Basics
Learning paths through this topic
What Is a Core Game Mechanic? A Plain Explanation
A core game mechanic is the action players repeat most, the one the rest of the game supports. How to find yours and describe it to your AI.
My AI says it added twelve items and changed nothing else, how do I check that
After a big edit the AI sums up what it did in a sentence, and the sentence is often a little off: a renamed item counted as new, a changed number not mentioned. Your AI can compare the list before and after and set the real counts against the claim.
A player lost an hour of progress because the game saved too rarely or at a bad moment
Saving after every step makes the game stutter, saving every few minutes loses work, and saving in the middle of a fight stores a state nobody wants to come back to. Your AI can work out a save schedule from a list of events and show when each save would happen.
The bag refuses an item that should just fit, or takes one that should not
With a limit of three kilos and items of a tenth and two tenths, the game claims the total is a hair too much. This is not your numbers: it is how computers add small fractions. Your AI can do the weights in whole units and say exactly how much is free.
My AI changed the damage rule and I cannot tell which fights are now different
After a formula change the game still runs and the numbers look plausible, so nothing tells you what you just made easier or harder. Your AI can compare old and new rule across a grid of fights and list only the ones that moved a lot.
I want my AI to write several chapters at once, but some need others finished first
Handing a whole adventure to one chat is slow, and handing every chapter to a separate chat breaks the ones that rely on earlier events. Your AI can sort chapters into rounds so that everything in a round can be written at the same time, and warn about chapters that wait on each other.
Long speeches run out of the text box and the last words are cut off
A character who talks a lot fills more space than the box has, and a long word can push everything sideways. Your AI can break a speech into lines and pages that fit, using the real width of letters instead of counting them.
The rare drop is set to five percent and testers say they never see it, is it broken
A handful of unlucky players does not show a bug, and a handful of lucky ones does not show fairness. Your AI can say how likely the reported number of drops would be if your setting is right, and how many tries are needed before the answer is clear.
After my AI rebuilt the level-up table, the hero jumps three levels from one fight
A table of experience needed per level is easy to break when numbers are typed by hand or generated. Your AI can scan it for levels that stall, steps that suddenly explode and rewards big enough to skip several levels at once.
A fight in my game never ends because both sides keep healing
A tester reports a battle that went on for ten minutes with nobody losing. Your AI can play the two sides' numbers forward and tell you whether the fight must end, how many rounds it takes, or that it repeats forever, which then points to the numbers to change.
A story switch is checked before anything has switched it on
A scene asks whether you spoke to the old man, and the answer is no because the game only writes that down a moment later. Your AI can read a recording of what the game looked up and wrote, and list the lookups that came too early or never found a writer.
Whole days pass in my game when the player switches to another window and comes back
A day and night clock that follows the real time jumps forward when the game was paused by the computer, and the shops open and close in a blink. Your AI can limit how much time one step may add and show the clock as day and hour without errors before day one.