Hey guys, I’m back. I’ve made a lot of progress in recovering from my injury. I ain’t 100%, but I can at least keep this Let’s Build a Pretty Good Dungeon thing going.

Like it says on the can, the goal here’s to build a pretty good dungeon. What does pretty good mean here? It means that the players can explore it however they want. It also means that the path the players are most likely to follow will lead to the best gameplay experience. It also also means that none of the other possible paths through it can lead to a sucky gameplay experience.

Right now, we’re still talking about what that means and how it’s possible.

We’ve already talked about paths, especially critical paths and golden paths, and how we want the golden path to be the one the players are most likely to take. We also talked about explorable spaces and how we can define them as lists of options the players have in front of them. Or in their brains.

Do you remember all of that? I know I’ve been on hiatus for a month, but I don’t think this shit’s beyond any of you. Seriously. You wouldn’t have stuck it out here on this site if you were as dumb as I constantly tell you you are.

Yeah, that was a compliment.

Anyway…

What we need to figure out now is how players pick what next thing to pursue from the list of options in their brains. How do players actually decide where to go and what to do next?

Warning: Incoming Psychology

I promised I’d keep this shit direct and practical. I promised I’d stop arguing with imaginary old-school neckbeards and modern sparkletrolls to justify my positions. I promised I wouldn’t dig any deeper into the conceptual bedrock than I actually needed to. We’re here to make a dungeon, not get a degree. That said, I need to disclaimer a little here.

We’re talking about how people make choices today. Most of the choices most people make most of the time are strongly influenced by the hardwired wetware between their ears. Habitual behaviors, personal traits, and, most importantly, these things called heuristics have a lot of power over the choices people make. Especially navigational choices that player people make.

Heuristics, by the way, are part pre-coded instruction and part shortcut. Brains use them because, otherwise, they’d get totally bogged down processing data for even the simplest choices. They do a lot of heavy lifting in a lot of the choices you make every day… as a player of pretend elf games. Remember: I don’t do life advice.

On top of the hardwired wetware that is the player brain, there’s also moods, social dynamics, gaming culture, the incentives the rules systems create, the situational context of the actual adventure, and accidental and purposeful influences imposed by whoever wrote the adventure and whoever is running it.

All of that means a few things about player brains.

First, it means that, by the time the very slow, conscious parts of the player brain get involved, it’s usually stuck doing catch-up. Mostly, it’s trying to find a good reason to accept the choice the faster, deeper player brain parts are already pretty committed to. Most players, thus, aren’t really fully aware of why they make the choices they do, and even when they think they are, they’re as likely to be wrong as right.

Second, it means that most player brains follow pretty similar patterns when making navigational choices. Most of them are running the same firmware, and the social, table dynamics, and learned behaviors tend to smooth out the differences. So it is possible to predict, fairly well, what the average, reasonable player is going to do, even if you can’t explain why they’re going to do it. That’s especially true if you’ve been running games for them for a while.

Third, it means that even though player brains are running a lot of the same firmware and even though you’re using your understanding to help guide their choices, they still are making choices. This isn’t manipulation. It ain’t trickery. It’s just knowing people well enough to help them spot the choices they want to make.

But, fourth, because this is down to psychology, it ain’t perfectly predictable or totally reliable. That’s why I included that bit about how no choices can lead to a shitty experience.

The point is, this is descriptive, but it’s not deterministic, and it’s not deceptive. It’s just knowing enough about player brains so that you can create play environments that are fun for player brains to brain around in. It’s reliable and useful, but it’s not perfect. In fact, it’s reliable enough that if you think your players’ brains are the weird exception, that’s probably because you’re doing something to short-circuit them without realizing it.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Yeah, but my players are different.” They aren’t. Sorry. But I ain’t going argue with hypothetical commenters.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s the big psychology disclaimer. Take it or leave it.

Where Next and What Now

Everything we’re talking about today is about how players decide where to go next and what to do now. When it comes to dungeon adventures, we tend to think about that in terms of picking directions, right? “You come to a fork in the tunnel; do you go left or right, guys?” But after last time, you know it’s more complicated than that. Player brains keep lists of possible next actions and, whenever they have to choose one, they pick from the list. Sometimes, they really just are simple directional decisions of the obvious exits are north, south, and dennis variety, but there’s usually more to it than that.

