How to tune difficulty with many levers

1 The bottom line

Difficulty is a catalogue of levers, not one dial: enemy behaviour, resources, pacing, routes and rewards each change challenge in a different way. Using them separately lets you serve novices and experts in one game without sorting players early.

2 Key takeaways

• Treat difficulty as a catalogue of tools, not one dial. Each tool changes the game and the player's relationship with it in a different way.
  • In Cuphead, the same projectile pattern is easy or brutal depending on its speed and size, so one pattern can be reused across fights Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:58.
  • For the Halo 3 sniper rifle, Jaime Griesemer ruled out the stats that define the weapon and tuned the rest. Raising the gap between shots from 0.5 to 0.7 seconds fixed two problems at once Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:37.
• When you ease one part of the game, put the challenge somewhere else. Challenge moved is challenge kept.
  • Rollerdrome automates forward movement, then fills the arenas with enemies, lasers, poison puddles and stomping mechs Mark Brown, with Paul Rabbitte and Drew (Roll7), Game Maker's Toolkit4:33.
  • Resident Evil 4 Remake lets Leon strafe, and Capcom offset it with more aggressive and more numerous enemies Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:50.
• Set how scarce resources feel, because scarcity drives tension and movement. The same supply dial can make a horror game or a shooter.
  • Dead Space 3 let players carry over 1000 bullets, so what to fire and when stopped mattering Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:55.
  • Breath of the Wild removed heart drops and rationed rupees, so players travel to forests, mountains and quarries to gather supplies Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:12.
• Let pressure rise and fall instead of fixing it before release. Constant pressure exhausts players, and constant calm bores them.
  • Left 4 Dead's Director starts a relax phase with no spawns when a player's intensity peaks, then builds tension again Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit56:46.
  • Pac-Man's ghosts scatter to the corners because Iwatani felt endless hunting would be too stressful Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:08.
• Give players ways to adjust difficulty while they play. They cannot know what Easy or Hard means before they start.
  • Mario games connect an easier pipe and a harder pipe to the average path, so players shift between them, even mid-level Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit18:31.
  • Silksong offers a second route to finish Act 1, with an easier boss, that feels like a discovery and not a concession Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit19:00.

it's a broad category that includes a whole catalogue of different tools

Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit

2.1 Name the levers before you move them

Know which tools you are using, test them with big moves, and check what each change breaks.

• Test a lever with a dramatic change. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:42
  • Double the value or cut it in half. Tweaks of 5 or 6 percent may never reach the answer before time runs out.
  • If you overshoot, step back. The big move shows quickly whether the lever matters.
  • Sid Meier halved the Civilization map a month before release. That fixed the pacing and gave the game its feeling of relentless forward progress.
• Check every modernising change for its knock-on effect. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:11
  • Any change to mechanics ripples through the rest of the design and can ruin the feel.
  • The Goldeneye remaster moved to modern shooter controls. A game built around clunkier inputs became a cakewalk.
• Use the dungeon map as a difficulty lever. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:55
  • The sooner players get the map and compass, the easier the dungeon is to solve. Placing them late makes players rely on their own sense of space.
  • Ocarina of Time varies their placement across dungeons, and the Water Temple gives them right away, which is one way it is kind to the player.
  • Wind Waker introduces its map very early, and with signposted paths and easy bosses its temples are the most straightforward in the series so far Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit10:17.
• Rate puzzles by a few criteria so you can order them. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit15:20
  • More possible solutions make a puzzle easier. More required steps make it harder, but too many is tedious.
  • More options at each moment add difficulty. Mechanics the player must already know also count.
  • Square Enix Montreal uses these four criteria for GO games such as Lara Croft GO and Deus Ex GO.

2.2 Shape challenge through enemies and encounters

Enemy behaviour, the roster and the order of encounters can change a fight without touching a health bar.

• Layer a second simple pattern on top of the first. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:41
  • Give the player several simple things to track at once, instead of making one attack harder.
  • Environmental forces like fans, water jets, moving platforms and falling chests add to the load.
  • Cuphead's puppet fires two bullet types together, the mermaid pairs an electric eel with sea urchins, and the clown fight adds a rollercoaster crossing the screen.
• Pick the roster to set the tone of the fight. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:54
  • Specialty monsters make a fight a tactical problem. Generic packs make it a shooting gallery.
  • Many fast, weak enemies that run straight at the player stop the planning and push combat toward action Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:40.
  • Dead Space 2 mostly fights packs of slashers and leapers, and drops the twitcher because most enemies were already fast. Its new pack enemy dies in a single shot, even on Zealot mode.
• Build a gradient by giving a new enemy an easier first version. Dana Nightingale and David Di Giacomo, Game Maker's Toolkit8:36
  • Ask the enemy team for a simpler type, then place gentler early encounters so players get used to fighting it.
  • Dishonored 2's clockwork soldiers saw behind them and attacked in all directions, so the map had no difficulty gradient and players were overwhelmed at once. The fix was two soldier types.
• Trigger enemy waves by health thresholds. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:37
  • Spawn new demons when a big threat drops to a set share of its health. Players who kill the big threats fast are never swamped.
  • In DOOM Eternal, the Baron of Hell triggers more demons at a third of its health and the Doom Hunter at half. The rhythm is predictable across restarts but never exactly the same twice.

