One of my favorite examples of a mechanic is spell interruption, a design tool I used regularly for both World of Warcraft and League of Legends. The ability to stare down the sights of your gun is another example of fluff, unless doing so improves your aim or slows your movement. Jumping might be the core mechanic in Super Mario games, but in a game where jumping makes little to no difference, it’s fluff. ‘Fluff’ in disguiseĭon’t get me wrong, there’s a place for fluff (I love an impactful visual effect), but a mechanics designer needs to see through the illusion. I’ll get into the many different kinds of mechanics soon, but in general, a good sign of a strong mechanic is one that interacts with a wide variety of different situations or shapes how you play the entire game. There are parts of the game that have meaningful consequences, and parts that are fluff. In that case, the fire is fluff it has no meaningful effect on gameplay.Īnd it doesn’t matter if you’re designing a roleplaying game (RPG), a first-person shooter (FPS) or an action adventure game. However, in another game, the exact same concept, a flaming arrow, might trigger an amazing VFX of burning grass, but otherwise act just like a normal arrow. What can be considered a mechanic in one game and is fluff in another, and the key identifier is whether it creates consequences.įor example: If you fire a flaming arrow in one game, and it burns away a patch of vines revealing a path, it’s a mechanic it can meaningfully affect the game world. Video game mechanics are how players and rest of the fundamental interlocking pieces of a game including rules, challenges, goals, actions, strategies, game states interact with each other in a meaningful way.
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