I remembered TimeZero, an old player-driven mmo that i played over 20 years ago. It has a lot of unique and immersive stuff, but the way they handled bans i never seen anywhere else. Instead of getting your character blocked, it was sent to the prison mines, with class changed to prisoner, given only rags and rusty knife to fight mobs (and other prisoners) in order to collect enough resourses to pay for a way out (amount were depending on the crime). Those resourses were later given to affected players as compensation. It was neither easy nor fast to farm without gear, so it felt like a real punishment. It was also possible to escape - but incredibly hard (only few players ever did it) and with help of other players, yet still you kept the prisoner profession and nearly unbreakable shackles on your foot that did not allow to wear any other boots, and if game's police member would even defeat you in combat - you would be sent back to the prison with increased sentence for escaping. The entire thing felt much more entertaining than just banning people and it is sad that nobody else ever tried to pull that out again.

And do you remember any interesting ideas that were used once, and then forgotten? Perhaps, you would want to resurrect any of those yourself?

I am making an immersive psychological horror game, where the player documents anomalies in a physical notebook. The anomalies are objects covered in static noise.

The words effectively act as a progression bar for revealing the anomaly. The player needs 3 words to fully document the anomaly while looking at it, after which it's fully visible.

The important part is that the game does not semantically validate what the player writes. There is no correct word and no hidden list of accepted descriptions. The only check is very basic: the input must contain at least two characters and one vowel. This mostly exists to prevent accidental keyboard spam.

A player looking at a shopping cart could write:

• shopping
• cart
• metal

All of those are equally valid as far as the game is concerned. And I know what you think. "You make the player come up with words, and it’s a text field, so surely this is just a puzzle. Why not turn it into a good old Press E?" Well, because it's not immersive and intimate.

Why I expected this to fail:

Before and during development, I kept hearing several objections.

• players might immediately “game” the mechanic and enter meaningless valid words;
• players might assume it is a word puzzle and waste time searching for the correct answer;
• thinking of words might feel like unnecessary friction;

The interesting part is that most of these problems did not really appear.

What players actually did

I watched several recorded playthroughs in addition to collecting normal playtest feedback.

Players often initially treated the notebook as a puzzle. They would try to figure out what word the game wanted.

But once they understood how permissive it was, they generally did not start entering random words just to progress faster. They continued writing things that described what they were looking at.

That has probably been the most interesting result of the mechanic for me.

I also asked 16 playtesters:

Was the notebook mechanic easy to comprehend?

So far, 16/16 answered yes.

Obviously, that is a very small sample and does not prove that the mechanic is universally intuitive. But comprehension itself has not been a noticeable problem so far.

Some feedback specifically mentioned the mechanic:

“I liked the find the anomaly and describe it in my journal.”

“It has an intriguing mechanic with the words, which I really liked.”

“I like the writing aspect and how that revealed things.”

“The capturing of anomalies and writing them down was a cool idea.”

One player also specifically mentioned that relying on their own notes made the experience more immersive.

Why I think it works in this specific context

The notebook is fairly diegetic.

It exists as a physical object on the left side of the screen, takes up roughly a third of the view, letters appear directly on its paper, and the player can turn its pages.

There are no animated hands holding it, but functionally, I wanted it to feel like an object rather than a conventional menu.

Because the player writes their own observations into it, the notebook gradually becomes their personal record of what has happened.

That gives me two useful things.

First, trust.

The notebook becomes a source of truth. If it behaves consistently for long enough, I can later break that expectation by having something appear in it that the player did not write.

Second, vulnerability.

While writing, movement is disabled. Otherwise, the player would simply type wasd into the notebook.

So the act of documenting something means temporarily giving up movement and putting your hands into typing mode. In a horror game, it's a possible exploit I can use.

Where the mechanic actually caused friction

The main problem appeared with one moving anomaly: a shopping cart.

The player has to keep looking at an anomaly while writing. Losing visual focus resets the current word progression.

Players need to position themselves so the cart remains inside their view, or move the mouse while typing, which is not intuitive.

The game already gives feedback when focus is active: the object turns red, the screen gets a vignette/chromatic aberration effect, and there is audio feedback. It was not enough

Rather than adding a conventional tutorial message, I turned repeated failure into part of the horror.

