Brilliant Game Design: What can we learn from my recent Favourites?

Pikmin, Unicorn Overlord, Pokémon, Ori: Games of many genres have the potential to engage us to an extent close to addiction. Let’s find out how they do it. And how we can design our own games in similar ways.

There’s a certain magic to the games that manage to really captivate us. Where you play for hours, then put down the controller — only to pick it up again a moment later.

But what makes these games so damn engaging?

Well, I’ve written about player engagement before. It was the topic of my Master thesis, and I think I did a good job summarising the literature and my thoughts on it. I also wrote a blog article in 2020.

In this article, I would like to revisit the topic and take a closer look at some examples. We’ll discuss some games that left a lasting impact on me, and what I believe made them so incredibly effective at keeping me glued to the screen.

This article is a bit different from other articles, because I don’t know what we’ll find either. We’re on this little journey together.

Let’s go.

The addictive Games I played

So, what I’ve prepared is a list of 10 games I played within the past few years. Some of them are quite different from each other, but they all managed to engage me at the highest level: I spent most of my free time playing them and kept thinking about them even after the credits had rolled.

Let’s see what those games had in common and what set them apart. How had they been designed so they would hook players like that?

Pikmin 4

Since Pikmin 4 is the most recent almost-addictive game-design masterpiece I’ve played, we can and should analyse it most thoroughly and use the results for a more streamlined approach in the subsequent entries of the list.

So, let me try to identify the aspects of the game that contributed to me enjoying it so much and discuss them in some detail. I will also try to give these aspects — actually, we might want to call them ‘motivators’ — appropriate names.

Here we go:

Completion

Since there are gamers who consider themselves ‘completionists’, I think there’s a strong motivation to do this kind of thing in games.

Pikmin 4 was very well designed in this regard. It had what I would call major and minor completions, that is, a strong push towards 100%ing the game — as it seemed an attainable goal — as well as small-sized tasks to check off within minutes. It certainly helped a lot that there were percentages to track your progress.

Maybe we should think of this as two gauges filling up: a slow one and a fast one. Ideally, these two metrics of progress work well together. You’re always like: All right, just one more objective! Or maybe another one! And before you know it, you’ve not only filled the fast gauge a number of times, but also made significant advancements on the slower gauge.

Story

Believe it or not, the story was actually pretty good! There was a certain mystery to the whereabouts of Captain Olimar and the nature of the so-called leaflings (people covered all over with leaves – for some reason). This mystery kept me invested, wanting to uncover more about the world and its characters. It felt rewarding to piece together the narrative.

The dialogues between crew members were quite entertaining too, offering lighthearted moments that balanced the sense of urgency in the main story. These character moments, alongside the overarching mystery, added quite a bit of depth to the game, making it feel more personal and immersive than the predecessors.

I think we could use the modifiers ‘major’ and ‘minor’ here as well to describe the overarching plot and the character moments, respectively.

Exploration

There was a flow to the exploration in Pikmin 4 that reminded me of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom: Wherever you turned, you saw something in the distance that seemed worth investigating and interacting with. You always felt like there might be something exciting (or dangerous) just around the corner.

Over time, you became more familiar with the initially unknown and hostile environment, which made you feel ‘at home’ in the game world in a way. This feeling was further enhanced by the shortcuts you unlocked, making traversal easier and giving you a sense of mastery over the terrain, and the fact that enemies did not respawn. You basically conquered the land.

Ability

Pikmin 4 actually has skills and tools as well as passives, like many other games nowadays. Which still came as a surprise to me, but was very effective in keeping me engaged.

The abilities made various things that were cumbersome at first easier and easier, and one of the passives also served as a Metroidvania-style ‘key ability’ in that it allowed you to enter a specific dungeon that had been blocked off by a wall of flames.

It was also pretty cool that there were so many different types of Pikmin that were each useful in different situations.

Gameplay

Well, this one seems straight-forward: a game without good gameplay can’t be fun, right? That is true, but there’s a difference between good and great gameplay.

