Carter's Curse

Carter's Curse got months of art before anyone tested whether it was fun. Mark Brown built sprites, finishing moves, an intro cutscene and menus with big juicy buttons in Photoshop for an iPad game coded in Codea, inspired by Bookworm Adventures. The core gameplay turned out dull, and he was too far in and too demoralised to fix it, so he scrapped it.

He had assumed the idea would be fun because it felt fun in his head. He later learned from interviewing dozens of designers that successful games start as quick, ugly prototypes that test only the core mechanic. "I had basically built a house on really shaky foundations and then I was surprised and upset when my toilet fell through the floor."

The monster fights were decoration the player could ignore. Howard Carter fought zombies, mummies and Egyptian gods by solving Picross puzzles, but you could ignore the enemy half of the screen and just play Picross. The game had no tactics or strategy, so play could not change with the enemy and it became shallow and repetitive.

A puzzle with no tactical depth cannot be made harder or more interesting for different enemies, so the surrounding layer needs a real effect on what the player does. "It was immaterial that you were fighting enemies."