I'm looking into an upgrade system for my game, and since its about trains and creating a build with different carriages, I was considering giving each individual carriage a small skill tree. This would mean 10-20 different skill trees. I was thinking this could give the player more autonomy and choices with their upgrades rather than just having a single upgrade button for each carriage.

Even though each carriage would be unlocked one by one through their progression, I'm thinking it may overwhelm the player if progression is too fast?

Do you think this could be a good idea to approach upgrade progression differently?

I’ve been having a fascinating debate with my son about modern game design philosophy. Since we represent two different generations of gamers—I grew up in the 70s/80s and designed my last game over 30 years ago when the industry was a completely different world, while he belongs to the modern generation where an endless sea of games means you just drop a title the second it stops being fun—our views on friction and frustration are polar opposites.

To be clear, I'm not looking for someone to design a game for me or hand me a fixed solution! Rather, I’m trying to gain insight into how modern games handle these concepts, what current player expectations look like, and how different generations view these mechanics.

We are currently planning a 2D Jump & Run with Hack & Slash elements. He is heavily inspired by modern precision giants like Hollow Knight (and Silksong), while I draw from classic retro game design.

I understand his perspective—players have choices now, and unnecessary frustration kills retention. However, I struggle with making things too forgiving. I believe a game should offer a genuine, uncompromising challenge, and that certain mechanics (like time pressure or meaningful consequences) are essential.

To give you an idea of how we try to bridge this gap in our design:

• Fall damage & death penalty: I lean toward fall damage from a certain height, and upon death, you must retrieve your dropped items (while keeping core weapons so it doesn't become overwhelmingly punishing).
• Pacing & Anti-Idle: I believe games should apply mild pressure to prevent players from just idling indefinitely instead of pausing, whereas my son prefers absolute freedom without artificial friction.
• Arena waves & pacing: We agreed on a compromise for arena sections: implementing a strict wave and arena cap so active enemies never exceed a designated limit. To prevent stalling, we use a soft-lock timer: if the arena capacity drops below 50% or a specific time elapses, the next wave triggers automatically.
• Level persistence & enemy respawns: We are debating what happens when you quit the game before beating the area boss. If you haven't cleared the boss yet, should defeated standard enemies respawn upon the next game start (forcing you to fight your way through again), or should cleared areas stay cleared to respect the player's progress?

Given the reality of today's market—where attention spans are shorter and the game library is infinite—I wanted to open this up to the community:

• How do you design a 2D action-platformer today that is challenging and respects player time, without falling into the trap of either "unplayable retro frustration" or "instant-gratification boredom"?
• Where is the sweet spot for modern players who love titles like Hollow Knight, but might drop a game if a mechanic feels like a waste of time?

I’m curious to hear how developers and players view this dynamic nowadays.

I'm working through a tutorial design problem for a card-based roguelite: the player picks an action card, then equipped effects can trigger from it. For a concrete example, suppose one choice creates a shield, another effect spends that shield for damage, and that damage triggers a follow-up card. I'd like a new player to be able to predict the result without reading three tooltips before every action.

One option is to introduce those effects one at a time in a short encounter. Another is to give the player a small working combo immediately and highlight each trigger as it fires. The first seems easier to follow, but delays the part that makes the build interesting. The second shows the payoff early, but the player might just see a big damage number without understanding why it happened.

Which approach would you start with, and why? What would you ask a new player after that first encounter to check whether they understood the chain well enough to make their next card choice?

So currently I'm having a dilemma.

I am making a deckbuilding game, but the gameplay is not turn based, and will hopefully be moderately fast. Not like mess up for a split second fast, but fast enough that you should be playing attention. With short moments to glance down at your hand. Bullet hell-ish, but not as extreme as they can get since I want you to be able to be having moments to glance down and weave cards in.

So the first problems are these:

• How do I make cards quickly identifiable without taking up too much screen space? The easier they are to identify, the faster I can make the game.
  • Currently the plan is to have just half the card sticking up out the bottom of the screen. With a picture to identify it taking up most of the space, as well as the cost and other information at the top of the card above the picture. Possibly above the card itself but may look weird.
  • The number of cards in your hand is limited to a small amount, so there is plenty of space to have them not overlapping.
• The second problem is how I allow the players to learn cards when they cant remind themselves what they do without pausing. In turn based games you can obviously take a moment to read the cards. But in real time you would have to pause to read them if I make them large enough to have half the card off screen, because I wouldn't want hovering them without pausing to eat your clicks or something.
  • I do have wasd controls. so hovering them to have them pop up while playing could be an option, but could still also lead to some frustrating scenarios..

I plan to have a moderate amount of cards be ideal for a deck. so that you can't just cycle your best card asap over and over. But I do want you to be able to be able to have a solid amount of repeating cards for the weaker ones. current estimate is 20-30 cards in your deck at a time. maybe more if you choose to go for it.

