Properties › Complexity
Complexity: medium
A paragraph with a few sub-rules or timing exceptions, or a single lookup table.
92 mechanics are coded this way.
Adjacency Bonuses
A placed piece yields or scores more according to what sits in its neighbouring cells, so each placement is valued by its local relations rather than by the piece alone or by a target arrangement.
Aim and Recoil
The player steers a reticle onto a target in real time while spread, recoil, and sway perturb it after each shot, so whether a shot lands is decided by continuous pointing precision and recovery rather than by a roll.
Area Control
Players place or move pieces into regions of a map and are rewarded for holding regions, by sole occupation or by having more presence there than any opponent, when control is checked.
Aspects and Tags
Short free-text phrases written on a character, item, or scene, such as Ex-Cop or On Fire, carry mechanical weight: invoking one that fits the situation adds dice or a bonus, and some can be turned against their holder.
Ball Possession
One side at a time holds the right to advance and score with a single contested object, and that right transfers by turnover, by scoring, or by a rule such as a boundary or a violation, so play alternates between attack and defence.
Betting
Players commit stakes to a common pot in a structured round of raising, matching, or withdrawing before an uncertain outcome is resolved, so the size of what is won or lost is set by the players rather than by the rules.
Boss Encounters
A climactic, individually authored enemy or wave sequence closes a segment of play with its own rules, scale, and phases, so progress is gated by defeating it rather than by attrition against ordinary opponents.
Combat Building
During a fight players spend materials gathered in the match to raise walls, floors, ramps and roofs in real time, as cover, height or a blocked route, and opponents can shoot the structures down
Combat Results Tables
An attack is resolved by computing the ratio or difference between attacking and defending strength, finding that column on a printed table, rolling a die, and reading a graded result such as eliminate, retreat, or exchange.
Combo Systems
Successive actions executed within a timing window chain together, with each link enabling or multiplying the next, so a correctly timed sequence yields more than the same actions performed separately.
Commodity Currency
The standard medium of exchange between players is a consumable item with its own use in play, so every trade weighs use value against exchange value and every use removes money from circulation
Cover Systems
Positioning a unit behind terrain or an object reduces the chance or amount of damage it takes from attacks along the obscured line, so position becomes a defensive resource.
Crowd Blending
A player's figure looks the same as computer-controlled figures around it, so the player survives by acting like them while an opponent watching the crowd must pick that figure out by its behaviour
Damage Types and Resistances
Each source of damage carries a type such as fire, piercing, or magic, and each target has fixed resistances, weaknesses, or immunities per type that scale the damage it takes, so the kind of attack matters as well as its size.
Death Penalty
On defeat a character returns to play instead of being deleted but pays a recoverable cost, such as lost experience, damaged gear, a timed weakness, or belongings left at the body to be fetched back
Deck-Building
Players start with identical weak decks and improve them during play by acquiring cards into their own draw pile, so each purchase changes the distribution of future hands.
Deduction
Players uncover a hidden fact fixed at setup by making queries whose answers eliminate possibilities, racing to be the first to state the solution with certainty.
Degrees of Success
A resolution procedure that grades the result of a check into three or more ordered bands, such as critical success, success, partial success, failure, and fumble, each with its own consequence.
Dice Placement
Players roll their dice and then place them one at a time on action spaces that require or reward particular values, so the roll constrains which actions are reachable and placed dice block or outbid later placements.
Dice Pool
A randomiser in which the number of dice rolled scales with a rating, and the result is read by counting dice that meet a target or by taking the best die rather than summing a single roll.
Doubling Cube
Before rolling, a player may offer to double the stake of the current game; the opponent must either concede at the present stake or accept the doubled stake and take sole possession of the right to double again.
Downtime Phases
Between adventures or scenarios the game runs a structured phase in which each character takes a limited number of actions from a menu such as recover, train, work on a project, or indulge, and campaign time advances.
Engine Building
Players assemble interlocking capabilities over the course of play so that each unit of input yields increasing output, converting early investment into late-game acceleration.