In fact, I’m gonna explain below how simple directional decisions are the actual worst. They drive players crazy, and they’re the result of careless, crappy design.

Let’s take it one step at a time, though.

Let’s say the players are standing in a room and there’s a door in the north wall and one in the east wall. That’s not counting the southern door by which they entered. In addition to the obvious exits, the player brains also remember the door they didn’t open two rooms ago. That’s on the list too. There might also be a grayed-out option like a puzzle they couldn’t solve or an obstacle they lacked the means to bypass. The list might also contain some abstract actions. Retreating to rest and recover is almost always an option, for example, and the player brains might be half-convinced their sucky Search checks led to an incomplete search of a cluttered storeroom.

So, standing before those two doors, the player brain’s list of possible next actions might look like this…

• Go north
• Go east
• Return to the statue room to take another stab at that puzzle
• Go back to that locked gate to see if this key might open it
• Search the storeroom again because we probably missed something
• Head back to camp and take a Long Rest

Most dungeon designers don’t think past those first options when they’re designing spaces. That’s bad enough; it’s missing two-thirds of the list. But it sucks too because those first two options are pretty awful. They shouldn’t be there.

Directional decisions suck.

What’s the Difference Between the Directions?

Want to really screw with player brains? Just ask them to choose between two completely identical-looking options. For example, ask them to pick which of two totally featureless doors leading in two totally arbitrary cardinal directions to open first. That choice is a coin toss. It’s a crap shoot. Player brains hate that shit. That’s why players argue forever at every nondescript intersection, even though everyone at the table knows they’re coming back eventually to explore every possible hall and room before they leave the dungeon. That’s how you play Dungeons & Dragons.

Brains know that every choice has a correct answer. Or, at least, every choice has an optimal answer. Most brains need to find it. So most brains will search for any way to prefer one option over another. Any difference at all. Anything that might work as a selection criterion. When Game Masters insist that the paths really are just two identical-looking tunnels running in different directions and that there isn’t anything in the environment to distinguish one from the other, they’re short-circuiting their player brains.

The thing is, this isn’t entirely about correctness. There’s another layer underneath it all.

Forward, Sideways, and Backward

Player brains do not actually want to choose between different directions. They’d much rather choose directions based on what they think lies in that direction. That’s true even when the player brains don’t know it’s true and even when the thing at the end of the direction is vague and abstract and impossible to describe.

The simplest, clearest, corest example of this crap in action is players choosing between the path they think leads to the goal and the one they think is a diversion or a side trek. Player brains are constantly trying to identify the direction that goes forward and the one that goes sideways. In a room with a door to the north and one to the east, they want to know which one means progress and which one means diversion.

For example, say the players are hunting a monster. That’s the adventure goal. They come to two doors. One’s rusty and dusty and looks like it hasn’t been opened in years. In front of the other, the floor is scratched and scuffed, and the gravel’s been swept aside. Clearly, the scuffy path is forward and the rusty, dusty path is sideways.

Note that simply identifying forward and sideways isn’t the same as making a choice. The player brain is just gathering information so it can make a good decision. The actual choice the player brains will make depends on their situation. If they’re worried about the monster’s hostage or that the monster might get away, they’ll choose the forward path. But, if they think the sideways path might lead to something useful or let them head off the monster or they just don’t want to leave unexplored paths behind them from which they might be attacked, they might choose to go that way first.

Note also that forward isn’t always about the adventure’s goal, but rather, it’s about whatever the player brains consider to be the current goal. If the players are urgently chasing the monster, forward is any path likely to get them to the monster. If the players are wounded and looking for a place to rest, forward is the path likely to get them somewhere safe. If the players saw a sparkly river and decided they really want to know why the water is so sparkly, forward is following the river to its source.