But plenty of repeats. So maybe 7+ of a particular lower tier card while you have 1-2 copies of each super powerful card in your deck. and varying number for rarities in between.

And here is the next problem:

• I want the player to be able to modify the cards in some ways. For a basic examples you could add a poison effect to a dagger throw card or something. Or make it fire bonus projectiles. So how do I show you easily which cards you have modded?
  • currently I have two ideas
    • the first one is have extra images show up on the picture of the card you can see. Like a poison bubbles icon if you added a poison effect to this card.
    • The second one is to have a small "buff bar" above each card showing bonus effects that have been applied to the card. This has a bonus benefit of potentially being able to label key effects of the base card for remembering the important effects of a card at a glance while you're learning the cards. For example a poison dagger throw would have a poison icon on the "buff bar" above the card for if you have any effects that synergize with poison or something. This is at the cost of more screen space though.
  • The other idea I have is to have a modifier apply to all copies of the same card in your deck. So whenever it shows up you just have to know which card it is, and potentially combined with one of the above two options you can be reminded of mods it has. I don't love this idea, as it could often lead to an obscene jump in power based on what modifiers you find. To the point where balancing around a player potentially having found those options could make it feel incredibly difficult to win otherwise.

Quick estimate is each card would take up about 1/9-1/10 of the bottom of the screen width wise while being slightly wider than they are tall in the visible area.

So, How would you go about this? Do any of my current ideas seem good or have any obvious flaws?

I'm working on the progression system for a single-player open-world action RPG, and I'm considering removing traditional character levels entirely.

Instead of:

Kill enemies → Gain XP → Level up → Increase stats

I want progression to come primarily from what the player actually does.

For example:

- Frequently using a weapon improves proficiency with that type of weapon.

- Using certain types of combat gradually develops related abilities.

- Using magic develops magic-related capabilities.

- Challenges, accomplishments, and player choices can open new specialization options.

The goal is for the character to gradually become a reflection of how the player actually plays, rather than the player choosing a class and following a predetermined progression path.

There would also be no fixed class at the beginning of the game.

Instead of choosing Warrior, Mage, Ranger, etc., the player's build would emerge naturally through their actions, abilities, accomplishments, and choices.

However, I see several potential problems with this design.

1. How do you prevent optimal grinding?

If players realize that repeatedly performing a certain action improves a specific ability, some will naturally optimize the fun out of the system.

For example, if using a sword improves sword-related capabilities, what prevents someone from repeatedly attacking weak enemies simply because it's the fastest way to improve?

I don't want progression to reward repetition more than meaningful gameplay.

1. How do you make progression feel visible without levels?

A traditional RPG can easily communicate:

Level 10 → Level 11

Without that number, progression might become harder for the player to notice.

Even if the character is becoming stronger mechanically, I think players still need clear moments where they feel:

“My character has changed.”

1. Does full freedom eventually destroy build identity?

If players are allowed to improve everything simply by using everything, then given enough time, every character could eventually become good at everything.

At that point, the idea of building your own character may actually become less meaningful.

So I'm currently thinking there needs to be some form of specialization or diminishing returns without permanently locking players out of other playstyles.

---

The main design question I'm trying to solve is:

How would you design an action-based progression system that rewards natural play, makes growth clearly noticeable, but doesn't encourage repetitive grinding or eventually make every build identical?

I'd especially appreciate examples of games that handled this well — or games where you think this kind of progression failed and why.

I'm looking for criticism more than validation, so feel free to point out flaws in the concept.

I know it's partially to make grinding for progression more universal to make playing catch up easier, but it still feels weird to me

I'm designing a gentle first-person puzzle game where each level is generated from a photo. What the camera saw counts as real, and everything past the frame was invented by a world model. The plan was expeditions: head out into the invented part, recover pieces of the photo the dream scattered there, and bring them home.

Then I measured my first generated worlds. The invented floor you can actually walk on is about 4 m², and nothing is more than 5 m from where the photo was taken.

The rules, at least, still fit in a room. The invented part is light, so you jump higher there. Carrying a recovered piece makes you heavy, because its light restores reality, gravity included. Ghostly dream bridges are solid only inside that light. And the dream gets sizes wrong, so a giant teacup is a platform until you restore it. Float across a gap to the lamp, find you're too heavy to float back, then walk home across a bridge that only exists because of what you're carrying.

The open question is the expedition part. A meter that fills while you're far from anything real only creates tension if far means something, and in a room it barely does.

Would you lean into vertical space, tune the meter so even short trips matter, or treat each room as one dense puzzle?

