The Secret to Making Any Game Satisfying | Design Delve 

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Juxtaposition gratification: going from "I can't do art" to "why don't I make more art"

Factorio is a great example (and my personal favorite game). At multiple points what was previously a slog becomes automated... and not just automated because you got handed a new ability, but automated because you BUILT the automation yourself. Belts, Construction Bots, Train networks, Logic Networks... each one introduces a new tool to use to replace tedium with gratification, replacing a previously difficult task with a factory that does it for you... opening up the next challenge on the list.

This made me immediately think of the moment in God of War (2018) when you have to fight ice enemies with your frost axe and it does barely anything, absolutely sucking all of the power out of the fantasy as you more or less just beat down their health bars in tiny incriments - until you retrieve your Blades of Chaos. It's actually quite a masterful stroke of narrative gameplay, because they make you feel so immediately powerful (thanks in part to the juxtaposition trick I just mentioned), which makes you understand just how much Kratos thematically did not want to ever use them again.

“Metroid: Zero Mission” is the one for me. There’s the standard journey of gradually increasing power that the series is known for, but what made it stand out was the additional post-Mother Brain content that wasn’t in the original NES version. Having cleared the entire game (or so you think) only to get shot out of the sky and reduced to being even WEAKER than at the start of the game-you only have a stun gun and one hit is death, forcing you to do something you never had to do before: run and hide-is a whiplash to the expectations and is a not insubstantial difficulty spike. However, getting the power suit back plus a supercharge besides has the enemies actively running from you while you rip through them like a furious god of laser beams. I may or may not have cackled in delight and utter gratified satisfaction.

I think the original God of War is an unusual example of this. It starts out telling the player in no uncertain terms that Kratos is a consummate badass, swinging around burning cleaver blades on chains and capable of literally tearing enemies apart. And it's done in gameplay, not in ludonarrative dissonance-creating cutscenes. And then, instead of pulling the nasty trick of taking away the player's power, the game simply escalates. The player is forced to become more skilled and upgrade Kratos' abilities while fighting monster hordes incorporating an increasing variety of former-minibosses-cum-regular enemies, not to mention the series' trademark ridiculous boss battles.

One of my favorite games OKAMI has a layered effect that was somewhat accidental for me. There's the obvious gameplay side where you unlock more powers and abilities as you progress which makes you feel more and more like the goddess everyone claims you to be. But narratively I found it to be compelling because when I first played the game I wasn't familiar with any Japanese myths or stories that the game is in constant reference to. So the greater satisfaction came from piecing together this great mythos pantheon and seeing how the devs put their separate stories into this overarching epic.

I think Undertale's take on this is interesting because it works on a narrative level instead of a gameplay level. When you start the game, you're all alone in a hostile world and your first interaction with another living being almost ends in your death. By the end of the pacifist route, you've made many friends in a charming land and one of your last interactions is choosing to comfort someone who barely got a chance to live.

Design Delve is one of the shows that helps me design the ttrpg campaigns I am running. Thank you!

Pizza Tower. The juxtaposition between a sloppy run at a level where you bash your face into the wall, take all sorts of damage, fall into holes, and fumble with the controls, allll comes to a point when you finally, after sometimes HOURS of trying, get that perfect P rank run. You obliterate every enemy, masterfully traverse every pit, grab every point you see, it's beautiful. It feels like the real time process of creating a work of art, scrapping bad attempt after bad attempt until it's finally chiselled to utter perfection. That is the best feeling in all of gaming.

Illusion of Gaia has a mechanic I love where you get stat ups when you kill every enemy on the screen. Not only does this make you stronger, but sometimes killing all the enemies involves some kind of puzzle or using a new ability you just got which keeps the stat ups engaging even when it's just +1 hp or +1 str.

I really think this is exemplified quite well in idle games. It’s an entire genre about exponentially increasing numbers and production rates As such, the player always feels powerful (if done right) Yes they may just be clicking on a cookie in cookie clicker but each click now earns a million times more than it did an hour ago Each upgrade unlocked and purchased provides a huge boost to production and continuously increases the feeling that the player is powerful because they’re doing better than they did moments ago.

I've been floating in a high of satisfaction playing some rogue(lite) games where you start weak against strong enemies but there's potential in a run to build a batshit broken character just slapping the bosses and it feels so gratifying when those pieces fall into place. I fell in love recently with Astral Ascent that way, the game is a pure masterclass in all aspects like the power creep, design and atmosphere

One interesting thing that games occasionally do is give you a taste of that power you will eventually reach early on, ala Symphony of the Night or Metroid Prime. The interesting part is that the majority of the time you will end up more powerful than you were in the preview. This episode was focused on the macro of satisfaction, but I do want to give a shout out to the talk "Juice it or lose it" by Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho. Much like Juxtaposition Gratification, once you learn to see it you can find it everywhere.

