My game is decision-based. Meaning all the player has to do is to make decisions to let the game create interesting events and more decisions. This is why I am interested in this. I want to make the game better! But this study is not only for decision based games it is about decisions in general and what makes them fun and interesting. (keyword is fun)
Read it here on google docs if you want.
And I will use my game and 8 other games I've played that I consider decision-based. To analyze what I liked and what I disliked when I am making decisions.
The Golden Rule of making a decision interesting
Before we start analyzing. Let's keep one thing in mind. It is a no brainer, but it is sure useful to say it out loud to focus the analytical process on one thing:
The player should scratch his head weighing his options.
So if the player is just going blind into picking a choice. Or just picking "whatever", or even if he is thinking about it but he is guessing (like pick color red or green without any idea why he should pick any). It's not a very interesting choice. Now it can give a very interesting outcome, making the player think back about his option. But I think the choice should be interesting in the first place. And the outcome will add to that interest. Because the thinking process is part of the fun.
Ideally; He should put his heart into it. He probably should be torn or scared to choose something… if your game has a few choices to make , all the decisions should be like that. But if it is all about decisions like my game or a visual novel. Then maybe every choice must be interesting and you should have some key or major ideal-choices.
Section 1: What makes a player weigh his options carefully?
A human when making a tough decision; He/she always will think about what he will gain and what he will lose. Whether it is getting married or going to college. If there is no bargaining; there is no thinking. Remember we are trying to create a "scratch-the-head" situation. Not only making interesting outcomes.
So for example if you are choosing under pressure to pick College A or B but you don't know much about them. Maybe you will pick [B] just because you want any collage. And the outcome is interesting because you met the love of your life over there. And if you've picked [A] you will get a Nobel Prize! But still the initial picking was uninteresting, because you based your choice on "whatever". And the thinking-process was boring.
Types of choice
To simplify; games have only one of these three situations:
1- Win/Lose Situation : whatever you pick you will earn something but lose something else.
2- Win/Win: you have to pick between two things that you REALLY want.
3- Lose/Lose : you have to pick between two bad or terrible options.
*sometimes its more than two options, or more than one reward/sacrifice.
Sacrificing Something:
- In a resources based game that would be losing resources.
- In a story driven game it could be losing a brother, or an important location.
Earning something:
- In a resource based game it would be (what else) gaining important resources.
- In a story driven game it could be getting the clue, or rescuing someone etc.
What about Risk/Reward choices?
Pick the high risk high reward; or the low risk but low reward.
It can be one of these as well : win/win win/lose or lose/lose. The difference is; here you are not sure of the outcome..
1- Win/Lose: you chose between high risk but high reward. Or low risk and low reward.
2- Win/Win: you chose between good-enough thing, or great thing in the future or it is unknown.
3- Win/Lose: you chose between bad but known. Or bad but unknown. (you either pay 1000 or you lose a random member) the reward here: if you gambled and the member died is someone you don't care about.
These have many examples and will need a discussion on their own. (do provide if you have)
Not all choices have to be risk-reward situations. But they do create interesting dilemmas. So always consider them.
The Exception
All of the three types should be balanced (obviously) ; the player should always consider the two options. With one exception: the player knows what he is doing. (he is stacking up on some resource or he clearly loves character A more the character B) but even in this case it SHOULD be interesting to talk about with friends :
- Why did you let B die. A is so much cooler!
- Why did you choose soldiers over gold? You clearly will need gold later.
In my game I failed to create this at many moments. Where the player clearly has to pick the lacking resource over the other resource. But I succeeded at others.
Section 2: What makes Sacrifices and Earnings have value to the player?
Gold is always good. As well as reputation. It's not enough to tell the player what do you prefer. You need to put him in an interesting context. So if he will sacrifice his reputation for some gold, he should need gold. And not just (well I guess I want to be evil ha-ha)
1- Knowing about the situation (Looking back)
And this is in my opinion; the most common mistake happens when people craft a decision for the player. The player doesn't know on what basis he should base his choice. And we can see this everywhere. Visual novels are more guilty doing this than other games. But this is not the genre's fault.
One example I can give is during the jam. Is in the game Sister's Lighthouse, where you have to pick the light bulb or not. And it's just like that, no other info is given. I don't want to spoil it but it turns out this one was a big deal. How was I supposed to know?
The outcome was great and well-written. But my thought-process was like : (ok I will just try this)
And not to mix things here, I am only saying that you need to give the player something to think about when making the decision. Maybe he will get screwed later but that’s beside the point. I am not suggesting that he always must know what will happen.
Scenario; say the player should choose between A) rescuing a criminal to join his team or B) kill him. The criminal will eventually betray you, but you knew he wasn't trustworthy so it is your fault. It is way more interesting than just recruiting some normal guy and he just betrays you. Same outcome. But the thinking process is interesting in the first case by gaining one piece of info : criminal.
In my game, Frozen Mammoth. I literally had the word Situation in my UI. And I could see players and streamers looking at the situation before making the decision (hmmm our scouting is good, I don't want to risk the health so I'll pass..)
