Use reference games to sharpen your own design questions, not to supply their answers. Start with the player experience you want, identify what a reference does that might help create it, and test that principle in a version built for your game.
Begin with the experience, not the reference list
Before naming games to emulate, write one sentence about what you want players to feel, notice, or decide. Make it specific enough to guide choices: for example, “Players should feel responsible for a fragile crew while making fast decisions under pressure.” That sentence is a design compass, not a feature list. It leaves room for several mechanics to serve the same experience.
The development of FTL: Faster Than Light offers a useful example. In its postmortem, Subset Games’ Matthew Davis and Justin Ma described the project as beginning with a desire to experience what it would feel like to captain a starship. Player experience came first; gameplay structures, mechanics, and genre followed. Read the GDC session description.
This order matters because a familiar reference can make a ready-made solution feel inevitable. If you begin with “make combat like this game,” you may inherit assumptions that do not serve your intended experience. If you begin with a player-facing goal, you can ask whether that combat model—or any model—actually helps.
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Study a reference for one quality at a time
When a game inspires you, name the particular quality you are studying and why it matters to your project. “I like this game” is a starting point; it is not yet a design brief.
- Quality: What exactly works for you—pacing, spatial readability, a decision’s emotional weight, or something else?
- Effect: What does that quality cause the player to understand, feel, or do?
- Project connection: How might that effect support the experience you defined?
Then separate the quality from the surface feature. A game may create tension through a timer, limited resources, uncertain information, or the risk of losing something valuable. Copying its timer does not necessarily copy the reason the moment feels tense. Ask what underlying principle produces the effect, then look for an expression that fits your game.
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Build a wider pool of influences
More than one game can help you avoid treating a single reference as a complete blueprint. You can also look outside games for a useful pattern, mood, or problem. The point is not to collect influences indiscriminately; it is to find ideas that illuminate the experience your project is trying to create.
In a 2009 GDC panel report, game creator Goichi Suda described drawing ideas from TV shows, films, and games, accumulating them, and eventually bringing them together in a game. Bethesda designer Emil Pagliarulo discussed reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and asking how to translate inspiration from another medium into a game. Read Game Developer’s report on the panel.
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Translation is the key: a film can suggest a mood or a kind of reveal, but a game must make that idea work through what players can do, perceive, and affect. A useful reference note therefore records not only the source, but also the transferable principle and the question it raises for your project.
Turn a design question into a playable test
Do not settle a borrowed idea by arguing only from taste or familiarity. Make a small playable version that can answer one concrete question. Keep the test narrow enough that you can observe whether the idea produces the intended effect.
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- State the question. For example: “Does giving players a way to undo a mistake make experimentation feel safer without removing consequence?”
- Build the smallest useful test. Include only what is needed to make that decision playable; avoid polishing unrelated systems.
- Observe the result. Notice what the system permits, what players understand, and what they actually do or feel. Compare those observations with your goal rather than with how closely the test resembles its inspiration.
- Decide what to keep. Keep, change, or remove the idea based on whether it serves the intended experience.
Jonathan Blow described testing an early question for Braid in code: “What happens if I gave the player the chance to rewind time in an unlimited way?” He said the outcomes revealed through testing were things he could not have foreseen. The same report quotes him saying, “Contemporary game design is so often about dictating, rather than listening,” a useful reminder to pay attention to what a system makes possible rather than assuming in advance what it will mean. Read Game Developer’s report on Blow’s talk.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Use feedback as evidence, not an order
A fresh player or teammate can expose assumptions that the design team no longer notices. Ask them to try the build, then record what they understood, where they hesitated, and what they experienced. Those observations are evidence about the current version; they do not automatically dictate the next one.
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In the 2009 panel report, Fumito Ueda said he watched focus players to see the game as if experiencing it for the first time, while also making clear that he did not change everything based on what they said. Feedback is most useful when interpreted against the project’s goal: a reaction may reveal a genuine mismatch, a confusing implementation, or simply a preference that does not fit the intended experience.
Ueda also said, “We always are making an effort to create the best thing, so changing the plan is not a bad thing.” A stable goal does not require a fixed design. The same panel report describes changes to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus while the team’s target remained the same, and discusses Pagliarulo’s account of playing the team’s own game and changing ideas that did not work. See the panel report.
Know when a reference is taking over
Revisit your reference list when it starts choosing solutions before your team has named the problem. Warning signs include:
- Your design notes describe what the reference game does, but not the player effect you want.
- A feature stays in the design because it is iconic in another game, not because a test supports it.
- Team discussions focus on matching a source’s surface details instead of asking what your own build needs.
- Feedback is treated as a vote to become more like a familiar game, rather than evidence to interpret in light of the project’s goal.
Originality is also a matter of vision and positioning, not a result that can be purchased or guaranteed. GDC’s description of a talk by Paradox Interactive’s Fredrik Wester addresses the advantages of originality and finding and expressing a vision. That is an industry perspective, not proof that originality guarantees commercial success. Read the GDC session description.
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References are not something you need to avoid. Use them to generate sharper questions, draw selectively from several sources, and let playtests show whether an idea belongs in your game. The goal should guide the choices; the design can change as you learn.
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