Properties › Feedback loop
Feedback loop: positive
Success compounds.
35 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.
Base Building
Players spend gathered resources to place persistent structures at a home site, each of which unlocks units, production, storage, or defence, so the layout and growth of the base is the player's capability over the session.
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.
Bluff and Challenge
A player makes a claim about concealed state that may be false, any opponent may challenge it, and a reveal then penalises whichever side was wrong, so the decision is whether to lie and whether to call.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Hit Location
After an attack hits, a further roll or a called shot assigns the damage to a specific body part or component, and each location has its own damage capacity, armour, or impairment effect.
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
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
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
Lives and Continues
The player holds a small counted stock of attempts, each failure spends one and restarts play from a set point, and exhausting the stock ends the game unless a continue is bought, so attempts are a rationed resource.
Memory
State that was briefly shown and then concealed, such as face-down cards or a played sequence, must be retained and recalled without aids, so success depends on remembering what has already been revealed rather than on new information.
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.
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.
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 Elimination
A player who meets a loss condition is removed from play while the game continues for the others, so the session ends only when one player remains or a separate end condition fires.
Player-Authored Goals
Each player writes their own character's goals, beliefs, or drives on the sheet, and the rules pay experience or metacurrency for pursuing or testing them, so the players rather than the designer set what a session is about.
Prestige Resets
The player voluntarily discards accumulated progress to restart from the beginning with a permanent multiplier or bonus, so each cycle runs faster than the last and the reset itself is the progression.
Promotion
A piece that reaches a designated zone, usually the far edge of the board, is replaced by or upgraded to a more capable piece, so advancing position is converted into a permanent gain in capability.
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
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.
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.
Sanity
A separate track for a character's mental stability drains as the character witnesses horror or strain, usually through a roll, and falling past thresholds brings madness, breakdown, or removal from play short of death.
Side Conversion
A player who is caught or defeated joins the side that caught them for the rest of the round, so that one side grows as the other shrinks until every player is on one side or a time limit ends the round
Socketing
Items or abilities carry a fixed number of slots into which the player inserts separate modules, such as gems, runes or materia, that grant or modify capabilities; linked slots let one module alter another
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.
Stock Holding
Players buy fractional shares in entities such as companies or chains, receive dividends or bonuses in proportion to their holding, and may gain control of an entity by owning the largest block.
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.
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.
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.
Coding guideline for feedback loop
Positive: success compounds (engine building, experience levels). Negative: success is penalised or trailing players are compensated (catch-up bonuses, handicap stones given to the weaker player). None: no systematic coupling. Mixed: the canonical form contains a built-in damper (deck dilution in deck-building).