I guess that’s one way to do it. We'll discuss more later.
2- Having a fixed goal(s) (Looking Forward)
Knowing the situation is not enough. The player needs to build towards something in his head. Even if you don't want him to know what's to come or to expect. You can still have mid-ranged goals. Like trying to survive, or collecting clues to solve a mystery.
In my game, your goal is to dig a thousand mile while making sure no one dies when lacking fuel or food. So all your decisions are directed toward this long-term goal and mid-term goal. And I inform the player of these two goals from the very beginning.
3-Scarce or limited resources (or sacrificial things).
The first and second factors will not work in an interesting way if you have unlimited resources! Even in a Lose/Lose situation. You don't care if you lose a bit when having plenty! This post is not about resource management so I will not create two pages about that here. But I want to say this factor is important even in a story or a visual novel.
In Mass Effect there is this very big decision about killing the Rachni queen and wiping an entire race! But it's not very interesting because you gain nothing or lose nothing (for all you know) if you chose to kill her or spare her.
An interesting character is always a good candidate for sacrifice. Your house, your reputation, losing friends, even losing memories. As well as resources ( a car or a weapon)
~~ Conclusion ~~
The player should 1)Look Back, 2)Look Forward, while having 3)Limited resources. An interesting choice cannot be crafted with one of these components missing.
Section 3: Seeing the outcome of your choice
I think we can agree that it's pointless to make decisions if you are not going to see the outcome of your game. So I will not try to convince you to do so. But I have few notes to keep in mind.
1- Give the player an indication of the outcome
In fact in a lot of cases it is preferable to directly know the outcome even before you choose. (do you want this weapon? Give me your friend soul!) but if they don't and you want the player to gamble (Risk/Reward) I think at least give the player an indication of the consequences. (sneak in; but you might anger the boss…)
Here I tell you that it is dangerous (you might lose people) and the reward is mostly food. Even though it could be something else. (in my game its hard to predict the outcome of scouting) so you don't know the actual outcome but you know what to expect. How vague you want to be is a very deep subject for this little post.
2- Most Outcomes should not stay long without showing
Because the player will forget the link between the outcome and the option.
3- If they do, you should give an indication that his decision made a difference (immediate feedback)
This is why Telltale games does this:
It just tells you that your action is noted. You will understand the consequences in a few episodes maybe!
In my game I implemented the + and - signs each time a situation increases or decreases in the final hour of the jam! I felt something is missing if you don't feel your choice is doing something. I also added negative and positive sounds for it.
4- The Bigger the outcome, the louder the feedback should be!
You don't want to treat them equally. Kenny will remember this is fine for a small talk. But he should get angry if you punch him in the face!
In my game for example when you send a scout team to hunt deer. You don't have any feedback except resource change. When they return you know the outcome. But when you establish a fishing camp, I wanted the player to know that this is not a minor decision (as long as you keep the fishing camp going; you will get one of 6 random outcomes)
So in the UI I actually add a new situation.
This will make it clear to the player that this decision is kind of bigger in outcome.
~~ Conclusion ~~
The player always should have the links between his options and the consequences. If the link is lost. The entire thing will be meaningless to the player. How to represent the link depends on how important it is.
Extra Section : Quick Analysis of LD46 games!
This article is a conclusion based on my feelings towards the decision making process in these games.
Remember this is NOT a review for these games. This is only an analysis for the decision part. They are all fun and unique games. You should give them a go if you can
Please read the article before reading this section as it is not that useful before setting the concepts in place. If you read the article. I highly encourage you to play these games; to see the rules we've talked about in action.
By @ilPrinny
In penguin march you lead a herd of penguins towards their safe destination. You need to balance two resources here: food and morale. It’s a compo entry so its fairly simple.
You know what is the situation, and you have a defined goal, with scarce resources. So you do actually think about your decisions. But it lacks big game changing decisions. And having maybe a secondary short-term goal that conflicts with your long term goal. Also it could use some Risk/Reward choices. Because you always know what the outcome is.
One thing unique here is the speed of march. It's a layer of choice that determines your style of play I guess. It's not currently ideal but the idea here how ruthless you are leading the group. Fast will consume morale and has a different set of events as well.
By @endytroll and @n-feofentov
Field hospital is all about morale decisions. You are a field doctor and you get to choose what soldiers you think deserve the limited treatment. You have a semi-clear goal which is to save the largest number of people. (maybe the largest number of people who deserves to be saved)
While this game doesn't have clear resources. But you do have two interesting things
1- The number of beds available.
2- The number of info requests about one patient: you can send the office an info to make extra medical exams or to give you info about his family or info about criminal record. But these requests are limited.
I like it because it is very unique to have a resource just to help you make a moral decision. Usually moral decisions are direct (save the child or the leader who can save more). But what if the leader is a criminal as well, you can waste a request to find out.
This game does very well at informing you with the situation. Even though the characters you chose to treat or not have short descriptions but you get a lot from it, is he a criminal? Does he have a family, is he serving the army well? How dangerous his injuries are. While keeping an eye on the number of beds of course.
