Picokaiju by spoik is very cool because it’s inspired by two other games and we get to see the evolution of a concept—its iterations! Very cool, that’s kind of what I talked about last week.

Crush, crumble, and chomp by Epyx inspired Chomp! by Picardy Third Entertainment which then inspired Picokaiju. Long story short, to me it looks like a lesson in removing stuff and fluff:

“One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” - Bruce Lee

It’s like seeing behind the curtain to glimpse what the process is like. I wrote an article about Why Monopoly is frustrating, and one of the points is that you lose control towards the end of the game. Well, more like the early middle, and then it’s just an agonizing few hours of daily decrease that always runs to bankruptcy. But I also say that too many options is bad, and these three games are good examples. Picokaiju has the fewest options of the bunch, but it’s the most satisfying, too. Funny how that works. Now, I’m not saying that it’s a game that you can sink 20 hours into. The simplicity is great, but introducing complexities as you succeed would be awesome to create depth.

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