So let’s take a look at Mafia City to see an example of a core loop in action. It’s a very simple and an easy to understand concept. Of course, there’s much more than can be expanded on and typically always should be.
¶ Core Loop Breakdown
Kill baddies > Earn Coins > Unlock next Level
But let’s expand a little to see how the elements work and what has been expanded on over time.
¶ Action/Task
Our player has to shoot all the baddies in each area.
¶ Reward
After each baddie is killed, they drop coins. Coins can also be collected from the chests contained in each level.
After completing the level, the player is taken to the bonus bank and is rewarded with a random quantity of coins.
¶ Progression
A new station map is now unlocked for the player to play through. In the last level of each station line, the player must collect a ticket which in turn unlocks the next line.
After every 3 levels, a Bonus Area is unlocked and these can be completed to receive special weapons that the player can start off with. The more levels completed means the starting weapons are better.
There’s also a secondary progression of medals for completing each round. This is a legacy system we introduced prior to splitting the game into the level based system we have now. There’s also a collecting system built in that players are able to collect semi-hidden fruits throughout the city.
We haven’t put too much emphasis on either of these mechanics and they are actually quite hard to spot. But they are there to one-day make more of a feature out of.
¶ Reinvestment
With each level that is completed, the player will accumulate gold coins.
These can be spent in the shop to expand the weapon classes available from chests along with a number of new player skins.
¶ Additional Loops
There's also a secondary progression of medals for completing each round. This is a legacy system that we introduced prior to splitting the game into levels when we had the open world map.
There's also a collecting system built in that players are able to collect semi-hidden fruits throughout the city. Now we haven't put too much emphasis on either of these mechanics and they're actually quite hard to spot but they are there. One day, potentially, we can make those a little more complex and expand this loop.
¶ Summing Up
That is the core Loop of Mafia City. Nice and simple, easy to understand and the overall goal is to ensure we deliver a satisfying short and juicy sessions for our players.
There's a moderate upgrade path that we've sort of plugged in along the way as we've iterated on the game but in theory the core Loop has remained the same since the original version.
There's no need to over complicate things. just try to ensure your core game loop has that revolving circle of a player satisfaction and progression.
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¶ Related Topics
Watch Us Build Series Game Design Foundation How to Get Game Ideas Dopamine In Games Game Scope & Feature Creep Game Scope Example What is a Core Loop in Games Playtest and Pivot How to Design Game Mechanics