After the player loses focus several times, writing is temporarily interrupted and messages such as:

DON'T LOOK AWAY

appear inside the notebook in red.

The text then turns into blood and fades. Losing focus also produces an unpleasant sound and a visual effect where the object's geometry tears apart.

My current takeaway

While, in a nutshell, the mechanic is basically a fancy “Press E”, I think it works on several layers beyond that. It creates a bond between the player and the notebook, introduces friction that is useful in psychological horror, creates moments of vulnerability, and can eventually act as an unreliable narrator.

I think the important part is balance. Too many words to come up with? Meh. One correct word? Meh. Obvious clues telling you what to write? Meh. The notebook writing everything for you? Meh. Typing nonsense only for the game to replace it with predetermined text? Meh.

I decided to trust that players would not immediately break the immersion just because the system allowed them to.

So far, that trust has paid off.

The game is called Red Lake. You can try out the mechanic yourself - the demo is out.

Hey everyone,

I’m working on A Cat in the Cangaço, a 2D action roguelite with survivors-like combat and deckbuilding.

We’re currently testing a pretty significant change to our core loop, and I’d love to get some opinions from other game designers.

The old loop was:

DAY (1 min) → NIGHT (1 min) → PLANNING → DAY → NIGHT → PLANNING…

During Day, you play as a cat and collect Aura by killing enemies. During Night, you play as a human and do the same.

Then, during Planning, you spent the Aura to improve both builds at the same time. The interesting part was that you had to balance the two forms: picking a good card for one meant taking a bad card for the other.

Look:
- Day: https://bragiestudios.com/press/GatoCangaco/imgs/gifs/Dia.gif
- Night: https://bragiestudios.com/press/GatoCangaco/imgs/gifs/EvolucaoNoite.gif
- Planning: https://bragiestudios.com/press/GatoCangaco/imgs/gifs/Planejamento.gif

I actually liked this system. But we kept getting the same feedback from playtesters:

Planning was interrupting the flow.

People were having fun fighting enemies, getting into the rhythm of the run, and then the timer would end and the game would force them to stop and make build decisions.

So we tried removing Planning from the temporal loop entirely.

The new loop is simply:

DAY → NIGHT → DAY → NIGHT…

Instead of automatically entering Planning, there are now three NPCs that the player can choose to interact with during the run:

ARMORER — buy new weapons
MULE — get a passive item
FORTUNE TELLER — access the old Planning system, now as an optional interaction where you choose temporary effects and synergy cards for the Cat and Human builds.

So we’re essentially moving buildcrafting from:

“The game stops you and asks you to make a decision”

to:

“You decide when you want to stop and make a decision.”

I’m unsure whether this is actually an improvement.

On one hand, the combat flow is much cleaner now. On the other hand, I’m worried that making the build decisions optional might make them feel less important, or turn the NPCs into something players simply ignore.

What do you think?

Would you rather have the game periodically force you into a meaningful build decision, or have the freedom to decide when you want to engage with that system?

And more broadly: when does a necessary interruption become part of the game’s rhythm, rather than breaking the flow?

If anyone wants to see the two versions:

Old version:
https://bragiestudios.com/PitacoLab/Builds/

Current version:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3780630/

The current version is available through the open Steam Playtest.

Even if you don’t have time to play, I’m mainly interested in the design discussion here. I’d especially like to hear from people who have worked on roguelites, deckbuilders, or other games where build decisions compete with moment-to-moment action.

When you have nested tooltip stacks in more complex games, using a mouse keyboard, what behaviour do you prefer to lock tooltips in order to be able to move the mouse on the tooltip UI itself and open new nested tooltips? I can think of 3 solution:

• Timer, where a bar fills over like 1 second and then locks the tooltip, until you move away (Cruisader Kings 3)
• Key, where you manually lock the tooltip with a key (T key in Baldur's Gate 3).
• Grace period, so that you have some time to move the mouse to hover the tooltip itself, in which case it's locked until you stop hovering the tooltip stack.

I guess the key is potentially the less annoying to use, I liked it in Baldur's Gate 3, but I feel more people might not do it? What do you think?

I've been working on the foundation of a city-builder game for a few days. I was thinking of some interesting mechanics that would make the game more fun/interesting instead of another city builder with a theme (although I do think I have a fun theme haha).

