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One cool mechanic in A Hat in Time is the way the game keeps you from getting lost. In A Hat in Time, especially as the game progresses, levels get bigger and more complex and less linear. As this is a game targeted at a casual
A video series by Game Design Library highlighting standout game mechanics from 2025, from A Hat in Time's camera navigation to Ball Pit's reload system and Baby Steps' walking controls.
Key Takeaways
- Good mechanics often solve a specific player problem, such as navigation in open levels or limited input in horror games.
- Constraints such as limited ammo, restricted controls or split inputs can produce creativity, tension and immersion.
- Designing for feedback and presentation, like AI timing or animations, can make mechanics feel more impactful.
- Risk-reward systems and meaningful choices are recurring tools that make mechanics memorable.
What the video covers
- A Hat in Time uses a camera snap to the highlighted objective so players always know the general direction to head, avoiding getting lost in large, non-linear levels.
- Blood Typers makes nearly every interaction, including movement, item pickup, attacks and computer repair, a seamless typing mechanic with dynamic word counts based on the weapon used.
- Kaput Mortem separates camera and hand control (mouse for camera, shift plus click for hand), creating immersion and tension especially in puzzles and combat with light sources.
- Demon School uses a planning phase and a combat phase, with AI letting independent characters act simultaneously for a spectacular fight presentation.
- Arc Raiders lets players extract even when downed, creating tense escape moments, and offers a free basic loadout to keep players engaged after losing gear.
- Abiotic-style rogue brawler Absolum lets players combo already-dead enemies, adding a riskreward choice since bodies disappear over time and combo contributes to XP.
- Baby Steps turns walking into a difficult task by assigning each leg to a trigger, reinforcing the character's story of relearning to walk.
- Ball Pit limits ammunition so balls must return to the player, and faster returns as enemies approach create rapid-fire clutch moments.
- Blackjacket adds betting rules on top of blackjack that increase tension and decision-making.
- The video covers a broad range of genres and titles, presenting each mechanic with analysis of why it works in design terms.
Chapters
- 00:00A Hat in Time: Navigation Camera Snap
- 08:30Blood Typers: Typing as Core Interaction
- 16:40Kaput Mortem and Demon School: Split Controls and Phase Combat
- 25:40Arc Raiders, Absolum and Baby Steps
- 39:10Ball Pit, Arc Raiders Loadout and Blackjacket Betting
- 50:00Slots and Daggers, Wheel World and Other Mechanics
- 61:40Luminas Arise Burst and Atomfall Bartering
- 75:00Closing Remarks
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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audience with no real exploration mechanics to keep the player content whilst they search for the objective, the developers really needed a solution for players getting lost. The mechanic which snaps the camera onto the highlighted objective is the answer.
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Without fail, at the very least, the player knows the general direction to go in. It's not a yellow line on a map or a know [music] the waypoint system. So it gives the player some room to figure out
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just how to get to that objective. But the important thing is they know what direction to head in. Now I personally think this is as close to a perfect implementation of this type of mechanic for this game as you are going to get.
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So I wanted to highlight it. One cool mechanic in Blood Typers is just how many amazing ways this game uses typing to interact with the game. Pretty much everything you do in this game, from walking from one point to another to
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picking up items to attacking to fixing computers, all are done with typing. Now, this isn't new. Typing games are usually built around only typing to interact with the game. However, this game is unique in that it pulls back a
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lot of the restrictions on typing games that are usually found. For example, the game is designed so you can walk pretty much anywhere you want. There is a radius around you and there are always words to type in any direction so long
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as they make sense. Additionally, the words and how much you type are dynamic. For example, if you're using a pipe to attack, you have to type three words to kill an enemy. But if you're using a pistol, you only have to type one.
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Honestly, it's really hard to describe just how fluid and seamless the typing mechanic is implemented in this game.
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You almost forget that you're typing instead of using WD to move or or left clicking to attack. One cool mechanic in Kaput Mortm, 100% said that wrong, is the fact you control the camera and your hand separately. Use the mouse to move
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the camera. Pretty standard. But to move your hand, you hold shift and leftclick at the same time. This mechanic is cool for two reasons. Firstly, the horror genre is just famous for control/ viewpoint restrictions. And this is another good one. The fact that you
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cannot move your hand and change the direction you are looking in at the same time could lead to some really interesting moments, especially involving either time-sensitive puzzles, combat, or your hand holding a light source like a torch. However, the way
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this mechanic is executed is what makes it really cool. Even in just the first 10 minutes of gameplay, you already start to sink into the extra layer of immersion as your right hand, which controls the mouse, starts to feel more
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and more like the right hand on the screen parts. One cool mechanic in Demon School is how the phase system in combat works. So, there are two phases, the planning phase and the combat phase. In the planning phase, you click on your
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characters and the board highlights where they can move and whether or not they can attack. Once you select a target destination, the character will move to that point. You'll be able to see the damage done to the enemy if
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there is an enemy there, as well as any other effects on them. But that's it for now. Once you have finished your planning phase, the board resets to how it was before the planning phase started. At which point, the board
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becomes alive and your character start performing the actions you planned out. This time with full animations, VFX, and if you use a special attack, a cool hood animation. This coupled with the fact that there is really smart AI behind the
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scenes where if a character is not reliant on another character performing an action before them, then they will go ahead with their actions at the same time as another character as there is no reason to wait, which makes for a really
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cool spectacle every fight. One cool mechanic in Arc Raiders is that you can extract even when you're down. The fact that you can do this leads to really tense moments where you can't fight back, but you just might be able to
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escape. A great feeling for an extraction shooter. Come. Yeah. [snorts] Yes. He's coming. He's coming. He's coming.
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No. Hello. Oh my god. We survived. One cool mechanic in Abselum is the fact that you can combo enemies even when they are already dead. This is great for two reasons. Firstly, it's fun. Fun and abundance, some might say. But secondly,
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combo directly contributes to your XP, which is critical for progression in this rogike brawler. This mechanic actually adds an interesting choice and a bit of riskreward. Can you risk continuing to combo enemies whilst others are on your back because if you
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stop then their body will be gone forever. One cool mechanic in Baby Steps is just simply putting one foot in front of the other.
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In classic Bennett body fashion, Baby Steps takes even the most basic mechanic, walking, and makes it incredibly difficult. The way it works is you push the left analog stick in the direction you want to go in and lift
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your left and right legs with the corresponding triggers. What's really great about this mechanic is firstly putting restrictions on the player to evoke creativity is always good, but also it really does feel like you're learning how to walk for the first time.
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The character you play as clearly hasn't really put one foot in front of the other in a long time, both physically and mentally. And the more you play, the better and better yourself and the character gets at doing just that. Also
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in classic Bennett Funny fashion, I'm sure the message is going to hit home after 20 hours of frustration and anger as you climb higher and higher. But already the mechanic and context marry really well together, and it's just a
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fun time. One cool mechanic in Ball Pit is how the reloading works and how it's insanely impactful. As you can see, ball pit is all about shooting balls. But what you might not realize is that the player only has a certain number of
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balls rather than infinite supply. To fire the same ball again, the ball either has to complete a certain number of bounces, or what's more likely, the ball has to reach the bottom of the screen and come back to you. This is
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insanely cool for one key reason. As you progress through levels, more often than not, enemies will get closer and closer to you. If they reach the bottom of the screen, you start taking damage. Because the time between firing, hitting the
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enemy, and the ball reaching you again gets quicker and quicker, you fire faster and faster. This mechanic facilitates so many clutch moments where you are right up against it only for essentially rapid fire to be triggered and you start mowing down enemies at the
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last moment. Now this is something that in the heat of the moment the player might not even notice is happening but they will feel its effect which is just great design. Another cool mechanic in Arc Raiders is the free load out. As Arc
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Raiders is an extraction shooter where if you die you lose all your gear. Having a free load out, which is a very basic kit to take it to the next round, is super helpful for keeping the player playing. On top of that, it makes you
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pitiful to shoot, which keeps you alive longer. I I literally just have a free load out. There's no reason to kill me.
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I won't kill you. Where are you? Ah hello. Thank you. Thank you. One cool mechanic in Blackjacket is how the betting system works. Blackjacket is just straight up blackjack with a few extra rules tacked on. You are still trying to place cards
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to get you up to as close to 21 as possible, but not over. But the rules around betting make for an even more tense and interesting experience. So, you start off every round by placing a bet from your own personal pot or your
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winner's pot you have gained from previous victories. The aim of the game is to take all of the opponent's personal money. Once they are at zero, they are defeated. But likewise, once you lose all your money, your run is
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completely over. Alongside having to place a bet at the start of every round, so if you keep losing rounds, you'll eventually run out money. There are a few things that the game does which can make you win or lose even more money.
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The first thing is the amount of cards you play or just where you place your cards. The final two card slots have a cost to placing cards there, but they do have a benefit. Additionally, if you are fishing for that one card to win you a
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round and you happen to get one that puts you over 21, then you can hide the card in your sleeve, which has an increasing cost every time you use it.
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Finally, there are plenty of cards and abilities which you or your opponent can use to increase or even decrease your bets. The point is, all of these options massively increase the complexity of decision making in Blackjacket. and most
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importantly up the tension in a significant way. This game only has a demo out at the moment, but it's already one of my most anticipated indie games for next year. One cool mechanic in Black Ops 7 is the wall bounce. The wall
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bounce is essentially like a wall jump, but one thing's for sure, it isn't like any sort of advanced movement we have seen in this franchise before for one key reason. Now, a lot of people's worries, mine included, were if the wall
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bounce would change combat to be similar to Advanced Warfares, with a lot of time in the air, heavily focused on zipping around corners, changing trajectory, and just generally trying to be as unpredictable as possible, making fights less so about positioning and awareness,
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and more so just about raw reaction time. Thankfully, this is not the case, and for one key reason. The implementation of the wall bounces as such that it is incredibly predictable, maybe even too predictable. The distance from the wall and the trajectory you
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leave the wall from is roughly the same every single time. No change in speed, no change in angle, and with low air movement control, it essentially means that every player will understand and be able to predict the path of a wall
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bounce very quickly. This means that it's not very effective in combat at all. And from playing the open beta, this is very obvious to see. Instead, the wall bounce is used to add an extra dimension to the navigation of levels.
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The wall bounce allows the level designers to create new routes to rotate and path to different objectives and points of interest, adding muchneeded diversity to the geometry of the level and the player experience. This mechanic was truly a fine line when it comes to
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implementation, and the devs executed it really well. One cool mechanic in Crypt is how you loot and upgrade your characters. Cryptmaster is a typing dungeon crawling game where to loot items from chest, you need to type commands to the crypt master to help
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figure out what's actually inside the chest. For example, you could ask him to look at it and describe it or smell it.
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Or he could remember back to his past life and describe where he had seen those items before. Then you type what you think the item is based off the information he's given you. And if you're right, you get the item. Now,
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what getting those items actually mean is you get the letters from those items. So, say if you got a book, you would get the letters B, O, O, and K. These letters would drop into the characters at the bottom of the screen. At any
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point in the game, you can guess what these letters are trying to say. And if you guess correctly, those characters get a power up. This looting and upgrading loop is really unique in how it utilizes the fact that Crypt Master
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is a typing game to really make it interesting. At every stage of the loop, you have to think about what to type, whether it's commands or guessing words.
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On top of that, the game is entirely voed and surprisingly really reactive to incorrect words.
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Robe. No, it isn't that. Of course, there are times you type a word that is completely out there and you get a default response. That's something which is impossible to navigate for the dev.
