What 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 moreRoller coasters aren’t fun because they are fast per se; their fun actually comes from the changes. First is the long, slow climb, building anticipation. Then your stomach lurches as you drop and twist and launch through turns and loops, and your speed fluctuates, too, slowing on some hills, before lurching down again. Etc.
In games you utilize the principle of cadence to make sure that levels are constantly shifting in terms of pace, difficulty or even type of skillset required.
Read moreA key part about a puzzle is that everything you need to solve it needs to be presented from the start. The challenge to the player is figuring out how to put the pieces together. In this case, the information that the man was in a sailor’s outfit is unknown and not something someone should be reasonably able to deduce from the given information. Literally nothing in the setup telegraphs that the man is in a sailor’s outfit. It’s like someone gave us a jigsaw puzzle that was missing pieces and then were shocked that we couldn’t solve it.
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