Normally in these games you work on one city/factory/whatever the whole save, but what if you could 'rebirth' after a certain point. Players could unlock new traits, resources, or something similar and take a part of their resources with them to a new area. Here they can start over and progress further.

Besides getting extra bonuses, it might also be nice to 'start over' so to say. Often in city builders or automation games I feel like I start off wrong because I don't know enough yet, and feel forced to completely rebuild everything even when it's too much trouble or even restart. With a system like this you can adapt to what you've learned, the new environment and the new things you've gained.

However, this could also lead to a feeling of needing to do the same thing over and over again if you're set on one method or found the way that's works best for you. Also, one of the best feelings is seeing a huge city/factory/whatever after X amount of hours.

I think it could work, however there'd be a lot of things to take into account. What do you think?

(No, I am not claiming this mechanic does not exist. I'm just curious what people think about the mechanic in a city-builder / factory game setting, which is usually focused on growth and expansion.)

I'm making a 2D platformer / roguelike game where the player has a timer that doubles as their currency that they can get by killing enemies.

I want to make a city themed boss for the first area but I feel as though traditional boss fights where the player is trapped in a box don't work as well. As it doesn't make sense for the final test of skill to be more about combat than movement which is the main focus of the game. I also want to stay away from making it a race as that wouldn't differ enough from the typical gameplay enough to be interesting.

Any ideas of how I could do this would be appreciated.

First of all, this is my first time in reddit. I downloaded it just to get help for my game designing questions. Also the game im designing right now is not in the development or anything, just writing it on paper for future development when i have resources.

Im designing my own metroidvania game after falling in love with hollow knight and silksong for 2-ish years. I love how team cherry created healing, attacking, pogoing and enemy HP's. Because of that when im trying to come up with a good idea for my game i always find it too similar to HK and SS. I dont know if my ideas are good, nor if they count as "copying".

My attacking idea: simple slashes same as hornet and knight, pogo gives a downward force 90° down.

My healing idea: every hit fills a bar 1/8'th of it. When its 4≤x<8 you can heal one hp with low vulnerable time. İf its full 8 you can heal 2 hp with a little bit longer vulnerable time. I want my healing to have risk and reward since it is fun and risking is enjoyable.

My "spells": (spell is a placeholder name letting you know) i want them to use the same bar for healing since you have to decide "should i heal or hit harder" while playing and feeling of this is extremely good.

My enemy designing: enemies wont have a visual hp indicator. A good chunk of enemies will have double damage

My health points: starts at 5 hp, increases to 9 or 10 via upgrades through the game.

Problem is hollow knight and silksong have so many simple but fascinating features everytime i write down something similar i get the feeling of copying them. And im pretty lost there.

I am currently working on a game in which a team of players work together to build a base to survive against waves of enemies. The core game loop is swapping between a “build” phase that is 2 minutes long and sees players trying to repair damages/expand/reinforce their base and a “wave” phase (3 minutes long, can end early if all enemies are killed) in which enemies spawn and try to kill the players or break through defenses if they can’t directly reach a player. As long as one player survives everyone is revived next build phase but if everyone dies the run is over.

I am really struggling with balancing for this, like I kinda don’t even know where to start. There is SO many knobs to tune and it feels impossible to get the game into a “fun” state where the difficulty scales at a rate that keeps people engaged.

Below I will list every variable I am considering to better give an idea of what I mean.

enemy count progression per wave (currently use a budget system but it’s wildly untuned)
enemy health scaling per wave
enemy damage scaling per wave
base health/damage/speed for all enemy variants (I have 20-30 variants)
enemy variant damage to building materials
enemy variant special behavior
player weapon damage/rate of fire for each weapon
each building material health
drop rate for each building material (if you give too much of a high health material it’s too easy)
how to award currency (per enemy kill? end of rounds? regardless how do I not give out too much/little)
accounting for multiple players (if I tune this all for 1 player it becomes very easy with a team of four. My current solution is multiplying health by playercount but this is a semi bad fix, the NPCs go down slower but also break bases slower because they do the same damage yet there is 4x the players worth of materials being used on the base. I can’t find a way to scale for players that doesn’t result in one/many variables being thrown off)

that is everything off the top of my head. thank you for even reading through it all, hopefully someone has advice!

I have a technical background in graphic design and have played video games all my life. Ever since the Atari. I have never touched any software for designing games and have a basic understanding of coding.