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Actually, I withdraw the question. I don't care. But other times, you will say a word that is wrong and the crit master will react appropriately acknowledging the word, which is really cool. One cool mechanic in Clover Pit is how the game
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brings order to the chaos of slot machine gambling. This game is of course heavily RNG based. The aim of the game is to earn enough money each round to survive the situation you are in by paying off debt, which you do by playing
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on the slot machine. The slot machine is entirely random, meaning that in order for the game to really be worth playing at all, there needs to be a mechanic which allows the player to control this randomness somewhat. The best way Clover
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Pit does this is via the lucky charms. Lucky Charms mostly simply change the odds of what type of symbol will appear on the slot machine which gives the player some control but not much. Then however you have abilities which can
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make it so when those symbols do appear they are higher value. So getting those two charms in the same run can really boost your chances of earning lots of money. Finally, there are charms which just help you with your luck such as
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increasing your odds of getting a pattern if you haven't gotten one in the last couple of turns. On any given run the problem is always the same for the player. How do I increase my chances of success? But with 150 charms, that
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problem has a massive variety of potential solutions with different synergies and strategies to uncover as you go. Randomness mitigation is always a necessary but tricky problem to solve in the genre. Don't be switched off by how this game looks. One cool mechanic
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in Cube Chaos is how the deck building works. Cube Chaos is a great example of a game which sacrifices visual quality in order to streamline development process of actual functional implementation. And the deck building is one of the key areas you can see and
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feel this in Cube Chaos. Before going into any fight, you select your deck. You can have up to 15 different blocks and it will take you a while in a run to actually fill the deck enough to have to
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make interesting decisions. However, once you do, due to how many individual blocks there are in Cube Chaos and the fact that each block can have wildly different abilities and effects, there are many interesting decisions to make before the start of any battle. Now, you
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can build your deck around fortification, around creating armies, around factories to generate economy and mana. You can have flying units, digging units, units which spawn just to feed into a machine. You can have lasers and missiles or healing stations. You can
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have teleporters, and you can also just have your standard block of stone. The aim of the game is to simply defend your leader and kill the other leader. But how you go about it in these missions, which take no longer than a couple of
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minutes, could vary wildly depending on how you build your deck. And if that isn't a testament to how good of a deck builder Cube Chaos is, then I just don't know what is. Another cool mechanic in Demon School is how the AP system works.
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AP is action points, and you have 10 to spend each round across your entire roster. The first trick this game uses is that for every action one specific character does, their next action will cost one more AP. So, if one character,
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Fay, for example, does one move, then one attack, then one move, their next move being their fourth attack, will cost 4 AP to do. This coupled with the fact that you can use any character in any order really adds a significant
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layer of depth to what moves you do in what order with what characters, as the more you use one character, the more expensive using that one becomes for that round. Really cool. One cool mechanic in Donkey Kong Bonanza isn't
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just the fact that you can dig and destroy pretty much any surface, but it's why that is fun. If you didn't know, in Donkey Kong Bonanza, you play as Donkey Kong and you basically just smash up the entire place. The execution
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of this smashing mechanic is where it really shines. Firstly, there are very little restrictions, giving the player a sense of agency where they feel like they can tackle a lot of the problems in the game with just this one mechanic.
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Secondly, the terrain is littered with collectibles and hidden areas that you can find as you dig, giving the player that constant feeling of rewards and progression. Thirdly, the camera, though not perfect, does an insanely good job at tracking DK, keeping focus, and
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logically either clipping through or pushing against terrain. Legit, if they didn't get this camera as good as they did, this game would have been dead on arrival. Finally, the smashing mechanic is core to the game. Pretty much every
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boss, every enemy, every puzzle involves smashing. It would have been easy to make this a gimmicky traversal mechanic and nothing else, but they didn't, and that's great. Another cool mechanic in Ball Pit is the base building system.
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Like a few rogue likes, the spoils of your adventures can be used to start creating a system to gain additional resources in between runs in the form of a base. The base allows you to collect basic resources to then build buildings,
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which unlock new characters and give you stat buffs, which is cool within itself. But what's really cool is how the game uses the core mechanic, which is firing balls in a brickbreaker style fashion to make the placement of these resource
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generators really important. In order to collect resources and build buildings, you have to fire workers in their direction, or if you can't reach them, hope that they bounce in that direction eventually. You start off with workers only having 7 seconds to complete their
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journey, making unoptimal placement really damaging. The game didn't really need to do this at all. It could have just worked like an engine like most rogue likes with this feature, but the worker placement mechanic is incredibly well done and fits the game so well. One
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cool mechanic in Arc Raiders is the quest system. The quest system works great for two reasons. Firstly, it gives the player a goal outside of just looting, a purpose to pursue outside of the core gameplay loop. However, secondly, the biggest impact quests have
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on the game is coupled with the insanely well done AI, it adds a whole other layer to the player versus player experience.
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Although, I'm pretty new to the game. I'm on like my third quest. I just need to kill some bots.
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Yeah. Due to the quest being so welldesigned and again the AI being so fun to fight, players find themselves wanting to work together even when not in a squad. In order to complete quests and fight the AI, adding a really cool social dynamic
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to Arc Raiders, which has resonated with the community and clearly designed with intentionality behind it. Well, that went terribly. I just down myself pretty much. Has anybody got a revive?
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Thank you so much. One cool mechanic in Babberu is that you complete puzzles using pseudo code. Babberu is a game where the rules are laid out in front of you in the form of text blocks. Babber is you, wall is stop, and flag is win.
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For example, the catch is you can push and move around these blocks to create interesting solutions to puzzles. For example, in this one, I changed wall is stop to wall is you, then moved all the walls to the flag to win. Babriu is an
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incredibly innovative and unique game, and if you haven't played it, I highly recommend it. One cool mechanic in Left 4 Dead 2 is how the special enemies work and how much of an impact they have. So, the general flow of Left 4 Dead 2 is to
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stay in a group, work your way through Hards of Infected, complete objectives, and get to the end of the level.
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However, throughout each encounter, a special enemy will emerge, which will pull every player's focus to them, completely switching up the gameplay.
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even if their presence alone doesn't draw the players to them. The fact that their AI targets one player until they down will it forces you to run to that player and help them before they down or die completely as completing the game
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with less players is significantly harder and also you want to help your team. I suppose each special enemy's design is really well done but just their base concept is something which I think is slept on from people who still
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wish to emulate what Valve accomplished to this day. One cool mechanic in Lumines Arise is how the game rethinks point scoring. In Luminess Arise, to score points, you have to create 2x two blocks of the same color. Pretty simple.
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However, those blocks aren't scored and removed immediately. Instead, a timeline that sweeps across the screen in time with the music scores 2x two or bigger blocks whenever it hits them. That means that there is a time element to scoring
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and placement. As the bigger you make these blocks, the more points you get. This not only incentivizes a player behavior to be quick with building up blocks to be as big as possible as soon as the timeline passes a certain point,
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but it also incentivizes thinking ahead as when blocks are removed, the blocks above fall down, potentially creating even bigger blocks that you can build on. A great example of an incredibly simple mechanic that creates a lot of depth. One cool mechanic in Kingdom
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Come: Deliverance 2 is the fact that if you choose certain dialogue options, they actually give you stats for those particular categories. For me, this is insanely cool for a role playing game as it just sort of works the opposite of
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how other games do it. So, conversations in Kingdom Deliverance are context first, meaning that unlike other RPGs, if you have high stats for one star, it doesn't mean you will always succeed.
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Instead, it's about choosing the right dialogue option for the context and for your character. And if you're successful, that stat increases. This means that the more you pick the same options, meaning the more you role play consistently, you will become even
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better at role- playinging in that particular way. A self-fulfilling gameplay loop which is incredibly rewarding and very well executed. One cool mechanic in Jump the Track is its visual novel where you unlock dialogue choices via playing Pachinko miniames.
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Yeah, it's a weird one. Whenever you get hit with a choice in the dialogue, you are prompted to play a pegle style miniame. you need to hit all the pegs of a particular type of choice in order to
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be able to say it. Say you want to hit back with a fierce response, you need all the orange pegs. Or if you want to be diplomatic, you need all the green pegs. Of course, you don't really know
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what these responses are going to be. So, you are torn between doing safe shots to make sure you get the choice you want and more risky shots to try and get all the choices before you run out of balls. On top of that, there are also
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actions you can take. actions are different from dialogue choices and require you to instead get a certain score in the pachinko miniame before you run out of balls. This mechanic is great because firstly it's a fun miniame but
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secondly it gives the player a hell of a lot of agency in their choices before they have even made them. What's also great is that the game rolls with the punches. If you get one choice, three choices, no choices, or you fail an
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action, the game adjusts and you really do feel like you're playing your own way, win or lose. One cool mechanic in Mirror's Edge is how it handles momentum. Mirror's Edge is all about momentum and keeping it. The game works
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like this. If left uninterrupted, the player will reach max speed and stay there. There is nothing the player can do to get past this max speed. However, the game is full of said interruptions.
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So then the game becomes how to mitigate as much loss in momentum as possible as you're running through a level. The game gives you tools to do this. If you're landing, you can roll or slide to lose less momentum. Instead of turning around
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a sharp corner, you can wall run and jump. Instead of jumping onto a ledge, you can vault off a smaller asset and clear the ledge completely. Running through a level in Mirror's Edge is a constantly changing and free- flowing
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puzzle where you are constantly looking for the next potential issue and how to solve it. One cool mechanic in Monster Train 2 is how the train works. It can sometimes be a struggle for digital car games to get new players thinking
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multiple turns ahead, but the train itself is a great way that the game helps the player do this. The way the train works is that monsters enter the train at the bottom level and at the end of every turn, if the monster is still
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alive, they will move up a level on the train. The player can place units on any level of the train at any point. And as they know that monsters will move up a level at the end of every turn, this is
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a great visual aid to allow them to plan ahead. They might start off with placing units to keep monsters busy at the bottom levels of the train and use special units as almost like a trap near the top, for example. On top of this,
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the player's health is located at the top of the train. If the monster gets to the same level as the health, they will start doing damage to it. Further motivating the player to think strategically about where and when they
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place their units. The lesson to take away from Monster Train 2 is that if you're struggling to get the player behavior that you want, try to visualize it for them. Now, this might be the hardest game I've ever had to try and
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make a video on because one cool mechanic in Midnight Murder Club is the fact that you play the entire game in the dark. Midnight Murder Club is a firsterson shooter where the absence of light is the real enemy. The downsides
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of this design decision are clear. Of course, it's hard for players to see, but also it's a nightmare for content creators, which makes me think that this game could have been a cult classic if it was released 20 years earlier. The
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advantages of this design decision are truly amazing. It elevates the already amazing sound design by having the players rely on it to move around rooms, hear enemies, and speak to them via proximity chat. Additionally, any light that is introduced into the scene, such
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as a light from gunfire, adds so much tension and suspense to any encounter. It makes the player think twice about shooting as it exposes their position.
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Finally, in the minute-to-minute gameplay, there is always an interesting decision to make. Do they use the torch to see where they are going or do they not to avoid being detected? Great design, and I wish more people played
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it. One cool mechanic in Mr. Sun's Hatbox, which is the developer of Ball Pit's previous game, is the extraction mechanic. Mr. Hatbox is a 2D Sidon dungeon crawler, but with a twist. The character that you choose to enter the
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dungeon with. If that character dies, all loot gained plus all loot equipped to them beforehand is gone forever, and so is that character. This adds a lot of riskreward to the pre-planning process, but it also massively affects your
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decisions when you are in a run. Do you push further to get that extra bit of loot, or do you play it safe and just complete the objective and get out?
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Another cool mechanic in Ball Pit is how the game handles meta progression. There are two forms of meta progression, your character and your base. Regardless of how you do in a run, your character gains permanent XP, which essentially
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works to increase the starting level of your character at the beginning of each new run, making it slightly easier each time. This means that if you are struggling on a boss or just getting to the boss for that matter, players can
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feel good about replaying levels over another because they know they are building up their character to eventually overcome this challenge.
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Additionally, whenever you return to your base, you can increase the resources you generate, which allows you to build new buildings, which can give you stat buffs, a nice additional form of meta progression. Another cool mechanic in Silkong is the new currency
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system. Previously, all enemies as well as different parts of the environment gave the player geo. Geo was the sole currency used to buy everything in Hollow Night pretty much. However, in Silk Song, we have shards and rosemary beads. The latter is the important
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currency we are going to be focusing on in this video. Rosemary beads are what is used to buy things like brooches, maps, orments, etc. But they aren't just given out all the time. At the start of the game, you will come across them very
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rarely, only given in secret or hidden areas via parts of the environment. However, once you come across Silkong's Cornifer, who to be fair, rivals him in his vocals.
