in Slipways work the same way, with one exception: people. Each unemployed person in your empire lowers your happiness score multiplier by 1%. This tiny exception makes it important to find employment for people. Other resources then gain importance according to their relationship to people. Food and Goods are what you need to upgrade populated planets. Bots are what you need to produce Food. Ore and Tech are what you need to produce Bots and Goods. Every other resource derives its meaning from its relationship to population.

Another way to make resources feel different is through asymmetric relationships between them. In Century Spice Road, you gain cubes that you spend to buy point cards. Mechanically, all the cubes are identical. However, the game imposes a hierarchy through the upgrade system: some actions can "upgrade" a cube to the next level. Higher ranks aren't strictly better because they don't substitute for lower, but the one-way nature of the upgrade mechanic makes them feel different.

Making resources feel unique does not need to be complex. A single difference accomplishes a lot. This is true of asymmetry in general. And fewer differences make games easier to learn and more broadly appealing.