Forced Positive Player Interaction
A game mechanic in which players must choose actions that may benefit their opponent.Many games have direct interaction between players as a result of deliberate “take that” actions, such as…
Novel mechanics to help your game rock
Single-Dimensional Movement
A game mechanic where location is simplified to a single dimension There are a whole lot of ways of quantifying location in both analog and digital games. Squares, hexes, triangles,…
Dynamic Resource Market
A mechanic for simple yet realistic markets to track in-game resource demand.One of the best ways to drive player interaction is by giving (or even forcing) players to trade resources…
Mini Tech Trees for Evolving Abilities
A mechanic where unrelated technologies can be advanced for character specialization or evolution.Part of the draw of a game focused on character evolution is the growth from a puny, ill-adapted…
Abstracted Tactical Ranged Attacks
A mechanic for abstracting gunfire in a tactical-level game, including concepts like cover, line-of-sight, morale, and armor. There are many games that include ranged attacks in some flavor or another,…
Demand Dice for a Dynamic Economy
A mechanic where the demands of cities is determined by periodic rolls of custom dice, which may change type and increase in quantity as the cities grow.It is fun to…
Drawing Tokens from Bags
Three mechanics for players to draw tokens from bags, either to gain resources at the expense of possible future harm, determine combat results, or pick a winner.Drawing tokens from bags…
Limited Variability Reprogrammable AI
A mechanism in a solo, cooperative, or competitive game in which the rules governing a non-player faction's actions are both known to all players and able to be changed in…
Shared Resource Pool
A mechanism where players must use resources from a shared pool although playing a competitive game. Many games have resources, and many of those games have resources that, once collected…
Hidden Variable Player Powers
Player each have a variety of unrelated powers known initially only to them. All the players are competing to achieve some goal on a board where position matters. Player may reveal their…