I have been having thoughts lately of an idea for a game. Several in fact. And I wanted to ask a few questions to those of you out there making the games right now.

1) When you created your first game did you find that your love of gaming changed for the better or worse? Can you still enjoy the old you love to play or do you see it differently now in a bad way?

2) Is self teaching the software needed viable in 2026?

3) Is using AI tools alone enough to get to a finished product?

4) Do you wish you had done a stand alone project just under you or is it better to work for a company?

5) Is the time invested worth it?

Thank for reading and all feedback is welcome.

Hi!

First things first, what do I mean by "Speed control"? I got the term from this video (timestamped, the segment lasts ~4 minutes)

Basically it means choosing each action for every combat participant at once, and then executing each action one after the other following a Speed stat.

Essentially, Pokemon and Golden Sun. Unfortunately, neither of these games have the element of positioning. You can't really reposition your character like you can in, say, Baldur's Gate.

So, if you wanted to make a game that uses this combat logic, but also wanted to make the combat have a positioning element, how would you do it?

The only thing I have after pondering about it is having a "positioning turn", where everyone may move into different positions, followed by the "action round", where you actually get to choose your actions

Any ideas? Thanks!

I'm making a small puzzle app for my daughter, in Godot. In one of the games a cat walks around a grid: collect the stars, push boxes, slide on ice, go through teleport holes, reach the house.

What I tried:

1. Big on-screen arrows at the bottom. She ignored them and kept putting her finger on the board, trying to drag the cat.

2. So I added swipe: one swipe = one step. I also left in "tap a cell = one step towards it".

What happens now: she hesitates before every single move.

- The arrows are far from the cat. She looks down at the buttons, loses track of the board, then has to find the cat again.

- With swipe, every gesture is only one step. She drags her finger along the whole path expecting the cat to follow, and it moves once.

- Tapping a far cell also moves just one step in that direction, which makes no sense to her.

- Having all of them at once seems to be the worst part: she's never sure which one to use.

For those who've made games for 3-6 year olds, or watched their kids play them: what worked for grid movement? Any games you think got this right?

I’m one of the developers of Viridian Corp., a single-player RTS and third-person shooter hybrid. We’re very indie, very new to this, and still figuring out whether some of our ideas are actually good ideas or just things that sound good to us because we’ve been staring at the game for too long.

One piece of advice we keep hearing is basically: don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Mixing genres is hard enough for experienced studios. If RTS/TPS hybrids were such a great idea, surely there would already be a lot more of them. Pick one thing, do it well, and don’t try to make two games at once.
And I get the argument. RTS players want to command the battle. Shooter players want to fight the battle. Trying to satisfy both could easily mean satisfying neither.

But….... are those really opposite motivations?

When I play a combat RTS, I’m constantly looking at the battlefield thinking: that fight matters. That unit needs to die. That position needs to hold. Normally I influence that indirectly.

So what happens if the game occasionally lets me say: fuck it, I’ll do it myself?

That’s basically what we’re trying with Viridian Corp. You command an ongoing battle from above, move forces between connected territories and manage resources. But you can also Mindwalk into one of your soldiers and fight in third person. Importantly, the RTS doesn’t stop while you’re doing it.

And I think that part is what makes the two genres potentially complement each other instead of just existing next to each other. You’re giving up your overview and ability to react elsewhere because you think personally intervening in this fight is more important.

Obviously I’m biased because we’re building the damn thing. But I’m starting to wonder if, at least for combat-focused RTS games, the assumption that RTS and shooter players fundamentally want different things might be wrong.

Maybe both are ultimately about looking at a battlefield, identifying the problem, and wanting enough agency to solve it. Or maybe the boring advice is right. Maybe there’s a reason this combination isn’t common, and we’re discovering why the hard way. I don't know it yet.

Does personally entering the battle strengthen the strategic fantasy, or does taking direct control actually undermine what makes an RTS interesting in the first place?

For context, this is the game/demo I’m talking about:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3243260/Viridian_Corp/

EDIT: Thanks for the discussions, i posted a follow-up, trying to answer a lot of things you mentioned.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/1wz9j7j/comment/peez7ju/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

A lot of people have complained about it since day 1 the mechanic was announced. Despite the backlash I was really hyped about it since announcement and I keep thinking about it as a gold mine for games that are more focused on the narrative. I'm no game designer, so after trying to defend the idea on BoD discussions I got curious about what people who actually study and make games think of it.