Pikmin 4 felt great to play.

The controls were much tighter than in Pikmin and Pikmin 2 (which I had played shortly before this one).

The Pikmin felt heavier. There was a sense of impact when you threw them onto enemies.

The rush attack of the dog Oachi – which was such a great addition! – was amazing, stunning enemies while all your Pikmin could work together to bring down even the large bug enemies within seconds!

From a gameplay perspective, Pikmin 4 really was the ultimate Pikmin experience to me, and once you start playing the game yourself, you should immediately notice all of the small improvements that contributed to this impression.

Unicorn Overlord

All right, now that we have identified a few motivational factors — similar to the 12 factors defined by Nick Yee that I had written about in the other article —, let’s have a look at another game and see how well that ‘framework’, if you will, holds up. We want to see if Unicorn Overlord also features exceptional strength regarding the aspects of completion, story, exploration, ability and gameplay.

Completion: On the world map, you can see exactly which areas you have explored and which battles are done and which are not. There’s also a percentage displayed. This would be the ‘major completion’ factor. ‘Minor completions’ exist within battles, I would say, where you need to conquer certain towns or defeat all enemy troops. Most battles are relatively short, although they are longer than the average Pikmin 4 task. Therefore, the push to complete ‘just one more task’ (that is, battle) isn’t as strong, but it’s still there.
Story: The overarching story is mysterious and comes with some twists. However, it’s not a very strong driver for the majority of the game. The character moments, on the other hand, are plentiful, and some of them are entertaining and/or emotionally engaging.
Exploration: The world map not only serves as a hub where you start the battles. It’s also full of items as well as points of interest. I enjoyed discovering more of it, collecting materials and finding out what the purpose of all those temples and statues and portals was that you stumbled upon every now and then.
Ability: Each new character adds to your abilities with their unique set of skills and passives. In games like Unicorn Overlord, Fire Emblem or, as I suspect, Chrono Cross and Suikoden, the ever-expanding roster of characters is always one of the strongest motivational factors.
Gameplay: There are many, many battles in the game, and so they better be fun, right? Well, they are! It took a moment for me to get into this style of combat — it’s quite different from Fire Emblem —, but once I understood how it worked, it really was quite enjoyable. There were a few battles where I actually wished they would last a little longer.

Are there any additional factors that we could identify now that we’re looking at a different genre? While I would say the visuals were very impressive, I’m not sure if I would add ‘Visuals’ to the list.

Some of you might disagree here, but for me, having more beautiful graphics to look at won’t pull me back to the game.

Strategy, however, was an important element. This aspect wasn’t nearly as strong in Pikmin 4, even though that game also encourages players to think through their actions. But games like Unicorn Overlord, Fire Emblem and many JRPGs give you whole menus where you can spend, like, half an hour just swapping around characters, equipment or abilities. You sometimes think about your strategic approach off-screen and can’t wait to apply your new ideas and see how well they work in practice.

To me, this is fun, and to an extent that I would consider it a motivational factor. So, let’s add ‘Strategy’ to the list!

Strategy: Building your teams was a lot of fun, and people who enjoy this kind of thing could actually go wild here, setting all the skills and their conditions manually! I didn’t do it, to be honest, but it was still a lot of fun.

All right. Next game!

Sea of Stars

Sea of Stars is an absolute masterpiece. If you liked JRPGs back in the 90s, you will love this one. You will probably find that Sea of Stars is pretty much perfectly designed.

