Game Design Dirty Little Secrets – GD Keys
Three years ago, the designer Jennifer Scheurle started a very interesting Twitter thread on “brilliant mechanics in games that are hidden from the player to get across a certain feeling“. In this thread, she invited designers to share the design secrets they have used, which should not be seen by the players in order to trigger specific behaviors, feelings, or reactions while experiencing their games.
Many games deliberately mislead players in subtle ways to create a better experience. This write-up takes a close look at several examples and discusses why they work. Some key takeaways are (1) the perception of fairness is more important than actual fairness (2) fail states break flow.