Leading game publisher Supersonic: How to balance challenge and fun? Setting the difficulty curve is critical!

The design of game difficulty has always been one of the important challenges faced by developers. Among them, the difficulty curve represents the balance between player skills or resources and game challenges. It is crucial to the playability and player experience of the game, and is also a key factor affecting the churn rate.

In the game, the difficulty curve refers to the change curve of the game difficulty throughout the game process. Low difficulty means that the player's skill exceeds the challenge of the game, while high difficulty means that the challenge of the game exceeds the player's skill. A suitable difficulty curve will not make players bored, but also motivate players to progress through the game by watching incentive videos or making in-app purchases (IAP). However, this is not easy for game design. To this end, mobile game publishing solution Supersonic from Unity recently shared practical tips for balancing game difficulty curves to help developers cope with difficulty challenges in game design and improve game playability and growth potential.

(Image source: Supersonic from Unity)

Why is the difficulty curve so critical in game design?

People play games to enjoy the fun of games, so the job of game developers is to provide players with the best in-app experience possible. If it would be more abstract to determine what is "interesting", we can think more intuitively about what is "uninteresting", which is to make players feel bored and frustrated. If the difficulty of the game is too high and the player cannot continue playing, it will make the player feel frustrated; while if the game is too easy, the player will feel bored due to lack of challenge. Both situations will eventually lead to player churn.

On the other hand, the difficulty of the game will also have an important impact on revenue. If the game lacks challenge, players have no incentive to watch incentive videos or make in-app purchases to progress through the game. But if the game is too difficult, players may find rewarded videos or in-app purchases to be of little use or even a waste of their money and time. Therefore, if the game difficulty is too high or too low, it will affect the monetization effect and user retention.

How to optimize the game difficulty curve and achieve the perfect balance of game experience?

1. What is the best difficulty curve

To optimize the difficulty curve of the game, you first need to understand what the best difficulty curve is. An appropriate difficulty curve can enable players to focus on the game and enter a "flow state" where they constantly gain a sense of accomplishment and fun. This state requires an initial difficulty level that is slightly above the player's skill level, but not so difficult that they feel hopeless. Without initial challenge, players will not be able to feel the sense of accomplishment brought by overcoming difficulties. However, too high difficulty may lead to frustration. Therefore, the challenge of the game should be set within the player's ability.

(Image source: Supersonic from Unity)

In the difficulty curve shown above, the Y-axis represents "challenging" and the X-axis represents "Skills and Resources". When X exceeds Y, it enters the boredom zone; when Y exceeds X, it enters the frustration zone. Players in a flow state are neither bored nor frustrated. To keep players in a constant state of flow, developers need to ensure that challenge difficulty matches the skill level players gain in the game. In addition, different types of games may have different difficulty curve characteristics, so developers also need to consider the differences in game types for optimization.

2. Key indicators of difficulty curve

Developers can find possible problems on the difficulty curve through retention rate and completion rate. Retention rate reflects which levels players are losing, while completion rate helps developers determine which levels players are completing too quickly. For example, if the retention rate drops after a certain level, it may mean that the level is too difficult; conversely, if the completion rate of a certain level is always very high, especially in the later levels, it may mean that the game is too difficult. Simple.

In addition to the difficulty setting of the game, other factors may also cause players to lose or complete the level too quickly. For example, game crashes and intrusive ads are two common reasons for user churn, so developers need to troubleshoot these factors first before considering optimization of the difficulty curve.

3. Methods of balancing the difficulty curve

First, developers can increase the difficulty of the game by reducing available resources or increasing complexity. For example, in terms of reducing available resources, the use of resources can be reduced by increasing the cost of in-game operations, increasing the frequency of resource consumption, or reducing the way players collect resources; in terms of increasing complexity, developers can add more enemies and allow players to Solve multiple problems at the same time or shorten the time for players to perform operations. These methods can effectively test more player skills.

Correspondingly, developers can reduce the difficulty of the game by reducing the complexity of the game or providing more available resources. For example, when the difficulty of the game exceeds the player's skills or resources, you can set up incentive videos or in-app purchase opportunities to help players obtain more resources to successfully pass the level.

For example, "Tall Man Run" is a gate parkour hyper-casual game published by Supersonic from Unity. In the game, players need to control their characters to avoid various obstacles and pass through doors that double in size, eventually becoming large enough to defeat the ultimate boss at the end of the level. Reward gates make the character stronger, while punishment gates do the opposite. Similar to parkour games like "Tall Man Run", the difficulty curve is usually relatively gentle and gradually increases. Developers often increase the difficulty of games by shortening the distance between gates and adding new obstacles, allowing players to make decisions with shorter reaction times.

(Picture source: Google Play "Tall Man Run")

In "Tall Man Run", when the difficulty of the game gradually exceeds the player's skills When leveling up, various power-ups will be introduced to balance the difficulty of the game. These power-ups include dash power-ups, which allow players to quickly pass obstacles, and shield power-ups, which double the effectiveness of bonus gates. As the difficulty increases, these props will become necessary, thus encouraging players to watch incentive videos or make in-app purchases to obtain props.

If a level is too difficult, you can reduce the difficulty of the game by reducing the skill level required to pass the level by increasing the distance between reward gates and punishment gates or obstacles, or by providing players with enhanced props. Conversely, if the player is able to beat the level quickly without watching incentive videos or making in-app purchases, then the game difficulty can be rebalanced by shortening the distance between obstacles and gates, increasing the number of obstacles, or reducing free power-ups.

4. Use tools to set difficulty curves to achieve game business growth

The Supersonic platform provides developers with a series of tools that can help balance the game difficulty curve. Among them, the level analysis tool can help developers detect changes in player behavior in different levels, including key indicators such as startup rate, completion rate, continuation rate, and failure rate, so as to help developers quickly understand which specific levels are in a clear and visual way. There is a loss of players. In addition, developers can also combine Supersonic’s Crash Detection Center tool to more easily and quickly troubleshoot the causes of player churn and technical issues.

Balancing the difficulty curve of a game is a difficult task, but all the effort you put into it will be rewarded when the difficulty curve is interesting and challenging Once balanced, it can become one of the developers' most valuable resources to motivate users to participate in the game and complete monetization.

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