Personally, I think that Juxtaposition Gratification is mostly an analytical bookmarking of the more generalized principle of creating and relieving tension. The flow of tension through a player/user/audience is the core of why anything is or is not satisfying. Tension is created when a player is new, underpowered, and underequipped. This is a common experience when you first play challenging in Helldivers 2 and the bots have you surrounded. That tension is slowly relieved as the player gains experience with how to play and acquires better equipment. Now "challenging" is very manageable now that they have bigger strategems and better understanding of bot aggression. At this point the complete form of juxtaposition gratification can be seen. The player can remember how it felt to be utterly swarmed and panicked, and can juxtapose that memory with the capability and power they now feel. The game can be said to be satisfying, the player is happy, no argument there. However, this term and distant perspective doesn't take into account the moment-to-moment; why a game continues to be satisfying even after reaching max-level, grokking all mechanics, and being completely kitted out. This only happens because the core game loop still retains a sufficiently strong buildup and release of tension. Even when you have every advantage the game can offer you, it still feels like chaos and tension when you get swarmed and the relief when you manage democracy against that swarm is still so sweet. You could argue that this is just juxtaposition gratification (JG) on a smaller and tighter scale, but I would then question why we need another, more complicated and rigid term for tension. Like many analytical tools, JG only applies to something in the past that has been formed and completed; a benchmark. But a design tool needs to be something that can be used while the thing/game is still incomplete or in progress. A designer focused on achieving the benchmark of JG, will make the mistake of assuming that because their game has a leveling system and increasingly powerful equipment they have a satisfying game (Gotham Knights, Suicide Squad, Avengers, etc). However a designer focused on the design of how tension is created and relieved will more likely build a satisfying experience even without any of those systems. Juxtaposition is the binary comparison of two fixed points, whereas tension requires context of the moment and suggests where things are going. JG definitely has its uses, but I resist elevating it the reason why a game is satisfying. A player is not going to have JG in mind when on-planet and three bug breaches open up, but they will be utterly engulfed in the tension and a drive to relieve it. Players will feel more fond for the memory of fighting for their lives and overcoming, than the mirthy execution of early-game enemies they can now trounce. In fact, the latter is only enjoyable if the former existed.

the depth of the skill ceiling.

I love Furi, which its only progression in terms of your power is your own personal skill. You never gain ANYTHING that you didnt already have, whether you were aware you could do that or not. Going back and playing the speedrun mode after beating it once makes you feel SO good and its all due to your own ability. Perfect parries, charging a strike to break the bosses chain attacks and get a custom counter. Its so different on a repeat playthrough even though technically nothing has changed.

The Mega Man Zero games are games that I feel have a solid juxtaposition gratification loop. Especially with Zero 2 and Zero 3. When you play better, the bosses themselves get more tools to fight you with, and if you beat the stage with a high rank you get new moves which motivates you to replay the levels and learn them to perfection.

Absolver has a thing like this going on, there's 4 bosses you have to fight, each demanding you learn how to use a part of the combat system, the "final" boss demands you use all that you've learned. And once you beat them you get the Absolver cloak, showing other players that you've beaten the final boss and can handle most things in the game. It's pretty cool, especially when you can still guide and interact with newer players, it's fun to help new players with enemies you used to struggle with! Plus dueling other absolvers always feel cool as hell.

The "Ludo being called a cheeky [FEMALE DOG]" gag falling flat was a funny lampshade to hang, nice. This comment censored because YT.

4:20 the depth of the skill ceiling

As I've said numerous times, TUNIC has become my favorite video game, because the juxtaposition between the beginning and discovering the truth of the Holy Cross and the Golden Path along with the truth of the manual too is just so satisfying: it has helped remind me of so many things that I forgot about due to life making it harder and more complicated to keep it in mind. But after playing TUNIC as a video game and only a video game, I now see that personal truth more clearly than I did before, and that is just amazing and beautiful and *OH I LOVE TUNIC SO MUCH!* 💖💖💖💖💖😄

It's funny how the way you approach a game can utterly change the way you experience it. I first played Tekken 2 when it came out as a kid going 'wow' at the 3d graphics, spamming a flip move so that i could see all the unlocked characters and who'd win in a fight, a bear or a dinosaur with boxing gloves. Playing Tekken 8 recently, alot of the moves and mechanics established in that game are still present, i even picked up a character that hadn't been seen before since Tekken 2 - Jun, and there's something so gratifying about knowing what buttons to press and having combos and the like come out without needing to look anything up, it's an amazing feeling. But, i no longer am just amusing myself beating up a computer opponent, i'm journeying into ranked, and from there i'm slowly uncovering the complex layers uponlayers of systems and teh way everything interacts with one another, from the 3d movement, to frame advantage and movesets, even stages behave differently, and because i'm looking to out manouver and beat human opponents theres a huge tactical element to everything that was always there, i just never appreciated. Its a slow burn, learning and improving, but its never going to not be satisfying overcoming a challenge today that you struggled yesterday, or exciting to look at tomorrows challenge and think ' yeah, i can beat that, just you wait'. Always love these design delve videos!

