Meadowvale - Less is More

Design Principle – Less is More

As a composer I am always looking to make the most of limited material.
In Meadowvale, an early design principle followed a similar train of thought. Start with no rules, and then add one at a time and see if it was necessary. At every decision point, ask the question, was that necessary? does it help onboarding? does it break the flow? and so on.

So I didn't start with a list of actions that players could choose from, or different phases of play, or a mathematical system.
Simply this:

Place 2 terrain tiles
Place one wildlife token
Redraw

That’s it. But within that simple starting point the challenge was to ensure all the complexity of interactions on the board could take place.
So, less rules, more intuition. Scoring and placement rules followed, but the mechanics only earned their place if they were absolutely necessary and driven by the theme.