[dgb23]

I appreciate your advice, but from a general viewpoint, just adding layers doesn't necessarily lead to interesting complexity.

StarCraft Broodwar is an interestingly complex strategy game, not because it has a lot of layers, or even lots of things at all, but because it has a simple system of orthogonal, powerful features. It had less features and units than many of its competitors (RTS was a big genre at the time), but it found ingenuity in simplicity, minimalism. Every piece of the puzzle was to some degree relevant throughout the history of the game.

I think you are right in a general sense, but "layers" can be a misleading term here. You rather want to increase complexity and beauty by enabling manners of composition.

Another game that illustrates this is The Witness, which is probably one of the most praised puzzle games and again, is beautifully simple. In terms of layers it has pretty much exactly three: The panel puzzles, the environmental puzzles and then the visual secrets that you only see by looking at things in a certain way. But in terms of actual game mechanics there are very few things. The complexity then emerges by mere combination.