Game Design Case Study - Knowledge Based Progression

Time limits on the last one, you need to give time to the player to get the mecanic if you dont tell it

The last game has a combination of problems but I think the obvious one is the flow of the game. The flow chart goes to challenging too quickly because of the timer when you haven't yet learned the mechanic so it's frustrating. It dousn't leave time to think. I think the timer should come in later and that would give more time to learn the game and already improve it.

I feel like the lack of feedback on the 3rd game removes the feeling of discovery when you find out how to kill an enemy. Since there is little to no feedback you're not actually sure that you discovered something new or made progress. In Tunic however it is very obvious that you make progress and understand the hints you've just been given, either by unlocking new secret areas that open up visually or by very obvious audio cues. I also think the kill order is quite confusing since personally I don't really know any other game that does this, I feel like it could be better displayed if the numbers are inside the monsters rather than beneath, and instead of swapping the numbers, I would swap the monsters position (and let them keep their number)

I think J-Menuing is bugged or at least doesn't have its timings right. At 11:48 you picked Magic vs 1 Blue which should have killed it but Kill Order Shuffle took effect during the attack animation while the shuffle animation was queued up (so you couldn't see the 1 change to 2) which forced you into Wrong Kill Order. Enemy colors should've been different too, the red + blue mix they picked is too close to blue which unintentionally created more friction than was probably intended.

The issue was clarity. The game was trying to tell you what you did wrong, but only in this tiny little text-box at the bottom that flashed away really quickly.

On J-Menuing, I dislike how the game seems to add a time limit to the player's menu inputs, while the menu itself is non-diagetic (as it would be in most games). Generally, when a time limit is put on something, it is supposed to affect the physics (e.g, the character's movement in the game world), and the timer is paused when the player needs to do some menuing or read some dialog (such as how dialog in The Curse of Tencond pauses the ten second timer, allowing the player any amount of time to read). I believe that in the case of J-Menuing, the menuing should have its own speed limitations, and allow the player time to strategize, rather than just be limited by the player's own mouse movement and keypress speed. To improve upon the design, the menu could be made to look like physical levers and buttons, and each could take some amount of time to use. The player could be limited to only using one control at a time, but inputs would be bufferable to allow the player to easily complete a plan with optimal efficiency. (the menu to be redesigned to show all controls at once, rather than having any menus embedded within others) The timer, each turn, would only start at the first control usage, so the player can have plenty of time to strategize. Also, wasn't paying a whole lot of attention, as I was watching the video while doing something else, but maybe a mechanic would be nice, where the previously discovered attributes of the current group of enemies would be listed perpetually for easy review.

Similar to what others are saying, but I'd describe it was failure to reward the player (and made that progression CONTINUE to be meaningful - I think is also really important here) that made the third game's experience bad. In all of the other games, when you hit a mark of progression it allowed you to immediately use your newfound capabilities. Beyond that, it also didn't punish you/get in the way in any form for trying to use those newfound capabilities either. J-Menuing, on top of it potentially being bugged, had conflicting mechanics that prevented you from actually utilizing your unlocked capabilities confidently/reliably, leading you to question if what you'd learned was even useful. In the first two games, the mechanisms played into the timers well to push you in a direction to improve and use your new capabilities. With J-Menuing, the added timer doesn't help push you forward in any meaningful way in my opinion. The combination of the menus, the random kill orders, and ADDED with the timer, meant you're fighting the experience more than actually discovering and progressing.

On J-Menuing: there seems to be no way for the player to control when menus or kill orders change. They just do. This leaves a nebulous period where the player asked to discover things through trial and error, remaining unsure whether something they are doing is affecting menu/kill order, which sort of leaves the stage of mastery in a rather unsatisfying conclusion. I feel the design would have been acceptable in a loose narrative with an ultimate goal, permadeath style. Even if the player never quite understood menu/kill order shuffle, there would still be a crowning achievement for mastery. Instead it is endless doubt (unless checking the spoilers). Unsatisfying.

not normalizing input wouldn't make zigzagging faster, it's only faster when moving at a diagonal. if you're moving straight down, diagonal down and directly down will be the same speed.