Equipment and Loadouts
Before or between engagements the player selects a limited set of items, weapons, or abilities from a larger pool into fixed slots or under a budget, and that selection defines what the character can do until it is changed.
Experience Levels
Characters accumulate experience points from play and, on crossing fixed thresholds, gain a discrete level that grants a bundle of improvements such as more hit points, better odds, and new abilities.
Exploration Procedures
Travel through unknown terrain is divided into fixed units of time or distance, each running a set sequence of steps such as mapping, ration use, and an encounter check, so exploration is a repeated procedure rather than free narration.
Flashbacks
A player pays a cost to declare, after the fact, that their character took a preparatory action earlier, and the declared action is narrated as a brief scene and takes effect in the present situation.
Full-Loot Loss
A defeated character survives, but the equipment it carried is destroyed or left, in whole or part, where the victor or anyone else can take it, often with insurance or protected storage softening the loss
GM Moves
The facilitator's interventions are codified as a named list of moves, triggered when a player misses a roll, when the table looks to the facilitator, or when a golden opportunity arises, and governed by a stated agenda and principles.
Grid Movement
Pieces move across a board divided into discrete cells, usually squares or hexagons, spending a movement allowance per cell entered, so distance, adjacency, and terrain are counted rather than measured.
Group Finder
An automated queue assembles players, usually strangers, into a temporary cooperative group for a chosen piece of content by filling required role slots such as tank, healer and damage, then places the group in it together
Hidden Movement Pursuit
One player moves secretly across a shared map, recording each move privately, while the other players move openly and try to corner them using scheduled reveals and clues left by each move.
Hidden Piece Identity
Pieces stand in public positions but their rank or type is concealed from the opponent, usually by facing away, and an identity is revealed only when pieces make contact, so knowing where is separated from knowing what.
Hidden Roles
Each player is secretly assigned an allegiance or identity that sets their win condition, and an informed minority works against an uninformed majority who must identify them before being eliminated.
Hitboxes and Hurtboxes
Each attack has an active volume and each target a vulnerable volume, both defined apart from the drawn sprite or model and switched on for specified frames, and an attack connects only when the two overlap.
Hunt Games
Two sides on one board are unequal in number, movement and goal, so that one or a few strong pieces try to capture the others or escape while many weaker pieces, unable to take them, try to hem them in
Income
At a fixed point in each round or on passing a trigger, a player receives resources at a rate set by a track, a table, or a flat salary, so the inflow is scheduled rather than earned by an action in the moment.
Inventory and Encumbrance
What a character can carry is capped by weight, slot count, or volume, so acquiring more than the limit forces the player to drop, store, or sell holdings or to accept penalties to movement.
Kill Streaks and Bounties
Consecutive defeats of opponents without being defeated are counted, and set counts grant the streaking player rewards such as new capabilities; many games also pay a bounty to whoever ends the streak
Lane Pushing
Computer-controlled units spawn on a timer at each base and advance along fixed lanes toward the opposing base, while players fight alongside them to break the towers guarding each lane and to defend their own
Last Hitting
Only the attack that defeats a unit earns its bounty of gold or a similar reward, so players time a final blow on weakened enemies, and in the denying form may finish allied units to withhold that reward from opponents
Legacy Campaign
A series of linked sessions in which the outcomes of each game permanently alter the rules, components, or world for every later game, through irreversible changes such as stickers, destroyed cards, and sealed unlocks.
Level Editors
Players build playable levels inside the game from its own palette of pieces and rules, test them, and save or publish them so that they or others can play them as ordinary play spaces
Line of Sight
An attack, spell, or observation is permitted only if a straight line can be traced from the acting piece to the target without crossing blocking terrain, so what a unit can affect is decided by geometry.
Lock-On Targeting
The player designates a target and the system then holds the camera, facing, or attacks on it until the lock is released or switched, so attacks connect without continuous manual aim.
Loot Boxes and Gacha
Players spend currency, often real money, on a sealed container whose contents are drawn from a weighted random pool, so the purchase buys a chance at an item rather than the item itself.