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You will soon come across enemies that can drop rosemary beads as well. These enemies aren't commonplace at all, but bonus points for having Corner 2.0 0 sell both maps, the quill and the compass, as well as enemies which you
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can farm to buy them all before moving on. This area in its entirety is 100% designed for the player to sit back, chill, and get their map situation in order before progressing. The new economy system, the fact that there are
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two prioritizes different enemies in different areas in different ways for the player. If the player wants to progress economy down one route, they focus on one area. If they want to go the other route, they will focus on
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other areas and enemies. It's a bit of added depth to the economy which is really welcome in Silong. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Silent
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Hill F is how the fungus, vines, and red spider liies guide the player through the most intense parts of the game.
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Silent Hill F is full of very densely packed levels with claustrophobia being the key feeling the level designers were tasked to give the player through the level geometry. However, the winding paths, labyrinth forks in the roads, and minimal sight lines pose a challenge for
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these chase sequences that occur when the fog monster attacks. To solve this, the developers used a red colored representation of the infection to guide the player. Specifically, the vines on the floor. Wherever they grow towards, that's where you need to go. If the
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liies start growing on a particular wall, that's probably the corner you need to turn around. If there's an area that's already densely packed with spider liies and vines, you know, not to go that way. This is something I
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noticed, but was designed with the intention of being subconscious signposting, and it really works. Other games have done this, but I can't think of one that's done it as well using the themes to such a degree whilst combating
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such tight level design. Another cool mechanic in Shroom and Gloom is the bash card and how it affects exploration and combat at the same time. So, Shroom and Gloom is a deck building game where one of your decks is entirely for
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exploration. Every time you progress to a new room, you need to unlock a door.
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In your deck, you do have cards which act as keys, but if you don't draw them, one card that is always in your hand is the bash card. The bash card opens a door, but at the cost of inflicting
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damage on the player. Now, this card is really welldesigned for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it just negates soft locking. And this soft locking would be when the player's run is just over because they're unlucky enough to not
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draw a key card. And secondly, it forces the player to think ahead. In combat, the player needs to make sure they have enough health at the end to use bash for the next exploration phase. And if a player decides to get trigger happy and
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uses bash to unlock an extra chest in the room, they need to keep in mind their remaining health before going into the next combat encounter. As if they push their look too much, they run at the risk of being one shot by the next
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enemy they see. Risk of Rain 2 is an exceptional action rogike, but this one cool mechanic has nothing to do with it being a rogike. Risk of Rain 2 is incredible at keeping the player immersed in the action, keeping them
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pushing forward, and keeping them looking over their shoulder. One way I notice that it does this is through the way enemies spawn. Now, I don't know if you have noticed this, but just from a couple hours of play, I realized that I
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rarely, if ever, see enemies directly spawn in front of me. Sure, sometimes I might see what is clearly a spawning animation play, like an enemy crawling out the ground, but in terms of enemies popping into existence or coming out of
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a monster closet or even just filing in from around the corner, this never really happens. Instead, it seems to be the case that enemies spawn outside of the FOV of the player. they spawn behind them or to the side of them or behind
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something. This alongside the incredible audio design of the game creates a scenario where the player feels like they are constantly in the middle of the fry. Even when out in the middle of an open field, they constantly feel like
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they are surrounded, making them whip their mouse around after every kill to see what enemies are coming next. I can't remember the last time I've seen enemy spawning done so well in the game.
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Another cool mechanic in Red Dead Redemption is the fact that horses seamlessly auto steer when you are aiming. When I got the first mission where I would have to ride and shoot at the same time, I was really worried I
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would have the same issues I had with other Rockstars games, such as the GTA series, where to aim, you have to take your eyes off the road, and it can lead to some really frustrating moments.
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However, that wasn't the case in this game. When you start aiming, you no longer control your horse, but instead of the horse just continuing in the direction that they were doing before you started aiming, they simply follow the path that they are currently on,
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allowing the player to focus on the task at hand before resuming control of the horse at the end of the fight. This is really well concepted and really well implemented. Another cool mechanic in Hollow Night Silk Song is the way the
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inventory and rosemary beads work. Like in most souls likes, if you die, you lose your currency. In this game, that is rosemary beads. However, something you don't lose are items in your inventory. Through collecting rosemary strings or buying them, you can turn
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your rosemary beads into necklaces, which are stored in your inventory rather than on your person. This is a great quality of life mechanic, which means that if you want to store your beads in a safer way, so long as you
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explore enough to find them or you farm enough to get enough rosemary beads to buy a string, you can do that. Now, it is a quality of life improvement, but it's not just a way to make the game
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easier by default. There is intentionality behind this and it requires action from the player. Players may choose to opt into this if they are having issues with specific areas or they might not. It's entirely up to you which is one of the reasons why this
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mechanic is good design in my opinion. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to Gil again for another cool mechanic. Another cool mechanic in Skate Story is the way the economy works. As you skate your way
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through the game, you will passively gain soul by doing tricks and keeping combos going. You also get a big chunk of soul whenever you go through a scripted encounter like a boss fight.
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This sole can then be used to buy upgrades for your skateboard as well as entirely new skateboards. You can also buy extra cosmetic stuff like stickers for your board as well, which is a really elegant and seamless progression
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loop. Skate to be able to skate better. Works well. However, soul can also be used to complete quests and missions that are part of the story. Like in the opening section of the game, you need to buy some bile tea in order to get a
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think piece to be able to get back on track with your mission of eating the moon. So to do that, of course, you have to visit the gift shop where said bile tea is sold for only 99 souls. One cool
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mechanic in Slots and Daggers is the skill check. On the surface, Slots and Daggers looks like your standard roulette game with not much input outside of the initial setup. However, there is one mechanic which breaks this.
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The skill check. If you roll an item which has a skill check, when the item is used, you will have to complete a quick time event which the outcome drastically affects how good the action actually is. For example, with this
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sword, I need to click when the meter is near the top in order to get a lot of damage. If I click near the bottom, I get almost no damage. Similar story with the mace, but instead of a meter, it's a
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reticle that bounces rapidly around the target. This mechanic really shines when both yourself and the enemy is low HP.
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This already intense moment is coupled with the fact that the game shows you how much damage the enemy is going to do on their next turn. Therefore, the player feels extra tense around their skill check. If they do it well and get
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a critical hit, they win. And if they don't, they lose. These are probably the best moments in the mid-to- mini gameplay of Sots and Daggers, and it's all thanks to this one cool mechanic.
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One cool mechanic in The Seance of Blake Manor is how it utilizes time in a really interesting way. So, you are a detective trying to find out what happened to a missing woman. However, the catch is you only have 1 hour. And
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every time you investigate something or just ask a question, that hour becomes 1 minute less. Say you have a conversation which has 10 interactions, that's 10 minutes gone. Say you open a draw and then look at something in more detail.
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That's 2 minutes right there. With a time limit of an hour essentially equating to 60 turns. It really makes the player pick and choose what is actually important to investigate further rather than just clicking on everything or choosing every line of
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dialogue which happens in every other detective game, which I think is a really neat twist in its own and a great innovation. But on top of that, there is also the fact that this game loops. You aren't meant to solve the case in just 1
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hour, but instead so many 1 hours. So the investigation actually becomes not only what you need to actually know, but when you need to actually know it. Also what you can do and where you can do it and figuring out character patterns,
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where they will be and when. All interlin in incredibly well done and satisfactory way with just a simple 60 turn limit. Now I'm going to show you an example of how you can use knowledge previously gained to move characters
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around and get to places you couldn't find before. Don't worry, this is right at the beginning of the game, so no spoilers.
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Sir, this area is for staff only. I would kindly ask you to leave this room if you need assistance.
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Your telegraph machine seems to be functional. Is that so? Mr. Hunter must have slipped in unnoticed and fixed it. Then you'll have to excuse me. I have messages to send ahead of tomorrow.
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Another cool mechanic in Silkong is how the five directional combat works. Usually in 2D games where the player can attack in four directions, it's up, down, left, and right. However, in Silverong, in order to match Hornet's more committal approach and personality,
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the game actually uses five directions: up, left, right, diagonal left, and diagonal right with no down attack.
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Attacking up, left, or right works as expected. But if you hold down on the D-pad or analog stick, you will dash either diagonal left or right, depending on which way Hornet is facing. Now, this is something to get used to for sure, as
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it isn't super intuitive the angle in which Hornet will attack. So, it's harder to start to figure out where she will end up. However, the feeling when you pull it off really makes you feel like you are playing much more
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aggressively than in Hollow Knight. Additionally, the knockback on these attacks are really strong, sending you back to your original position as if it was a regular down attack. Now, this diagonal attack allows you to attack down without being on top of enemies,
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which is safer at first, but then it forces you on top of those enemies before returning you back to original position. If you judge distance wrong, you could end up smack bang in front of them. Finally, it's just also a great
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movement tool. You can use it outside of combat to zip around, and it's great for bouncing between enemies with purpose.
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Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Vigil is that whenever you blink in real life, you blink in the game. Vigil is a horror game that tracks your in
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real life blinking and translates that into the game. In the game, there are two key systems which work with this mechanic. Firstly, the eye scanners that are dotted around the level. You need to keep your eyes open whilst the scanning
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process happens. But secondly, and more importantly, every time you look away from the monster chasing you, they move.
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If you keep your eyes open in real life, they stay still. But every time you blink in real life, they move. This mechanic is obviously incredibly technically impressive and interesting, but gameplay-wise, it uses a periphery, which isn't standardly used, especially
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in indie games, and uses it to immerse the player further in the experience. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune in to GDL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Viewfinder is how the perspective
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mechanic works. Similar to a game like Super Liiminal, Viewfinder uses the real-time location and rotation of the player's camera and whilst referencing the location and rotation of the objects which can be affected, checks to see if the camera is looking at those objects
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in particular ways. If they are, then it triggers an event which is usually a spawn of assets into the world, creating a really interesting and unique effect which is undeniably cool. One cool mechanic in Void Breaker is how the
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destructible environment and throwable items interact with enemies. In this rogike FPS, you can throw grenades at any structure and it will start to crumble. If debris lands on enemies from that structure, they become staggered.
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The staggered effect is really cool as not only does it stun the enemy, but they also take more damage per bullet and they give more ammo and health if they die while still stunned. This is the same for throwable items as well
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where if they hit the enemy, the stagger effect applies. with the ghostrunner inspired movement system and level design. Adding the stagger mechanic which heavily encourages players to change the level around them via destruction and change course to grab
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throwable items is really genius design and is executed really well. And all of this is done by a solo developer, too.
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Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the like button and tune to GDL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Wheel World is the way the boost works. Like in a lot of racing games, you have a
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boost. However, it's the way the player gains boost which is really interesting. You gain boost by getting air time by near misses or crashes. Basically, anytime you go off road, your chances of getting a boost increases. What this
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does is it rewards players that are trying to go fast by cutting corners or finding shortcuts anyway by giving them a boost to go even faster. This is a classic case of synergistic design which works really well for this title. One
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cool mechanic in White Knuckle is how the climbing works. White Knuckle is a firstp person platformer that is built for speedr running. There are two major mechanics to contend with when trying to go as fast as possible. The first being
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the individual hand stamina. In White Knuckle, you grab onto holds in the wall or ledges to mantle onto via clicking either left or right on the mouse. The catch is the longer you hold with either hand, the redder the hand becomes. If
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the hand becomes too red, it'll give up and you won't be able to use the hand again for a while. This idea keeps the player moving and puts pressure on making decisions whilst hanging in the air. The second mechanic is the pittance
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and hammer. Sometimes you will come up against a wall without holds and with no ledge in sight either. The answer to this problem is to hammer pittens into the wall. This is simple enough when on the ground, but becomes very tricky once
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in the air as you have to hold onto the piston already in the wall. open your inventory and use your hand you aren't holding on to the piston with to equip another one only to then get your hammer
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back into your hand as well. And again, you have to do all of this whilst your hands are turning more and more red.