Half Life 1 does this really well with the first Assassin sequence. You have all of these weapons, have just taken out the hardest enemies yet, you walk into a room.... And have to start from a crowbar all over again.

If that puzzle isn't available on the Second Wind store I want my money back.

Juxtaposition gratification exists in literally every media outlet with a story involved. It exists in books, movies, shows, games, and theatre. You introduce a new world, the audience learns more about the world and it's characters, create suspense for those characters, and reward your attention with a payoff (unless you plan to break the rules of this set up to express a theme, which can also exist.)

This feels like such a general concept that it mighta been cool to dip a bit out of gaming and see how it applies to things usually beyond Second Wind's scope. Does this apply to going to the gym? To cooking food? To constructing IKEA furniture?

Design Delve and Cold Take are honestly why I donate on patreon. Love these videos guys!!

Crypt of the Necrodancer is a good example of a game that keeps the juxtaposition gratification going. You clear one giant hurdle and the game throws an even bigger one at you, eventually reaching levels of difficulty that would have felt utterly insurmountable at the beginning. And at any point you can stop and look back, and see how far you have come, simply through your own skill. And it feels great.

My father always calls this "the hero's journey", after the dime-a-dozen fantasy novels of his youth. He loves the element, thematically and mechanically, of starting at nothing and working your way up to becoming the greatest in the land. My favorite computer game, World of Goo, is a puzzle game, and has exactly one extrinsic reward, but the complexity and narrative escalations are both strong, both as gimmicky mechanics get bolted onto the strong core construction challenge, and as the actions of building these structures gradually have a greater and greater impact on the world. The final chapter ends with the most gimmicky level imaginable, closer to Angry Birds than a physics puzzle, but the game doesn't end until the epilogue: End of the World. By this point, the narrative has already come and gone, and the last three levels have no frills: just basic building blocks and a few balloons against seemingly impossible distances. However, the player has grown to understand the system to the point that these lengthy gauntlets are more meditative than stressful, even if they take multiple attempts. And then, after you've proven yourself, the story ends with a whimper rather than a bang, tying all its loose ends up, showing all you've done, and leaving you with a sense of hope.

Juxtaposition gratification also fits when looking at it from motivational psychology. (Self Determination Theory) We have some intrinsic psychological needs, and the promise to satisfy these needs are what keeps us motivated to keep playing. If you completely satisfy these needs from the start, then the player will quickly get bored. If we frustrate those needs to much however, we will also thwart their motivation. If we keep the players in somewhat of a deficit, their motivation will theoretically be the greatest. The threshold between satisfaction, satisfaction deficit, and frustration are subjective however. In the video, you mostly referred to the need satisfaction of competence. However, you can also use juxtaposition gratification to satisfy relatedness and autonomy as well

I find that the best examples of gratification are the later levels in the Katamari games. You start as a tiny ball being pushed around by mice, and wind up rolling up the planets, literally overcoming obstacles the whole way. After playing through all the other courses in the game, the final levels are like the entire game smooshed into one 15 minute level. “Chef’s Kiss”

solving that jigsaw feels more like creating chaos than overcoming it

classic zelda be it majora or twilight or links to past, will always have a fun runup in the dungeon where you explore everything without the legendary item and the runback WITH the item, often trivializing the things that gave you headaches moments before. I always love a "You hated that dodging the lava part, but now you can SWIM in lava and now have double the dungeon and never worry about lava again!"

Just now realized the outro for these episodes is in 5/4 time, I love funky time signatures!

5:10 Hey now! I’m a Patron here! I don’t wanna be eaten!

Outstanding quality and considerations, keep it up mates!

Helldivers 2 was a good example. I was so surprised and excited when I heard that the mechs actually had to be unlocked in a community mission rather than just added to the game, and they might be adding a new enemy type soon based on the new mission that is currently. Its a unique way to add in new content to a game and I enjoy it quite a bit.

Deception 3 is where I noticed it first. Early on, the game is difficult, but the focus is on the trap location and timing, so your mind is 100% on the happenings. You unlock traps and take them for a spin, but not much more. Later game has enemies with immunity or resistances to certain traps, and that's when your focus is split between which traps will be useful for the current stage and how can you exploit them for maximum impact. This forces you to learn how to combine different sets of traps that you would have probably ignored early on if it wasn't for the resistances and immunities. And that made the game better for me.

