Thinking in the Box

I often try to work inside very tight constraints. That's not because there's something virtuous about restriction but because a small box amplifies decision-making.

When space and components are limited, a design is forced to show its workings early. Fluff and theming can't obscure them, and gimmicks aren't an option.

In a constrained space, false decisions are hard to hide. If choosing A or B leads to the same outcome a turn later, players notice quickly. Similarly, if one option is always visibly superior, optimisation replaces engagement almost immediately.

At the same time, this isn't solved by simply adding randomness. Too much chance, and players become nothing more than engines to run set procedures with no meaningful choice, just the luck of the draw.

Tight constraints change the nature of pressure too. With limited room to manoeuvre, decisions matter sooner. Mistakes can't be set aside indefinitely, and endings can't be postponed forever - for anyone who's tried to conquer Madagascar in a game of Risk, that's a blessing.

That pressure doesn't come from complexity. It emerges when a system can absorb only a limited amount of player input. Progress becomes a commitment rather than a calculation, because the same decision may not be supported later.

Working inside a small box isn't an argument for small games. Larger designs rely on constraints just as much; they're just less immediately visible, distributed across more expansive systems. What matters is whether those constraints are chosen deliberately or inherited without looking. Unexamined limits tend to produce muddled experiences, while deliberate ones give a design clearer shape.

I keep coming back to tight constraints because they make iteration honest. Feedback arrives quickly, and weak ideas collapse fast. It doesn't make the results better by default, but it does make them clearer, sooner. Once a system can hold together under pressure, it becomes easier to decide what to expand and what to leave alone.

The box doesn't define the final form of the game, but it does make decisions harder to put off. Thinking in the box isn't about denying possibilities. It's a way to see the shape of a design before it has somewhere to hide, and to decide what's worth keeping before burying it under layers of complexity.