But how could we describe the greatness of this game using our categories of motivational factors? Well, let’s go through them one by one again:

Completion: Sea of Stars is a complex game with many different things to complete, but that is still manageable. I very rarely 100% games, but this one was an exception. It was just the right amount of content. In terms of minor completions, you could say that the length of the dungeons was a great design choice as well: They were all very different from each other and never overstayed their welcome. You couldn’t really say ‘just one more dungeon!’, but you could at least take up the controller again to get ‘just to the next save point!’
Story: Sea of Stars is a JRPG, so naturally, seeing the plot unfold is a huge part of the appeal. The character moments were great too, though. Especially the scenes with Garl.
Exploration: Exploration in Sea of Stars was amazing. Some treasure chests were well hidden, some behind a clever puzzle, and since the dungeons weren’t too long, you could quite easily find most of the treasure chests without any backtracking, which is how it should be.
Ability: All right, here’s one thing that I would like to change about the game, namely the number of skills you learn. I think 2 more active skills per character would have benefitted the player experience, and I also think there should have been some passives, or at least more accessories, maybe even another accessory slot. That said, the skills you did get were fun to use, mainly because of their Paper-Mario-like action commands that were different between the skills. But this is actually …
Gameplay: … a gameplay aspect. Besides the fun skills, exploration also had a certain smoothness to it, a fluidity, since unlike many other JRPGs, the protagonists were actually capable of climbing, swimming and other actions that allowed you to move around in a very natural way.
Strategy: The turn-based combat was strategic enough for my taste. However, as I said, there weren’t many accessories, so that kind of strategy where you keep brooding over the perfect character builds even when the screen is dark was, unfortunately, missing. There was a mini game, however, called Wheels. It was a strategy game involving figurines and, well, wheels like those of a slot machine. You had to make some difficult decisions sometimes (risk vs. reward), and I really enjoyed it. I would buy an expanded stand-alone version of Wheels.

Even though a few aspects were rather weak in Sea of Stars, I still maintain that, overall, the game was almost perfectly designed. Which shows that you don’t necessarily need to check all the boxes in order to create an excellent player experience.

Dragon Quest Treasures

Dragon Quest Treasures was a surprise to me. I didn’t expect to be as hooked as I was. Let’s get right into the possible explanations:

Completion: I’m not sure if I should use this category, but the ever-increasing value of the treasures I collected felt pretty much like the major completion in other games. On a smaller scale, I think filling out the slots of treasures you can carry at a time while exploring served pretty much the function of the smaller tasks in Pikmin 4.
Story: Well, this aspect was a bit lackluster. There was a story, of course, but there was no mystery I was really interested in solving. The character moments were nice, but also nothing exceptional.
Exploration: Exploration was definitely an aspect! There were multiple large areas to explore and find and unlock fast-travel points in. There were also a lot of treasure chests, of course.
Ability: There was hardly any progress in terms of the abilities characters or monsters could use, and the abilities themselves weren’t really fun.
Gameplay: While the game as a whole was amazing, the moment-to-moment gameplay wasn’t as much. Battles were pretty boring, to be honest, and movement was slow (unless you had a monster to ride on). In this regard, there’s a lot for a possible Dragon Quest Treasures 2 to improve upon.
Strategy: Aside from the medallions that functioned as equipment and had different stat boosts and effects, there was nothing strategic about the game, I would say.

Well, this is weird, isn’t it? Most of the boxes are left unchecked with this game, but nonetheless, I gave it 5 stars in a review I posted on Instagram (on my private account).

What’s up with that?

I’m not sure. But it does seem as if a brilliantly designed game doesn’t actually need to be good at anything except a few things that it is really good at — almost like an athlete or artist trained or talented in just one discipline (but potentially pretty bad at most others).

I don’t think Nick Yee went into too much detail as far as the number of motivational factors necessary for player engagement was concerned. But I might just not remember the sources very well. It’s been a while.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Okay, let’s make this quick from now on.

