How to make hard games feel fair

1 The bottom line

A hard game feels fair when players can read the challenge, recover from mistakes and see themselves improving. That is what turns frustration into triumph instead of rage quitting.

2 Key takeaways

• Make every hazard readable, so a failure feels like the player's own misread. Players only keep trying when they blame themselves.
  • In the Ori and the Will of the Wisps sand worm escape, about 60 to 80 percent flows from what is on screen and about 20 percent is curveballs. Every hazard can be reacted to. Chris McEntee, Moon Studios15:35
• Give players room to recover from a slip. One mistake should not feel like total failure.
  • Dishonored 2 fills a meter from suspicious to alerted. Escaping at any point avoids combat. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:40
• Show players the hidden information they need to plan. Without it, choices feel random.
  • Slay the Spire enemies first gave no hint of their plans, so players played almost randomly. Intent indicators fixed that. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit2:07
• Let difficulty teach the player your systems. Hardness is fair when it pushes players toward depth.
  • Even the weakest Dark Souls enemies can topple a player who ignores the rules. Players learn parries, backstabs and i-frame dodges. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:17
• Cut the BS that makes players angry instead of better. Cheap difficulty destroys the satisfaction that justified the hardness.
  • Silksong's BS includes long runs back to a boss, troll moves, extremely random boss patterns and secondary-weapon ammo that does not regenerate on death. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:56

I kept going because I could see a path to victory.

Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit, on Hollow Knight: Silksong

2.1 Decide what the difficulty is for

Hardness earns its place only when it gives the player a payoff and a lesson.

• Make a challenge hard where you want the win to be unforgettable Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit2:23
  • A boss you struggle with for an hour, while your skills, reflexes and knowledge improve, becomes a remembered triumph.
  • Beating the Last Judge in Silksong left Brown with sweaty palms, a racing heart and an involuntary shout of victory.
  • Set pieces need the same weight. A very easy one is all spectacle and no substance, while the Ginso Tree escape in Ori and the Blind Forest is tough and players fail more than once. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:57
• Use difficulty to push players away from boring, repetitive strategies Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:36
  • Easy games let players get away with simple tactics. Hard games force them to use every mechanic, tool and bit of level design.
  • In Furi, the patient dodge, parry and counter ballet only works because the boss cannot be beaten by running up and attacking after a few simple dodges.
• Keep a visible path to improvement Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:55
  • Players stay in the challenge zone when they learn from mistakes, feel themselves getting better, blame themselves and get ample retries.
  • Brown kept retrying the Last Judge because he lasted longer each attempt and the mistakes were his own. Frustration became catharsis.

2.2 Make the challenge readable

Players call a fight fair when they could have known what was coming and had the skills to answer it.

• Balance memory, reaction and execution in every boss fight Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit8:46
  • Cuphead's Von Bon Bon asks for learned patterns, reactions to random sub bosses and telegraphs, and tight control against chasing and layered attacks.
  • The chasing head and bouncing rock candy wheels demand skill, while the random sub bosses demand reaction.
• Make levels learnable so repetition becomes the reward Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:48:20
  • Hitman levels run on clockwork: events at fixed times, targets on looping routes, objects in the same places.
  • The first run is messy. Knowledge accumulates until the player can finish unseen and without changing out of the suit.
• Let a harsh first hit teach what a telegraph means Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:16
  • Some attacks cannot be reacted to on a first try, so most players take the hit once.
  • Cuphead's screen-sized laser is announced by an animation, but nearly every player is hit the first time. With few hit points and no mid-fight healing, that death becomes part of learning.
• Preview an action's consequence before the player commits Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:28
  • Grenade arcs, grapple range indicators, lock-ons and XCOM's movement line let players act with confidence instead of blind faith.
  • In the Shovel Knight Specter Knight DLC, a pose change did not show when or where the dash slash would land. Yacht Club Games added a reticule showing the action and landing spot, and called it the most important change for making the move understandable.

2.3 Make mistakes survivable

Give the player time, tools and a way back after a slip.