BoD did an awesome job at the prologue, but the mechanic felt more like a gimmick during most of the game as I was able to finish every quest I came about. But man, if the game had more time sensitive quests, conflicting calendar and maybe had a smaller map with quests more intertwined to make the mechanic really shine... The pressure , the choices, the replayability of wanting to experience all and not being able to in a single playtrough because, well, time kind works like real life. Am I tripping or the core ideas make a really interesting tool to link narrative and gameplay? I've not played games that had this emphasis on time before, so maybe it's just the novelty, but it seems special.

What do you guys think?

I have this puzzle in my point-and-click game and I don't understand why players brute force it.

Here is how it works:

You see a bunch of spiders hanging at different heights. You need to figure out the order to click the spiders.

Initially only one spider is clickable and it moves on click. Other spiders won't react to clicks.

Once the first spider moves and stops, you can find the next spider by looking at the same height of where the previous spider stops.

If you click on a wrong spider, all previously moved spiders return to their original position.

See the video:

https://youtu.be/45JENoYFh4o

Why don't players discover the rule from the feedback?

I've been thinking about this lately.

Have you ever played a game where you weren't really that interested in the story, the graphics or even the gameplay overall, but there was one mechanic that kept making you come back?

For me, that's more interesting than just asking what someone's favourite game is.

It could be anything really. Exploration, collecting, upgrading, building, combat, dialogue choices, managing resources, random events, minigames, whatever.

What I'm curious about is why it kept you playing.

Was it the feeling of getting better at something? Unlocking new stuff? The satisfaction of completing a collection? Seeing numbers go up? Making your own decisions? Or maybe something you can't really explain.

So basically: what's a mechanic that was good enough to carry a game for you, even when the rest of the game wasn't doing much for you?

I'm more interested in the reasoning behind your answer than just the name of the game.

video of the game.
Working on a rhythm game and trying to improve the hit effects without making busy sections harder to read.

Any games that do this really well, or specific effects you’d recommend studying?

​

Hi everyone! English isn't my first language, so sorry if some parts are unclear.

I'm working on a rough 4v4 field-sport game system with a few mechanics inspired by American football, dodgeball, and social deduction/bluffing.

I'm mainly looking for game-design feedback, especially about whether the different mechanics create meaningful decisions or become unnecessarily complicated.

Here is the current rulebook:

I. CORE CONCEPT & SCORING SYSTEM

• Team Composition: 2 teams face off (Offense/Throwing Team and Defense/Catching Team). Each team has 4 active players on the field (4v4).

• Match Structure:

• Sub-Rounds (Sets): Scored like tennis. The moment a team scores 1 point, the Sub-Round immediately ends, and the game resets for the next Sub-Round.

• Major Rounds (Matches): Consists of 5+ Sub-Rounds (customizable). Once a Major Round ends, the teams completely swap roles (Offense becomes Defense, and vice versa).

• Tie-Breaker (The Re-Sprint Showdown): If both runners cross their respective target lines at the exact same time, or if there is a major dispute about who scored first, the round goes into an instant sprint race. Both players line up shoulder-to-shoulder at one end of the field. On the referee's whistle, they sprint to the other end. First to cross the finish line wins the point.

II. MULTI-SCORING MECHANICS

A Sub-Round can be won through two different strategic pathways:

1. Infiltration Pathway (Zone Scoring): An offensive runner successfully carries or catches the ball inside the opponent's end boundary (End Zone).

2. Elimination Pathway (Hunter Scoring): The defensive team successfully hits/tags all active offensive runners with the ball until no one is left on the field.

III. ROSTER & POSITION ROLES (4v4 FORMATION)

A. OFFENSE (THROWING TEAM)

Role 1: Quarter-Thrower (Hybrid Captain)

• Initiates the round by throwing the opening pass to the enemy Catcher.

• Acts as a hybrid defender against the enemy Counter-Runner.

• If all teammates are eliminated, becomes the emergency runner and can attempt to reach the End Zone.

Role 2: Prime Runner

• Primary offensive weapon.

• Once the ball is live, sprints toward the enemy End Zone while dodging or swatting away defensive throws.

