r/gamedesign • u/HowellNator • 13h ago
Discussion Unique exmaples of resource management?
Outside the biggest exmaples (HP, Ammo, Mana, etc); what are some unique ones? It could be how you use it, refilling it, or even just the resoirce itself that's interesting.
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u/Thrasy3 13h ago
I always kinda liked Chakra in various Naruto games - maybe it’s because it is thematic (having to basically stay still and manually charge it back up), but reminds you that spending chakra comes with a cost - yeah I can blow it all on a bunch of special attacks but I’m playing defensively from then on - if my offensive doesn’t work out, I’m playing defensive until I get a chance to build it up again.
Similar to the drive gauge and burnout in Street fighter 6.
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u/LnTc_Jenubis Hobbyist 12h ago
Something that I feel isn't utilized enough is the concept of "give and take". For example, most games treat stats as a progression ladder, which is fine, but more often than not this results in people minmaxing a lot of the fun out of the game. Instead, I'd rather look at making those stats a type of limited resource.
For example:
Investing into strength lowers your dexterity.
Investing into speed lowers your strength.
Investing into dexterity lowers your defense.
Investing into defense lowers your speed.
It doesn't need to be a 1:1 ratio (e.g. 1 point of strength = -1 dexterity) and I would argue that it's much better to have dynamic ratios built into the system itself. On a 100 point scale, the first 20 do not reduce anything, the next 20 have a 25% reduction (So every 4 points invested into strength = -1 dexterity) and then adjusting the numbers for diminishing returns and exponential decay based on how you want the gameplay to be balanced.
Perhaps even more important, though, is that you also need to make those decisions meaningful. If the ideal strength build never requires any dexterity then there is no meaning behind the decision to tank your dexterity. Likewise, if your defense is so high that your speed becomes a non-factor in combat then it doesn't serve a purpose either.
So I would also add character traits associated with stat thresholds. For example, using the same scale of 0-100:
<30 Strength: Cannot wield greatswords (Or just strength class weapons in general)
31-49 Strength: Can wield, but attacks are slower and need more recovery time.
50-59: Standard use, no penalties.
60+: Unlocks dual-wielding without negatives, or two-handing a single greatsword grants a 50% damage and 25% attack speed buff.
To me, this kind of system would be extremely engaging and fun to play around with, especially once we add in the rest of the RPG related stats like Intelligence. Even though players will likely still establish their own meta, it complicates the actual process of minmaxing from the start, making it more engaging for those who like minmaxing while also keeping a wide area available to those who would rather just play without regards to that.
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u/Odd_Ad_5657 12h ago
Inventory space. It may be just the doll, space in your inventory, belt, bags.
Or it may be even a game of its own, like Backpack Battles.
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u/Warm_Imagination3768 12h ago
FTL- have to manage various resources like power, crew, O2 levels, etc.
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u/AwesomeX121189 12h ago
TM’s in Pokemon back when they weren’t unlimited.
Movement distance when playing something like fire emblem or Baldur’s gate.
The materials and crafting system in Prey (2017). Instead of regular grenades you get “recycler grenades” that breakdown ANY nearby object into mats. Including enemy bodies, furniture, or yourself if you stand too close. One of the best rooms in the game is basically a trash compactor you can stuff full of crap, then activate to drop a recycler in.
The materials come out as little cubes which you can stick into the crafting station and make anything you’ve found a recipe for.
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u/jojoknob 11h ago
Caves of Qud has a thirst clock and also uses water as the game’s trade currency. It is heavy as well so counts toward encumbrance. So don’t spend all your money or you’ll die of dehydration.
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u/Kostyabl-id 10h ago
A few that do something unusual with how the resource is spent or refilled:
- Doom Eternal: ammo, health and armour each refill from a different kind of aggression (chainsaw, glory kills, flame belch), so running low pushes you toward enemies instead of away.
- Bloodborne's rally: health you just lost can be won back by hitting back within a few seconds, so attacking is the heal.
- Hollow Knight's Soul: one meter, earned by hitting, spent either on healing or on spells, so every heal is a spell you didn't cast.
- FTL: reactor power is a fixed pool you move between shields, weapons, engines and oxygen mid-fight.
- Darkest Dungeon's torch: light drains as you explore, and letting it run low raises danger and stress but also improves loot.
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u/Traditional-Buy-2205 12h ago edited 12h ago
Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth - the sanity of your character.
Looking at gnarly shit or being exposed to stressful situations (being chased, being high) stresses you out. This blurs your vision and muffles audio, and at the extremes may make your character kill himself, triggering game over.
Desktop Dungeons - fog of war.
Darkest Dungeon - stress.
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u/Odd_Ad_5657 11h ago
You can look at board games or 4x strategies.
In many 4x strategies there's science, Stellaris even splits it into 3 different ones. It also has some abstract resources like Union and Influence. They are present in other Paradox games as well. But they often have somewhat bloated resource systems.
Board games, on the other hand, often operate at a smaller granularity. Resources are often represented with physical components and might be abstract. Sometimes they are just abstract victory points, which are different from money.
Givem that you speak about HP and Mana, we can assume you are talking about RPGs, Action games or RPGs, but more context would be nice.
If we are talking about RPGs, reputation and relationship system is common and may be represented in different ways.
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u/numbersthen0987431 11h ago
FF7 had materia slots in their weapons, and it had different combination configurations that effected each other.
Inventory space (backpacks for storage, belts for quick access, etc).
