THE DIFFICULTY WITH DIFFICULTY
Getting the difficulty right is crucial to
great game design, and Steve Bromley is here to tell you about how you can use playtesting to ensure your game’s challenge is intentional, not accidental
F
riction is core to fun game design. That’s no more evident than in soulslike games, where players’ expect the game to be challenging and require mastery of mechanics to progress. One of the worries I hear when speaking to teams about
playtesting is that it will make their game ‘too easy’. Last year was a big year for testing ‘difficult’ games in our playtest lab, with many playtests for soulslike games coming through our doors. One of the most interesting challenges that came up is ‘how do we handle difficulty’ in this notoriously difficult genre. Players expect the game to be difficult. But difficult in the ‘right’ way. In this article, I’ll talk about how to handle difficulty in your
playtests, while avoiding making your game too easy (or just ‘bland’).
THE TWO TYPES OF DIFFICULTY The first step is to recognise that there are two forms of ‘difficulty’ that occur in games. The first is intentional difficulty - usually as a teaching moment - such as requiring players to demonstrate they have learned to parry before passing a boss. This intentional difficulty is core to fun game design, creating satisfying moments when players can achieve something they haven’t done before, and feel good about it. The other type of difficulty is accidental difficulty where the
game is confusing or hard but without a good reason. Players wandering around lost not being able to find the boss is (usually) unintended - unless the developers are trying to create a maze. Players usually find this type of accidental difficulty frustrating, particularly when the resolution is unsatisfying.
44 | MCV/DEVELOP December/January 2026
RECOGNISING WHICH DIFFICULTY IS WHICH To run a successful playtest, we need to separate intentional and accidental difficulty, by defining ‘what is the design intent’ for each encounter, including ‘what do we want players to feel or think at this point’. Sometimes getting lost is ok, sometimes it’s not - and designers need to decide which is which. In reality this can be quite messy, as many teams rely on ‘we’ll
know when we see it’. Luckily playtesting reveals these moments where decisions need to be made, and then gives the teams the opportunity to make an intentional decision about whether this moment is meant to be difficult, feel frustrating, etc - or whether it’s an accident and should be removed. Design should be heavily involved in the playtest process, and ultimately make the final decision on what action to take, ensuring intentional game design creates space for creativity and intent (and avoiding creating a bland experience for players). Ultimately playtesting lets you find the unintended difficulty,
remove those distractions, and create the experience you want players to have.
MEASURING DIFFICULTY In playtests, there are two ways in which difficulty can be measured. The first is objective measures - how hard is it for players to do.
Through analytics (or just watching players), you can count how many times players take to defeat the boss, or to get through a platforming section, and create an objective measurement of difficulty. Once again, this can be compared to the design intent, and how often you want players to have to attempt a boss to complete it, or
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