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White Knuckle is an incredibly fiddly but very interesting and rewarding game that has a justified dedicated fan base.
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One cool mechanic in Words of Vengeance is how it tweaks the pacing and enemies to make it feel more like a Warhammer game. Traditionally, in typing games that involve combat, the entire aim is to kill the enemies before they hit you,
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and you do this by typing words above their heads. However, the designers acknowledge that it needs to be different for a Warhammer game, and the difference is small, but really meaningful. Warhammer games are all about dealing with hordes of enemies and
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really just about the war of attrition, trying to outlast your opponents. Therefore, the enemies in Words of Vengeance are primarily designed to just immediately and continuously attack you.
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So, the behavior for the player is still the same. and try and type as quickly as possible. But the goal is different.
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It's now try and do more damage to the enemy than they deal to you, rather than just trying to kill them before they deal a single point of damage to you.
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This is backed up by the very generous healing given between encounters. Now, if you are playing bad, it won't heal you back to where you were pre-enccounter, but it is balanced so that if you have a decent words per
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minute for the difficulty, you'll be replenished a similar amount to what you would have lost. A great example here of a small but necessary design change to work better with an established IP. One cool mechanic in word play is the way
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the plays work. Plays are essentially turns which translates to the amount of words you can submit per round in order to get the score you need in order to progress. However, it's how this roglike spelling game uses plays to influence
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the player's decision. If you run out of plays, your run is over, like I said.
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So, right there, the game is forcing the player to try and make the most out of every word that they play. Now, this just isn't through spelling, [clears throat] but through the perks and abilities you get along the way.
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Each of which are designed to get the most out of your letters in different ways and building what is essentially a deck of abilities around certain goals.
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And doing that will help multiply your scores much higher than what would otherwise be possible. Now, without the threat of the play system looming, these decisions wouldn't be nearly as interesting. On top of that, we have a smaller mechanic such as a roll mechanic
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at the shop where you can spend a play in order to roll the shop. Now, this sounds very basic, but actually, I think it's quite nuanced. The fact that you are looking for ways to reduce your total plays per round being the perks,
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but to get the right perk, you might need to spend plays is really cool design. One cool mechanic in Wizardom is how the progression system works and how it's balanced more importantly. So, Wizard is a boomer shooter with roglike
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elements. Those elements being paid upgrades between runs, which is pretty run-of-the-mill. However, it's how those paid upgrades actually work in practice.
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When playing Wizardom, if you just rush through and just go to the quest marker at any chance you get, you'll find out pretty quickly that it's going to take a while for you to be able to afford the
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upgrades you need. The player really needs to explore, find hidden areas, take on optional combat and enemies, and even find a goblin Santa like creature that appears occasionally with a big bag of gold. Note with the last one, you
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need to kill him quick or he is out of here. The reason I wanted to call this out is because I can't remember the last time a boomer shooter, new or old, has ever made me this hungry for
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exploration, and I think it's down to the balancing and level design in Wizard. One cool mechanic in Wildgate is overloading the reactor. In Wildgate, your aim is to fight, loot, and extract with the artifact, or just be the last
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one standing. A lot of the players time is spent fighting AI mobs for loot and to complete quests. However, every now and again, you'll be faced with enemy players in a rival ship. Ship combat is not too dissimilar to Sea of Thieves.
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You have your cannons, your hard to maneuver ship, and your crew mates. Also, not unlike Sea of Thieves, you can board enemy vessels and try to kill them in a more personal way. However, what's really cool is the fact that if an enemy
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boards your ship, you don't just have to worry about them coming up behind you and shooting you in the head. You also have to worry about them overloading your ship's reactor. That reactor is near the heart of every ship, and if
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close enough, enemies can trigger the overloading procedure. This works as almost like a golden snitch. If the reactor goes off, regardless of who's winning or losing the fight, that ship and the crew that belongs to it is gone.
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This creates an incredibly potent hierarchy of importance where regardless of context, if that reactor alarm starts blaring, you bet every member of the crew is [music] gunning to switch off the countdown, which is what makes it such a cool mechanic. Another cool
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mechanic in Hollow Night Silkong is the fact that you can always find the map guy if you pay attention to what he says at the beginning of the game. What he says is that he will be hanging out with
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the people of Bone Bottom. Lo and behold, he was there. And not only was he there, but he had the map of the area I was just in. So, this change effectively gives the player two points to buy the map. Either Shakra or the
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fast travel. You just find one of them and you can buy the map. As the fast travel can take you back to Bone Bottom where he always is. This is a great quality of life improvement because it can really feel like you end up
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exploring an entire area before getting a map, which is a shame because one of my favorite parts about Hornight is seeing where the gaps are in the map and filling them in. So, I am very grateful they've made it so Shakra, yes, can be
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found in the wild, but also he will always be in Bone Bottom with the relevant maps available. Another cool mechanic in Ball Pit is that there's a character that can just straight up turn the game into an idol game. Now, there
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are plenty of other idol related mechanics in the game that you unlock, such as buildings that work even if you're logged off. But what came as a complete surprise to me is that there is a literal character you can pick to play
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the game for you if you just want to have it on in the background farming resources. Now, this character isn't for everyone. and it's definitely not something super fun to watch, but if you are doing something else, having it on
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in the background is really cool. The combat system is unsurprisingly the one cool mechanic in Batman Arkham Asylum.
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Love it or hate it, the effect it has had on games that have come after it, we can't deny just how farreaching this design, concept, and implementation has been. Essentially, the combat system, which is built around basic attacks,
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countering, and combos, coupled with gadgets and level designs that facilitate stealth, really do make you feel like a superhero. The fact that there is constant and consistent time dilation with every hit and every counter, as well as everything I've just
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mentioned makes this system work great in the superhero genre. But any game where the designers want the player to feel powerful and to feel like they can tackle any number of enemies as just a lone wolf, well, this system just works
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great for that. No, no, no, no. Bioshock uses collectibles as a way to trigger either a good ending or a bad ending. If you save all the little sisters, you get a good ending.
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What I've come [music] to expect of you, you saved them. If you kill them, you get a bad ending.
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Brutality. Rapture was not enough for you. Your father was tell this type of ending tries to tip the scales with regards to player behavior in Bioshop. Regarding the gameplay, it is better to kill the little sisters as it makes you stronger. So, in an attempt
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to counteract that, the devs added a clause in the contract where you only get the good ending if you save them and essentially make the game harder. One cool mechanic in the final sentence is pretty much the entire concept of the
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game. A typing game that's also a battle royale. You enter a lobby with a bunch of different people and the aim of the game is to get to the end of what you have to type before anyone else.
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Otherwise, you lose. This alone adds a lot of stress to the situation. As you can imagine, it almost has the same effect as when you're on a work call sharing your screen and all of a sudden you just forget how to type. On top of
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that, there are a bunch of little mechanics and systems which work really well with the broader concept. What you have to type in total are actually split into rounds which are usually just a few sentences. If you fail to type correctly
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three times and a bullet is loaded into a revolver and someone attempts to shoot you. Of course, this starts off at around a 16% chance to kill you, but increases with every string of failures.
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This along with the fact that every time you fail, even just one letter, it sets you back to the start of the sentence means that even if you are clearly not the quickest typer in the lobby, so long
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as you are accurate, you will always have a chance of winning. as that 140 word per minute player could get unlucky and get one shot if they make too many errors. One cool mechanic in Fez is the fact that you can rotate the camera,
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turning a 2D platform into a temporarily 3D platformer. The idea with this mechanic is that objects which take up a certain space from one perspective take up a different space from another perspective. This is because their depth is perceived but not actually a thing,
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if that makes sense. So, as some parts of the level move closer or further away from the camera due to the rotation, they become closer or further from the center of the screen, which increases or decreases the distance in between those
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and other parts of the level. Now, there is no doubt how much of an impact Fez has had on the indie scene in the early 2010s. From how great it looks to its story to its appearance and indie game
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the movie, but one thing is for sure, this mechanic and how it completely shifts the perspective of the player from one rotation to the next opens up so many possibilities and actual executions of some amazing puzzles and platforming. One cool mechanic in Frog
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Detective 2 is a notebook. The first game in the series, Frog Detective 1, had less characters and less items to gather. So, it relied on the player going back to each character to get them to repeat what item they needed. Due to
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the increased ask from the player, Frog Detective 2 introduces a notebook which has two pages for each character you come across. Within the notebook, you will see their name, potential motive for committing the crime you are investigating, the item they want in
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order to progress the story, as well as sometimes useful, but most of the time hilarious notes about the character that the frog detective has observed. Now, this is a pretty simple mechanic. I'm not going to deny it. But one of the
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reasons why it's cool is due to the evolution between the first game and the second game. The team wanted to expand the game, and they recognized with that expansion, they needed to give the player the tools to deal with the
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expanded story and ensemble of characters. And the notebook is a great mechanic to do just that. One cool mechanic in Glyphica typing survival is how it melds and marries typing with rogike mechanics. So, you are a little circle in the center of the screen, kind
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of like asteroids. you have ships coming towards you. You type the word above their head and you fire projectiles towards them. Pretty standard stuff.
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However, you will soon see that you start getting presented with upgrades. These can increase damage, debuff enemies, give you special abilities such as spawning turrets after every kill.
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Then, in classic rogike fashion, you can build on these abilities by synergizing them with others, such as passives, which buff the damage of the turrets, for example, or create chain lightning, which damages enemies but gives energy to your allies. I will say that the game
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is a bit slow paced on the first level, which is understandable as most typing games start out quite slow. But when you get to about the 10-minute mark, the fireworks really do start popping off and you really do see the benefits of
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the build you have created. There is, of course, permanent upgrades as well, which just tie in very beautifully to the rest of the game. This is a great example of two mechanics and systems coming together to really make more than
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the sum of their parts. Great design. One cool mechanic in Ghostrunner is the deflect mechanic. The deflect mechanic in Ghostrunner essentially works as a parry as most enemies, especially early on, shoot slower moving projectile bullets and the player has about a half
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second window to use their melee attack to deflect the bullet. Due to the player constantly playing a one-touch game, meaning any amount of damage will insta kill them, the deflect works as a last resort tool. If the player has
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positioned themselves poorly or their dash is on cooldown or simply an enemy has just surprised them, getting off a perfectly timed deflect can be one of the best feelings you can experience while playing a game. Thank. One cool
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mechanic in Hades 2 is the secret way enemies spawn. Unlike other wave-based dungeon crawlers, Hades 2 spawns waves in the strange way. It isn't just kill all the enemies and wait for the next wave. It's actually pretty dynamic. To
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trigger the next wave, you could have killed just 50% or 70% or even 90% of the enemies in the room. Now, I've logged a lot of data on this to see if there is a rule around health pools or
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types of enemies, but it seems to be pretty bespoke for every encounter, meaning that the developers would have tuned each new wave trigger based on play testing and intuition by hand, which is really cool. This wave spawning mechanic removes downtime and keeps up
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with the tension, but also it makes those moments where you do get a brief break between waves even more relieving.
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One cool mechanic in Demon School is just how many features the game gives you to plan the most optimal round you can. So firstly, in the planning phase, you have an option to rewind any move.
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You can do this any number of times right to the start of the first move in that round, which is unlimited freedom, which I don't see too often. Secondly, there are no restrictions on character order, meaning that you have more tools
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in your arsenal to combine moves and attacks in different ways. And thirdly, the player has complete knowledge of how friendly and enemy characters work, their stats, their abilities, their strengths and weaknesses, etc. This all leads to a situation where the player
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isn't trying to figure out how to defeat enemies, but how to defeat enemies the best way they can possibly defeat them.
