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(Note: this blog post will contain Hollow Knight screenshots, which may be construed as location “spoilers”.)
If you don’t play Hollow Knight, the only information you need to know is that it’s a moderately difficult game with occasional rest spots that feature benches. Your character can sit on these benches to heal and save the game. And they’re designed so well that it’s made me enjoy sitting down in real life.
Read moreWhat builds suspense in pretty much every element in life is when you care about something but are missing crucial information relating to it. And hey - it turns out every challenging game has unknown outcomes everywhere! You don't know if you’re fast enough to hit the ball. You don't know if your enemy has a trap card. You don't know if you’re going to roll something amazing or awful. You don’t know if your teammate is going to pull through or fail.
The problem is that you usually need to make decisions without being 100% sure what the outcome will be.
Read moreThere's a kind of tension for players who are concerned about playing well, and it's this: if you care a lot about victory and defeat, and you're grinding out lots of games to try and improve, you'll naturally start adopting patterns of play. Developing patterns is mostly good: save mental energy by formulating frameworks and strategies to follow, right? You had a great run with a specific card, so every time you see that card, you remember what synergies generally worked and try to replicate them.
But adopting patterns creates problems when you start to accept too many things as a given. For example, "thin decks can be good with certain cards" can easily become "always keep your deck thin". Or "This card combo is pretty strong" becomes "I see this combo is available, so I'll ignore other potential strategies".
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