A game for two. Should I make it playable by more?

Question

I am developing a strategy game for two players. It is something somehow in the line of 1960: The Making of the President (but less complicated and with a quicker gaming rhythm…) Both the theme and the mechanics I have thought are optimised for two players.

Adapting the theme should not be very difficult ; it would mostly be a matter of choosing another contestant. Adapting the rules would require substantially more work and I fear that it might lessen playability.

Do you think that it is worth doing it that restricting the number of players to exactly two is not too restrictive?

Answer 1

It depends, probably not at first. Most truly enduring games (Chess, Go, Reversi, even Magic: The gathering, etc) were originally for two players. But also most of them have variants that arose later that allow 4 players.

In short, if adapting for more than 2 players is non-obvious, then it is probably not worth the initial effort. But if the game becomes popular and there is a demand for a multiplayer version, then it is likely worth doing at that point. The changes could be fairly small, or they could be substantial (Magic required only small tweaks to produce multiple multiplayer variants, but most multiplayer versions of chess require a different board and rules tweaks.)

Answer 2

A lot of people WANT a game for two players, and I can see a game that is obviously optimised for two as having a valuable USP all of its own.

As an example of a popular existing game for two, I offer to you Reiner Knizia's "Lost Cities" (though he did in fact create another game later using a similar central mechanic for larger numbers of players). With a bit of work you can adapt this for 3-4, but you have to buy an extra set to do so! Even so, it's a really popular game for couples and people without regular access to large gaming groups. I'm sure your game could be successful on similar terms too - if it's any good of course!