Loot Distribution
A cooperating group allocates each shared reward, such as a boss drop or a treasure hoard, among its members by a stated rule, such as ranked need and greed rolls, turns, a leader's award, banked points or per-player loot
Markets
Players buy from and sell to the game at prices the system sets and moves in response to purchases, sales, supply, or events, so the rate of exchange is a changing state rather than a fixed recipe or a negotiated deal.
Morale and Rout
When a unit takes losses or faces a shock, a test against its morale rating decides whether it holds, and a failed test makes it break, flee, or surrender, so battles are decided by nerve giving way before every unit is destroyed.
Morality Systems
The game tracks a character's ethical standing on one or more scales, moves it in response to the player's actions, and gates abilities, content, or endings on where the character stands.
Multiple Endings
A bounded story has several authored conclusions, and which one a player reaches is decided by accumulated choices, tracked flags, or a final decision, so the ending is a readable record of the path taken.
Needs and Moods
Characters carry several decaying meters such as hunger, energy, and fun that must be refilled by spending time or items, and their combined level sets a mood that gates what the character will do.
Network and Route Building
Players place route segments between nodes on a map to build a connected network and score or earn for the connections made, so the value of each placement depends on what it links to and whom it blocks.
One Versus Many
One player runs the opposition against all the other players, who cooperate to defeat them; the two sides play by different rules, the solo player is a competitor rather than a facilitator, and their position is not secretly logged.
Pattern Building
Players place pieces onto a personal board or grid to complete specified arrangements, such as rows, colour layouts, or shapes, scoring when the target configuration is achieved.
Pick-Up and Deliver
Players move a carrier of limited capacity to collect goods or passengers at one location and carry them to another location that pays for them, so earnings depend on the route between source and destination.
Piece Capture
A piece removes an opposing piece from the board by moving onto it, leaping over it, or enclosing it, so a spatial relation between pieces converts directly into permanent material loss.
Player Invasions
A player enters another player's ongoing single-player session as a hostile, uninvited or on a trigger the host has set, and the intrusion ends when one of them is defeated or the host clears the area
Power-Ups
A pickup placed in the play space, or spawned there on a schedule, grants a temporary capability to whoever touches it first, lasting for a timer or until a hit removes it, after which normal play resumes
Procedural Generation
Maps, dungeons, encounters, or other content are assembled algorithmically from random inputs at play time rather than authored in advance, so each session presents a different arrangement.
Quest Structures
Play is organised into discrete assigned tasks, each with a framing, an explicit objective, tracked progress, and a reward on completion, so authored content is delivered and consumed one task at a time.
Random Upgrade Offers
At set points in a run the game draws a small random selection of upgrades, usually two to four, and the player keeps one, so a build is assembled from choices among offers the player did not set
Rating and Matchmaking
A numerical rating moves after each game by transferring points from loser to winner in proportion to how unexpected the result was, and a pairing rule uses the ratings to decide who plays whom next.
Relationship Systems
A tracked measure of the bond between the player character and a specific other character rises and falls with choices, gifts, and time spent, and gates scenes, bonuses, and endings as it crosses thresholds.
Reputation & Factions
Persistent numeric standings track how each of several in-game groups regards the player, rising and falling with the player's actions and gating access, prices, hostility, and story branches.
Resource Conversion
Players exchange specified quantities of lower-order resources for higher-order goods, buildings, or effects according to fixed recipes, so progress depends on routing scarce inputs through the right conversions.
Resource Gathering
Players obtain raw materials by harvesting resource nodes placed in the world, such as ore veins, herbs, trees or fishing spots, which deplete and later respawn, so supply is fixed in place, often skill-gated and open to rivals.
Rhythm Action
Notes shown ahead on a track or bar meet a judgement point in time with a piece of music, the player enters the matching input as each arrives, and every input is graded by its timing, so a song's result sums many graded timing tests.
Roguelike Meta-Progression
Currency or unlocks earned during a run survive the run's end and permanently expand what later runs start with or can contain, layering persistent progression over permadeath.
Role Selection
Players in turn take one role from a shared, visible set; the chooser performs its action with a privilege, the others may then perform it too, and a taken role is closed to later choosers for the round.
