¶ What is a Game Core Loop?
Your game's core loop refers to the central set of actions that players repeatedly perform throughout a game.
What will be the primary thing they will be doing over and over.
Your core loop is designed to keep players engaged by providing a continuous cycle of challenges, rewards, and progression.
¶ The Importance of Game Core Loops
In games designed to be played on your phone especially, this core game loop is essential for maintaining your players interest, creating a sense of accomplishment, and encouraging repeat play sessions in a relatively short period of time.
Your core game loop should be short, simple and easy to understand. It should make sense in your game's universe or theme and support your game's rules.
¶ Game Core Loop Examples
It’s helpful for you to think about how you would summarize your game in a single sentence and if your game can be instantly understood.
¶ Classic Game Core Loop
The classic core loop typically consists of the following elements:
Action/Task:
The player performs a core gameplay action, like battling enemies, collecting resources, or solving puzzles.
Reward:
After completing the task, the player receives some form of reward, such as points, coins, new items, or experience.
Progression:
The reward enables the player to progress in the game—unlock new levels, improve their character, or acquire more resources.
¶ Reinvestment Expanded Game Core Loop
Depending on the game type and complexity, it’s also very common to include an additional step into casual games core loops.
Reinvestment:
The player uses the reward or progress to take on more challenging tasks, starting the loop again. This allows you as a game designer to create deeper experiences, or at least bake this into your loop from the very early stages of developing your idea.
Let’s take a look a few examples of some game core loops:
¶ Core Loop of a Strategy Game
Action: ( Build )
The player builds and upgrades structures.
Reward: ( Generate Resources )
They receive various types of resources dependent on the complexity of the game.
Progression: ( Upgrade / Expand )
Resources are used to build new or stronger structures or train new or more existing troops.
Reinvestment: ( Unlock New Unit / Battle )
Troops or new upgrades are used to complete missions, leading back to the action step.
¶ Core Loop of an Obby Game
Action: ( Navigate )
Traverse a series of various challenging obstacles, platforming objects and elements. Perform somewhat precise jumps, slides, and other specific manoeuvre to progress through the stage.
Reward: ( Collect )
Collect Gems / coins or other in-game currency.
Progression: ( New Stage )
Complete the stages to get as far as possible.
Reinvestment: ( Character Upgrade )
The Player can use the currency collected to upgrade or buy new character skins or even pets.
¶ Core Loop for Retention & Fun
Your game's core loop is crucial for player retention and repeated sessions as it provides a satisfying cycle of effort and reward that keeps players returning.
Defining fun in games is a highly subjective topic, and we touched on this in our video “The secret Sauce in Games”, however your core loop should aspire to achieve some if not all the pillars of an ideal ‘fun’ player experience:
- Engaging Gameplay
- Well-Designed Challenges
- A Strong Story or Theme
- Meaningful Choices
- Pleasing Aesthetics
- Polished visuals, audio and music
- Replayability
- Rewarding Progression
- Smooth Controls and Performance
- Innovation on familiarity
Overall, these factors promote Game clarity, player motivation, invoke positive responses and generate a satisfying game experience.
¶ Expanding to better gameplay loops?
For longevity, retention and increased session times, it’s also worth considering how the following time spans that impacts on your games overall replayability value.
- Moment to moment - This would be your core loop
- Minute to minute - What happens after playing for a short time
- Hour to hour - Can your game support long play times
- Day to day - Why would they come back tomorrow?
Remember, the core loop is essentially the heartbeat of your game. It’s a series or chain of actions that is repeated over and over as the primary flow of your players' experience.
It’s the core essence of why we return to play games over and over again.
Take your time perfecting and refining this as if your core loop is weak and unsatisfying, no amount of meta or additional game systems will help improve your game overall.
¶ Watch the Next Video
¶ Playtesting & Pivot
Why playtesting is an essential part of the game making process.
Watch the Next Video
¶ Related Topics
Watch Us Build Series Game Design Foundation How to Get Game Ideas Dopamine In Games Game Scope & Feature Creep Game Scope Example Playtest and Pivot Core Loop Example How to Design Game Mechanics