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This is a core tenant of combat, obviously justified by the turn number target for each fight. If you win the fight before or on this turn number, you get a bonus, which really elevates everything I've just mentioned. One cool
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mechanic in Death Stranding 2 is the weather system. Many games have weather systems, of course, but the weather system in Death Stranding 2 is the most impactful and reactive weather system that I've ever seen. If you don't know,
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the entire point of the gameplay of Death Stranding is to get from point A to B. How you navigate through the environment is up to you. In Death Running One though, the terrain was tricky and interesting enough, backtracking to and from the same points
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could become a bit repetitive because the terrain is always the same. The weather system in Death Shawning 2 fixes that. If it rains, rivers which weren't there before now become obstacles. The plane of desert that you've crossed three or four times could suddenly be
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hit by a sandstorm. You could even get hit by lightning if you choose to brave certain weather conditions. Bottom line, the new weather system in Death Shawning 2 works simply because it adds variety to the puzzle that is getting from point
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A to B, which is cool. Another cool mechanic in Bulpit is how the game handles meta progression. There are two forms of meta progression, your character and your base. Regardless of how you do in a run, your character
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gains permanent XP, which essentially works to increase the starting level of your character at the beginning of each new run, making it slightly easier each time. This means that if you are struggling on a boss or just getting to
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the boss for that matter, players can feel good about replaying levels over another because they know they are building up their character to eventually overcome this challenge.
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Additionally, whenever you return to your base, you can increase the resources you generate, which allows you to build new buildings, which can give you stat buffs, a nice additional form of meta progression. One cool mechanic in Arc Raiders is the UI that shows you
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your current inventory after you loot. This is such an underrated feature for Arc Raiders, but I think it is so welldesigned for such a common pain point with extraction and looser shooters. Like most people, when I loot, I grab everything and figure it out
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later. If my inventory is close to being full, then I start to think about what I actually need. Therefore, when I'm actually looting on the screen, I'm not really taking in what's there and what isn't and how much space I have left.
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Not only for the reason I've just said, but also I just want to get out of the screen as quickly as I can so I don't get jumped by some randomer.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't shoot. Don't shoot. Oh, why did you do that? So the fact that the game then flashes up an update to your inventory after the fact after you've left the screen whilst you can see the world around you and the
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potential dangers around you is such a great feature. Another cool mechanic in Luminous Arise are the squares which at the start at least basically help bad players like myself. So as you are playing you will sometimes place an orb
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which has like a D-pad like icon on them. What this means is that for every connecting block of the same type for the next timeline sweep all those blocks will be removed from play. This means that for players just learning the game
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or bad players like myself, you can get lucky and remove a lot of blocks which are blocking your combos. However, like with everything in this game, this very simple mechanic has a lot of depth to it. Due to the nature of the timeline
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sweeping every so often, you can actually purposely block off combos of massive block formations until just the right moment, then use this block type to remove those barriers and then execute on these combos. This strategy probably won't be as common in this game
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compared to the last games due to the new burst mechanic, but if you are without burst, it is a good way to increase the value of your scoring blocks beyond the point what they should usually be. One cool mechanic in
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Pinnacle Point is the resonator. The resonator is an Alan Wake style device, but instead of shining a light on enemies to prime them to be shocked, you trigger the resonator, which plays a high-pitched frequency. This feels great to use as it slows the enemies down
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whenever you use it. So whether you are priming them for attack or just getting out of dodge, the resonator works well as a really useful tool. Additionally, the resonator is used to affect the environment such as removing barriers or
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locks. The trick with this though is everything you remove was in place for a reason to protect you. Once it's removed, it's removed. So there's always an interesting decision for the player to make. One cool mechanic in Phoenix
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Wright Ace Attorney is the ability to object during a cross-examination of a witness testimony. Whilst the witness is giving their testimony based off the evidence you have gathered throughout the case, you can object if you think there is a contradiction in what they
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said when considering the facts of the case. The feeling the player gets when they lock onto a discrepancy, double-checking the facts and then calling it out is incredible, and it's all thanks to the way the case is paced.
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The player is forced to sit and listen, to take in the information and pay attention to every sentence the witness says. So when they spot that discrepancy, they are chomping at the bit to object and set the record
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straight. This mechanic really does make the player feel like they are in a courtroom helping defend their client.
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This mechanic does get more complex as the game goes on, but all footage I've shown is from the first case to avoid spoilers. One cool mechanic in Peak is a stamina bar. Like many others, Peak takes inspiration from the Breath of the
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Wild. Your aim is to climb to the well peak of the mountain, and you're only limited by your stamina bar. However, it's how the stamina bar can be affected by different things which makes it really interesting. The stamina bar also
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works as your health bar. So, if you take damage, it takes a chunk of your stamina away. If you get hungry as you climb, your hunger takes away some of the stamina. If you get poisoned, that also takes away some stamina. And the
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weight of your gear can take away stamina, too. All of these different aspects are also cured in different ways. Health is cured by bandages.
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Hunger is cured by food. Removing weight is cured by, well, getting rid of resources. The fact that different things remove stamina in different ways, and you need different solutions for each of them means that the game has a
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bunch of tools to motivate the player to head off in different directions whilst they climb the mountain. Not only is the mountain a big puzzle to solve, but so is managing your stamina. One cool mechanic in Platform 8 are the hints
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hidden in plain sight. Unlike the sequel to this prequel, Platform 8 gives the player a helping hand in figuring out how to get past anomalies via the LCD screens at top the doors to the carriage. Sometimes when you come up
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against an anomaly but have no idea how to get past them without forcing a restart, if you take a look at the LCD screens, it might give a helpful hint, like don't look at them. In a game where
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the goal is to get to the eighth carriage, and one false move can send you right back to the start. Little hints like this can avoid the player just having a guide up on the other screen, which removes a lot of the fun
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and takes the player out of the experience. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GGL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Promise Mascot Agency is how saving mascots work. On jobs, more often than not, mascots will get
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themselves into trouble. In order to get the full payout for the job, you need to go in and save them. To do this, you use hero cards. Hero cards have different stats on them. The only one you're interested in is the icon matching the
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health bar at the top of the screen. The number next to that icon on the card equals the amount of damage that hero card does to the health bar. You have 60 seconds and two turns in order to get
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that health bar down to zero. This mechanic is cool. Firstly, because it adds a bit of strategy to quite a humorous part of the game, but secondly, it's because of how you get these hero cards. You get these hero cards by
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exploring the town, speaking to people, and helping them out, and in return, they will help out your mascots.
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Exploration and this miniame on the surface aren't really tied together. But with the hero cards being the glue, it's a great motivator for players to explore and engage with NPCs and the story, which is another reason why this
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mechanic is so interesting. One cool mechanic in Rampage Knights is the lockpicking game. So this game, Rampage Knights, which originally came out in 2015 and with no disrespect, looks like it did as well, has a mechanic which I
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haven't seen in any other action rogue like I've played and that is the lockpicking miniame. So when you enter certain rooms in Rampage Nights, you might find a chest and to unlock it, you need to pick the lock by timing button
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presses when the key is above the golden pins. The key moves on its own, so you are at the mercy of its speed. And if you fail, you restart from the beginning of the miniame. What makes this a cool
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mechanic is the fact that these chests are available at any time, not just when you've killed all the enemies in the room. So, if you're in desperate need of a heal or a buff, you can chance it on
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completing the QT flawlessly in order to save yourself. Or it might just be the nail in the coffin. One cool mechanic in Rat Shaker is, well, the rat shaking mechanic. [laughter] Rat Shaker is a mouthwashing inspired horror walking sim where the player goes
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through the story with a rat clenched in their fist. The player can do two things to the rat. Of course, they can shake the rat, but they can also squeeze the rat. Shaking the rat allows the player to build up their rat shaker meter at
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the top of the screen. Uh, also to light up ways in the dark areas of the level, power up generators, and remove the infection. Squeezing the rat allows the player to use the rat shaker meter to interact with objects such as doors or
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TVs or elevators. So, first off, this mechanic is cool because of how many uses it has with just two inputs. But the real hero feature of this mechanic is the sound design. Because Rat Shaker is a horror game and especially as you
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get further and further in the game, every fiber of your body wants to keep quiet and in the shadows. However, you need to shake the rat in order to progress. And every time you do this, the rat screams,
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[groaning] the volume, but also how the screams reverb off walls really makes the player feel incredibly unsettled and vulnerable whenever they have to do this, which are two emotions every horror game has in mind for the player. Thanks for
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watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Reanimal is the way it utilizes light. Like in a lot of horror games, sight restrictions are key to creating atmosphere and an
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environment for the player to feel scared and uneasy. And Rean Animal is no different with its heavy fog and the inability to move the camera. In the opening sequence of the game, the player is unable to move the camera or see much
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further than the edge of their boat. But they can see fuzzy lights from buoys in the distance. This immediately creates a very visceral feeling of fumbling around in the darkness, hoping you don't crash into a jagged rock or beach the boat or
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even just run into a monster of any kind. Then you were joined by a companion, which is where the game makes use of the fact that the right analog stick doesn't move the camera by allowing the player to move the other
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character's lantern around to shine light on the environment. Just the twin stick nature of this is really interesting, but the pacing of this introduction is a great way to sell the player that your companion matters and can be useful. All of this is present
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within the first 10 minutes of the game, which is incredibly impressive, especially considering a lot of time is actually spent setting the scene and allowing a couple of story beats to breathe. One cool mechanic in Red Dead Redemption is the cover system. Now, the
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cover system as a concept isn't itself revolutionary, but the way Rockstar executed the system in this game is where it really shines. The bottom line is it feels incredible, but here are all the reasons to why it feels incredible.
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Firstly, the mechanics which go into making it feel good, such as the ability to seamlessly lock or unlock to cover.
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You never really feel like you're fighting it like you can do in other games. And one visual where you can see the seamlessness is the slide into cover if you are sprinting beforehand.
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Secondly, there is a lot of rounded cover in Red Dead. The lock on system allows you to move arounded cover smoothly which is something that's easily taken for granted and it works so well with the way the game is designed
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as it opens up so many more angles to shoot enemies. And thirdly, the triple combination of great leveling encounter design coupled with a great feeling of auto aim, plus the fact that there is a lot of fall-off when it comes to your
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shots, all motivate and reward the player to take out one or two bad guys, run to the next cover, take out another bad guy, and repeat. Sometimes it's not that the mechanic is unique in itself, but it's the way that it's implemented,
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and this one is done really well. One cool mechanic in Shroom and Gloom is that it is a dual deck builder. What this means in practice is that you have one deck for combat but also one deck for exploration. This is a great idea as
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both decks require completely different decisions and strategy. Now, one deck will of course be how do you synergize and make the most out of your cards to do the most damage but also sustain the most damage whilst the other deck will
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be all about how to get the most out of exploring. Now, with the exploration deck, do you want to build a deck all about getting as many keys as possible?
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Or maybe it's as many camps or as health as possible. Do you find ways to feed your exploration deck into your combat deck? Now, these are just a few things that you can think about when it comes to building that exploration deck
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alongside your combat deck. Now, this one mechanic adds so much to the rogike deck building genre that I just had to point it out.
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Another cool mechanic in Hollow Night Silk Song is the way the inventory and rosemary beads work. Like in most souls likes, if you die, you lose your currency. In this game, that is rosemary beads. However, something you don't lose
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are items in your inventory. Through collecting rosemary strings or buying them, you can turn your rosemary beads into necklaces which are stored in your inventory rather than on your person.
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This is a great quality of life mechanic which means that if you want to store your beads in a safer way, so long as you explore enough to find them or you farm enough to get enough rosemary beads
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to buy a string, you can do that. Now, it is a quality of life improvement, but it's not just a way to make the game easier by default. There is intentionality behind this, and it requires action from the player. Players
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may choose to opt into this if they are having issues with specific areas or they might not. It's entirely up to you, which is one of the reasons why this mechanic is good design in my opinion.
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Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to Gil again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Skate Story is how the tricks and boss fights work. Yes, there are boss fights in this game. Tricks are of
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course things you do on your skateboard, a pop shove it, an ollie, a kick flip, etc. To deal damage to the boss, you must perform tricks close enough to them whenever you successfully land a trick, they take damage. For different boss
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fights, they may require you to do a combo of tricks before just landing one attack. Once you've built up enough of a combo, you press square to unleash the damage your combo has just built. So, the bigger the combo, more damage.