You're not wrong, but it's an an oversimplification. You've described anchoring (kind of like setting a reference point for comparison). Juxtaposition = Near position. I.e. adjacency, that CAN invite comparison, but it doesn't necessarily mean comparison, nor contrast (the thing anchoring exploits). Getting 1 hit killed (early in game) and 1 hit killing everything yourself (late in game) are also not exactly "adjacent" states of gameplay that juxtaposition describes. Gratification is the goal. Anchoring is 1 of the ways to achieve it, but it doesn't do anything for many genres. Here's a few other ways: - Challenges/Objectives. Roguelikes often have amazing mechanics, but don't give you a reason to replay them. Challenges can both expose you to new ways of playing the game and make a simple tick of a checkbox feel exciting as you clear a "challenge". - Co-op games have entirely different dynamics. Simply playing a role nobody else in the team can fulfil can be gratifying. The fact your involvement saves another player is really something. Finally, the feel of the game. I feel stupid having to explain that, but gameplay can feel satisfying on its own. Think rhythm games, racing games, fighting games. Think arcade and not long campaigns. In a rhythm game as long as you like the music, the map is fine-tuned and can keep up with it, it's satifying on the first try. You don't have to lose a few times to get that satisfaction. The unrealistic physics feeling intuitive is satisfying. Think of the last good platformer you played, like the pepper grinder. You don't need a learning curve to make it feel good. The fluidity feels great. Same goes for racing and fighting games. Ones with mass appeal have physics feel very intuitive, even if they make no sense. E.g. Tekken combos almost look like a dance and that's just not the case for many of the 2d counterparts. For what it's worth I think Forspoken would be a success due to feel alone, if it wasn't an empty open world (i.e. smaller and either more dense, or linear) and the character was mute.

Ludo deserves the car!

This is exactly what I need for my brain break while developing, thank you! Love this series

When I watched the video, I was thinking about early power source in Satisfactory. At first you can power your factory only with biomass, that you have to collect manually from plants, process it (this part can be automated) and then put it manually into biomass power generators. All that chores was there so when you already unlock fully-automatizable coal power, you fill the difference. Filling it with a stack of best fuel last for ~40 minutes (more if you use less power). It was not liked by at least part of the community. But it was a very straightforward example, devs mention explicate that this early game grind is to make coal feel better, so I felt like it is not really worth mentioning. But today everything changed. They removed (announced they are removing it in 1.0) the second manual part - biomass burners (we do not know if all, or just an upgraded version) can be feed from conveyer belts. We need now only to collect biomass by hand, but that part was So it looks like we can overdo with this trick.

Calling out an example that I really enjoyed - Heat Signature. The game gives you a fairly good tutorial playing as the game's only real named NPC, and from there the game opens up - and as the contracts and spaceships gradually get more challenging, you simply learn how to mix and match the various tools at your disposal - whether found or bought - to complete the contracts you take, whether that's milking slowed time to juggle six wrenches against people's foreheads before spacing yourself with your target in tow, or combining various stealth and teleportation gadgets to pull off heists in complete stealth through some of the most extreme security in the game.

Was this just a 10 minute video describing, a sense of accomplishment? And then renaming it? XD Entertaining all the same! Loving everything on SecondWind!

Okay I now officially demand merch that includes a Hoodie that has "Juytaposition Gratification" written all over it. Like I mean it, really EVERYWHERE, in different fonts, sizes, directions... I'd like colors too but I guess black/white is more realistic for such a thing... but in all caps, all lower case... every single way one could come up with, as long as it's written roughly about a bazillion times all over the hoodie :D

I like how you invented some fancy term to describe the concept of 'challenge'.

One trick for single-player games is the new game plus. The "go back and bully the enemies that bullied you" approach worked great in games like Resident Evil 4. However, what kind of never caught on but I wish we saw more of: Goldeneyes's missions and rewards. Playing on lower difficulties unlocked higher ones, and completing the highest ones under level par unlocked cheats. Raising the difficulty didn't just add health to enemies, it added behaviors, changed up routes and added objectives. Maybe some of this is lost to time, but it rewarded player investment by taking the puzzle and mixing it up again, challenging you to do it again but this time some of the pieces are hidden! You wouldn't want to start there, but if you were having fun it meant you could keep doing it and is really a combination of skill-based and reward-based gratification.

I always enjoy your takes in these videos, cheers

The board game Spirit Island has a great gameplay loop that involves gradual power increase through growth mechanics over the course of the game, matched by the slow ramp up of enemy forces. Selecting the right growth options combined with the luck of drafting the right powers for your chosen spirit is addicting, while the knowledge that the invaders are becoming more numerous and can overwhelm your action economy due to bad luck or poor choices is incredibly tense, making victory that much more satisfying when you achieve it.

