The Unallied

More than all other games, the original Pokemon was a game that hides its complex mechanics under a dead-simple interface. I like many Nintendo games for this reason, but I’m still impressed with how well they distilled the RPG formula into a one-on-one battle with just 4 actions for each side. The game gets much more complex simply by giving you many choices – you can customize your 6-Pokemon team, choosing them from 150 types, and choose the best 4 moves for each one. This kind of “layered complexity” is something I try to think about when designing games, and Pokemon was how I learned it.