Thread by @delaneykingrox

#gamedev
Okay so lemme just drop a serious lesson about game design for this whole trending thing.
Why is this the ideal design and can we boil it down further.

Yes, we can.

This design is simply a difficulty slider.

That's it.

You have a choice at every single stage to make your life harder or easier by picking a direction.

With dungeon levels, the idea is that the deeper you go, the deadlier it becomes.

As you press on, your opponents get harder and your resources are used up.

Reversing your direction takes you back to a safe space with resources.

As a character gains level and resources, the difficulty slider is more and more biased towards easy at the extremes.

For starter designers, a simple trick is to match "level" of dungeon with "level" of player. If you can pass through with some resistance, you have it set right

Allowing players to press on or backtrack gives them a risk and reward based on playing time.

Do I trudge back to the village or just keep going?

It's a stick or twist with boredom as the currency.

Physically you don't need this exact layout. You can have the safe space as the core of a zone and have rings of difficulty the further away you get. Like an onion.

This is the model that early MMOGs used. Around towns, you get rats and kobolds- grinding mobs for low levels within easy retreat distance to town.

You can see a different model used in Elden Ring, which is punish and run.

Punish and run is where you cannot evaluate a threat based on distance or depth- you only know dangeer when it absolutely destroys you. Then when you do know the difficulty you are forced to run by.

The difficulty is set by the player by sprinting or riding past a big threat and circling back when you think you are ready.

This is the same thing, but rather than distance as your threat slider, you just have to be bullied and beaten for hours on end until you build a map...

...in your head of the difficulty settings.

But for those of us who don't enjoy being one shotted twenty feet from the start of a game and want to judge our risks in a straightforward way the "dont wander off the path" method is a winner.

"Dont wander off the path" is the leaving the safety of the village and going off into the wilds.

The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings starts in the safety of the shire and progressively ramp the difficulty as the adventurers travel.

It's distance based.

We see "don't wander off the path" in many fairy tales so it is built into our cultural view of danger and risk.

Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Hansel and Gretal... shit gets real once they stray from the path.

Remember, this isn't a spoon fed linear path. This is about the simple choice of leaving safety and heading into the heart of darkness.

The hero story always has the hero leave safety, delve deeper into the "underworld" and return with boons for the village.

The levels of a dungeon and the town/shop is basically the hero's journey on a progressive loop.

A good design allows you to experience the hero's journey at the pace you are comfortable with, and let's you challenge yourself by biting off more than you can chew... or think you can chew.

It also allows you to skip the grind and go in hard if you are a good skilled player.

Why grind levels 1 to 3 to get decent armour from the village when you have the mechanical skills to dodge everything, spot the traps and predict the boss fights? Just dive right through into level 4 with a basic sword and test yourself.

Hell, see if you can run level 10

So in summary, allowing players to ramp their difficulty to their comfort by using physical space is a strong games design concept.

Hope that helps.

Go make that game. X

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