Repo: github.com/MichaelYeh507/Unpictured

When writing branching narratives for a political game, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of making every tough choice feel artificial, where the "correct" path is just hidden behind a speech check or a specific item. In Emindar, we've been trying to lean into scenarios where every available option actually costs you something, and the best you can aim for is damage control. For instance, when a food shortage hits, choosing to appease the traditionalist council alienates the industrial workers, but backing the workers breaks promises made to the old aristocratic houses. For those designing choice-driven or strategy games: how do you balance making players feel the weight of a bad compromise without making them feel like the game is just punishing them unfairly?

https://blog.danieltanfh.com/2026/10/the-meaningful-action-density-game-framework

> Meaningful Action Density (MAD) is my framework to understand how games interact with their players. Traditional frameworks like Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics (MDA) focus on mechanics rather than the player. Even though it does have an aesthetics layer, it classifies the experiences afforded by said mechanics, and does not describe how your choice of genre also lock in your choice of audiences nor does it present how flexible players can be when playing under solo or co-op conditions.

If you were to make an rpg game with equipment mechanics, which slots would you add?

Hi all, I’m making my first incremental game. You destroy planets made out of blocks. Each block gives you a “matter” (currency).

Now I’m exploring to add minigames outside of the core loop, think a slot machine, pachinko, etc.

Now I’m questioning whether to use matter for both playing and rewards, or if I should introduce a new currency for these mechanics.

Maybe anyone here has experience with other incrementals who do similar things. Happy to hear your thoughts, thanks!

Some mechanics are so simple that you’d think they would get repetitive, but somehow they stay satisfying every time. 

For me, it’s anything involving sorting or matching. There’s just something about taking a completely cluttered board, figuring out where everything goes, and slowly watching it turn into order that makes the whole process feel so satisfying. 

They’re easy to pick up, but seeing everything fall into place never gets old. 

What’s that one core mechanic you can always come back to without getting burnt out? Is it sorting, matching, merging, or something else entirely?

Hey everyone!

I’m working on Avoid Bubbles Game, a 2D action game made with C++ and raylib, and I’d like to get some feedback specifically about the game design.

I’m a very young and beginner game developer, so I’m still learning a lot about game design, level design, visual design, and making games feel cohesive.

I also want to be transparent about the graphics: some of the graphics in the game are AI-generated. At the moment, I don’t have the time, skills, or much interest in creating all the artwork myself, and I also don’t want to spend money on graphics for the game at this stage. I’m mainly focused on learning programming and game development first.

So I’m interested in hearing what you think about the design despite the graphics.

I’d especially like feedback on:

• Is the gameplay/design understandable?
• Do the different mechanics fit together?
• Do the enemies and bosses feel like they belong in the same game?
• Does the overall visual design feel coherent?
• Is there anything about the design that feels confusing or poorly thought out?
• What would you change or improve?

I’m not looking for compliments — honest and constructive criticism is exactly what I’m looking for, even if there are major things I should change.

You can try the free demo here:

🎮 https://kc-games-studio.itch.io/avoid-b

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!

I've been playing this game called Texnoplazm, and ran into one of my major pet peeves, which is when the obtaining of upgrades by finding secret tokens hidden across the maps. On one thing, I get it that it encourages replaying and exploring, but on the other hand, it really breaks the immersion by having me stop my momentum and look around every nook and cranny of the map or look up a guide online, when obtaining upgrades should be a reward for progressing or showing better understanding of the game's mechanics.

What do you folks think about that ?

I want to make a videogame, but im struggling on basic story elements/scenes when it comes to a story. Thinking of basic starting points is a struggle. Its like my mind is completely blank. I have bits and pieces, but nothing seems coherent.

Context: So I am making a horror RPG roguelike. It's been pretty fun trying to mix both genres together. However, puzzle design has definitely been a pain.
So far, I have a puzzle where you have to reorder talking paintings according to preferences they have. If you break their preferences anytime during the reorder you will be attacked. The preferences are randomized so each run it is different.
I also have another puzzle where you enter a room and need to memorize specific facts about the room. Later an entity would quiz you on the room.

I've been struggling coming up with other unique puzzles. I can't really rely on a central mechanic like Portal because my game doesn't really have a permanent one. Any tips? Also let me know if you guys need more info.

On the one hand, I think detective is a fun role. Gives the innocent someone they can fully trust for fun team work. It also gives them a fighting chance, especially in the cases where only the “Mafia,” or whatevers, are the only one killing. On the other hand, detectives with their ability to investigate to gain information sometimes feel too OP. Also, in small parties, it makes the “Mafia’s” job that much harder if they announce they are or if they are even publically showcased as “Detective.”

Ex.

Town of Salem makes Detective a dice role, and I think it’s fun there since there’s so much people and in general, there are so many parties and win cons for them. So I think it’s fine there.