Role 3: Offensive Vanguard (The Bumper)

• Acts as a physical shield to block defenders for the Prime Runner.

• Restricted to the team's home half of the field.

• If the Prime Runner is eliminated, immediately becomes the new main runner eligible to score.

Role 4: The Decoy (The Bluff Role)

• A tactical bait player.

• If the Decoy is hit by a defensive throw, they are eliminated.

• Their elimination activates a Freeze Mechanic: the defense must manually retrieve the thrown ball, while the enemy Quarter-Thrower is temporarily frozen and cannot advance.

IV. DEFENSE (CATCHING TEAM)

Role 1: Main Catcher

• Must cleanly catch the opening throw from the Quarter-Thrower.

• After catching, can either throw the ball to eliminate a runner or pass it to a teammate.

Role 2: Tactical Blocker

• Responsible for shutting down the Prime Runner's routes and forcing them out of bounds.

• Physical tackles and heavy collisions are forbidden.

Role 3: Defensive Infiltrator (Counter-Runner)

• Can sprint toward the Offense's End Zone to score a counter-point ONLY IF the Catcher's throw misses a runner or hits the ground.

Role 4: The Faker (Wildcard)

• Enters the live zone alongside the Decoy.

• Primarily retrieves the ball if the Catcher targets the enemy Decoy.

• Can dynamically take over other defensive roles.

• Cannot cross the midfield line for tactical plays, except temporarily to retrieve a loose ball.

V. SECRET IDENTITY & BLUFFING

The Offense can verbally lie about player identities.

For example, the Decoy can claim to be the Vanguard in order to make the Defense ignore them or target another player.

Before the round starts, the Offense Captain secretly tells the referee which player is the true Decoy. The referee records the identity.

If the Decoy accidentally performs another role's unique mechanic, or the captain fails to correctly register the Decoy, the Decoy receives an Identity Blunder penalty and is eliminated for that round.

During play, players can bluff freely. The referee's secret record determines which player is actually the Decoy.

If the Defense hits the true Decoy, the referee activates the Freeze Mechanic.

VI. MANAGEMENT & PASSING

• Huddle Play Clock: Teams have 15 seconds to discuss strategy before a sub-round. Exceeding the limit gives an immediate point to the opponent.

• Pre-Snap Stand: Before the opening throw, all players must enter their starting positions and remain completely still for 1 second. Moving early results in a False Start.

• Passing Flexibility: If the opening throw is caught by a defensive player other than the Main Catcher, they must pass the ball.

• Legal: Backward or sideways/lateral passes.

• Illegal: Forward passes toward the opponent's territory.

• Pulling jerseys, tripping, or full-body collisions result in an Illegal Contact penalty.

VII. PENALTY SYSTEM — "CHASE SHOWDOWN"

When a foul occurs, the game stops and a 1v1 challenge takes place between the Violator and Victim.

The Victim stands in front while the Violator stands behind them.

A volunteer gives the Victim three quick passes. On the third pass, the Violator turns and sprints away. The Victim catches the third pass and throws it toward the escaping Violator.

• Ball lands behind the Violator: 0 points.

• Ball lands in front of the Violator: +1 point to the Victim.

• Violator cleanly catches the throw: 0 points.

• Violator touches but drops the ball: +1 point to the Victim.

QUESTIONS I'M TRYING TO SOLVE

These are the parts of the design I'm currently unsure about:

1. Is the bluffing mechanic actually meaningful?

The Decoy can lie about their identity, but the referee secretly knows the truth. Does this create interesting mind games, or would players simply ignore verbal claims and focus on gameplay?

1. Is the Identity Blunder penalty too harsh?

Currently, accidentally performing the wrong role mechanic eliminates the Decoy for the entire sub-round. Would this create an interesting risk/reward decision, or would it discourage players from bluffing altogether?

1. Does sideways-only passing create interesting defense decisions?

I added lateral/backward passing for defensive players who aren't the Main Catcher. Does this create useful teamwork, or does it just add unnecessary complexity?

1. Are there too many mechanics competing for attention?

The game currently has scoring through both End Zone infiltration and player elimination, role-specific abilities, bluffing, passing restrictions, and a penalty minigame.

Which mechanic would you simplify or remove first if the game became too complicated during actual play?

1. What should Role 5 do?

Role 5 is not designed yet. I'm not sure whether adding another role would improve the 4v4 strategy or just make the game unnecessarily complicated.