Psychonauts 2, Raz going from thinking to knowing what he’s doing to royally messing up and his whole journey realizing his place in the world to hoping he is forgiven while learning to forgive it’s just…..that game is beautiful

Cuphead is a good example. Most people start off getting pounded into the dirt by that game's difficulty, but the more you play, the better you get at the timing and moves necessary to avoid damage, and the more of a feel you get for the bosses' attack patterns and which weapons work best for which boss. And then one day you find yourself able to get A-rank or better on every boss and pick up the Pacifist award, and it's just so damn satisfying. I'd say Returnal mostly nailed it too. Much of that game's satisfaction comes from becoming more skilled with the weapons and better at avoiding damage, but you also get just enough of a drip-feed of permanent unlocks that you feel like you're making progress that way too.

The Mass Effect series does a great job of this, going from a lone ship fighting roving pirates and weak husks all the way up to taking on godlike giant sentient spaceships and leading a team of the galaxy's super soldiers and a combined sentient armada.

I always called this concept "Inertia": you have to overcome a system's inherent friction to get going, but once you do, it's easier to keep going than to stop.

Not gonna lie, it sounds like you can replace your fancy term with one word: progression

Love this series, it's the new extra credits for me

I remember there was a shooter in the long ago days of the 00s, back when I was just out of high school that did a neat thing with its multiplayer. There were difficulty selects, but if you wanted normal, everyone was on an even playing field. Meanwhile there were two harder and two easier ones, and THOSE were matched against each other, with the easy mode players starting with an advantage in resources and taking more damage, while on the very hard vs very easy you got a turret on your base that was infinite ammo and shredded the very hard players. It was fun.

The “abilitease” that Metroid made classic is an example of this - by giving you a peak at the start at what you’ll be able to do later, they make that valley after you lose all those powers that much more impactful. It’s a bit of a risk though - those who stick it out will enjoy getting the new powers more, but if executed poorly it could drive players away.

It’s always a good day when James releases a new video. Got something to watch after work now

Grappling hook. The answer is grappling hook. Its the clear cut method to make any game satisfying.

Juxtaposition gratification sample: League of Legends. I didn't like this game at first, but saw possibility, then I proceeded to suck at it for 2 years and put it down. Later, it comes out on mobile, and over another year, I get ranked A in most matches due to better character utilization and predicting opponent actions. Conclusion: sucking at something is the start of being kind of good at something, and that is made all the more satisfying on a competitive field. Side note: this is easily my favorite episode. There's something extraordinary about finding out what simply makes games fun.

A trick I've noticed RPGs like to use is to maximise their juxtaposition by giving you mid/late game power right at the beginning, then taking it away to put you to base level - they might do this either as a 'how have the mighty fallen' story where you have to claw your way back up to regain your lost power or it might be an in media res dealio that then flashbacks or rewinds to the start. When done well, this heightens the sense of extreme difference between the highest and lowest points of your journey because they're *right next to each other:* you get a taste of the godlike power you'll have later to give you more incentive to work towards it, not to mention if they take the in media res route you're naturally led to think 'okay, so how did we get from THIS to THAT' which helps heighten the ancipation in a narrative way. Personally, I'm a fan of when games use this trick to show you how powerful you'll be around the mid-game, because then although you've got a goal to aim for there's still something more to be discovered on the other side, so you don't feel as though you've already seen everything there is to see - or perhaps the game gives you the 'default build' to play with at the beginning, but then wipes it and lets you pick whatever you want after.

Okay, I don't have an all-time favourite example, but 2 come to mind: First, StarCraft 2 - Years ago when the game was still fresh and I was playing 1v1 on ladder. Now, I never got out of bronze or silver levels because I just never played often enough to have a consistent win rate. Thing was, I didn't care about racking up wins - I wanted to win _my_ way. For this reason, getting out of the early game was always a challenge. My first win finally came in a Terran mirror-match. My opponent had chased me out of my main base, but as I left, I had simultaneously expanded and destroyed their main as well. As a result, we both set up new bases in different locations to our starting areas. What my opponent didn't know was that I had 2 bases compared to his single base, which meant I was effectively restarting on double economy. For the next 10 minutes of the game, we built up air forces, since that was the only way either of us could reach each other and do damage. As we were trading shots and ships, I was building a whole second force up at that other base that they never found. As our mining resource dwindled, we clashed one final time. And that's when I brought in the reserve forces, overrunning his smaller army and taking out his last base! The thing that made this so awesome was that I'd managed to keep enough pressure on my opponent that they never thought to go looking for this secret base, and because he never saw any other activity out of what he'd expect from a 1-base production line, he never expected the reinforcements. It was a completely unconventional game compared to the high-level play you'd expect in Diamond or higher tiers too, so it was impossible to completely predict how an opponent was going to play. But in that moment, that first win on ranked matches, I felt like I'd completely outsmarted and outplayed my first real human challenger. It was was a victory that truly felt like my own earned achievement, rather than one that was attained by walking a road well-travelled. Second, Don't Starve (Reign of Giants) [SPOILER ALERT] - Anyone who's played this game will know that the most dangerous enemy in the overworld is the Dragonfly, which appears during the most brutal season (Summer). She closes fast, does a tonne of damage, and her fiery aura adds to the damage taken by the player. It's possible to defeat her by detonating gunpowder under her after putting her to sleep, but it's not a trick that you can reliably repeat without a lot of nitre, which I wanted to use to make more endothermic firepits. It was a huge deal when I finally had a sustainable supply of reeds and learned how to farm snowbird feathers with boomerangs, as well as survive the most ferocious hound attacks (and everything else). Reason for this is that it meant I had a sustainable solution to putting down the Dragonfly every summer. I had well and truly conquered the game.

