I once played an old (ASCII) roguelike where your character could randomly choke on an apple and die. My mind raced with theories about the game's depth. Was it simulating food? Breathing? Anatomy?
Thankfully, the game was open-source, so I checked the code. It was a single line that basically said: if (random() < 0.01) { choke(); }.
This made me realize one of the most powerful tools we have as procedural designers: the player’s imagination. Players don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes, so they will often fill in the gaps with their own complex theories.
Recently I had to think of this again, when I received a LinkedIn DM with broken markup: "{Hello|Hi|What's up?} Riad". It reminded me of how we used text manipulation in Curious Expedition.
Initially, we used procedural text to swap synonyms: "A {handsome|good-looking|charismatic} person." This turned out to be completely pointless. The variation was technically there, but it had no emotional impact. It was text-based oatmeal (see lesson #1).
So, we changed our approach to use antonyms or emotionally distinct words: "An {ugly|menacing|friendly|ambitious} person". The effect was very different. Players could invent complex theories about why the game chose "menacing" over "friendly" for a character on that specific run.
Sometimes there was a deep mechanical reason... but often, there wasn't.
We got away with it, just like the apple-choking game did. We created an illusion of complexity. I feel a lot about proc-gen game design is about playing with this illusion.
This is the 5th post in my series on the "95% problem" in procedural design.
Thanks for following this series! What's a simple game mechanic that made you believe the world was far more complex than it probably was?