And the outcome is also great. You have short outcome;and then the long-range outcome years after the war has ended (after the game ends).
What can improve I think is having a defined goal(s) but I am not sure about that as it can mess with your moral-decision making. But maybe not if implemented well.
By @spookyfish @baconn00 @sandra-martinez @yauangon, and @valeth2124
The game is about surviving at the worst pandemic in history.
I've noticed one unique thing about this game. It is very story driven but it is not a visual novel. It has the problem I mentioned in the article about visual novels when you don't know why would you pick this or that (no clear context, and no well defined goal) but here it is worse because in most visual novels you have a back button. You can change the outcome if you don't want it. Here; you need to restart the entire game.
I feel bad just criticizing this, Seriously though the game is really great.
By @dane-ziggler
This game is kind of the exception. But not really.
Ok this game is all text. But it is really funny. It violates all of my rules above. But it kind of works because it is hilarious. You kind of want to try a blind pick because you want to know what random outcome will happen. Of course you can click back and try something else. Otherwise I would dislike this.
That said, I still think if you want to include the fun of making a choice; You still need to follow the rules even in a comedy. I'd like to see how that will be in action but maybe this game is not about the fun of making a choice after all.
By @pilarius , @plantless and @cataractar
Mutiny is an interesting one. It doesn't have a lot of choices. Most of the choices here are about buying resources. In fact it is not really a decision based game. But you can choose where to assign your pirates. You can have people looking for prize ships to pirate or people to push the ship faster. Or rest so you don’t have a Mutiny.
I would love for someone to experiment with the idea of making choices in a toy-like way like this one, but in an actual decision game.
By @alina , @k-baskakova , @akintsevil , @woodoomurderdoll , and @imod
You've got to like this one. It's highly polished fantastic art visual novel!
However; like most visual novels I think it lacks the fun of actually making a decision. You just try whatever and you go back and change it if you don’t like the outcome.
I mentioned in the article how a simple thing like, would you like to pick this light bulb could lead into mega results!
I think to make the choice more interesting you need to have context, goal and a sacrifice. But maybe visual novels are not about making choices. Well I think it still would increase the fun to have actually a choice that you think about.
By @emiliabea
Highlights suffers from the same problems as Sister's Lighthouse and Keep What Alive
The mechanic is different. You have a set of phrases you can say, and you have to guess what phrases will make the opponent happy and what not.
But here I actually was trying to choose based on my knowledge of the character. Even though I failed to do so. But concluded that you can easily change this by letting the conversation go longer and I would try to have an assumption on how he will respond.
By @clemencemet , and @zakamana
ok delicious letters have a lot of things to consider. I don't want to spoil anything here. But I think there is a contradiction between balancing resources and actually trying to get interesting letters. To me after a while I just tried to balance the resources, maybe because answers got repetitive. Which led the game to be less interesting. But they did had a clear goal. So that was a good thing.
By @hassan-khallouf , @meme-310 , and @abdurrahman-khallouf
I talked about my game in the article so I'll talk about my failures here.
- In Mammoth Expedition I failed to create big Key-moments that would drive the situation somewhere new. The fishing camp was a step in that direction; but I need to create that Key change whether you said yes or no.
also the game sometimes gives you no choice. you don't have fuel so you will always sacrifice anything for it. I tried to counter that by getting a canister of gas event. some people even when low on fuel used that fuel for the car. creating an interesting gamble here.
It is also annoying when they keep asking you to buy stuff where you clearly have no money and you have to answer with NO every time.
Also the lack of visuals made some big outcomes seem regular. the + and - are not enough. I need more effects and art when something huge changes.
last but not least. at times the player couldn't read the situation well; for example if you send someone to get some food and he will return in 4 days. Sometimes people forget that and still act as if we have no food. also they forget how many workers we have outside of camp...
Note: this is an open study.. If you want to join the conversation please tell us what you think. You can leave your game in the comments if you think it will enrich the conversation. (even if its not decision-based)
Also you can leave your comments on my document on google docs here (this is where this article will evolve)
Note2: I did not include examples for moral decisions. But yes I think the rules apply here. They have a win/win or lose/win for example. As well as Risk/Reward situations. I'd like someone to write an extension for this explaining moral decisions through these lenses. And they are not interesting if you cannot look back to your context, or have nothing to lose(morally)
I'll rate your game in exchange. \o/
I updated the game into a complete experience but also was able to leave the original intact! You can choose either version from the title screen.
If you have the time I'd appreciate a playthru and some feedback! Please don't rate the game unless you played the original, and only consider that one when judging my life-choices. 
Is all you need to play my game. Highscore currently at 16000, who can beat it? :D
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/brainstorm
https://shakedimus.itch.io/brainstorm
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/keep-yourself-alive
Play Stoke The Flame in your browser and rate now: https://indieaustin.itch.io/stoketheflame
![0iB_Yr[1].png](http:///raw/48d/d/z/33bda.png)