Saving Throws
A defensive roll made by the target of a harmful effect after the effect is triggered; success negates or reduces the effect, failure lets it apply in full.
Seasonal Leagues
A live game periodically opens a temporary parallel realm in which all players start new characters in an empty economy under new rules or content; when it ends, characters and items move to a permanent realm and a new season begins
Security Zones
A shared world is divided into areas with graded rules on attacking other players, from areas where any attack is a crime to areas with no rules, and an attack the area forbids flags the attacker for retribution by the system or by players
Shared Holdings
A group pools assets in storage it holds in common, behind access rights set by rank or role, and any member with access can withdraw them, within any limit the rules set
Shared Narration
Authority to narrate what happens in the fiction is distributed among all players by rule, passing by turn, by interruption, or by spent currency, so no single facilitator owns the story.
Sowing
A player lifts all the counters from one pit and drops them one at a time into successive pits around a circuit, with captures or further moves decided by where the last counter lands and what it finds there.
Status Effects
A named temporary state such as poisoned, stunned, or hasted is attached to a character and alters its capabilities by a fixed rule until it expires, is cured, or is otherwise removed.
Stealth and Detection
The player avoids being noticed by guards or opponents who detect according to sight, sound, and proximity rules, and detection changes the game state, so remaining unseen is itself the objective.
Subclasses
Within one class, a character takes one of a short fixed list of branches at a set level or on completing set content, and the branch grants its own package of features at later levels of that class
Supply Lines
A unit is in supply only if a path of permitted length, free of enemy units and their zones of control, can be traced from it to a supply source, and a unit that cannot trace one fights, moves, or survives at a penalty.
Threat and Aggro
Each hostile picks its target from a running tally of how much every player has provoked it, so a party controls who gets attacked by generating, holding, or shedding that tally rather than by position alone.
Time Loops
The game world resets to a fixed starting state after a set interval or on failure while the player keeps what they have learned and sometimes a few items, so progress is made in knowledge across repeated cycles.
Tournament Formats
A fixed schedule and pairing rule composes many individual games into one larger contest, such as a knockout bracket, a round robin, or a Swiss system, and decides who advances, who is eliminated, and how the field is placed.
Tower Defence Pathing
Waves of enemies advance along a path toward a goal the player must protect, and the player places static defences beside or across that path, so the geometry of placement decides how long each enemy is under fire before it arrives.
Traitor
In an otherwise cooperative game, one player or possibly none is secretly assigned to oppose the group, so loyal players must pursue the shared goal while judging whether setbacks are bad luck or sabotage.
Trick-Taking
Players each contribute one card from hand to a round called a trick under a follow-suit rule, the highest card by rank or trump wins the trick, and the number or content of tricks won is scored.
Variable Player Powers
Each player begins with a different rule exception, capability set, or faction that breaks the symmetry of the shared rules, so the same situation offers different options to different players.
Victory Points
An abstract scoring unit awarded for heterogeneous achievements such as buildings, sets, regions, and completed goals, summed on a track or at game end, so that unlike pursuits are made commensurable and the highest total wins.
Vulnerability Windows
A player-owned structure can be damaged, captured or destroyed only in a scheduled period, often after an attack has put it in a protected state whose end the defender partly sets, so sieges are fought at appointed hours
Word Building
Players form valid words from a limited supply of letters, by placing tiles on a shared grid or assembling them from a rack or draw, and score by letter values, word length, or placement.
Worker Placement
Players take turns placing a limited number of worker tokens on action spaces to claim those actions, with each space usually holding one worker, so occupying a space also blocks it.
Zone of Control
Each piece projects a zone into the cells adjacent to it, and an enemy piece entering the zone must stop, pay extra, or accept an attack, so a piece controls more ground than it occupies.
Coding guideline for complexity
Low: one or two sentences, no exceptions. Medium: a paragraph with one to three sub-rules or timing exceptions; a single lookup table on its own is medium. High: several interacting tables, prerequisite graphs, or multiple interacting sub-rules.