2.3 Tune resources so they feel as scarce as your game needs

Supply, limits and competing costs decide whether players feel tension, comfort or chores.

• Set scarcity by changing how fast supply flows. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit2:38
  • A faster or slower tap changes how rare and precious a resource feels, and the pace of progression too.
  • Rare ammo drops create tension in survival horror. Abundant munitions suit a fast-paced shooter.
• Make spending choices compete. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:08
  • Make ammo and health rarer than in a typical shooter, and make store money cover supplies, weapons, suits and power nodes.
  • Limit resource types and where crafting happens, so every item competes for the same scrap Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:09.
  • In the second half of Dead Space the presenter ran out of ammo, sold weapons, hunted credits and used kinesis on physics objects while dodging enemies. Scarcity pushed improvisation.
  • Metro Exodus has only metal and chemical. At a workbench you can make bullets, but in the field only ball bearings for the pneumatic gun, so you must plan what to carry.
• Cap what players can carry, and make power-ups few. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:23
  • A limit such as carry weight or a tiny attache case forces players to decide what matters now. It also stops them stockpiling a thousand potions until the end.
  • Pac-Man has only four power pellets per maze, so each one is a decision about when to eat for points and safety Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:31.
• Keep resource pressure from swamping the other questions. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit11:14
  • Balance the questions against each other, not only each one alone.
  • Keep survival meters light, or the world becomes a set of bars to top up Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:11.
  • DOOM Eternal cut max ammo and made players use the flame belch for armour. Players can spend more time patching up resources than slaying demons.
  • Metro Exodus has no hunger or toilet needs for Artyom, which keeps focus on the place and not the upkeep.

2.4 Pace intensity so it rises and falls

Plan the curve of pressure across sections, not only the variety of content.

• Pace intensity as well as activity. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:24
  • Plot the intensity of each section and alternate peaks with recovery. Max intensity for too long causes exhaustion or desensitisation.
  • Do it even when every section is different Mark Brown and Oliver Granlund, Game Maker's Toolkit20:56.
  • Uncharted 2 goes from calm puzzles and climbing to a firefight, a calmer train yard, a very intense train set-piece, then its calmest stretch in the Tibetan village before the siege.
  • It Takes Two has variety by default, yet Oliver Granlund admits the team should have paid more attention to the intensity curve.
• Swap gameplay pillars before the player tires of one. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit0:35
  • Split the game into pillars such as combat, climbing, puzzles, set-pieces and cutscenes, and never linger on one for long.
  • Pick pillars that move at different speeds and test different skills Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:53.
  • Titanfall 2 cycles through firefights, platforming, titan battles and story, so players don't get fatigued but never hit a lull.
• Use the neighbouring levels for contrast, and retune the player before the next one. Mark Brown and Evan Hill, Game Maker's Toolkit14:27
  • Track what the sections before and after need so flow stays consistent.
  • In The Last of Us Part II the museum follows an intense underground subway. A boar jump scare before the Jesse rescue and the first dogs tells players the fun is over.
• Add pressure systems and timers that stop players from combing every corner. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit11:21
  • Use pressure to force difficult decisions, with the satisfaction of choosing right and the regret of choosing poorly.
  • Pair a short timer with a compressed world, so every direction holds something interesting Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit9:07.
  • Spelunky has a ghost, FTL a chasing fleet, Don't Starve hunger and Dead Cells timed doors. Without pressure, Returnal players spend hours joylessly scouring levels, and Deathloop players wander emptied levels.
  • Majora's Mask's three-day timer means finishing a complex dungeon in about an hour, which is rough. The inverted song of time slows it to about three hours, but only if the player learned it Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:01.

2.5 Let players choose, escape and earn their challenge

Put the adjustment inside the world and the rewards, so players tune difficulty by playing.

