this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
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Developers can - and should - lift systems, mechanics, and whatever the hell else they want from any other title (occasional sticky legal protections aside). The problem arises when those things are copied uncritically.
Good games are intricate systems of interlocking mechanics, and good game designers put a lot of work into designing those things to create the specific play experience they have in mind.
If you want to reuse some or all of those aspects, you need to also understand how and why they work, so that you can apply them correctly in a new context. If you don’t, and instead just lazily copy with no plan or vision? That’s when people start calling things out as rip-offs.
But what does it mean to copy critically if you're copying everything?
What I'm thinking of is copying all major mechanics and only making a few minor changes based on what I find more fun. It's the kind of thing where it could be a mod, but it'll be a new game with new setting, characters and story just all the same mechanics.
If you're copying everything, you're NOT copying critically. You're putting no thought into WHY that mechanic was added in the exact way that it was.
Is that mechanic even needed?
Could it be done a different/better way to add complexity or simplify it, it alter the experience in a substantial way?
I'm trying to put thought but everything is just so tightly designed I feel like removing ANYTHING would ruin the appeal.
At the end of the day you have to have a reason to make your game. If you want to be heavily influenced that's fine, but your effort needs to come from a place of feeling like you have a vision for how it can be improved. That you have something to add. If you think the original game as it already exists is the perfect implementation of the concept, why make a new version?
If you’re not copying setting, characters or story then you’re not copying everything. Those are also part of the recipe that makes the game work, through things like level design, narrative design, and game feel.
Copying critically means not just copying blindly but understanding how things work and why they were designed that way to begin with. You talk about wanting to make changes, but do you know how they would affect all the other parts of the design?
It’s very common for new game designers to dive into making changes without a full understanding of what they’re even trying to solve, let alone the knock on effects of their proposed solutions.