Game design is like a well-choreographed dance between the creator and the consumer. Through good design, the gap can be bridged between the intentions of the developers in the past and the experiences of the players in the present to create a single, harmonious whole.
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| (Original image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
Make no mistake though, this is not a bad thing. To some extent, it is inevitable that we'll find a way to break our games in a medium where consumers are given any kind of agency. Instead of trying to solve this problem though, what I would like to put forward today is a proposal; that more games should embrace the jank and please, let us cheese your games.
Some case studies in cheese
On the surface, many of my favourite games from recent years don't have a lot in common. Balatro and Elden Ring are my most played games this year but if you asked me to draw a Venn diagram of their features, the only thing in the centre would be that I'm piss poor at both. However, despite their clearly divergent gameplay and design elements, both exist as part of an ongoing trend of games that aren't afraid to let you bend and break their challenges through cheese.
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For my first example of intentional cheese in action, take Balatro, this year's indie darling poker roguelike. The game's random elements mean that runs can range from nail-biting struggles for progress all the way up to sailing through challenges mounted atop a throne of gold-encrusted poker chips. It's a solid design setup and one that is rife for exploitation with the right combinations of decks, jokers and booster cards.
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What makes Balatro stand out in this respect though, is that it doesn't try to limit your abilities. You might collect a joker that boosts your face cards, arcana packs that thin your deck to just face cards and then another joker that causes all face cards to be retriggered multiple times over with high multipliers. This, fairly obviously, destroys the challenge of the game but at no point does the game try to say that those abilities are incompatible or that the player is not allowed to be overpowered. It simply sits back and lets the player enjoy their godlike strength as if to say, "You've earned it, this round's on us."
Elden Ring offers another case study for this, albeit in a very different context. Both the base-game of Elden Ring and its recent DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree were lauded upon release for their high difficulty. However, you don't have to look very far to find players capable of trivialising significant portions of the game with the correct build whether it be magic, lightning spells or giant hammers doing the heavy-lifting.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
This is a fairly similar trick to the one that Balatro pulls. Elden Ring's high difficulty, like Balatro's random elements, incentivizes experimentation and creative character-building to overcome challenges. Equally, much like in Balatro, there is also a deliberate choice to allow players to stack various buffs and special abilities together to make yourself wildly overpowered if you are so inclined. This rewards players for experimenting and getting creative with their choices because they get to see their experiments pay off when they easily overcome previously insurmountable obstacles.
A final example of intentional cheese in practice works a little differently because, unlike Elden Ring and Balatro, it doesn't involve any form of buff stacking. Prey from 2017 took the immersive sim approach of letting players tackle problems in any way that they pleased, before taking it one step further with the gloo gun.
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| (Image property of Arkane Austin and Bethesda Softworks) |
The gloo gun, shockingly, fires glue. It's what the glue can do though that makes things interesting. The glue is capable of sticking to most flat surfaces, allowing players to build stairs, bridges and makeshift ladders to aid them in their exploration. This gives players whole new avenues to explore for getting around the Talos-1 space station and the game just lets you get away with it. If you wanted to gloo gun your way around the roof of every room you enter to avoid all of the enemies, the game is more than happy to let you do that. The only limitations placed upon you are to your vision and your patience to make it happen.
Prey is a particularly interesting example for this discussion because the cheesy tactics that the gloo gun supports won't help you to do more damage or defeat enemies more easily like in Elden Ring or Balatro. Rather, it offers a less direct solution to your problems by allowing you to completely circumvent any challenges or areas that might be giving you trouble through your own creativity and lateral thinking. You're still overcoming a challenge through your own experimental thinking, the difference is that you're able to do it without ever having to face the challenge head on.
Why is this a good thing?
I don't think it's a coincidence that so many games that I've enjoyed, including those listed above, include ways to solve your problems through cheesy tactics. So much of what we do in games involves some form of exploration or experimentation with the end goal of solving a problem. It could be a boss, it could be a puzzle, regardless, there will always be some level of exploring or experimenting to try and overcome that challenge. Overcoming the challenge is where the satisfaction comes from.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
With this in mind, games that allow you to create overpowered or wildly creative solutions to problems offer us a glimpse at the logical endpoint for creating satisfaction in players. If so many games are about experimenting to find solutions to problems, then games that allow you to find outrageously powerful solutions to their problems will always be some of the most satisfying.
Trivialising a game that is meant to be difficult, like Elden Ring, is incredibly satisfying because you've proven your superiority over a difficult foe. Forming a perfect combination of cards from Balatro's randomised gambling hellscape makes you feel high on your own good fortunes and strategic genius. Evading problems that would otherwise cause you a great deal of strife in Prey gives you that impish feeling of having gamed the system. In a single word, it is satisfying to find ways to cheese your games.
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| (Image property of LocalThunk and Playstack) |
What's more, even beyond the simple satisfaction of it, there's something very personal about finding your own solutions to a game's challenges. You feel more like an active participant in the narrative of your games when your own ingenuity is what allows you to overcome its obstacles. Players take ownership of their own solutions, this makes players feel more connected to the game and more players feeling a connection with their game is better for the developers. Everyone wins.
Last but not least, while there is a certain irony to saying it, allowing players to solve problems through cheese creates a healthy environment of fair play. There's nothing that kills my enthusiasm for a game quite like the game setting up barriers to my creativity. A good example is invisible walls. Everybody knows that game worlds have to have limitations and yet we all hate invisible walls. Why? Because nobody likes being told to their face that they're having too much fun. We know that we can't go beyond that boundary but somehow having a wall thrown in our face to stop us just feels insulting.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
The same applies with cheese strategies. If I conceive of an outrageously overpowered build in Elden Ring only to find that the game doesn't allow my various buffs and talismans to stack together, I'm going to inevitably be disappointed. The idea that a game remains consistent in its rules, even if it makes the player overpowered, creates the feeling that the game is playing fair and that it is not unjustly trying to stifle the player's creativity simple for the sake of maintaining balance.
Conclusion
Hopefully I've made my case here clear for why I think more games should allow me to cheese to my heart's content. While it might not be at the forefront of people's minds in the modern gaming landscape, I do still think there is value to cheesing games. If every game maintains a strict difficulty curve and controls players' progression with an iron fist, then I can't help but feel like games could really lose their sense of identity and a lot of fun that comes from messing around an experimenting with them.
What do you think though? Should more games allow us to find cheesy solutions to their problems? Do you have any recommendations of any other games that do this well? Feel free to let me know and I wish you all a lovely day.
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