• Let stuck players leave, get stronger and return. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit10:27
  • Offer ways to mitigate difficulty through exploration, learning or circumventing the challenge, so players are not stonewalled Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit33:33.
  • Hold power-ups until after the hard boss so later fights are tunable Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit36:56.
  • Mark Brown was stuck on Silksong's Savage Beastfly, explored elsewhere, gained upgrades and beat it much more easily on return.
  • Before The Last Judge you can find about 6 mask shards and 25 tools. Before Lace you can add 10 more shards and nearly every tool, which is why Act 2 felt easier.
  • Puzzle games can do the same: Braid, Stephen's Sausage Roll and Baba Is You let players skip levels and return later, so one puzzle is not a brick wall Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:03.
• Skip the up-front difficulty menu where you can. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit5:14
  • At the start, players don't know what Easy or Hard means. They may pick the easier option and rob themselves of the intended experience.
  • Easy, medium and hard usually tweak numbers like health, damage or enemy counts. That does not work in a hand-crafted game with very specific interactions Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:42.
  • Miyamoto prefers that players adjust difficulty while playing. Only one of more than 30 mainline Mario games has anything like an explicit easy mode.
• Make challenge optional through scores, collectibles and target choices. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:45
  • Let anyone finish, then grade how well they did. Players are rewarded for the skill they bring.
  • Split required goals from optional ones Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:54.
  • Require only a subset of targets so players pick the ones that suit their playstyle Mark Brown, with Bjarne Kristiansen and Håkan Almer, Game Maker's Toolkit4:05.
  • In Thumper, reaching the end of a stage is one challenge and an S rank needs serious skill. Snake Pass has three key stones, plus blue bubbles and gold coins that demand exploration and extra climbing skill.
  • Hitman 3's Apex Predator needs only five of eleven kills. Five are well placed for sniper assassin, five for suit-only and five for speedrunning, and targets drop useful items like Agent Tremaine's key to the radio tower.
• Keep the main path easy and put the hardest content on top. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit6:35
  • Make the main game accessible, then add challenges after the credits for dedicated players.
  • Use a goal flagpole so skilled players can reach the top through a hard final puzzle, while others touch the bottom and clear the level Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:17.
  • Odyssey's post-credits challenges include Koopa races. Insomniac added a harder swinging setting in Spider-Man 2 Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit7:01.

2.6 Keep challenge matched as players grow and roam

Skill, upgrades and free exploration all move the player's power, so the game must respond.

• Make the game harder as the player does better. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:12
  • Let success raise the pressure, so challenge tracks the skill the player is showing.
  • Let difficulty emerge from the play space and not only a speed dial Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit10:44.
  • Each alien killed in Space Invaders leaves the processor fewer sprites to draw, so the rest move faster. Nishikado kept this accident in the game Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit3:17.
  • Tetris raises speed after set lines, but also gets harder naturally as blocks pile up. Snake gets harder as the body grows.
• Offset permanent upgrades with a counterweight. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit8:25
  • Add hazards as the player completes objectives, so the game fights back as they grow and holds them in a flow state.
  • Prey: Mooncrash adds radiation and fire at about 25 percent, a shorter time limit at 50 percent and dust storms at 75 percent. Deathloop has no real counterweight to infused gear.
• Scale difficulty to what the player has already done in non-linear games. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit8:54
  • Games can change based on what the player has seen and done, so non-linear stages need not all be equally hard.
  • In Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, the three tower puzzles are secretly swapped so the first tower you climb holds the easiest version. Halo 3: ODST has a flat curve and could have varied enemies by mission order.
• Plan for over-levelling when players roam freely. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit12:04
  • If you leave balance to the player, explore too much and a boss falls over with a light shove. That spoils the satisfaction and makes earlier areas boring.
  • Elden Ring hides enemy levels. Mark Brown thinks more could have been done for its supersized world, as Skyrim and Assassin's Creed scale enemies with player power and Breath of the Wild drops stronger enemies in after a number of kills Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit13:24.

2.7 Where designers disagree

Flat or scaling difficulty, and whether a win should prove skill, depend on your structure and your audience.

• Free order can mean a flat curve instead of scaling. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:22
  • Each dungeon might be the first one visited, so puzzles cannot assume earlier knowledge.
  • A Link Between Worlds has a steady, fairly flat curve in its second half. Scaling puzzles and layouts to the order visited would be a nightmare to build.
  • Dark Souls' four Lords are similar in difficulty, but the player levels up and the last ones become pushovers. Different difficulties risk players hitting the hardest boss first Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit15:02.
• Persistent upgrades make wins ambiguous, flat runs make them clear. Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit1:49
  • When nothing carries over, the only way past the final boss is learning the systems, so a win means the player got better.
  • Spelunky and Enter the Gungeon always start you with the same health, bombs and money.
  • With permanent power-ups the game is hardest at the start. In Dead Cells it can feel like you have no chance until you buy more health potions, and a win leaves you asking whether you improved or the game got easier Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit4:43.
  • Hades embraces the other side: players can succeed by playing for a long time, not by getting better Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit11:17.