Make Your Game More or Less Challenging
Games can vary significantly in difficulty depending on the target audience. Many games are designed for casual players who simply wish to enjoy a game without investing significant time and effort to master it. However, there are also players who are willing to dedicate substantial time to improving their skills, where repeated failure is an expected and necessary part of the learning process.
Making a game more difficult can greatly enhance the satisfaction experienced by players seeking a greater challenge. More challenging games can also become more immersive, as players are required to exert more effort and maintain higher levels of concentration to accomplish objectives. However, if a game is made excessively difficult, even hardcore players may find it frustrating, leading to demotivation and abandonment of the game—an outcome developers certainly want to avoid.
Increasing a game’s difficulty can be relatively quick and straightforward, but if done poorly—particularly when offering multiple difficulty settings—it can give players the impression that the game is simply “cheating.” Consider the following example, which illustrates how a new “Hard” difficulty might be created based on a “Normal” reference difficulty in a strategy game:
Metrics
Normal
Hard
Enemy AI health
100%
130%
Enemy AI damage
100%
130%
Enemy AI reaction time
100%
80%
Enemy AI starting resources
100%
170%
Difficulty overview of rather unfairly designed difficulties.
In the table above, it is evident that the game was initially designed and optimized for the “Normal” difficulty, with all metrics set at 100%. To create a “Hard” difficulty, several numeric parameters were simply changed. While this method is easy to implement and requires minimal development resources, the resulting difficulty feels shallow. It does not introduce meaningful innovations, and players are left facing opponents who feel artificially empowered, giving the impression that the AI is “cheating.”
Nevertheless, modifying numeric values can be acceptable if it is complemented by more sophisticated changes. The following table provides an example intended to encourage a different approach to designing multiple difficulty levels:
Metrics
Normal
Hard
Enemy AI health
100%
100%
Enemy AI damage
100%
100%
Enemy AI reaction time
100%
100%
Enemy AI starting resources
100%
100%
Enemy AI offensive tactics
Attacks are sporadic, no flanking; no guerilla attacks.
Numerous waves of attacks; some flanking; sporadic guerilla attacks.
Enemy AI defensive tactics
Some fortified positions; no reconnaissance for early detection of player movement.
Heavily fortified positions; camouflaged units deployed far from base for early-warning purposes.
Difficulty overview of rather fairly designed difficulties.
As shown in the table above, players are not forced to deal more damage or endure unfairly overpowered enemies. Instead, players face smarter and more tactical opponents who surprise them through strategies also available to the player. Although some players might perceive the AI as “cheating”—for example, by seemingly seeing through the fog of war—the AI is actually deploying camouflaged units unknown to the player. Similarly, the AI does not receive additional resources through unfair means; rather, it builds a superior economic system to gather resources more effectively, allowing it to strengthen its defenses and offensive capabilities.
It is true that developing diverse AI strategies requires significantly more resources compared to the relatively inexpensive method of adjusting parameters. Furthermore, a game might contain hundreds of parameters, making even simple adjustments a complex and time-consuming task. Ultimately, it is up to the development team to decide how to modify the game to create varying difficulty levels. However, it is crucial to remember that players seek a fair challenge.
In the following pages, various categories are introduced, each containing numerous examples where each row represents a single feature. While some features are commonly implemented in existing games, others are hypothetical but illustrative. These features can be used not only when designing multiple difficulties but also when developing a game with a single difficulty, where developers may choose between options on the left or right depending on which best suits their design goals.