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However, you can't just do the same trick every single time. Tricks have a staleness scale. If you perform the same trick too often, they won't do as much or even no damage at all depending on how much you do it. And when you are
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building up combos, they will give you less points which contributes to damage when you eventually land it.
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Additionally, certain attacks do more or less damage, but also gain more or less staleness. Like the heel flip, for example. It does a lot of damage, but you can only use it a couple of times before you need to switch it up again.
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This mechanic, first off, is cool as hell, but secondly forces the player to continuously use different tricks and get better at them as the game progresses. And also, like I said, it's cool as hell. One cool mechanic in Sonic
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Blast is a special way you can get an extra life. Of course, like in most old school platformers, if you run out of lives, you have to start the game from the very beginning. Also, like most old school platformers, if you get 100
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coins, you get an extra life. However, in Sonic Blast, there is another way you can do this. At least once in each world, in one of the three levels in that world, there is a hidden door to a
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bonus level. This bonus level emulates a 3D third person perspective, but in 2D, and has the player running in one of three lanes to collect coins. If the player collects 50 coins by the time they get to the end of the run, they get
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an extra life. With the combination of having to find the level, get 50 coins, and the fact that lives are so important, this little mini game is incredibly tense and incredibly fun.
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When you get to the end of having one or two coins off having 50 with no way of retrying it, you can bet some choice words are mentioned. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune in to GDL again for another cool
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mechanic. One cool mechanic in Sono is the little indicator you have on your little fella. Sono is a top-own game where your aim is to collect little colorful orbs. Once you have them all, you beat the game. However, the game can
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be quite disorientating without much differentiation in the background. Therefore, one thing the devs did that was really cool is introduce an indicator that looks in the direction you need to go. This has been done in many games before, from maps to way
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points to wind to anything really. But you can tell with this game that this is a problem which needed to be solved. A mechanic which has a very distinct purpose and was designed in a way to facilitate that purpose which I think is
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pretty cool. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in South of Midnight is how the wall running works. Wall running has been around for ages. You jump on a
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wall, run for a bit, and jump off the wall before you fall off. With South of Midnight, though, it works differently.
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Using the character's hooks, not only can you run on a wall, but you can also move down and up. This allows the player to firstly not fall off the wall, but secondly choose the height from which they jump off of the wall. Now, this is
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a cool mechanic simply because it takes a mechanic which has been done in so many games and puts a cool spin on it, and it's executed really well. One cool mechanic in Spilled is how the upgrades work. The aim of Spilled is to clean the
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ocean of oil and rubbish. To do this, you have to scoop it up with your scooper at the front of the boat. The oil goes into a tank at the back of the boat, and you have to drop it all off at
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a bigger boat in the area to empty the tank and get money. The three ways you upgrade your boat are increasing the size of the scooper, increasing the size of your tank, and increasing your speed.
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If you increase the size of your scooper, you can scoop more quickly. If you increase your speed, you can get around quicker. And if you increase the size of your tank, you can stay out for longer without having to offload your
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oil at the bigger boat. If you upgrade your scooper, you'll get more oil quicker, meaning you'll fill up your tank quicker. So, you'll also want to upgrade your tank. But if you upgrade your tank, you'll want to get around
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quicker to fill up your tank quicker. See how it all interconnects? This very simple upgrade mechanic, which just affects three variables attached to the player character, creates a very satisfying and rewarding gameplay loop for the player for the game's hour-long
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runtime. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Split Fiction only occurs briefly in a side story. Split Fiction is a co-op game with heaps of variety on how to make players work
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cooperatively. However, the bomb throwing and catching mechanic does this the best. And this is how it works.
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Simply, the players are playing a game of hot potato. They have a bomb and they need to throw it to the other player before it explodes by pressing the right trigger. But what is special about this mechanic is that the player catching the
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bomb also has to press right trigger at the right time to catch it. The fact that this is really difficult to base your catching timing on visuals alone alongside the level design forcing the player to look away from the other
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player creates a scenario where players have to communicate. In this side story, you'll hear a loss of 3 2 1 throw. 3 2 1 throw. And this is great. On the surface, it may sound simple, but trust me, all of these ingredients came
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together perfectly to create this experience. One cool mechanic in Spool Side is the fact that not only can you rotate the world horizontally, but vertically as well. Well, pretty much any direction. Spoolside is a game that is pretty much impossible to get hold of
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now. So, hopefully this video showcases just how interesting this mechanic truly is. In Spoolside, to get from one part of the level to another, to talk to NPCs or to collect items, you need to rotate the world in order to unlock new paths.
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Maybe a part of the level is way off to the right. Well, maybe you can bring it to the foreground and jump onto it.
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Maybe there's a wall that's impossible to climb. Well, you can flip it on its side and walk on it instead. I don't think I've come across a game that gives you so much creative freedom with this mechanic that involves changing the
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level like this. Hopefully, you can take inspiration from it for your own game. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL next week for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Super Meat Boy is what is left behind
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every time you die. Super Meat Boy is a twitchy and quite difficult platformer that relies on the player trying over and over again to land pixel perfect jumps. One subtle yet incredibly useful tool the devs give the player is the
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fact that Meat Boy not only leaves a big blood splatter on any surface that kills him, but it also leaves a trail of blood on the ground as he moves. This gives the player the path used on every
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previous attempt, allowing them to easily jump that one pixel earlier or hold the jump button half a second longer. Without this mechanic, the game would surely be 10 times harder. So, I think we can all be grateful that it was
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included. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune in to GDL tomorrow for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in the altars is how it manages time. As the altars is at least part management sim, like others in the
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genre, it has to bend the rules slightly when it comes to representing time to the player. Each day you start at 7:00 a.m. with the end of the day finishing around 8:00 p.m. Every in-game minute lasts about 1.5 seconds of real world
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time, meaning a full day would take about 19 1/2 minutes. Unlike other management sins, you cannot speed up or slow down this time with a time dial.
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Instead, different actions take up a different amount of time. Mining something or crafting something might take an in-game hour to do so. So instead of the game making you sit there for 90 seconds, the game speeds itself up. So, the action is still taking an
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in-game hour, but instead of waiting 90 seconds, it's closer to 5 to 10 seconds.
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This limits the disconnect between what the player is doing and the time in which they are doing it in. There's no cut to black until it's done, which could break immersion, and stuff doesn't just instantly happen as that would fly
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in the face of the survival element of the time mechanic. This is a really interesting and impressive solution that is 100% worthy of being called a cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in the Warren is how the doors work. So, this
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game is just all about doors. from its design to its presentation. The aim of the game is to collect all of the white cubes found in different corners of the levels. And to do that, you need to go
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through a bunch of doors which teleport you to the places depicted on the photo in front of them. Levels are designed so that whenever you come across a new door inside a level, it takes you back to the
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motel room where you started, where all of the doors you have used are stood before you. Levels are designed so that whenever you come across a new door inside a level, it takes you back to the motel room where all the doors you have
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used are stood before you. As you go through more and more of the level, this motel room becomes sort of a hub level for you to teleport to different parts of the level in different orders. Now, I played this game as part of Steam's Next
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Fest, and there is so much potential for puzzle and level design here just from this one mechanic. So many ways to switch up how the player progresses through the level and what order they do things in. Also, just to add, this game
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100% looks rough around the edges, but from playing it, you can clearly see there has been a hell of a lot of thought and care put into this demo, and I'm sure the rest of the game, too. 100%
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worth checking out. One cool mechanic in The Witness is the puzzles hidden in plain sight. The Witness starts off by introducing you to quite basic puzzles entirely located on screens, but soon starts teasing you with puzzles that involve the environment. The idea is
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that eventually the player will realize parts of the actual environment themselves are puzzles, which opens up the game to a whole other layer of not just puzzle solving, but puzzle hunting.
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I think it goes without saying that this game does a lot with not very much and that is a testament to how strong the core design of the game is. But to add a layer such as this to the game is only
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something you can take inspiration from. One cool mechanic in Ultimate Chicken Horse is the fact that every round you control whether the level gets easier or harder. Ultimate Chicken Horse is a two to four player party platformer where
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the goal is to get the most points by the end of the game. To get points, you need to get from the start to the end of the level. However, the catch is is that if every player gets to the end, no one
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gets points. To help yourself, but also hinder others. In between each attempt to get into the end, you get the opportunity to place down an item you select in this phase. These items are random and it's first come first serve.
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So, if you want to get a particular item, you need to be quick. Then, once you select the item, you can place it down with the idea that it makes it harder for other players, but you have a
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plan in mind of how to deal with it. You also get bonus points for killing players with traps. So, it's further incentivized to be dastardly, but not too dastardly as the rule where you get no points if everyone completes the
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level is the same if no one completes it. Honestly, I can't think of a game that has accomplished the same style of gameplay loop in such a simple and tight way. One cool mechanic in Paper Clay is how you can unfold parts of the world.
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Paper Clay is a collectathon platformer with a cardboard and origami aesthetic. The hero mechanic which marries the looks with how the game plays is the buttons or knobs which unfold either objects or entire parts of the level.
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The ones which unfold large areas are purely for looks pretty much. But the buttons which unfold objects or platforms enhance the platforming gameplay as they are on a timer which ticks down, meaning the player has to run over to the newly unfolded platform
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and use it before it folds back up. A very very simple mechanic which is more technically impressive than anything else. But what's cool about it is how synergistic it is with the visual style of the game. One cool mechanic in Paper
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Bark is the fog of war. Paperback is a walking sim in the style of a watercolor children's book. The hug is simply that the page is only colored where you step, or at least that's the main way that the
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player colors in the page. This in itself is interesting as it means the player can only see what's just ahead of their nose, which simulates the feeling of exploration through the dense Australian outback despite the top- down camera perspective. However, there is
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one extra wrinkle in this mechanic. The player can also paint in the background, if only temporarily. If the player is lost and needs a bit of help with regards to where the paths lead, they can drag their mouse across the screen
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and the game will paint in any white background your mouse touches. Even though the paint only lasts a few seconds, this tool being given to the player is firstly a great quality of life feature, but secondly a really nice
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visual spectacle that sells the theming really well. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Patrick's Paradox is the recursive levels used in puzzles. In Patrick's Paradox, the player's job is
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to make sure every square silhouette has a square on top of it and then to place themselves on the square which looks like Patrick. However, how the player does this is what's really interesting.
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Some boxes are actually levels the player can go inside. This opens up a few possibilities. The player might need to use a smaller level to get to a different part of the bigger level. The player might need to put a box inside of
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the smaller level and then move that smaller level before retrieving that box. The player might need to go inside the smaller level with the box and place it on a smaller silhouette inside of that level. The player might need to
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move a box inside of a smaller level and then come out of that smaller level with the box separately. This one mechanic creates so many interesting puzzle design opportunities. It is incredibly unique and really innovative for this type of 2D puzzle game space. One cool
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mechanic in AI in the Blind Forest is the bash ability. The bash ability allows AI to propel themselves in the direction they are aiming, which is pretty cool. But what's really cool is how the player activates it. The player
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can use bash if close to lanterns that are dotted around the level, enemies that try to attack AI and projectiles that enemies fire. And not only that, but when AI uses bash and projectiles or enemies, it sends them flying in the
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other direction. This mechanic is so much more than the sum of its parts. It's incredibly useful and a satisfying tool for movement, but it's also great for combat and solving puzzles. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GGL tomorrow for another
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cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Nutmeg is the way the deck building and card playing works. Nutmeg is a deck building football game where your team and actions determine your tactical deck, which are the cards you play throughout the match. Every turn, you
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click the event deck to see what the next scenario on the field is. Then you play cards from your hand, which are cards from your tactical deck to influence the chances and successes of that scenario. The cards shown to the
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right of the players are the potential outcomes. And depending which cards you play, those outcomes increase or decrease in likelihood. The best part about this system is the stamina system.
