“THIS GAME IS A FELDIAN POINT SALAD.”
What does that even mean? Well, it was designed by <PERSON>, so by definition it must be 'Feldian', right? And 'Point Salad'? I understand what is intended by that phrase. It's quite pithy. For some people a 'Point Salad' game is a generous game. It's a game that is always giving, and therefore gentle on the ego of players. For others a 'Point Salad' game is the equivalent of a school sports day where everyone gets a ribbon for taking part, regardless of placing.
I hear something different. Something very different. When someone tells me that a game is 'Feldian' then my own personal dictionary substitutes the word 'sadistic'. When I hear 'Point Salad', I think 'deliberately opaque'.
Aquasphere is a Feldian Point Salad. It's sadistic and deliberately opaque.
I don't understand any way of thinking about Feld that doesn't acknowledge the fact that he designs some of the most vicious games out there. Aquasphere is no different.
It's a core concept of game design to give the players difficult (i.e. meaningful) decisions. This can be generated by ensuring that the players have to manage limited resources (see almost every game ever made) and/or by forcing the players to compete with one another for limited actions (see almost every worker placement game ever made, except for unusual ones like Ninjatowhere taking an action doesn't block other players. Seriously, what's up with that?). Aquasphere embraces these fundamentals, as you'd expect from an experienced designer like <PERSON>. I want to move to this section and deploy a Submarine in this section, but I don't have enough Time to do both. I want to take this Research card and this Lab section and kill those Octopods, but another player might well be after one or more of those same things. This is vexing. This is good design. But this is not 'vexing' enough for Feld. This is not 'good design' enough for Feld. These alone do not make it 'Feldian'. No. For Feld, there has to be another source of conflict. For Feld, the game also has to pit the player against him or herself. 118
So let's program a Bot. But which program do you want? By saying 'Yes' to one program, you are also saying 'No' to another in an ever decreasing spiral of limitation. That's what makes this game 'Feldian'. For you, sir or madam, Mr. <PERSON> is happy to go the extra mile and design a game in which you are not just screwed over by it or by the other players, but you are also forced to screw yourself over. Repeatedly. Whether it's programming a Bot, or the <PERSON> action selection of Trajan, you are going to be your own worst enemy. You'll sit and take it, and you will like it.
So, to be 'Feldian' is to be sadistic. And to consume a 'Point Salad' is to immerse yourself in the 'deliberately opaque'.
Aquasphere has many moving parts. I counted at least a billion. And the value of these individual moving parts to your cause is not immediately obvious at any point in the game. In the early stages it is impossible to tell who is winning. Good. So you play on, oblivious. Then in later stages of the game it occurs to you that it is still impossible to tell who is winning. End game scoring makes a mockery of any attempts to bring your feeble mental computing power online, as does the unpredictability of the next five minutes.
For a new player who has no idea what he or she is doing, it's very easy to blunder along almost at random. Because you are always scoring points, or seemingly improving your game position, it's very difficult to tell whether or not you are actually playing well, or whether or not you are setting yourself up for a particularly brutal end game scoring experience. So many moving parts. So little feedback, except for the persistent internal nagging that accuses you of sub-optimal play at every step. The temptation is there to just sit back and let the flow of the game carry you along. Sure, you will lose, but you'll probably only lose by a handful of points. It's like plate-spinning in a hurricane. There's a small chance that the winds will howl just right and end up doing all your work for you, making you look like a legend for a short while, but the fickle nature of...errr...Nature also means that the very next second you could be picking shards of bone china out of your face. Feld does not design gentle, ego-massaging games. He designs nasty, complex slapping machines. 118