For games such as Call of Duty which was a PvP game with equipment progression, a common way they balanced new players was giving them weapons which were inherently strong for the category, so they could stand a chance and weren't at THAT much of a disadvantage compared to more skilled players. In Black Ops III (the one I played the most) the starter assault rifle was pretty consistently #2 in terms of power, and running it with a small number of attachments was common even among high level players. Coincidentally, the most commonly ran attachments (the Quickdraw grip and a dot sight) were among the first unlocked attachments.

The Mass Effect Trilogy does this in an interesting way. While it has the conventional incremental RPG leveling, where its true satisfaction lies is the story and characters. When you start in ME1 people are sceptical whether you are capable enough to be a Spectre and your squadmates are a wild mix of misfits and trust issues. Which makes it so incredibly satisfying to reach the end of ME3 as THE Shepard, galaxy saving hero who all look up to, and the squadmates at your side are your best friends, who you have formed a true bond with over the course of three games.

I love the way that the juxtaposition gratification is done in "else Heart.Break()" you come into a new world, your character moves to a new city. You don't know the layout of the city, you have no idea how the world works. If you come in blind you might even think you're playing a Point'n'click game, but it is far from the truth. At the end of the game you have seen and written programming code for your environment, you have become the god of this world, you know how everything works, you can teleport around, know where every NPC is, control their inventory and lock them off if you wish. And the greatest thing is, there was only one item that gave you new powers, other items mostly help you understand how things work. Subsurface Circular also has a satisfying implementation of the juxtaposition gratification - you play as a detective and the game parents to you the many points of view on the central dilemma and at the end you have everything you need to make a decision. And the decision is not easy and will stay with you after you close the game. Antichamber is another game that has it's strange rules and at the end you navigate it like a pro. It was satisfying to speedrun it glitchless back when it was released

That Mario and Sonic shipping scene puzzle looks like a nightmare to assemble.. so much solid colour!

My favourite juxtaposition gratification must be the great tower from stephen's sausage roll. In the course of 1 level it begins looking insanely intimidating, and then after eventually learning how stacked sausages work, realising that the solution is quite simple, which is very very satisfying

I'd say civilization comes to mind. Spending early game struggling against those pesky barbarians and then start sending out hunting parties to rid the land of them, can be very satisfying. The same with the exploration/settlement system. You can get your eyes on a fertile valley with valuable minerals in the hills. From there on starts the race to settle the area and cultivating it. That may be the reason my excitement peters out in the late game stages. I'm never hesitant to start a new game however. I love early to mid game gameplay.

I love the feeling in a good mega-man alike of being equipped to handle anything and everything. Then you have the secondary satisfaction because there's still a skill ceiling to the final gauntlet.

Love all Design Delve's videos!

Outer Wilds. The fun of discovering a new place and having no idea what's going on. Then you find a key piece of knowledge, often on a completely different planet, and it all clicks. You get to go back and explore with new knowledge, with the key to unlock the secrets!

I put in over 500 hours across multiple save files in Star Ocean 3 when that was new. Fan reception aside, I loved it. Going from some boy on a vacation to literally ripping open the dimension for a back attack was wild.

I like this series I've been watching a few videos lately when the channel started but now it I am fan

I think at its core, Tears of the Kingdom's Ultrahand mechanic is its own source of Juxtaposition Gratification. Similar to your puzzle example, being able to bring order to a chaotic pile of zonai devices, and having your creation do what you intended seems to fit. But more than that, you start with a very small battery to power your creations, and if you invest the time to expand your battery power (while being limited in your ability to use zonai devices), it makes it all the more gratifying to be able to fly further distances, utilize more cannon blasts, and better realize your creative visions when your battery hits 4, 8, and 16 full power units. And even more than that, finding the Autobuild power provides another source of gratification after the juxtaposition of having to build everything one connection at a time for all your prior playtime.