Player brains really want to match directions with specific actions or goals. They don’t want to make direction decisions; they want to make action decisions. They want a list like this…

• Chase the monster (North Tunnel)(Forward)
• Investigate the sparkly river (East Tunnel)(Sideways)
• Solve that unsolved puzzle (Statue Room)(Backward)
• Unlock that locked gate (Gate Room)(Backward)
• Rest and recover (Surface Tunnel)(Backward)

I really, desperately hope this is one of those “Obvious now that you’ve told us, Angry” things. Otherwise, I might have to take back that thing I said about you not being as dumb as you are. I also hope it’s obvious how this ties into non-dungeon adventures. You can replace “Investigate the sparkly river” and “Solve the unsolved puzzle” with “Check out the bartender at Nicky’s Pub” and “Visit the crime scene and look for clues,” or whatever.

That said, directional decisions aren’t actually the worst. It’s okay for there to be an option that simply leads into the unexplored unknown. It’s just best if the players are never trying to choose between too many such options without some way to break the tie.

So that’s how player brains parse out and keep track of navigational decisions. Now, let’s talk about how they pick options from the list.

Seeking Mode and Exploring Mode

Last time, I pointed out that players don’t explore explorable spaces, but rather, they navigate them. Players make navigational choices. Well, now, I’m gonna bring exploring back into the equation.

Player brains operate in two modes: they either Seek or they Explore. A player brain’s operating mode helps it make navigational choices.

Seeking Mode

In Seeking Mode, the player brain prioritizes movement toward a particular goal, and it optimizes for efficiency. If the player brain is currently hunting down a monster and it’s in Seeking Mode, it prefers actions that’ll bring it to the monster as quickly as possible.

I noted above that player brains can switch goals. They don’t always treat the adventure’s goal as the current goal. The adventure goal is always there, but player brains can temporarily put it aside in favor of some other current goal. If the players are hurting, for example, the player brains might consider finding safety or returning to camp as the current goal. They park the main goal, or even actively avoid it in some cases, and seek the current goal.

Seeking Mode is very strong. If the player brains are in Seeking Mode and can’t differentiate the forward path from all the others, they tend to glom onto anything that looks like a path as the most likely forward path, even if there’s no reason to think that. Players hunting for a monster in a labyrinth will follow a river in the hopes it’ll bring them to the monster, even if there’s no reason to connect the two. Obviously, player brains aren’t completely stupid. Well, they’re mostly not totally completely stupid. They won’t follow a river thinking it’ll lead them to a hydrophobic vampire, but you get what I’m saying. In Seeking Mode, if the player brains have nothing to work with, they’ll treat anything as a path, even if they have to imagine it.

How do you know when player brains are in Seeking Mode? Just listen to how they talk. Are they talking about goals rather than directions? Are they saying things like, “Let’s finish our job first; we can explore later”? They’re probably in Seeking Mode.

Exploration Mode

In Exploration Mode, player brains are all about making sure they’ve been there and done that. They prioritize seeing every inch of the space, gathering every clue and treasure, and leaving no stone unturned over making forward progress. In fact, in Exploration Mode, players generally consider the path forward to be the wrong path.

See, there’s a weird kind of imaginary FOMO in Exploration Mode. A fear of missing out. I’ll talk more about this below because it plays into something called the Threshold Effect, but for now, just understand that player brains often associate making progress with losing the opportunity to explore. Player brains in Exploration Mode don’t want to miss anything before they make progress, so they prefer to go sideways before they move forward.

How do you know when player brains are in Exploration Mode? Watch what they do and listen to how they debate their decisions. Are they saying things like, “Let’s make sure we don’t miss anything before we move on?” Are they talking about clearing the whole space? Are they wondering what’s over there? That’s classic Exploring Mode talk.

The Tsundere Explorer

Now, I don’t want to go into the whys of player brains and Exploration Mode, but know that Exploration Mode isn’t always about exploring. In fact, it’s often not. I know that sounds bonkers. It’s because some player brains find exploration intrinsically motivating, but most players are more extrinsically motivated to explore. Exploring is how you play. It’s how you grow. It’s how you get more powerful. That’s how fantasy adventure roleplaying games work.

What’s important to know is that most playbrain groups default to Exploration Mode. Or, more correctly, unless there’s something about the adventure pushing them into Seeking Mode, most player brains start in Exploration Mode, and also tend to flip back to it whenever they finish something, whatever that means.

That said, player brains are also constantly looking for an excuse to switch out of Exploration Mode, provided doing so doesn’t stop them from exploring.

Wait, what?

