Pattern

Braking engine

You might say: negative feedback, drain

A balancing feedback loop pushes back harder as success grows, slowing a snowball.

Ask
Where does the brake balance the engine?

Sources

  1. Machinations.io, Game systems: Feedback loops and how they help craft player experiences, Positive and negative feedback loops: what are they?They are the E=MC2 of game design, the harder you push, the more the negative feedback loop pushes back. This stops the player from snowballing success to the point where the game becomes unenjoyably easy.
  2. Ian Schreiber, Level 5: Mechanics and Dynamics, Feedback LoopsA negative feedback loop is a balancing relationship.
  3. Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans, Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, ch. 4, p. 66Negative feedback makes a system resistant to changes.
  4. Ian Schreiber and Brenda Romero, Game Balance, ch. 2, p. 75Negative (dampening) feedback loops: A feedback loop is negative when systems dampen their own effect and stabilize the game. In a multiplayer game, this gives an advantage to players who are losing, or a disadvantage to players who are winning.

Use it on your project

teardown-apply: hold "Braking engine" (pattern-braking-engine) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/4x-strategy/ against my project

Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.

An AI agent wrote this map with the teardown skill. It can contain errors: check the sources before you rely on a part. About and legal