This week we're going to take a look at 2 powerful methods to create game tension.

This is a follow-up from the previous episode of the Game Design Compass, where we discovered the difference between Difficulty and Challenge in Game Design. If you've missed it, don't worry; here's a quick recap:

• Difficulty is a situation where once you overcome an obstacle, you haven't learned anything new about the game (you know what and how to do, but it's hard)
• Challenge is a situation where once you overcome an obstacle, your mental model updates with new patterns (you know what to do but don't know how to do it).

Difficulty and Challenge are 2 helpful tools to spice things up in a game that can create rewarding tense moments and increase the player's motivation. However, with great power comes great responsibilities, so they're not easy to manage and can quickly lead to the opposite effect: player frustration.

So, knowing how to manage them properly is crucial for a Game Designer.

‍

We’re going to discover:

• Why Difficulty and Challenge are always design choices.
• How to manage Difficulty and Challenge in a game.

Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

Target Experience Is Your Game Design Holy Grail

The game Difficulty and Challenge rate are always a design choice relative to the Target Experience.

Although some people say that games should be harder or easier, a good Game Designer knows that it depends on what you want to achieve with your game. So you must always refer to the Holy Grail of Game Design: the Target Experience. For example, you may want to ease the player with a tutorial battle so he can get comfortable with controls and game systems. Or you may want to establish the game's tone by presenting a tough fight to the player right at the beginning.

Dark Souls is a perfect example. It establishes a challenge base ground in the tutorial by saying, "you won't find challenges easier than this from now on".

By the way, let me make a point about Dark Souls that people often misunderstand nowadays.

‍

A game is not an architectural barrier to overcome.

This means you NEVER deserve to finish a game. It's not in your right to complete a game, so asking for an easy mode is madness and ruins it. Game Design is the water, and the cup is the experience; if you ask to change the water's shape, you also need to change the cup.

So going back to Dark Souls, adding an easy mode means not having Dark Souls anymore. Furthermore, players who ask for easier Dark Souls would never be satisfied because they would play a different experience.

We'll talk more in-depth about this in the future, but now let's move on and see how to handle Difficulty and Challenge properly.

How To Manage Difficulty And Challenge In A Game

Good Difficulty Options are not about raising the Difficulty level.

The first and most common way to manage Difficulty is Difficulty Options. Their effectiveness depends a lot on how you place them into the game.

A good example of difficulty levels is God of War, where the enemies change their behavior, forcing the player to find new strategies. A bad example instead is The Witcher 3, where enemies only change some stats, and the player needs to learn nothing new. If you have to do it “The Witcher 3 way”, don’t use them in the first place. Trust me; you’ll even save yourself the burden of testing the game on every difficulty level (yes, you must do that too 😅).

So, Difficulty Options are good when they are about Challenge and not Difficulty.

But, besides external game options, let’s look at what good design Difficulty looks like.

1-5-2-1

Good difficulty is placed in a game level to increase tension and focus.

An example of good difficulty is the pixel-perfect jump in Super Mario. Players must jump in perfect timing on the extreme edge of a platform to reach the other side of a pit. You won’t find a mandatory level in Super Mario with pixel-perfect jumps because it will frustrate most players. Raising difficulty in specific spots adds tension between relaxed moments and increases focus. But Game Designers must carefully place those moments evaluating the whole game progression and balance to avoid frustration.

Sometimes you can find well-managed higher difficulty spikes in optional levels or quests. Take, for example, Omega Weapon (Final Fantasy VIII), Path of Pain (Hollow Knight), Queen Sigrun (God of War), etc.

Ok, let’s now look at Challenge.

‍

Challenge is a graph value you can manipulate with highs and lows over time.

Examples of good challenges are much more common since Challenge is less delicate to manage than Difficulty: Dark Souls, Celeste, Hollow Knight, Devil May Cry, The Witness, and many more. Yet, they all create Challenge in the same way.

You can raise the challenge level in a game in certain moments by adding or changing something at the gameplay level. Doing it creates a gap in the player's mental model, so he needs to learn something new to overcome a situation. To make things harder to manage, Challenge can also contain Difficulty spikes to add tension and increase the stakes. And I'm sure you know that it's usually the wise combination of them that crafts those unforgettable tense experiences (👈 sooner or later we’ll talk about this design perfection 🤤).

Challenge is a powerful tool to motivate and engage players but pay attention to not abuse it; otherwise, the player will feel overwhelmed and frustrated.

‍