Yeah, I know this shit is bonkers. Stay with me.

Brains hate Exploration Mode because it’s the opposite of progress. It’s purposely avoiding progress. Brains hate that shit. But because of imaginary FOMO and the Threshold Effect, if you finish the goal, the exploration is over. So most player brains wander around in Exploration Mode, looking for any current goal that isn’t the primary goal. Then they go into Seeking Mode and chase that goal. Once it’s done, they either pick a new goal from the list or flip back into Exploration Mode, looking for another goal.

You get this. I swear. Think about the last time you wandered around some exploration-focused video game. What did you do? Assuming, of course, that you prefer Exploration Mode by default. Because preferences.

You didn’t move efficiently toward the glittering main quest marker, did you? You looked around first, or you at least moved really slowly toward it. You cataloged the different paths and possibilities. At some point, something else caught your interest. Maybe it was an interesting side quest. Maybe it was a weird sparkly river. So you made that your current goal, and you fixated on that for a while.

Player brains like Exploration Mode because it’s freedom, but they hate it because it’s not progress, so they like to split the difference.

This ain’t true, by the way, of all player brains. As I said, there’s a preference thing here. Some players are Hyperexplorers. They are totally allergic to progress and can’t seem to fixate on any goal at all. They just wander randomly forever in Exploration Mode or do short Seeking Mode sprints and get easily distracted. Other players, by the way, are Hyperseekers. They hate getting distracted. They want to finish things. But both of those player types are rare, and so, in group play, their preferences end up tempered by the rest of the group.

You’ve probably seen this too. You’ve seen the one player who’s either always keeping the group on task or else always pushing to clear the entire dungeon before finishing anything. If they’re dominant personalities, they can often run roughshod over the group for a long while, but eventually frustrations win out, and the rest of the group either insists on slowing down and exploring or else focuses on getting something done.

Mode Flipping Fools

Now, I just told you about one of the most common mode-switching patterns player brains tend to follow: Explore until something worth Seeking shows up, Seek it, then Explore for something else to Seek. From that, if you’re as smart as I never say you are, you can conclude players switch modes pretty freely.

So what flips the switch? And what makes player brains pick one mode over another? Apart from basic preferences.

The biggest thing that makes player brains switch modes is… nothing. Nothing at all. Player brains want to be in the other mode. That’s how they work. Player brains be cray, yo.

On the one hand, there’s all that crap about Imaginary FOMO that’s constantly kicking player brains out of Seeking Mode for fear they’ll accidentally finish the dungeon before they find all the stuff. On the other hand, there’s the need for a sense of forward progress constantly kicking player brains back into Seeking Mode so they feel like they’re doing something. That’s why, by the way, smart dungeon designers build dungeons that invite Exploration Mode then scatter progress indicators around like cookies for the players to munch on, or else, they build dungeons that demand focused progress but provide opportunities for short, rewarding diversions at regular intervals.

Remember Guided Nonlinearity? Remember Closed Open Worlds? Now you know why they feel so good to most players.

But that aside, player brains tend to get drawn into Seeking Mode whenever things feel urgent, whenever there’s a strong benefit to efficiency, or whenever any kind of emergency happens at all. If you’re chasing something that might get away, that’s urgent. If people are dying right now without the medicine you’re looking for, efficiency is important. For funsies, try collapsing the entrance to the dungeon behind the players. Most player brains will slip into Seeking Mode and look for a way out. Only when they know there’s an escape route will they settle down enough to actually navigate the dungeon.

If you keep player brains in Seeking Mode with too much urgency for too long, they tend to stress out. Mostly, it’s when the list of unexplored possibilities they’re leaving behind them gets too long for comfort. Yeah, it’s that imaginary FOMO thing again. That ain’t necessarily a bad thing. Internal conflict can be good for gameplay. But player brains get stressed when the explorable space gets too big, and they tend to start forgetting about possibilities.