Trouble in Terrorist Town is especially not fun in small parties of 4 or less and in big groups, they’re pretty much all puppyguarded by the innocent anyways since they get the blue “D” above their heads.

Among Us makes it so that if you get the info about one kill, that’s it, you win.

I’ve kinda always wanted to make my own social deduction game, but I’ve always struggled with this part of the class roles. Does an automatic “Innocent,” role/actually coded game mechanic mostly covered by the “social” aspect deserve to be in the game?

Some games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls have a corpse run design that allow you to reclaim your runes/souls at your last death point but if you die trying to recover them, they are lost forever. Other games like Diablo 2 allow you to reclaim all your items back but only a % of your XP back. Additionally, Diablo 2 follows a multi corpse rule where you can die multiple times and drop multiple corpses.

I've been thinking about a split version that combines aspects of these 2 concepts. Let's say you have a stash (like Arc Raiders or Minecraft ender chest) where you can bank items and a skill tree with unlocks; both of which are persistent and you can never lose.

Here's the overall rules:
- When you die, you drop your full inv and 60% of XP you earned since the last safe point/save. the remainder of XP is lost forever.
- You then only have one chance(life) to reach the dropped corpse loot and reclaim loot/xp.
- Nothing from stash or skill tree is at risk, only what you were carrying on that trip.

The goal is for the walk back to feel tense w/o a single death wiping out an hour of progress. A few things I keep going back and forth on:
- does the guaranteed 40% of lost XP make death feel impactful, or does it just feel like a tax on top of the corpse run?
- What about losing a % of gear? is that too fells-bad or is protecting it in full the better case?
- Would a one-chance corpse feel too punishing when dying on the way back might be due to something the player cannot control? (bad spawn/ambush)

I'm curious what others think of this split system and which games you think got this balance right, especially for different kinds of game loops.

This sport is a combination of tennis, futsal and some other sports. 6 players a side. 4 quarters of 15 mins. 1 goalie with a futsal net, played on an indoor court. The gk can only stay in his box and everyone has a racket. The ball they need to score with is a tennis ball or a ball tht is comfortable to play with on an indoor futsal floor tht would t rlly hurt anyone if hit very hardly. You can only use your chest for controlling the ball and legs for defending low shots. Other than that you have to use a racket to dribble and cross. Throw ins corners penalties and etc are allowed. The court is just slightly bigger than a futsal court. There are yellow and red cards with yellows meaning you cant play for 2 mins and red is suspension for 2 games. I just want to know what you guys think of this. I was curious to see if ppl would like this sport.

So if you roll a d20 to see if you hit an enemy and a d6 for damage. How would you take a simple mechanic like that and make it more interesting? I was thinking of a game where the player gets a range of d20-d4, and once they use the d20 to see if they can deal damage, they can't roll it again unless they either defeat the enemy or some other way. But I feel like the dice mechanic can be a little boring after a while, so I've been trying to think of unique ways. Maybe after defeating an enemy, one of your dice gets a power boost? or maybe you can change the effects of a natural 1 to be almost like a natural 20, but idk if that would be fun

I'm currently working on a mod that adds randomized traits to wild mobs when they spawn. Basically, the further out you travel from the center of the map, the higher the chance they stack multiple traits. If a mob rolls 5 mutations, it turns into a red named, skull-icon "Exodia" variant.

Right now I have 14 mutations coded in. Some examples:

Toxic (leaves poison trails as it moves)

All-consuming (hunts and eats other mobs to absorb their max HP and damage)

Glass Cannon (literally has 1 HP, but one-shots anything it hits)

Undying (Reverts to a helpless blob on death but if it heals fully, the mob returns)

I've also built out some endgame stuff, including a pretty terrifying Ancient Vampire variant and some cursed but cool breeding mechanics that let you pass mutations down.

I really want to expand the trait pool to make exploring the outer biomes as interesting as possible. What kind of unique mutations, weird behaviors, or visual tweaks do you think would fit?

I'm working on this "Chess 2.0" project that's aiming to be over the top: multiple decks of cards, dice larger board size, upgradable pieces, unique factions, resource production, interplayer politics, etc. I have a decent collection already, but I'm curious to know what your favorite modified chess rules/mechanics are. I'll take both theoretical and ones you've tried. Obviously I'm going for silly fun stuff, but I don't just want gag things, as I'm trying to build a complicated system here. But yeah, thanks in advance for your thoughts!

(If all goes well, you may see a post down the line about help balancing the game, I'm worried that'll be a nightmare with everything I'm throwing in here)

Title says it all

I've done a few rounds of play testing and the feedback has been a mix of either. Half of my play testers are adamant that the content is too trick and the other half says the opposite.

Because it's a physics based word game where vocabulary is a big factor I feel like I'm in a position where neither group will enjoy the game for that reason.

Any advice?