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Difficulty Curves and Player Flow

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What Are We Doing?

  • Game Difficulty
  • Types of Players
  • Difficulty Curves and Player Flow
  • Creating a 2D Platformer
  • Creating a 2D Dungeon Crawler

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Discussion: Difficult and Easy Games

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Example Player Types

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Casual Player

  • Plays in short bursts (15 minutes to 1 hour at a time)
  • Simple graphics and story that are easy to understand are best
  • Will need well-polished tutorials and instructions or they might not understand the game
  • Looks for simple mechanics that are fun to play

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Genre-Experienced Player

  • Will sit and play for long sessions at a time
  • Wants high-quality graphics, well-polished gameplay, and a great story
  • Will need some tutorials for the basic controls
  • Explores the world, uncovers hidden secrets
  • Bugs in the game will make them not want to play it

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Speedrunners and Competitive Players

  • Will play a game however long it takes if it’s challenging enough
  • Focused on the game mechanics over graphics or story
  • Will usually skip tutorials and figure out the controls on their own
  • Always looking for the most optimized path and fastest way to win the game
  • Exploits bugs in the game to their own advantage

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Other Ways of Thinking About Players

  • Age
    • Is your player old enough to read instructions?
    • Will they have trouble pressing buttons precisely?
  • Experience with game tools
    • Can they use a controller or a mouse?
    • (Apps) How large are their fingers?

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Discussion: Your Type and Your Player’s Type

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Player Flow and the Difficulty Curve

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Player Flow

  • Happens when a player is completely immersed in the game
  • To get a player to feel flow, you need to:
    • Provide instant rewards for good actions
    • Make sure the player always knows the goal
    • Give the player a sense of control over the game’s outcome (use randomness sparingly)
    • Provide the player a challenge that matches their skill

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Difficulty Curves

  • Level 1 - Easy Tutorial Level
  • Level 2 - Enemies and Platforms Added
  • Level 3 - Tougher Enemies
  • Level 4 - Harder Jumps
  • Level 5 - Final Boss

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  • Keep the game difficulty high enough to keep the player interested
  • Don’t make the game so difficult that the player feels they can’t make progress

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Difficulty by Level

Skill

Player too skilled, game is boring

Game too hard, not fun to play

Player Flow

Game Design With Unity

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Self-Paced Lessons

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Platformer

  • How to navigate the Unity interface
  • How to add objects to the scene and modify them to make a level
  • + A quick look at mods we can make in the future

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Dungeon Crawler

  • How to create a dungeon using a tileset
  • How to add collectibles and enemies to the level
  • How to track the health of the player
  • How to create new levels

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