Great video, love this stuff

Alright, lemme put on my fave games with a few examples: Final Fantasy VII: - Sephiroth in the flashback: Being able to match and then surpass his power - Materia: Basic spells and small effects level up to stunning magic with way too powerful effects - Combos: Materia and weapons can make straight up computer-like combos of ridiculous magnitudes The Legend of Dragoon: - Lloyd's arena fight: Set up as an untouchable opponent, giving you reason to go after him and finally taking him down - Additions: They're action commands that turn your basic attack into a combo. At the start the timing can be very difficult, but with time you can literally do them with your eyes closed. - Dragoons: They start off as simple transformations that make you super powerful, but eventually become highly versatile tools that allow you to swing battles wildly The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask: - Majora: Literally unbeatable for most of the game. It toys with you and you have to play around it before finally being able to beat it. - Time: Starts off as a time limit mechanic that restricts most of your actions, and then becomes a tool to deepen your exploration and expand the scope of the game - Masks: You start the game with little to no options, and end up with not only the usual army's worth of gear, but with 4 characters worth of moveset to trash anything

Its strange that my favourite game, Ghost Master both has the core mechanic of starting with only a bit of "plasm", which is used to power up your ghosts. You have to get by using weaker powers like turning off the lights or make the TV malfunction a bit before you get to play with the big guns, like causing a storm or make everything in the room fly around. The game also has puzzles in it, but a lot of them are hamstrung by the need of waiting for the NPC AI to deign to perform a specific action to solve it.

Prince of Persia Sand of Time comes to mind. You start with just the basics then get the ability to reverse time to undo mistakes all the while you gain health and more sand tanks. But toward the end you lose sand tanks and gain a 1 hit kill sword so it trivializes non-boss combat but ups the stakes since you can no longer rewind time reinforcing mechanical mastery and satisfaction

In Wario Land 3, when you get a key and open a treasure chest, you see the treasure and then a scene where it's used to either open a new level or change a previous one letting you get another treasure there. At least if you follow the Hidden Figure's adveice on where to go. Seeing how you were responsible for a change in the world is very satisfying.

Factorio. Taming the chaos of complex systems is amazing.

I think the gameplay loop of something like Factorio or other factory-likes has a similar, equally compelling juxtaposition gratification. Starting with basic tools, finding better materials to build better ones or further upgrade old ones until you've created this complex assembly line that can do just about everything for you at ludicrous speeds. The starting from nothing to building everything near automatically using your own creativity and resourcefulness is a mighty satisfying loop

These delve videos teach me more about psychology than university and textbooks, practically speaking... And teach me more about game dev than English Lit in uni too. I really think this is way deeper than most give it credit for judging by the comments. There's so much insight and depth into life and social psychology in here if we look for it.

u even got me on a short hike... being unable to do a single flap to being able to soar at high speeds...

Once upon a time, the original Robocraft had you - as a player - slowly transitioning from piloting a box with wheels and a gun fighting other, slightly differently-shaped boxes with wheels and a gun to large, complex machines with many distinct methods of moving around and attacking enemies who could be so wholly distinct in appearance and function from you that the way you fought could be wildly asymmetric, for better or for worse. The reason this was so, so gratifying was because you literally built up your creations block by block, gradually unlocking parts and increasing your part limit in order to build the larger and more complex creations that the game became known for. What's more, your player skill was expressed both through how you made your 'bots tougher to beat and how you tore others' 'bots apart more efficiently by targeting weak points in their construction. There were many distinct methods through which your advancement as a player was displayed, both in terms of player power and player skill. The game's developers reworked many of the game's systems and gameplay several times over, eventually leading to the game's downfall, as much of what players had liked about the game changed or was removed entirely. However, there was a lot to like about the game for a few years, and much can be learned from its example. Nowadays, there are still some games operating similarly, most notably Crossout, but the spirit of creativity and gradual progression in skill and power is marred by egregious monetization and progression systems.

Outer Wilds uses knowledge for its juxtaposition gratification. Honestly the game’s entire existence is based around the lack of knowledge for the player at the beginning, and the gradual buildup of knowledge gained by exploring each planet. It’s the perfect time loop game because it captures the core fantasy of that subgenre to an absurdly perfect degree at every important layer. The player character never gains any new gameplay-altering tools beyond the tutorial, you just learn to use those tools in different ways, some of which are kept totally secret from you until certain facts are learned. This also, obviously, includes the main point of attraction about the game which is its narrative and backstory mysteries. What happened to the alien species who was here before us? Why is the sun going nova? Why are we in the time loop?

My WoWCrack addled brain went immediately went there because there's nothing like starting off as some level 1 scrub dealing with minor threats to a local area to being the savior of multiple worlds/planes of existence.

I've always held that you need contrasting experiences for a fun game, which is just another way of saying juxtaposition gratification, so I couldn't agree more.

Love the topic, this series is growing on me more and more every video!