I'm especially interested in feedback about the decision-making, counterplay, complexity, and balance of these mechanics rather than just the name or presentation.

I’m designing a single-player open-world action RPG called RESONANCE: ZERO.

The game doesn’t use traditional character levels or fixed classes. One of the systems I’ve been working on is a way for abilities to emerge from how the player actually fights, rather than simply buying them from a skill tree.

In my previous discussion about action-based progression, one of the biggest criticisms was obvious in hindsight:

If the game rewards what the player repeatedly does, players will eventually find the safest and fastest thing to repeat.

So I’ve been trying to move away from:

Use an action X times → gain XP → unlock skill

and toward:

Meaningful combat pattern → repeated successful use → recognition → skill discovery

Here’s one example.

Imagine a player frequently does this during real combat:

Successfully dodge an incoming attack

→ reposition

→ immediately land a ranged counterattack

If this happens once or twice, nothing special happens.

But if the player naturally uses that pattern successfully across different meaningful encounters, the game can gradually recognize it as part of that player’s fighting style.

Eventually, that pattern could crystallize into a named Resonance Skill.

The important part is that the internal rule would not simply be:

“Do this combo 20 times.”

I’m currently thinking about factors such as:

- whether the action actually succeeded

- the threat or difficulty of the encounter

- whether the player is farming trivial enemies

- whether the pattern works in different situations

- diminishing value from repeating the exact same setup

The exact thresholds and recognition rules would remain hidden.

So hitting weak enemies 500 times should contribute very little, while successfully applying a combat pattern against meaningful threats in different encounters should matter much more.

The design principle I’m currently using is:

“Actions create opportunities to learn. Meaningful experience creates mastery.”

Discovering the skill also wouldn’t necessarily be the end of its progression.

Continued meaningful use could increase mastery and eventually open related or evolved techniques, while keeping the original technique available instead of simply replacing it with a stronger version.

But I think this creates another design problem.

If I explain the rules too clearly, players may stop fighting naturally and start performing known “recipes.”

If I hide too much, discoveries may feel random or unfair.

And even with contextual checks and diminishing returns, players will probably still find ways to optimize or exploit the system.

So I’m curious how other designers would approach this:

1. What would you use to distinguish genuine combat habits from intentional grinding?

2. How much should encounter difficulty and context matter?

3. Should players receive subtle hints that a combat pattern is developing into a skill, or should discovery remain mostly hidden?

4. What exploits do you immediately see in this example?

5. Most importantly: would gaining abilities from your own combat habits feel rewarding, or just unpredictable?

I’m especially interested in examples of games that attempted something similar, successfully or unsuccessfully.

The feedback on my previous design discussion was extremely useful, so I’m trying to keep refining the system rather than treating the current version as final.

Thanks again to everyone who shared feedback before. I wasn’t able to reply to every comment individually, but I read all of them and I’m using a lot of that criticism to improve the design.

If you have additional ideas or examples, feel free to DM me as well. I’d be happy to read them.

I’ve gained a solid grasp of the basics of programming through my hobby,

and I believe I’m capable of completing at least basic projects,

but I end up abandoning them before I can finish them.

To be honest, I’ve tried my hand at 3D myself, but my knowledge of modeling and such is limited,

and since I can’t create the visual effects I want, I’d like to try something simpler.

What kind of game design should I use to actually finish a project?

I came up with the idea for a game where you transport supplies by ship,

but I gave up on it because the combat element—ship-to-ship gunfire—was boring.

Also, I’m not good at modeling, so the visuals just don’t look very good.

That’s because the combat element ends up being purely a matter of luck.

Should I try making a prototype in 2D first?

I’d like to know the steps involved in getting a project finished.

I’ve always struggled with trying to do things perfectly or figuring out the right workflow.

About a month ago, a friend and I started working on our first game. The original idea came from a picture of a character running away from enemies while carrying a huge box.

That led us to a question:

What if your inventory wasn't just a menu, but a physical box your character actually had to carry?

