Why your game gets boring after ten minutes: new things on a schedule, rest beats and three more pacing tricks

The first ten minutes of your game are fun. Then the player has seen everything, the waves just get bigger, and somewhere around minute twenty they put it down. That’s a pacing problem, and it’s rarely fixed by adding more content. It’s about when things appear, and what happens between the big moments.

Each demo below plays a short session sped up: 18 seconds stand in for 6 to 30 minutes of play, with a game clock in the corner. Both sides run the same game with the same random seed and the same bot; the only difference is one switch. Under each side, a live intensity graph is measured from what’s on screen (threats and bullets near the player, plus hits), and a ◆ marks each time something new appears. Press Play “without” or Play “with” to take over from the bot: steer with the mouse, a finger or the arrow keys, and firing is automatic.

1. New things on a schedule

Spread new enemies, weapons and rules over the whole game instead of handing them all out at the start. Plants vs. Zombies gives the player a new plant at the end of nearly every level of its Adventure mode (Wikipedia). Its creator George Fan told GDC to “spread out the teaching of game mechanics”: PopCap held money back until after 10 levels and saved the Zen Garden for near the end (Game Developer). A rule of thumb: something new every 2 to 5 minutes early on, every 5 to 10 later. On the left, all seven unlocks land in the first two minutes. On the right, the same seven arrive one every 2 to 3½ minutes. In our demo, the longest stretch with nothing new drops from 18:11 to 3:30.

2. Four steps per mechanic

Don’t just add a mechanic; walk it through four beats. Introduce it where it’s safe, develop it in a harder spot, twist it so it’s used in an unexpected way, then give a final test. Super Mario 3D Land director Koichi Hayashida describes his levels as four-panel comics: “you introduce a concept”, “develop the idea a little bit more”, then “something of a change-up”, then “your conclusion” (Game Developer). On the left, mines are thrown into a full fight and used the same way all level. On the right, a lone mine comes first, then mines inside packs, then an armoured bomber that drops mines on you, which you blow up under it. Ways the mine gets used in our demo: 1 on the left, 4 on the right.

3. Rest beats after peaks

Constant pressure isn’t exciting; it’s flat. After each peak, drop to a calm stretch, and give the player a light decision in it so it isn’t an empty wait. Valve’s Left 4 Dead director keeps threats minimal for 30 to 45 seconds after a peak, and Valve’s slides put it simply: “constant, unchanging combat is fatiguing” (Valve, GDC 2009). Resident Evil 2 remake director Kazunori Kadoi called its save rooms “a safe place to take a breather” (PC Gamer). On the right, each wave builds, peaks, then a calm stretch opens a 3-card shop (tap a card or press 1 to 3). In our demo, time above 60% intensity drops from 87% to 21%, and each peak climbs higher than the last.

4. A rule change at the midpoint

The middle of a game drags when the last half plays exactly like the first. Hold back one change to how the game plays and spring it halfway through: take away a free resource, add a movement ability, turn the map around. Plants vs. Zombies does this stage by stage: at night “sun is not generated naturally”, so players lean on cheaper mushrooms, and later stages add a pool, fog and a roof (Wikipedia). On the left, coins fall from the sky for all 30 minutes. On the right, night falls at 15:00: no more free coins, kills drop them instead, and the map turns 180°. Watch the graph dip and climb again as the player relearns the game with the same controls.

5. Cut the padding

Padding is time with no decisions in it: long walks back, fetching the same thing again, grinding the same enemies. Open a shortcut home after each loop, and put something new in any area the player must cross again. In Dark Souls, according to a Game Developer community blog, “Sen’s fortress has a huge shortcut that literally drops you back at the start of the level”, while the same author criticises areas where missing shortcuts meant “running to and from bonfires” (Game Developer). This demo is a small dungeon. On the left, the hero grabs the chest and walks the whole cleared U back to camp past the same respawned enemies. On the right, a door opens beside the chest, and each loop puts ghosts and a potion in the old halls. The hatched parts of the graph are time spent crossing cleared ground: 3:19 on the left, 1:39 on the right in our demo, and loot banked goes from 1 to 2.

Don’t flatten it the other way

Pacing is a rhythm, not “more new stuff, faster”. A few rules the skill follows:

• New things every 2 to 5 minutes early, every 5 to 10 later. Faster than that, players never learn what they already have.
• Calm stretches stay short and hold a choice. A shop, a build or a plan, never an empty corridor. In the skill, calm stretches with no choice should be 0.
• Measure it, don’t guess. Log when each new thing first appears and when the peaks are. In the first half hour, the longest gap with nothing new should be under 5 minutes.

If your game gets harder too fast rather than too samey, that’s a different problem: see difficulty curves. For how a game’s first minute is paced, see video game openings.

Add it to your game

1. Copy the skill at the end of this page into your project.
2. Ask your agent: “My game gets boring after ten minutes. Fix the pacing.”
3. Play it, then tune in plain words: “The calm after wave 3 is too long, I’m just waiting.”

Art in the demos: Pixel Shmup, Tiny Dungeon and Kenney Fonts by Kenney (CC0).