Player brains tend to start in Exploration Mode unless something pushes them into Seeking Mode, and they tend to fall back into it whenever they can’t identify a strong current goal, but they’re not ready to finish the adventure or cross the threshold. Most of the time, that happens because none of their options really represents a goal they want to pursue. If everything that doesn’t lead to the primary goal is just a sideways path with no indication of what’s at the end, they stay in Exploration Mode and just make directional decisions based on other criteria I’ll discuss in a bit. You still don’t want them choosing between north, left, and dennis, though. The directions have to be different from each other somehow, but if there’s no sparkly rivers promising an answer to a mystery coming out of any of the directions, they’re still just directions.

Make your directions look different, dammit!

If you keep player brains in Exploration Mode by not occasionally letting them identify a goal worth Seeking or because every direction leads to more directions, they start to feel lost. They feel like they’re getting nowhere. Brains need a steady diet of progress, completion, or closure. This, again, ain’t always a bad thing. Sometimes, you want them to feel lost and overwhelmed by the space around them, but if you take it too far, player brains can feel listless, overwhelmed, or disengaged. At the very least, they need to feel like they’re shrinking the space as they explore.

Completion Bias

Let’s put modes aside now and talk about something else. See, I keep bringing up the fact that player brains need to feel like they’re finishing things or, at least, making meaningful progress toward something. That’s true of Exploring brains and Seeking brains alike. Player brains don’t like to flail uselessly doing nothing for too long.

Yes, I know your players spend hours making, remaking, dismissing, vetoing, debating, and screaming about their plans for something like a five-minute interaction encounter with zero stakes. All players do that. That’s a different problem. Today, we’re talking about navigation decisions.

If player brains have a goal, direction, or action, they want to finish it before they pursue something else. Once the player brains decide they have to know why the river’s sparkly or that they must catch that monster, they want to see that task through. Meanwhile, if they’re merely exploring, they want to be able to finish exploring a direction or a path before they start exploring another.

This shit’s called Completion Bias. Once a player brain chooses a thing, they want a sense that they finished it. This explains why, once player brains have decided whether to move forward or sideways, they tend to keep moving forward without stressing any further directional decisions until they hit a wall. That’s provided they can classify every direction as forward or sideways.

Suppose your play brains choose to follow the red tunnel because it looks like sideways and they’re in Exploration Mode. But then, while the red tunnel continues, there’s a fork that isn’t the red tunnel. It’s a dull, gray tunnel. Most players will stay in the red tunnel, and they won’t even freak out at the intersection. They want to finish the red tunnel before going sideways again. That’s not guaranteed, but it’s a tendency. Hyperexplorers can fuck this up until their fellows override them, and exciting tunnels that promise actual goals, like sparkly rivers, can override them. But, all else aside, player brains want to finish a path before they pick another. That’s Completion Bias at work.

To get the players to make a new navigational decision, to get them to re-evaluate their “what next” list and pick an option, you need to break their Completion Bias. How do you do that?

Well, the obvious first way is just to let them finish. It’s kind of like when your editor starts ranting about how you can’t include an analogy about an amorous canine here. You just have to let them finish their… rant. Once the players catch the monster or find the waste pipe from Navi’s Pixiedust Factory back in town, they’re done. It’s time for their brains to pick a new “what next.”

Another obvious way to break Completion Bias is just to show the player brains some younger, sexier thing to chase. When player brains in Seeking Mode see something potentially more interesting, useful, or urgent to chase, they’ll stop and reassess. They’ll make a new navigational decision. There’s no guarantee they’ll change goals, but they will consider it. Meanwhile, player brains in Exploration Mode are usually on the lookout for anything worth switching to Seeking Mode for. So something interesting, useful, or urgent might make them switch modes and rethink their navigational choices. That’s what happens when wandering explorers spot sparkly rivers and get curious enough to find out why they’re sparkly.

Urgency and exigency, which I’ll discuss below, are very powerful here. Players hate missing missable opportunities. You gotta chase Hornet, you know?

Another way to break Completion Bias is to stop the player brains from completing something. Drop an obstacle in their path. If you can’t keep going the way you want, you have to go somewhere else. That’s how it works. But note that player brains resist turning back. They hate being blocked, and they hate moving backwards. That’s why players will literally try to chew through iron gates in the way of sparkly rivers before they’ll admit defeat and go another way. Completion Bias is a hell of a drug.

