Game Design the Wrong Way

Gamasutra - The Designer’s Notebook

Adaptive difficulty is something of a hot topic. I think there’s ways to do it relatively easily, using existing mechanisms, in ways that gamers will find natural. In fact, I’d argue that a lot of games already use adaptive difficulty, they just don’t call it out.

Take Puzzle Quest. It has an interesting feature in that losing a “combat” (puzzle) doesn’t cost you anything. You just have to redo the puzzle from the beginning.

But, even more, you will gain experience and gold from even a failed attempt, meaning that a few failures can often be enough to level you up, giving you a better chance against the tougher creatures.

And beating tougher creatures gives you more exp, causing you to gain levels faster, so that you can fight even tougher creatures.

So, if you are having a hard time on a part, the game will eventually make your character stronger so that you can have an easier try of it. If you’re regularly defeating tougher challenges than you “should” be capable of, the game will zip you along to the harder content.

That sounds like adaptive difficulty to me, and it doesn’t require any insane AI, or convoluted design mechanisms.

Parallel ideas are seen in other games, as well. Many side-scrolling adventure games (Metroid, Castlevania, etc.) will have hidden powerups in areas. If a player is just stumped, they might just explore around previously “finished” areas, gaining powerups, and coming back to take on the challenge with more power.

Even grinding in some RPGs can be seen as a kind of adaptive difficulty, as you can still choose when you wish to try to go into the Dark Dungeon of Doom, depending on how penalizing the math is.

A lot of the answers are right in front of our faces. Good games, past and present, do things well. They might not understand what they’re doing, or why it works, but it works anyway.