Completion: There’s a lot of stuff to do in the game, but once again, it doesn’t feel utterly unachievable to 100% Tears of the Kingdom like it does with many other games. As far as minor completions are concerned: ‘Just one more shrine!’ is definitely a thing.
Story: Where’s Zelda? What happened in the past? The overarching plot is interesting enough. It’s not a JRPG, but still. It’s a Zelda game at least, not Super Mario. As far as character interactions are concerned: There’s something in there for sure, but I wouldn’t say it was a major part of the appeal.
Exploration: We all know that the game is basically all about exploration, so, yeah. Check.
Ability: Link gets basically all of his abilities early in the game, so being excited for new abilities wasn’t a motivational factor. Sure, some weapons were interesting, and increasing your stamina would allow you to do more things. But other than that, there really wasn’t anything interesting in regards to this category.
Gameplay: The gameplay was fun, but not as fun as in other games, to be honest. Gliding was nice, but everything else seemed just okay. The physics and building engines were impressive, sure, but they didn’t contribute to my engagement at all.
Strategy: I’m not sure if you could count building stuff with the Ultrahand ability as ‘strategy’. Maybe.

Conclusion: This is another example of a game that neglected a few of our categories, but still managed to get a 5-star review from me.

Fire Emblem Engage

I really enjoyed Fire Emblem Engage, despite many people apparently not liking it very much. Here’s the breakdown:

Completion: Similar to Unicorn Overlord, you had battles of medium length to complete. In terms of 100%ing the game — what we would consider major completion —, I would say that FEE has too much content for the average player to make an attempt, though.
Story: See Unicorn Overlord again. The plot was okay, the character moments were more interesting.
Exploration: They tried. Between battles, you could ‘explore’ an area and collect items. But, what should I say? I found this a bit ridiculous and tiresome, to be honest. It almost seemed as if they had a framework like ours themselves and tried to somehow tick this box?
Ability: New characters = new abilities. Once again, similar to Unicorn Overlord.
Gameplay: I love the Fire Emblem gameplay! And this one wasn’t any different. So, yeah, check.
Strategy: Well, it had tactics, of course, which is thinking about your next move. But strategy? Thinking about your party composition or equipment? Hm. There wasn’t much of that, I’m afraid.

I can’t get over that exploration thing. It was so weird. But other than that, FEE was amazing! It was mostly due to the gameplay, though, and the perfect length of the battles. So, does that mean that those two things alone can get you 5 stars (from me)? Seems so!

Persona 5 Royal

This game was one of the longest I’ve ever played. Maybe the longest. But it had me hooked the entire time. How did Persona 5 Royal accomplish that?

Completion: Completion wasn’t it. I would never attempt to 100% the game, nor was there any aspect of the game where you would pursue completion, as far as I remember. You could maybe argue that completing character arcs is a form of completion, but I don’t think I agree. It’s not the same in my view.
Story: The story was great, but a little slow for my taste. The early chapters were rather boring, actually. The character moments, however, were 5-star stuff! I reckon that’s the major appeal of the Persona games in general?
Exploration: There were dungeons with treasures, but it certainly wasn’t Zelda-level exploration.
Ability: Yes! New character skills, new Personas, new Persona skills, passives — there were many ways to increase your power level in this regard.
Gameplay: Exploiting enemy weaknesses was fun, but I wouldn’t say that the gameplay was a major engagement factor at all.
Strategy: The Personas are very much Pokémon-like, so if you really wanted to, you could spend some time thinking about which Personas you wanted and how to build them in terms of skills and passives. However, I just went by personal (haha) preference most of the time, so this wasn’t actually a factor for me.

I consider Persona 5 Royal a masterpiece, and I’m looking forward to the 6th instalment of the series. But why? There wasn’t that much in the game that kept me engaged other than the characters. Which I normally don’t care that much about. It was a weird experience. I think I just happened to like most of the cast, and that must have been the reason I wanted to experience the whole story and their individual arcs. Not sure, though. An interesting case!

Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 wasn’t my favourite part of the series, but it hooked me nonetheless and got 5 stars. How does the open-world action JRPG do it?