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You might think that the numbers in the top right of the player cards are their rating, which is sort of true, but what is actually the case is that it's a stamina rating. Each card you play cost stamina. The better the card, the more
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stamina it costs. So yeah, the higher the stamina of the player essentially, the more good cards you can play on them. This stamina system coupled with the fact that if you don't get the right type of cards, you can't influence the
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game makes every decision really meaningful. Another cool mechanic in Luminas Arise is actually also to do with the new mechanic burst, but it's so important. I think it's worth its own mention. So when you are using burst, which again is the mechanic where you
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stop scoring and instead try to connect as many of the same shapes together as possible, all shapes that are not of the same shape are actually pushed away. As soon as your burst is over, every single shape that was pushed away, meaning
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every single shape that wasn't the shape you were trying to score points with, is all going to be coming crashing down onto the board. This can be insanely good as they are all of the same shape, so it can lead to a combination of
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multiple screen wipes in quick succession. However, this mechanic, the way it's presented and timed, also forces the player to have to think ahead in order to get the most out of it, which is great design. One cool mechanic
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in Hollow Knight is how the souls work. Souls act as a mana bar, which replenishes whenever the player lands a hit on an enemy. Souls are used for two things, to heal and to do damage with a spell. The fact that firstly, the player
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has to hit enemies to gain soul forces players to play aggressively even when they need to be cautious. But then the fact that soul can be used as a way to heal and do damage creates a really interesting riskreward mechanic which is
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constantly in a tugof-war with itself depending on the player's needs as well as the players's attitudes towards the scenario they're in. Such an elegant mechanic done incredibly well. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune in to GDL next week for another
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cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Eyes of the Elderwood is how the magic works.
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So you start off the game with a gun given to you by a frog in a swamp, of course. However, if you try left click, your hand will start pointing with purple emitting from the finger. Weird.
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Then, if you right click, you will shoot. So, the question in the player's mind is, what does left click actually do at this point? After a while, you will then stumble across some torn pieces of paper. On the back of them
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shows a shape and a clue as to what that shape means. Sure enough, if you draw that shape with your left hand, you will be able to cast spells. That alone is a cool mechanic. It's not completely unique, but a very well done and
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immersive implementation of spellcasting. But on top of that, it's the fact that you dual wield magic and a revolver at once, which for me is just great. One cool mechanic in the Duck Detective Ghost of Glamping is the
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inspection mechanic. When walking up to suspects, you can choose to inspect them. What this does is bring up a zoomedin image of the suspect and gives you control of a magnifying glass.
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Moving the magnifying glass around will show you that there is more to these people than just their obvious outward appearance. Mechanically, the player is trying to find points of interest which can indicate to them a motive, evidence, or a relationship to another suspect.
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What's really cool, though, is that wherever the player places the magnifying glass, the image becomes a lot more detailed and is used as a great tool for some implicit storytelling. As the dug detective games are quite light touch when it comes to actual
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sleuththing related mechanics, the inspection mechanic stands out as the most immersive part of the experience and is 100% worth pointing out. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune in to GGL next week for another cool mechanic in Doom: The Dark Ages is
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just how they managed to make a bullet hell work in a Doom game. Doom is all about pushing forward, being aggressive, and ripping and tearing demons apart.
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Inherently, bullet hell is juxtaposed to that. Bully Hell is all about dodging, moving, avoiding damage whilst chipping away at enemies. So, how did Doom do it?
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The parrying system. Parrying is used in a lot of games to be a more aggressive player response compared to dodging. In Doom, you avoid the red attacks, but parry the green attack. Parrying green attacks does heaps of damage to the
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enemy who fired the attack and usually stuns them. The way the attacks have been designed forces the player to keep moving towards the bullets. For example, there is one common attack which fans three lasers out from the enemy. This
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attack always alternates which laser is parable from left to right, meaning the player will need to constantly be moving towards the laser so they can parry it, which despite it being a bullet hell style attack, really makes the player
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feel like they are on the aggressive. I think a lot of people were worried about how this game would maintain the tone and feel of playing the slayer with a shield and bullet hell style enemy attacks. But this one cool mechanic was
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designed specifically to put those worries to rest. Another cool mechanic in Ball Pit is the fision, fusion, and evolve mechanics. During a run, you will come across these rainbow covered spirals on the ground. Pick them up and depending on what type of balls you have
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at the time, you will get different options. Vision allows you to increase the level of a ball, which usually increases their stats. Fusion allows you to meld two balls together, taking the stats from both and combining them, and
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evolve is withheld for bespoke combinations of balls, which add a new ability to them. This decision is really interesting, as not only are factors such as amount of balls and effects of the balls something to consider, but they impact what decisions you make when
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you level up. As you level up, you get the choice between three balls to choose from. Because, for example, the fusion option exists. Even if a ball isn't great on its own, it effects might work really well attached to another ball.
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Maybe a ball doesn't start off great, but you know by level five it gets really strong. You might take it early on and then choose the fision option for the first few instances in order to mainline it to level five. You might be
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aware of a particularly cool evolve and then aim to get the right balls for that outcome. These three options are essentially just variable modifiers, but the way they are designed makes for incredibly interesting and meaningful decisions for the player inside and
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outside of the screen, which is really great game design in my book. One cool mechanic in Arlo is the wing condition.
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Armelo is a digital tabletop game where the aim is to be crowned the king in one of two ways. Either the king dies of natural causes or you kill the king. The catch is each turn the king loses
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health. If you make a beline for the king at the start, you will most likely perish due to the amount of health he has. This creates a very tense atmosphere between players, who is going to strike first? Will someone take a
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punt on killing the king whilst they have five health, four health, three health? This really encourages the players to keep track of what every other player is doing each turn, making sure they aren't getting too powerful, and if they are, try to sabotage them or
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beat them to the punch and kill the king before they do. This very simple mechanic, which essentially ticks down a variable each turn, adds so much more value to the game compared to the amount of time it would have taken to implement
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it, which is why it makes it such a cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Atomfall is how the bartering works. Whilst exploring Windom Village, a countryside town hit by a nuclear disaster, you come across a range of different traders
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offering the opportunity to barter for goods. What's cool about this specific bathroom system is how each trader has different and unique preferences. As you can see, when placing certain items on the scales, it tips the scales specific amounts. Depending on which item you
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trade with which trader, it could tip the scales more or less based on their preferences. So, how much the trader lights specific items plays a huge role in how much you'll be able to get from them in return. You might choose to save
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all cloths for one trader and save all melee weapons for another, for example. This mechanic adds flare to an otherwise basic system and brings life to the NPCs the player trades with. Thanks for watching and tune in to GDL next week
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for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in blueprints is the way the terminals work, specifically the security and the laboratory terminals.
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The security terminal does two really cool things. It allows the player to one change the security level in the manner from low to high and two change the offline mode of key card doors. What changing the security level does is
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increases or decreases the chance of key card doors spawning in blueprints. Key card doors meaning doors which require key cards. If you do not have a key card, you will want this to be low. But if you do have a key card, you will
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actually want this to be high as adding more key card doors actually reduces the chance of finding a locked door which requires a key. As both key card doors and lock doors increase in likelihood the further you move up the manner.
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Changing the offline mode of key card doors to be unlocked alongside turning off the power to the key card system using the utility room means that all the key card doors can be unlocked without a key card. Again, then changing
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security level to be high means that in theory you should need to use less keys overall. Both settings are really powerful tools for progression depending on your circumstance. The laboratory terminal allows you to mix and match cause and effects. The player is
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presented with three causes and three effects. The player can choose any from the left side and any from the right, but only one of each. This will only be in effect for that run. So, the player wants to try and tailor this new created
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rule to the run they are on, which adds a lot of variety, replay-ability, and strategy. One cool mechanic in Celeste is how the dash works. Dashing in Celeste is essential for traversing through the tricky levels the player faces. However, one constant problem the
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player will face is the fact that you only get one dash until you land. Now, as the game progresses, feet touching the ground gets more and more [music] of an ask, and planning ahead at a time and figuring out when your net's going to
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get to solid ground is a must for the player. The dash reset alongside a tight level design really makes every level feel like a puzzle. However, there is one hidden mechanic in Celeste, [music] which you might not know about. Celeste
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uses a camera and level segmenting technique that uses transitions from one screen to another. Once you get to the end of a section, the camera transitions to the new section. Now, another rule with the camera transition is that the
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player always starts with their dash available, even if they have just used it, and even if they haven't touched the ground yet. This little wrinkle allows players to do some really remarkable things for impossible beforehand. No new system, no new mechanic, just two
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mechanics working together to create more than the sum of their parts. One cool mechanic in Citizen Sleeper 2 is the dice and how you use them. At the start of every day, the player gets a fresh set of dice. These dice are then
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used to perform actions in the environment the player finds themselves in. Each area usually has two to three slots where dice can be placed.
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Depending on the number on the die, the chances of being successful in the action vary from positive to neutral to negative. Alongside this, your base class and skills which you can upgrade can add or subtract from the dice roll
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depending on the type of action you are trying to do. This means that at the start of every day, the player is given an everchanging set of tools, and it's up to them to use them in a way which is
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optimal for their character and gives them the best chances of success. Additionally, they may be given a bad set of tools for a particular day where they need to do actions their character isn't naturally good at. Improvising and
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making the best of a bad situation is encouraged through this mechanic. As well as that, dice can break depending on certain outcomes, which requires the player to fix them. And if the player's energy depletes too much, they lose dice
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for the next day. Dice are the center of how Citizen Sleeper works. There is a lot more to them that I can cover in one shot, and the depth of how they interact and mold the player experience is
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exactly why it is a cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Dungeon Clorer is the claw machine. Dungeon Clawer is a rogike deck builder where all your actions are dictated by what you pull from the claw machine. If you pull a sword, you do
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damage. If you pull a shield, you protect yourself from damage on the enemy's turn. However, what's really cool is how the game really uses the claw machine. For example, there's one item which is a stone brick and every
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metal item close to it is buffed. There's another item which adds useless fluff to the machine every time you use it. There's also enemies which increase the size of certain items every time they are left alive to make it harder to
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grab what you need. The placement of items in the claw machine is actually really really important. The grabbing itself as well can also be a real nailbiter as you might just need that one shield or that one sword to save you
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and it lands right outside the goal zone. There are many ways to do randomness in games. cards, dice, or just RNG. But I've never seen a game say to the player, "Hey, if you can see it, you can grab it." It really is a cool
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mechanic. One cool mechanic in Expedition 33 is Verso's perfection mechanic. The way this mechanic works is every time Verso lands a hit or evades successfully via a dodge or parry, the perfection meter ticks up one. Every time Verso is hit, it ticks down one.
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The perfection meter starts at D and can go all the way up to S. The higher the rank Verso is on, generally the more damage he does. Each character in Expedition 33 has their own mechanic, their own gimmick. But Versos is so cool
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because it's the most connected and synergistic with the rest of the game. The entire combat system is built around understanding how the enemies work, how they attack, when to dodge, when to parry, and when to attack. Learning enemies whilst having Verso in your
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party not only gives you the passive effect of being better at evading, but a more tangible benefit via the perfection system. It feels like during the design process, the perfection system very much went handinhand with the initial concept
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of the combat system and it shows. Not only that, but Verso skills also add a lot of value to the perfection system.
