Hey y’all!

So I’ve been playing around with an idea: what if I could make a funky “game mechanic ideas generator”?

Well… it turns out it’s more difficult than expected! Not abstract enough, and you fall into “game design 101” with no room for interpretation or uncovering anything fresh and new. Too abstract, and making everything connect into a beautiful mechanic becomes insanely complex (and not fun at all). Too precise and nothing ever match. Too generic and it becomes an insipid jumble of words… Balance is everything!

After much experimentation, I reached the result below! This tool won’t invent a brand new game mechanic for you (too easy, and not needed since we are all designers here) but, instead, will prompt you with everything a game mechanic is and needs, and leave you with hopefully a ton of new: what if?

  • Action: What do you do?
  • Element: What do you interact with?
  • Goal: What are you trying to achieve?
  • Twist: What changes or complicates how you achieve it?

This is very much a work in progress! If you want to help me polish it (very appreciated), please jump on our Discord or send me a mail!

I’d also love it if you could share with me your best game mechanics and the 4 prompts that led you to find them 🙂 Happy Brainstorm!

Loading The Game Mechanic Machine… JavaScript must be enabled to spin the wheels.