Completion: XC3 has side quests that function as small completions you can always do ‘just one more’ of. On a greater scale, I don’t think the game contains anything that contributed to me being semi-addicted, though. I would never try to 100% a game of this scale.
Story: Major motivator, of course. Most people play these games for the story and the combat, I suppose, and I’m no different.
Exploration: It’s an open-world game. Of course exploration was part of the appeal.
Ability: While you do gain new abilities from time to time, I think the Xenoblade Chronicles games aren’t particularly good at making you excited for the skills or passives that are yet to be learnt.
Gameplay: The combat was indeed fun! Often times, I would get into another battle just for the sake of fighting. I think the combo system where you apply debuffs in a set order (Break, Topple, Launch, Smash) is simply amazing.
Strategy: There’s some strategy in terms of building your characters, but I don’t think it really engaged me very much. Most of the time, you would choose a random class and max it out (as far as you could), then switch to the next.

This game was mainly about story and combat, as I said. Plus some exploration. That are the ingredients that make XBC games work for me. The combo system is interesting, and maybe I should indeed try to replicate it in some way within a turn-based battle system.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus

An open-world Pokémon game was bound to be amazing, right? So, what did Pokémon Legends: Arceus excel at?

Completion: Completing the Pokédex is always the major task in these games, even though it’s becoming increasingly harder for new players to do it with each generation of new Pokémon. Smaller completions could be done in the form of missions.
Story: There was a certain mystery to the story, but I think it were the character moments that were more interesting. That said, I don’t think that was a huge deal in terms of getting me to play some more.
Exploration: The game had an open world to discover. This worked very well, because each new area had new Pokémon too, and you could never be sure which ones you would find.
Ability: Well, Pokémon themselves serve as an expansion of the player’s abilities, one could argue. There was definitely a motivator in trying to assemble your dream team with a variety of types. TMs were part of the fun here as well.
Gameplay: Gameplay was very, very fun! Sneaking, throwing Pokéballs, catching Pokémon, getting EXP and items … it just worked. This was probably the most important part of my semi-addiction.
Strategy: Pokémon games do require some strategic thinking when it comes to party composition and move types, and I did make plans with pen and paper before even starting the game, so, yeah. This was a factor!

This game did a number of things right, as you can see. Was it, therefore, better than the other games which only got points in a single category? I would say no. Which is rather interesting – especially considering that many modern games tend to be crammed with features that seem to be only in there to appeal to some niche target group. Do you really need that to make a great game? Or would a ‘lean’ approach be better, focussing on a few aspects and perfecting them?

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

A visually stunning game with beautiful music. But was that what made it addicting? No, not really. Here’s the real deal with the Ori games, Ori and the WIll of the Wisps in particular:

Completion: The major completion in a Metroidvania is probably to fill out the map. Here as well. What were the minor completions? Well, I think finding the next save point! Basically, as a player, you think of the stretch between two save points in a Metroidvania (and other games) as ‘levels’, right?
Story: The story was cute, but not a motivational factor.
Exploration: The explorational aspect isn’t as strong in a Metroidvania than it is in an open-world game, I would say. Still, it was a contribution.
Ability: Major motivator! In a Metroidvania, new abilities are often literal game changers, making it way easier to traverse the world and/or fight enemies. Over time, you get really, really powerful thanks to all the new tools you’ve found. By the end of the game, your character is completely transformed.
Gameplay: Ability and Gameplay are two sides of the same coin in a Metroidvania, I think. What you can do has a heavy influence on how the game feels.
Strategy: Well, there were some choices in terms of passives and upgrades, but I don’t think it counts as strategy.

A Metroidvania is very different from other genres. Acquiring new abilities really makes a difference. The beginning of the game and the end of the game are almost like two different games as far as the gameplay is concerned. JRPGs do the same thing in a way, considering how much power your characters have at Level 1 vs. Level 99.

Elements of Engagement

We have identified 6 factors that contribute to me, personally, being hooked to a game. These factors may differ from person to person, of course, but the framework seems useful to answer the question: What does my next game need? Which aspects of the game deserve special attention?

Let’s try to summarise the findings: