Does games need to be complex in order to be fun?

Last week, we had an assignment in the course Advanced Game Design where we were supposed to play two board games and one role-playing game and write an analysis of them. I will not go into much depth about that, but after some thinking, I wondered if game needs to be "complex" in order to be fun to play. I'm gonna do some reflection over the board games that my group played.

Note that these opinions are my personal ones; not the ones of Uppsala University Campus Gotland nor those of my group mates. This is also my first blog post for the university, so I will improve my writing as time goes on.

Last Night on Earth

The first games that our group played was the zombie-survival game Last Night on Earth by Flying Frog Production (1). The game can be played by 2-6 persons and the players are divided into two teams, heroes and zombies. The heroes have a certain scenario that they have to fulfill before daybreak; otherwise the zombies win the game. A PDF of the game's rulebook can be found here.

At first sight, it may seem like the rules for this game are complex. And while there are games with more simple rules out there; these rules are not complex ass they might seem at first. The most commonly used systems in the game are movement, combat and playing cards. There is not much to say about movement, all characters in the game move a certain distance on a squared board. The rules for combat is similar to those in Risk.

The cards in the game modifies the state and rules of the game. While there are several different cards in the game with different effects, they never modify the rules so much that you all of a sudden have a completely new game. The effects of the cards themselves are actually not actually all that complex, the reason why it may seem like so is because of how many different effects there are.

For example, the card "Baseball Bat" allows the player to roll an extra dice in combat and after each use, it has a 1/3 chance to break (in which case it is destroyed). "Old Betsy" slows movement for the zombies and "Crowbar" changes the rules so that heroes wins on ties in melee combat (the zombies wins on tie by default).

So while LNOE has several rules and several ways to modify the rules; the game and the rules themselves is not that complex. What makes the game feel complex is that there are several different ways.

Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan is a social board game for 3-4 players (up to 6 can be supported with an expansion (2)), where players are trying to build up settlements and cities and eventually get enough points to win the game.

The core mechanic of this game is a simple one; roll two dices to generate resources and then use them to buy things to get points towards victory. You can also trade your resources with other players as well as with "the bank". While there are other game systems present in the game, these are  the things that you will be doing for the most of the game. And here the rules already seems more simple than the rules in Last Night on Earth.

Conclusion

While  I do think that LNOE has some flaws and Settlers has almost none, I do think that both games are just about equally fun in their own way. They are different games, different mechanics and different rules, but the biggest reason I like Settlers a bit more than LNOE is because LNOE has some flaws in it.

However, I did enjoy playing LNOE as well, I just think that there are some points in the game that could need more polish(1).

So while more complexity doesn't equal more fun, that still doesn't mean that complex games can't be fun as well.

End notes 

(1) There are expansions available to the game; but we only played the base game and as such, reflections is done based on what exists in the base game.

(2) The 5-6 player expansion of the game modifies one rule in the game and makes the game board bigger. The rule change is that players can now buy things at the end of another player's turn, rather than on their own turn. Otherwise, the rules of the game stays the same.