Game design thinking
You know, idle games have brought up interesting methods of engaging gameplay that other games could leverage to make skill gating less punishing and overall make games more accessible...
Game design thinking
But... I feel like the envelope for telling a story is still there in idle game mechanics - the concept on limiting how much effort it takes to advance gives you a way to make engaging difficulty while putting a ceiling on what's needed to get there
If you apply this more broadly, you create games that can actually focus on the story instead of around grinding until you can beat the next boss
I know grinding is satisfying for some folks but not all...
Game design thinking
@vahnj There was a neat mechanic in an explorative story game I played recently. Tacoma. You could literally play it as an idle game if you want. The only thing the game actually /requires/ you do to is go to a place, put a thing in the wall, and wait 30 minutes or so while a progress bar fills.
However, every area has places to explore and recordings of people you can use to figure out what happened to the station. Enabled by waiting. :-)
Game design thinking
@emanate yes. this is good.
Game design thinking
I actually just designed a music game with the boy that leverages advancing the game using idle mechanics, but at its core it's effectively a music game.