Recontextualization can also break Completion Bias. What the hell does that fancy-ass word mean? It describes discoveries that change the situation you left behind. Think: finding a key that might open that locked door you had to pass up. Think: a clue that might let you solve that unsolvable puzzle. Those are obvious examples of recontextualization. Less obvious is a discovery that changes your understanding of the rules of the space. Imagine you discover a secret door marked with a particular rune. You then remember seeing the same rune on a dead-end wall down a side passage earlier. Now, you’re thinking there might be a secret door there.

By itself, recontextualization isn’t as powerful as most Game Masters think it is. Us Metroidvania fans love us some recontextualization, and we think it drives everything. It really doesn’t, though, because players hate going backwards. Going backwards is a setback. It’s a loss of progress. Even if the way to proceed is behind you, going backwards is still worse than going any other direction. Thus, in most Metroidvania games, recontextualization is usually paired with something else. You don’t just find the Legwarmers of Long Jumping in the middle of a hallway, but you usually find them at the end of a path. Or else, you find them and then find an obstacle almost immediately thereafter. Or you find them and then get kicked out of a door to before.

Which brings me to the door to before. That’s a path that unexpectedly dumps you back in a place you’ve already been. It’s the end of a navigational loop. That creates a three-hit combo. It breaks your Completion Bias by ending the path, it moves you back so you don’t have to choose to go backwards, and the recontextualization leads to you prioritize overcoming that obstacle you left undone.

See how this shit stacks up? Remember that. I’m gonna mention it again.

Now, let me discuss the one thing that breaks Completion Bias that’s so big and important and useful that it deserves a heading of its own.

The Threshold Effect

You know that conversation players always have when they find the stairs to the next level or a passage that leads to a new major biome or when they reach the gate that obviously leads to the boss room or the adventure goal or whatever? The one that starts with, “Before we move on, shouldn’t we…”

That’s The Threshold Effect.

When player brains find themselves facing a major transition or milestone, they tend to pause and look at their “what next” list and consider whether they’re ready to “move on” or “finish the adventure” or whatever. That happens even if there’s no evidence that “moving on” will actually end the adventure or stop them from coming back later to explore more. It’s a psychological thing. Thresholds are endings. You don’t cross a threshold with unfinished business unless you’re okay with that business going unfinished forever.

I have to stress, though, that the Threshold Effect doesn’t ensure the player brains will choose to turn around. All it does is make them re-examine the “what next” list and decide whether they want to cross the threshold or whether they want to go back and clean up their unfinished business. The player brains may decide it’s time to move on. They may even decide it’s safe to move on because they really can come back. As with all Completion Bias breaks, all the Threshold Effect does is make the player brains stop and re-examine their navigational decisions.

When All Paths Are Equal

Holy shit, is this still going on? So much for a quick, practical essay, huh? Who knew that analyzing all the psychology behind how players make every navigational decision ever would take this many words? Player brains don’t seem that deep or complicated at the table, do they?

Well, let me cover one more thing and then try to compile some kind of list of points to remember.

The fact is that most of the time, player brains are choosing between pretty similar “what nows.” Most of their decisions are really just directional in nature. That’s why it’s so important, by the way, to make the directions look different. Because player brains often need a way to pick a direction when there’s no way to know what’s at the end of that direction.

Say, for example, the player brains are at a dead end. They’ve found the pixie dust waste pipe, the sparkly river is explained, and there are no new paths before them. Now, they have to choose which of the directions on their “what now” list to go back and do next.

Or, say the player brains are in Exploration Mode. They know where the boss monster is, they know how to access it, but they want to loot and pillage the dungeon before they lock themselves into the final fight. All the choices before them are basically directional: “Explore the dark tunnel to the east,” “Head north into the mossy grotto,” “Try to open the puzzle lock on the gate to the south,” and other such shit.

In cases like that, why do player brains choose the options they do? When their operating mode and Completion Bias aren’t dictating their choices, what drives their preferences? It turns out, there are a few dominant heuristics that player brains run to pick which path is preferable.

First, there’s Exigency. That’s the sense that something’s going to expire unless you act on it right now. If you miss the opportunity, you’ll never have it again. If you see something running away from you or hear a distant noise, you have to investigate right now, or you’ll probably lose the chance forever. You gotta chase Hornet.