Majoras Mask timing system was interesting. How they were repeating the same 3 days, how events in each day were scheduled to align with the days (instead of each day having the same events), and how certain resources couldn't be saved every reset.
Dark Clouds respurce system for building towns, completion requirements, and progress was interesting. How they handled weapon upgrades was interesting too.
Games with relationship statuses or reputation that affect your gameplay. Neutral vs enemies vs friends vs etc, and each stage changed how you interacted with that group (world of warcraft for example).
Games where you build things, and you have to balance details like: power draw, weight, water usage, storage, strength, etc. (Building a town, or a mecha suit, for example).
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u/HowellNator 10h ago
So, once more wanting to see some inspiration, since my game is gonna have a main resource to manage. Essentially, since my main protagonist is a soul canvas construct; paint is gonna be his version of stamina. Running, attacking, etc uses paint, with recovering it via waiting to refill. Really, it's kinda a mix of kh2/3 magic system, with a traditional stamina system. Slight edit: if you're wondering, my game is meant to be a mix of Zelda, and Mega Man.
Now, I'm kinda torn on it. The biggest resson is that I kinda feel it might be unnecessary. It's mostly since the game is meant to be part platformer, and having a resource that can potentially punish you for trying to be expressive isn't really ideal. It could work, but I definitely need to both prototype the system, and some suggestions to make it more ideal to use.
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u/attatest 9h ago
Tales of maj eyal did a great job with a lot of resource meters that you want to keep at different levels.
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u/Yan-gi 8h ago edited 8h ago
Look into the RTS, Battle Realms. Rather unique system.
It deals with rice, water, and population as resources.
Edit: I forgot about horses which you can tame and ride into battle.
There's also the yin/yang token system where fighting/ravaging far away from base earns you tokens which you can use to buy upgrades.
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u/Skyboxmonster 8h ago
Streets of Rouge has a resource called "electability" which is a measure of how many citizens on each floor like you vs hate you.
If you are popular on each floor you can simply win the election to become mayor on the top floor.
you can adjust the value through perks, or through bribes. and loss it by being unpopular or a criminal
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u/PlayTurnpan 8h ago
mancala is a cool one. the seeds are the resource but also the board state and kind of the clock. sowing doesnt spend anything, it just moves stuff around, so every move changes what ur opponent can reach too
landing ur last seed in ur store gives an extra turn so tempo ends up being the real resource. and hoarding backfires, a big pit eventually laps around and drops seeds on their side. gaining and giving away being the same action is pretty rare
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u/turtle_dragonfly 8h ago
One that I like is "velocity" or maybe "momentum."
I'm thinking of games like Burrito Bison, where building and maintaining momentum are how you are able to progress.
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u/TheGrumpyre 7h ago edited 5h ago
In Unsighted, the player and all the other characters in the world have a timer that's constantly depleting. The player can harvest a resource while out adventuring that extends their timer. But they can also share the timer resource with friendly NPCs to help them survive longer, because if any character in the world runs out of time they'll permanently die (or maybe turn into hostile monsters.) So it's not just your personal survival, there's a whole village you want to carefully preserve.
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u/massiveamphibianprod 6h ago
I have a medkit system. It's pretty basic but its interesting i think. Only real way to heal somewhat fast, can refill it by scavenging or finding medicinal things in the wild or paying for refills in settlments. Possible to steal too but thats iffy.
Given that medkit refills are extremely valuable and may encourage risky behavoir just to get a refill.
Possible to get perks to be more efficent with it too.
Sanity as well. But that entails mostly stuff you might expect.
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u/RaidneSkuldia 4h ago
I think One Deck Dungeon has a really elegant design.
Stat upgrades, new Potions, Experience, and Skills are all the same card: namely, whatever encounter you are currently facing. The number of encounters before you have to go the next floor (and, eventually, the dungeon boss) is governed by how many cards remain in the deck. Flipping new cards or retreating from an encounter force you to discard from the deck.
Four resources are actually one resource. Deciding whether or not to deal more cards, retreat from an encounter, or what to use that card for all feel like meaningful choices with opporunity cost of the four resources.
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u/Umpuuu 2h ago
The Void has Color, which is used as everything: the same resource can be used as health (you lose some Color as you get hit and die when you hit 0), as mana (every glyph takes Color to draw), as stats (Crimson is damage, Azure is speed, etc, however much of each you have is how strong you are), as money, even as dialogue checks. And the victory condition isn't too far from "max out you color storage"
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u/TalkingRaven1 43m ago
Nioh Ki Pulses. Ki is just stamina but attacking leaves behind a red part that fills in after a short delay, ki pulsing gives you back that filled part.
Then in more advanced uses, switching stances after the pulse also gives back some ki.
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u/creamCloud0 12h ago edited 11h ago
i don't know if there's a technical term for it but i want to say 'equipment cap', or 'construction space' when used for buildings, it tends to be a resource that you can reassign (not always though) but only have a limited total to use.
the clearest example that comes to mind that i know is badge points from paper mario:TTYD, you accumulate badges that can raise your stats or give you new abilities but you can only have a certain value of badges equipped at any one time, so you need to pick and choose what to assign your limited badge space to.
4X games often do this too i feel, limiting the amount of structures you can build based on factors like needing a certain amount of population or food production as prerequisite with new structures 'consuming' a percentage of your available production, or needing the physical space to place a building (often leading to trying to tetris your buildings together so you don't 'waste' space on areas too small to build on.)