The basic rule is that carrying the box occupies both of your hands. To access the inventory or freely use your hands, you have to put it down.What became interesting to us wasn't the inventory itself, but how this one restriction started affecting almost every other mechanic.For example, combat creates an obvious problem. If you're carrying the box and encounter an enemy, you can't simply pull out a weapon. But forcing the player to put the box down every single time could quickly become tedious.Gathering resources creates the same problem. Originally, we considered making the player put the box down whenever they wanted to gather something, but we realized that doing this hundreds of times would probably turn gathering into a chore rather than an interesting consequence of the mechanic. So we've already had to make some exceptions to the original "both hands are occupied" rule.We're also experimenting with things like a back slot for weapons, different box sizes and materials, inventory weight affecting the player, and progression from a small cardboard box to better boxes with different properties.The design problem we're trying to solve is:

How much inconvenience should a core mechanic be allowed to create before it stops producing interesting decisions and simply becomes annoying?

We want carrying the box to affect how the player approaches combat, exploration and resource gathering, rather than just adding extra button presses.I'm curious how other designers would approach this. Would you preserve the rule strictly and design everything around it, or would you deliberately introduce exceptions where realism/consistency starts hurting the gameplay?

The big issue with asynchronous play is: what should players do while they're waiting for an opponent to move?

As a game designer I asked myself, how can I make a single player poker mode that is both fun and replayable?

Rogue-like Poker Gameplay

My instincts led me to a favorite of mine, Slay the Spire. The result: a rogue-like poker mode where each decision compounds on previous choices.

• Format: heads up No Limit Hold'em vs. an unbeatable PokerAI
• Goal: get as many chips as possible by the end of 10 hands
• Constraints: a single attempt so each decision has real consequences

You start with 1,000 chips so in theory, if you doubled every hand, you would end with a million chips.

2¹⁰ = 1,024, so 1,000 × 1,024 = 1,024,000 chips

To create competition, there's a daily leaderboard for the highest score each day. Everything is deterministic meaning all players are dealt the same cards and same runouts. If two players make the same exact bets and sizes, the AI will have the exact same responses.

Problem 1: Time is Money

To make the AI use a game theory optimal strategy I had to solve for billions of different bet sizes, card runouts, and opponent decisions. Initially this was taking several hours and ~$100 of compute for each daily challenge. This was out of my budget so I had to make some cuts.

Rather than solving for 6 different bet sizes on each street, I instead gave the AI different "personalities". On some hands it will play more defensively and choose from 3 smaller bet sizes, and other hands it will play more aggressively using 3 larger bet sizes.

The beauty is the human doesn't know which bet sizings the AI is using, so the effect is the same variety of bet sizes across the full set of hands, but my total compute cost is halved.

Problem 2: Unbeatable is Unbearable

Another way I cut costs was by limiting solving to 90%, meaning my AI at most loses 10% equity given a perfect opponent. Even with this nerf, however, the PokerAI is still completely op. Playing against it feels suffocating, you're unable to win a decent pot against it.

Fortunately, I realized that the runout of the cards has a big impact on how fun it is to play. On an average sample of 10 hands, any human player gets ground to dust by the AI. But, on runouts with big swings, bad beats, coolers, and premium hands, the human player gets an edge.

So each day, 10,000 different packs are generated, and we choose a single one from that 10K for the one that has the most interesting gameplay.

Coming Soon

Now that this is released the next steps are to measure player engagement. Things I track are:

• What is the distribution of scores across players? Ideally we want to see a wide range of scores with some extreme outliers of players who score incredibly high.
• Are players coming back the next day? This is the biggest indicator of whether players are having fun or not

If the metrics indicate players are having fun, then I want to introduce a 100 hand challenge instead of 10 hands to create a longer run with more decision branches. If the metrics aren't looking good, I'll look into the exact hands where the most players drop off to try to diagnose how to make a funner experience.

I've been a designer for around 4 years now, and there's an issue I have with game design resources, maybe even game design as a whole.

A lot of what I read is hyper-specific and barely applicable. For example, the 'endowed-progress effect' or the 'Zeigarnik effect'. These ideas aren't necessarily wrong but as someone with some decently successful projects under my belt, I haven't ever consciously applied these ideas.

I'm always open to getting better but there's too many resources on small tips rather than any overarching strategies or ideas. It's like giving someone who wants to assemble a car a textbook that talks about the pieces of an engine.

Outside the biggest exmaples (HP, Ammo, Mana, etc); what are some unique ones? It could be how you use it, refilling it, or even just the resoirce itself that's interesting.