Anticipation makes the reward even sweeter

When something is not quite finished, but you could imagine it in its finished state, it holds quite an attractive force. You often see this in mobile game where you can win 3 stars each level. When you get 1, they will always show 2 other faded out stars you didn’t get. Not to put you down, but to show you it’s incomplete and encourage you to go for it all. Now when you play again and you win all 3 stars, you got something you set out to do and get that satisfying feeling of completing something that was before incomplete.

This might seem really logical, but it’s something that’s easy to overlook when you’re designing. Let’s say a player pulls off an impressive combo and you want to reward him/her. You surprise the player with a good sum of money and an extra life. Now this can work well, surprises are fun, but they work even better when you bring anticipation in the mix. In the previous scenario the player didn’t know they were going to get a reward and if they guessed they didn’t know when they would get it. Giving the player some indication as to how close they were from a certain combo and teasing them with what they could earn could make it a lot more exciting. This is a variation on completing something incomplete but it uses the same anticipation-reward mechanic.

To see the example I mentioned in action, check out Downwell. An amazing game all in all and the combo system is really fun, but it leaves some things to be desired. What exactly does Gemhigh do?