Why to theme games (and when not to)
Games have themes. Ticket to Ride is about trains. 7 Wonders is about ancient cities. Dungeons and Dragons, dungeons and dragons. Theme, however, does a lot more than just make a game pretty.
But are there any situations where a game should have no theme?
What is a ‘good’ theme?
To be honest, the primary function of theme is marketability; tapping into a familiar theme makes a new game feel familiar, appealing, and fun. Themes also make spending time in the world of the game enjoyable (immersion).
From a game design perspective, however, theme fulfills a different function. It gives you a design language; it creates shortcuts in the minds of players about how to relate to a game.
For example, fantasy themed games often use hanging banners as the backdrops for titles on cards. They also often use the currency of gold; new players instantly can intuit that collecting gold is good. A ‘knight’ is more powerful than a ‘peasant’, and so on.
One way to judge the quality of a game’s theming: A game is well-themed if the theming makes the game easier to learn.
Themes make learning games easier, and therefore make your game simpler (where simplicity is a metric of how confusing your game seems, not a metric of how few moving parts there are).
Sometimes, however, theme can be stifling.
The game I’m working on, Inventures, doesn’t have a theme (very deliberately). You can use the game to go on adventures in any setting, from fantasy to scifi and way beyond, so using a visual language or theme would be restrictive. Forgoing theme makes everything more complicated, from box design to explaining the game to card design.
There are, however, many successful games without themes. Dixit comes to mind right away.
Dixit can be considered themeless; at most, its theme is ‘dreamlike’
The only good reason (I can think of) for a game to have no theme is to allow the game the flexibility to accommodate different play experiences. Your game should either have a strong theme, or no theme whatsoever.
Many simple card games have no theme as well (a la Apples to Apples or Cards Against Humanity). This is done to keep the game about the social interactions.
If you’re thinking about making a full-on board game with no theme, just realize it’s an uphill climb, and decide how, why, and when you communicate that there’s no visual theme.