Next, there’s a pair of related heuristics called Recency and Availability. All else being equal, player brains prefer paths they’re closest to or options they learned about most recently or were reminded of most recently. The last thing that a player brain became aware of, or the most conveniently available thing, is the best thing. That’s why player brains like to go back to the last room and take the other path. That’s why Hollow Knight and Metroid Dread — not Silksong, which sucks at metroidvania, and Prime 4, which sucks — that’s why Hollow Knight and Metroid Dread use so many doors to before that drop you right near the next convenient path to progress.

Next, let’s talk about Completion Bias’s kissing cousin, the Unclosed Loop. All else being equal, player brains hate leaving things unfinished. Thus, if there’s something the player brains left undone, they want to go back and do it. Unsolved puzzles and unopened locks chafe player brains, and paths that were blocked by unpassable obstacles leave player brains with exploratory blue balls. If the players couldn’t finish following the sparkly river because of a locked gate, you can bet your ass that anything that looks like a key will send them back to it.

Finally, there are a pair of effects called Salience and Memorability. All else being equal, player brains are attracted to sexy, unusual, unique, and memorable things. No shit, right? The rune-covered silversteel gate, humming with magic, is more likely to draw player brains back than the simple iron gate in the basement once they find anything key-like. That also goes for anything that teases the players with a sweet reward. If the players can see a glowing magical sword behind a locked gate, that’s pretty damned sexy salient.

Salience, by the way, is why your directions have to look different. If the player brains are down to salience as the tiebreaker and all the options are just unopened doors or featureless tunnels, there’s no way to make a decision. Lots of directional decisions do come down to salience, by the way, because they’re usually about picking the most attractive path from the two that are right here in front of you. They’re equally available, there’s no urgency, they’re equally unclosed, and so they’re basically tied on everything but how they look.

Make them look different, dammit. Even if its just making them different colors. Make one tunnel red and one tunnel gray for fuck’s sake.

All else being equal, and I know I’m saying that a lot right now, all else being equal, those effects I just listed are in order of their power level. When player brains are trying to pick between roughly equal options, they’ll first prefer what’s urgent, then whatever is conveniently available, then whatever lets them finish something left undone, then whatever stands out as the most sexy special. But that’s only when all else is equal.

See, clever adventure designers can change the weights. Remember what I said about frustrating progress. If the player brains got really pissed off by an obstacle blocking a path they were pretty committed to, their desire to close that loop might override any other factor. Likewise, clever adventure designers can stack this shit up. For example, if the most salient choice is also right nearby or was just discovered, that could shoot it to the top of the list.

And that’s really what all of this is about.

Desperately Trying to Bring All This Crap Together

The above ain’t about psychology, and it ain’t about tricking or manipulating players. It’s not even really about memorizing heuristics and terms. It’s just about knowing why some choices are more attractive than others, so you can polish up the choices that lead to the best gameplay experience, and so you can prevent the players from feeling like acting randomly is their only option.

In other words, it’s about how you make the best path through the adventure look attractive and how you remove paths that lead to sucktastic crapfests. Then, you can let the player brains brain their way around as they will, and they’ll have a good time.

To get there, you just have to understand how player brains parse choices.

Understand the paradox: that player brains want to Explore sideways while always Seeking forward, and so they switch back and forth a lot.

Understand that player brains keep “what next” lists that are more than just directions.

Understand player brains try to label everything as either “forward,” “sideways,” or “backward” and prefer “forward” when Seeking and “sideways” when Exploring.

Understand that player brains want to finish the paths they pick before they make any more major navigational decisions. They have a Completion Bias.

Understand that too many unexplored paths chafe player brains. Don’t let the “what next” list get too big.

Understand that player brains need ways to distinguish between different directions of equal weight, or else they tend to get paralyzed.

Understand that player brains prefer first to chase what’s urgent, then to do what’s convenient, then to finish what’s undone, and then to explore what’s memorable or attractive.

Understand that player brains often pause at important thresholds and examine whether they’re ready to proceed.

And understand all of this shit just describes what tends to nudge player brains toward one choice or another. To get anything out of it, you’ve usually got to stack them up or design around them all.

If you understand all of that, then you’re ready to build a pretty good dungeon.

Almost.

But we’ll talk about that next time.