I think for me, it...always comes back to Pokemon. Pokemon has that core loop of satisfaction in that you find a creature, catch the creature, and now you have a creature you can make stronger and use to complete the challenges the game gives you. Later games give you more ways to customize this and make that Pokemon that much more unique. New moves. A nature. Personality based on stat totals. Ways to breed them. When I caught a Pokemon and gave it a nickname, I was making it part of my story. The games, for good and for ill on the story's quality, always improved on ways to be in control of your Pokemon's growth, making them truly yours and no one else's. Even the act of randomly finding and catching a shiny Pokemon in the wild, or actively seeking it out through hunting tactics, scratches that juxtaposition gratification itch.

The simplest juxtaposition gratification is I'm weak and the boss is strong so if I defet the boss, I feel great. Works in many games.

The Mega Man X games do a wonderful job of carrying you from a state of weakness, to a state of empowerment. The whole way through, your skill and exploration are rewarded, and even at your most powerful, the games are often still quite difficult in the later stages.

I can think of one very interesting example of "resetting" the gratification loop with the second half of Half-Life 2. Instead of taking away all of your powers and forcing you to start all over again against the increasing power of the Combine, they instead give you endgame powers early for your Gravity Gun. This lets you live out every part of the power fantasy before eventually getting bored and happily returning to the gradual slog of working your way toward the challenge of the final act. I can speak from experience, there is no feeling greater than mowing down hundreds of the previously difficult enemies with the untapped power of a roided out physics defying hyper cannon.

I was mainly thinking of spiritfarer which has an odd doubling of it - because at the start, you have a small boat and only have a few tasks to do, but over time you build and expand and get guests and things to do and whatever else and suddenly it's all so busy and bursting with stuff! But then as you wind down to end game and people go, you slowly have less and less to do until you're back to doing as little as you were doing when you started.

I picked Invisible, Inc., the isometric stealth game from Klei. There are some examples of JG from weak to strong (it's a roguelike after all), but I think the more interesting juxtaposition is from order to chaos. The contrast between when you're skulking through the building at the start and sprinting for the exit at the end is so good, even though the latter is more dangerous and less desirable.

my problem with autocombos in fighting games is not really do with them streamlining a process and removing the reward of effort. I prefer my classic controls and complex d-pad movements but i don't really take any issue with games that streamline new players towards the real thing that makes fighting games fun- the reads, the reactions, using your tools to outplay the opponent, etc. Modern controls in SF6 i'll never use, but i'm fine with it, I think it's a very helpful thing to get people into the "fun" as quickly as possible. the problem with autocombos is that they don't really serve that purpose- they often lean into being non-optimal, are usually just the one string, and actively dissuade people away from exploring the full extent of their tools, since newcomers will be encouraged to just go with the one cool mashing string, and will have to learn execution from scratch to figure out anything else. My even bigger problem with autocombos is that they can get in the way of the ease of execution in other areas. Trying to learn a combo that starts with the autocombo-ing button twice but goes somewhere else? Well, if your precision isn't great, you can't mash as freely as you could with the other buttons, because you'll risk locking your character into their autocombo. It's not that it bypasses the climb towards higher skill- it actively gets in the way of it!

I learned about juxtaposition gratification from the game Escape Velocity, and particularly the last game in the series, Escape Velocity Nova. Because it's extremely simple to mod, I would give myself the strongest combinations of ships and equipment so that I could easily have all the cool and powerful stuff that's usually locked behind money and story progression... and discovered, as I did so, that I wasn't having any fun with it. Just having all the coolest stuff wasn't innately gratifying, it was only special *because* I spent so much time in a crappy shuttle and a mediocre mid-range ship, because I put in the effort to earn the money to afford the fancy things, because of what it took to reach the endgame power level. You have to have the juxtaposition in order to have the gratification.

Megaman X - obvious juxtaposition gratification from the armor collection, weapons, health, and energy tanks. Building up to and getting the upgraded buster was pure dopamine in the first Megaman X. I've always considered the first game's third-level-charge attack to be my favorite. A massive, blasting wave of attacks with a back-wash blast behind you. It was cathartic to use every. single. time and even with all the tricks and additions the later entries added, they never recaptured this pure joy for me, and it was absolutely enhanced by having to get through a chunk of the game without it to appreciate what it did. Charging all of the weapons abilities, too, just enhanced this catharsis.

This is a bit of a weird example, but in games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa (that kind of detective game) it's incredibly satisfying when a clue that was hinted at hours ago is finally revealed. Like you've been wondering why that screwdriver is even in the evidence for a long time and then it finally comes into play and your curiosity is sated

Going way back to the PS1 era, we have Legend of Legaia. Its core gimmick was that to attack, you had to input directions to create a string of attacks. Some specific combinations of inputs would let you unleash an Art, which is a fancy looking move that does more damage. When you start out, you can only input 3 directions, but as you level up you'll eventually be able to input more directions. This lets you unleash more Arts in one turn, or find Arts that are a longer chain and do even more damage.