Want to know why games like Clash Royale offer 4 choices at a time, when 3 appears to be a standard?

Last time I talked about why Slay the Spire, Hades, and many more games offer only 3 options at a time and got a great response, so I’m back for more.

I explained how this works on a brain chemistry level, using the Decoy effect and other cognitive biases. You can find that post on my profile.

However, there are situations where you should use sets of 2, 4, 5, or 8. Let’s start with 4.

𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲

This can happen in shops, or in games like Supercell‘s Clash Royale where you have a hand of cards and will often play 2-card combinations that go well together.

In these scenarios, the model of “two good options to make for an interesting decision, and one (contextually) bad option to make you feel better about picking one of the other two” breaks – because you can just pick both good options. You lose what makes the decision compelling.

By offering 4 options instead, we fix this problem. Now we can offer 3 good options and 1 bad option.

Our bad option still makes us feel better about our final decision, and makes it feel like a meaningful decision in the first place.

𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗺 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻.

When drafting is involved, we can ALSO use the “1 Great, 2 Good, 1 Bad” pattern.

This way we get to feel great about finding a super strong card or power, feel good about ignoring the bad option, and still have 2 more good options to choose between for a meaningful decision!

If you like this kind of deep dive analysis, good news – you can get a lot more of it. I just announced that I’m partnering with Game Design Skills to run a 12-week Design Bootcamp.

It’s called 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 and we’ll be covering dozens of topics like this. I’m teaching the sessions live, so if you want to learn the Why behind fundamental game decisions like this and ask all the questions you can think of, you can check out the full details here: https://lnkd.in/gfyZk6cW

Otherwise, feel free to follow me here for more nuggets like this. I’ll be talking about when to use 8 options next.