u/Icy-Description-7597

I wanna bring this up because I've seen lots of people say in here "ideas dont matter, execution does" whilst at the same time people on youtube like Jonas Tyroller thinks ideas matter a lot and the more I look in to it the more it feels like people are just talking about different things.

There's a post like some hours ago talking about what are some good games that has a bad Idea. The top comment in that post mentions how Vampire Survivor has a bad game idea because you can only move and choose upgrades but is that really the game idea of Vampire Survivors? My personal take is that the idea for Vampire Survivors a game where the player can gamble their way into becoming an op monster. If anything, the limited controls is the execution part of the game to make it more focused. And so to me Vampire Survivor doesn't have a bad idea and it's no wonder that vampire survivor is addictive when the whole idea is that the player can be Gambling and shoot 10 thousand flashy fireballs. But again, this is my take.

so what do you think is a Game Idea and Execution?

So I just recently found out that Outbound, a game I've been interested in has been released. However, it's safe to say that both the sales and reception of the game did not meet expectation.

It currently has mostly positive reviews on steam but is borderline mixed. A lot of people are pointing out that the game doesn't have a lot of things to do or is quite boring/shallow which brings me to ask you guys.

What makes a game Shallow or Deep?

Why do people think games like schedule I or Palworld is deep but outbound is shallow (btw I'm not trying to mock or defend any of the games here, just using them as examples). I have some theories and vibes as to why this is happening but let me know if this is correct or not.

I know in general a games progression consist of either :

1. A reward at each milestone (like progress to the story or an item/upgrade)
2. A punishment for not keeping up (like perma death)

but all the games mentioned above have a reward. If we break it down specifically, why does the progression of outbound feels unrewarding but schedule I does. My thinking is that aside from lack of content and slow progression, upgrading the look of a van doesn't really feel as interesting as building an building a drug empire. Specifically because the upgrades to the van doesn't really do anything gameplay wise, you still end up just driving a van at the end of the day where as when you build a drug empire, you start out by yourself but then is able to automate the process, which turns the game from just a simple package delivery game to a management sim.

What do you think? Also how do you guys make the progression system of your games?

I'd like to learn more about the design of the long term gameplay progression of a game as I am now about to wrap up my game's prototype and move on to the broader design and I don't want to make the same mistake and make my game boring after 1 hour.