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Certain skills do more damage at and beyond certain ranks and other skills effects only work at certain ranks. This allows you to strategize and get the most out of any rank, which is important to avoid the feeling of sluggishness
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when your rank resets at the start of every battle. For example, quick strike when used at rank D gives more perfection, usually getting you to at least rank B. Adding this move to your kit and using it at the start of every
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fight jump starts your progression up the perfection ranking. Another cool mechanic in Hollow Knight is the way the knockback works. Whenever the player hits something with their nail, they are knocked back. Like in a lot of 2D games
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which have melee attacks, on the surface, this is used to sell the impact of the hit. However, one somewhat hidden aspect of this knockback feature is that the knockback works in all cardinal directions. Meaning that the knockback can actually be used to platform and not
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just platform environmental obstacles, but enemies as well. Once the player realizes this, it blasts open a wide range of movement possibilities when exploring and when in combat. This is truly a cool mechanic because it simply applies a bit of force to the sprite,
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but in actuality, it adds so much more to the gameplay experience. This is the type of mechanic every dev should strive for. One cool mechanic in Inscription is what happens every time you die. Like with a lot of modern rogike games,
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inscription offers the player a few avenues for permanent progression. But the coolest way Inscription does this is with the death [music] card. When the player dies, the monster who is holding you captive makes you create a personalized death card. This death card
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comprises of cost, health, and damage, and a special ability, which you can choose from three random cards drawn from your deck. What this allows the player to do is customize a card to suit their needs. They have just died,
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meaning that they have just come up against an opposing force that they could not overcome. Immediately, giving the player the opportunity to create a card to directly help deal with that threat is [music] really cool. On top of
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that, if you get lucky enough of your draws, you can create some massively overpowered cards, which feel amazing to draw in the heat of battle. I haven't quite seen a permanent progression mechanic in a rogike quite like this
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before, and hopefully you found it interesting. Tune in to GDL next week for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Jump King is how the jump works. Funnily enough, in Jump King, you have three main buttons: space to jump,
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left arrow to move left, and right arrow to move right. However, it's how jumping restricts these movement options when jumping that is really interesting.
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Holding down space charges your jump. Essentially meaning that it determines the distance of the jump. Whilst holding down space, you cannot move left or right. Instead, what left and right do is they determine whether you'll be jumping to the left or to the right when
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you let go of space. The combination of the two inputs, left or right and space, and how long you hold space for creates the trajectory of your jump. As the player can't move whilst in the air at all and the fact that every vertical
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surface has pretty unforgiving knockback, this movement system creates a jump that requires pinpoint accuracy every time. Jumping as a mechanic is almost as old as video games itself.
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This is a cool mechanic because it takes such a welltrodden formula and restricts it in an elegant way to create a truly unique experience. One cool mechanic in mouthwashing is that you will never see any character walk even if they are
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following you. Mouthwashing is a psychological horror game where every detail of this world is crafted to make you uneasy and unsettled. This one particular mechanic which involves making any character follow you stop just before they come into your field of
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view. Coupled with the fact that you can hear their footsteps just behind you is just one of many cool mechanics to create such a disturbing environment.
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However, as a developer, one thing that I really find cool about this mechanic is that it's also a timesaver for the developer. It is clear from the rest of the game, the animation as a whole is used sparingly, potentially due to the
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fact that the team didn't have a specific animator or just enough time. There is only one walking animation used at all throughout the rest of the game, and most of the time characters are completely stationary. This alongside being a great ingredient to the pot of
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terror that is mouthwashing is also a genius solution to saving development time. One cool mechanic in rematch is how the positions work. Firstly, there are only really two positions in rematch, outfielder and goalkeeper. The distinction between outfielders pretty
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much stops at where they spawn on kickoff as the pitch is so small and the players can change positions so quickly.
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However, with the goalkeeper, you have completely unique controls and unique responsibility. So with this in mind, how does rematch allow players to play how they want to play? Unlike other football games, rematch doesn't allow you to select your preferred position.
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Instead, it does two things. It rotates positions with every kickoff, meaning if there is five kickoffs in a 5v5 game, every player would have played every position once. And if the goalkeeper leaves the area, then the next player to
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enter that area becomes the goalkeeper. This second point is an amazing mechanic as it allows for two outcomes. Firstly, if the goalkeeper goes on a mad one, you can still have a goalkeeper by just going in goal yourself. And secondly, if
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your preverted position is goalkeeper, you can just simply swap with the person in there at every kickoff. This is such a simple mechanic, but it really adds a lot of flexibility and player choice, which would have otherwise gone a miss.
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Another cool mechanic in Shroom and Gloom is the bash card and how it affects exploration and combat at the same time. So, Shroom and Gloom is a deck building game where one of your decks is entirely for exploration. Every
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time you progress to a new room, you need to unlock a door. In your deck, you do have cards which act as keys, but if you don't draw them, one card that is always in your hand is the bash card.
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The bash card opens a door, but at the cost of inflicting damage on the player.
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Now, this card is really well designed for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it just negates soft locking. And this soft locking would be when the player's run is just over because they're unlucky enough to not draw a key card. And
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secondly, it forces the player to think ahead. In combat, the player needs to make sure they have enough health at the end to use bash for the next exploration phase. And if a player decides to get trigger happy and uses bash to unlock an
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extra chest in the room, they need to keep in mind their remaining health before going into the next combat encounter. As if they push their look too much, they run at the risk of being one-shot by the next enemy they see. One
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cool mechanic in Super Meat Boy is what is left behind every time you die. Super Meat Boy is a twitchy and quite difficult platformer that relies on the player trying over and over again to land pixel perfect jumps. One subtle yet
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incredibly useful tool the devs give the player [music] is the fact that Meat Boy not only leaves a big blood splatter on any surface that kills him, but it also leaves a trail of blood on the ground as
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he moves. This gives the player the path used on every previous attempt, allowing them to easily jump that one pixel earlier or hold the jump button half a second longer. Without this mechanic, the game would surely be 10 times
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harder. So, I think we can all be grateful that it was included. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL tomorrow for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in the Altters is how it manages time. As the
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Altters is at least part management sim, like others in the genre, it has to bend the rules slightly when it comes to representing time to the player. Each day you start at 7:00 a.m. with the end of the day finishing around 8:00 p.m.
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Every in-game minute lasts about 1.5 seconds of real world time, meaning a full day would take about 19 1/2 minutes. Unlike other management sins, you cannot speed up or slow down this time with a time dial. Instead, different actions take up a different
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amount of time. Mining something or crafting something might take an in-game hour to do so. So, instead of the game making you sit there for 90 seconds, the game speeds itself up. So, the action is still taking an in-game hour, but
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instead of waiting 90 seconds, it's closer to 5 to 10 seconds. This limits the disconnect between what the player is doing and the time in which they are doing it in. There's no cut to black until it's done, which could break
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immersion, and stuff doesn't just instantly happen, as that would fly in the face of the survival element of the time mechanic. This is a really interesting and impressive solution that is 100% worthy of being called a cool mechanic.
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One cool mechanic in Spilled is how the upgrades work. The aim of spilled is to clean the ocean of oil and rubbish. To do this, you have to scoop it up with your scooper at the front of the boat.
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The oil goes into a tank at the back of the boat, and you have to drop it all off at a bigger boat in the area to empty the tank and get money. The three ways you upgrade your boat are
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increasing the size of the scooper, increasing the size of your tank and increasing your speed. If you increase the size of your scooper, you can scoop more quickly. If you increase your speed, you can get around quicker. And
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if you increase the size of your tank, you can stay out for longer without having to offload your oil at the bigger boat. If you upgrade your scooper, you'll get more oil quicker, meaning you'll fill up your tank quicker. So,
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you'll also want to upgrade your tank. But if you upgrade your tank, you'll want to get around quicker to fill up your tank quicker. See how it all interconnects? This very simple upgrade mechanic, which just affects three variables attached to the player
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character, creates a very satisfying and rewarding gameplay loop for the player for the game's hour-long runtime. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to your DL again for another cool mechanic. One cool mechanic in Spyro 1 is what happens whenever the
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player dies. Like in a lot of old school platformers, the player has a certain number of lives until they have to restart the level. One way you can get extra lives is simply by picking them up when you bash into clams.
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Run-of-the-mill stuff. However, another way the player can get extra lives is actually genius. Whenever you die, but you don't run out of lives, you spawn back in the level at the last checkpoint you cross. When you do this, enemies
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respawn. However, levels are designed so you can only get a maximum amount of gems, meaning that gems that you have previously picked up no longer exist, including the ones from enemies you have killed. Instead, what enemies drop are
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little gray orbs, which tally up until you get an extra life from the amount you have collected. This is great for two reasons. Firstly, it's incredibly synergistic design. When the player dies, they lose a life, but when they
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respawn, enemies provide a collectible which can restore that life. Additionally, it gives a player a reason to bother killing these enemies again.
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as without these great orbs, the player might as well just run past them. Now, this is a very subtle mechanic which is designed so cleanly and thoughtfully that I needed to call it out, which makes it even more surprising as well
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that it's not included in the sequel. But anyway, thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and tune to GDL again for another one cool mechanic in Black Ops 7 is the changing environment in some of the maps. This change in the
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environment, broadly speaking, either gives or takes options from the player, which then switches up the combat and makes it more interesting. For example, in the returning map from Black Ops 2 Express, periodically throughout the game, a train will burst through the
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center of the map. Of course, killing anyone in the way, but more importantly, blocking people from running across the tracks. This both segments the map into two halves, but also if the players do want to cross the tracks, then it
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localizes combat to the very narrow bridges above the tracks, leading to more interesting encounters than would otherwise be there. Another example is more subtle, but in the brand new map Homestead, there are parts of the map where you can dive under the ice and pop
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out at different points. This really allows for a completely different style of gameplay where you are sort of acting like a mole burrowing around and trying to pop up when people least expect it, which is a nice variance to the style.
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Another cool mechanic in Ball Pit is the dual character mechanic. At some point, players unlock the ability to combine two characters together into one via the matchmakers building. What this does is like a fusion combines two characters abilities together into one. For
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example, you could match make the shade which shoots balls from the back of the stage instead of the front with the repentance which returns balls to you if they hit the back of the wall. This specific example allows you to negate
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the negative of the shade where balls just never come back to you when there are too many enemies on the stage by having them come back to you rapidly via the repentance abilities. Now, there are so many combinations of interesting
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abilities, 120 to be exact, that it adds so much replay-ability and interesting decisions. But on top of that, it also makes it so you can complete runs with two characters at once, giving you two gears at once instead of one. And if you
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are really struggling with a particular character, you can just pair them up with a character you like to carry them through it. Such an amazing mechanic that adds so much to the game, it's crazy. One cool mechanic in Arc Raiders
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is the quest system. The quest system works great for two reasons. Firstly, it gives the player a goal outside of just looting, a purpose to pursue outside of the core gameplay loop. However, secondly, the biggest impact quests have
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on the game is coupled with the insanely well done AI, it adds a whole other layer to the player versus player experience. Although, I'm pretty new to the game. I'm on like my third quest. I just need to kill some bots.
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Yeah. Due to the quest being so welld designigned and again the AI being so fun to fight, players find themselves wanting to work together even when not in a squad. in order to complete quests and fight the AI, adding a really cool
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social dynamic to Arc Raiders, which has resonated with the community and clearly designed with intentionality behind it.
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Well, that went terribly. I just down myself pretty much. Has anybody got a revive?
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Thank you so much. Another cool mechanic in Silkong is the new currency system. Previously, all enemies as well as different parts of the environment gave the player geo. Gio was the sole currency used to buy everything in Hollow Night pretty much. However, in
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Silk Song, we have shards and rosemary beads. The latter is the important currency we are going to be focusing on in this video. Rosemary beads are what is used to buy things like brooches, maps, orments, etc. But they aren't just
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given out all the time. At the start of the game, you will come across them very rarely, only given in secret or hidden areas via parts of the environment.
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However, once you come across Silk Song's Cornifer, who to be fair rivals him in his vocals, You will soon come across enemies that can drop rosemary beads as well. These enemies aren't commonplace at all, but bonus points for having Connifer 2.0
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sell both maps, the quill, and the compass, as well as enemies which you can farm to buy them all before moving on. This area in its entirety is 100% designed for the player to sit back, chill, and get their map situation in
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order before progressing. The new economy system, the fact that there are two prioritizes different enemies in different areas in different ways for the player. If the player wants to progress economy down one route, they focus on one area. If they want to go
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the other route, they will focus on other areas and enemies. It's a bit of added depth to the economy, which is really welcome in Soong. Thanks for watching. And don't forget to subscribe and tune Gail again for another cool
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mechanic.
Topics:game designgame mechanicsvideo games 2025indie gameslevel designgame analysisplayer experiencecontrol designextraction shooterroguelike