• Fill a detection meter gradually instead of spotting the player instantly Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit2:42
  • Let awareness grow while the player is in view.
  • Grow it slower when the player is far away, in peripheral vision, in low light, crouched or still.
  • This gives the player time to react and feels fairer than being caught the moment you touch a cone. It is the approach of Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Mark of the Ninja and Thief.
• Tune hostile AI so one mistake is not instant death Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:37
  • An early Hitman 3 Berlin prototype had armed targets pull a gun and shoot the moment they saw you. It was too punishing.
  • A forgiving response keeps armed, fighting-back targets threatening without ending the run.
• Keep a retro hazard, but give the player a way to recover Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:19
  • Knockback sent Castlevania players to their deaths again and again.
  • Shovel Knight keeps the knockback but lets you steer in the air back to safety. The old feel stays and the unfair part goes.
• Make the fail state of a quiet mechanic still playable Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit16:33
  • When you are spotted in the Liberation courtyard in Call of Duty: WWII, the game shifts into a traditional firefight.
  • Rescued French citizens join the fight, rewarding earlier heroic choices. Brown notes that designers still need better fail states for non-traditional gameplay.

2.4 Be fair to what the player sees and can do

Tune the game around the player's view and skill level, not around realism or expert play.

• Bias the simulation toward what the player believes is fair Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:40
  • Players judge fairness by what they can see on screen. Handicap guards where realism would feel cheap, such as hearing someone you cannot see or spotting you as you peek over cover.
  • In Splinter Cell: Blacklist, guard hearing is halved offscreen. In The Last of Us, enemies raycast to Joel's chest instead of his head when he crouches.
• Give novices a counterpart to any bonus that rewards experts Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit0:52
  • In Gears of War, perfect active reloads gave better bullets, so enemies were made more resistant.
  • Beginners often ignored the active reload entirely, so they were left outmatched.
• Test levels at the speed and with the tools newer players have Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit9:30
  • Play the whole Super Mario Maker 2 stage without touching the run button, to check it can be completed at Mario's normal speed.
  • Mario's huge jump can sail over obstacles, so stretch gaps and add blocks and slopes to stop it.

2.5 Cut the traps that waste the player's effort

A player stuck on a problem they could have solved, or on one they cannot read, feels cheated.

• Never let a failed attempt leave the level impossible to finish Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit10:02
  • If a Super Mario Maker 2 jump needs a Koopa bounce, missing the gap and killing the Koopa leaves no way across.
  • Fix it with enemies, p-blocks or trampolines that infinitely pop out of pipes, or with an indestructible element such as a note block.
• Do not let consumable tools break or run out mid-puzzle Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit13:26
  • In the Blue Flame shrine in Breath of the Wild, you can run out of arrows or have weapons break.
  • The player is then stuck on a problem they could otherwise solve. Brown calls this a pain.
• Do not stack unfair puzzle gates on top of hard combat Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:17
  • Zelda 1 asks you to push one random block, but only after all enemies in the room are dead.
  • With hidden walls, the player cannot deduce what to do, and the dungeon goes from challenging to unfair and silly.
• Avoid overlapping enemy spawns that hide the safe spots Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit9:44
  • The Savage Beastfly in Silksong has simple patterns but spawns loads of enemies that block you and drain health.
  • The overlap makes it almost impossible to predict where is safe, so the challenge stops being readable.

2.6 Keep the player company in the struggle

Small confirmations and other players make a long climb feel manageable.

• Confirm progress in small steps rather than at the end of the whole challenge Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit20:37
  • The Case of the Golden Idol confirms each panel as it is solved.
  • Return of the Obra Dinn confirms fates in batches of three.
  • Solving an entire case in one go would be a lot less manageable.
• Use multiplayer features so players never have to struggle alone Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:05
  • Dark Souls fills the world with player-written messages that warn of ambushes, bosses and traps, and players are incentivised to leave truthful notes.
  • You can summon friends or strangers to help with a boss.
  • Complex systems and unspoken rules also push players to discuss the game, which builds community.

2.7 Where designers disagree

Some tools that feel harsh in one game are the point of another.

• Memorisation can be a reward or a flaw
  • Hitman's learnable levels (above) make repetition the reward.
  • Brown says a boss that does the exact same thing every time, like Little Horn in Super Meat Boy, tips the balance entirely toward memory. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit8:18
• Timer pressure with sudden death only fits fast games
  • Prey: Mooncrash's corruption meter resets the loop at the bottom. Brown calls unceremoniously killing the player too harsh, because it clashes with slow stealth, exploration and environmental storytelling. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit12:29
  • Deathloop's Wake Up Challenge at The Complex is a gentler, optional pressure.
• A steep skill barrier is acceptable when the payoff is big
  • Advanced movement in Super Mario Odyssey, Titanfall 2 and Just Cause 3 gives speed, shortcuts and the drop on enemies. It also means lots of face-scraping on the tarmac before mastery. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit8:53