Video games are a unique art. It's all about the way they create impressions. The player is in control and creates a level of immersion that cannot be compared to anything else. He is not just observing something, he is participating in it.
Shaping those feelings is what game design is all about. Every twist or game mechanic helps create emotion. Most of them are obvious to the player, but sometimes you have to be tricky. Developers hide certain mechanics to give the player the best experience. They are there, they work in the background, but the player is never informed about this.
Trick the player into feeling cool
One of the popular types of such mechanics is one that makes the player feel powerful and indestructible. By slightly tweaking some elements of combat, designers can make players feel more powerful than they really are.
Assassin's Creed or Doom would be great examples of this, where the last few health points are done a little differently. Naturally, when the player sees the health bar, he assumes that all health bars are equal, but this is not the case. The last few HP bars are more important than the rest - because of this, the player spends more time in this state - it seems that he is hanging on by a thread from death.
System Shock uses a similar tactic but reverses it. In it, your last bullet deals additional damage, which increases the player's chances of winning.
You know what's really annoying? Suddenly being killed out of nowhere. This is why some games (such as Bioshock, Assassin's Creed and Luftrausers) have systems where the AI ββintentionally misses the first shot in certain situations.
Destroying a player's shield in the first Halo requires an almost full magazine of ammo - the player runs out of health around the same time the enemy starts reloading. This forces players to make split-second decisions in order to survive.
Creating suspense
Instead of making the player feel cool and powerful, these hidden mechanics are meant to create fear, anxiety, or tension. Such mechanics are often used to enhance the atmosphere in horror and survival games.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a great example. At the beginning of the passage, players are told about the "dark rot", which with each death covers the main character's hand more and more - if it reaches the head, then the game will have to start over. But at some point, this curse simply stops growing - the threat of losing all progress is needed in order to increase the feeling of tension.
Another example can be found in the Uncharted series, where the player must escape from collapsing places, such as a train falling off a cliff. It seems that the train can fall at any moment and have to be loaded from the checkpoint. But the animation of the falling object is actually tied to the progress of the passage - it will speed up and slow down depending on how far the player is. At such levels, the user always has time at the last moment, and the object falls apart completely just a few moments after the rescue.
Another example is Alien vs Predator. Typically, autosave is triggered when the player reaches some sort of checkpoint, whether it's clearing a certain area or defeating a difficult boss. But in AvP, autosave is often used to create suspense. When the autosave icon appears right before entering a room for no apparent reason, the player naturally assumes that something is about to happen. This builds up additional stress.
AI that doesn't behave the way you think
In itself, artificial intelligence can be seen as a kind of hidden mechanics, because you never know what exactly they are going to do. In most video games, the AI ββis quite simple, and the player can easily predict its actions. This category will be about AI in video games that behave so stealthily or unintuitively that the player will never notice.
The earliest example can be found in Pac-Man - each of the ghost characters actually has a unique AI that controls their movement. The red ghost just chases the player, while the pink and blue ghosts try to jump out in front of Pac-Man. The movement of the orange ghost is most likely just random.
Something similar can be found in the Amnesia series. It may seem that the enemies are just chasing the player, but the reality is a bit more complicated. Enemies try to get as close as possible to the player, while remaining outside of his zone. This creates the feeling that the player is being watched and the impression that enemies appear out of nowhere.
Sometimes the AI ββdoes change as the game progresses. In Alien: Isolation, the Alien can learn the player's habits (such as where they like to hide) and adjust their behavior. Another example is Enter the Gungeon, in which the AI ββneeds time to "warm up" - the further the player goes, the better the AI ββgets.
Dynamic difficulty change
Perhaps this is the largest of the hidden mechanics. It's annoying to play over and over again in the same place, which is why many games dynamically change difficulty on the fly. The game can give the player a bit more "luck" or add more difficulty when needed.
Others
Some games tweak the physics to make the game more fun at certain points. In FEAR, bullets are slightly attracted to explosive objects. And in Doom and Half-Life 2, opponents' ragdolls are attracted to ledges to make them more likely to fall.
Other games try to hide the loading of new locations through in-game activities. Sometimes it looks silly - for example, accidentally "stumble" in Jak and Daxter. Or vice versa - as in The Suffering, where the character slowly goes crazy - the hero holds his head while the level is loading around.
Source: habr.com