Encounter Design

---
name: encounter-design
description: Design gameplay encounters by combining player abilities, enemies or hazards, space, objectives, resources, information, escalation, failure, and replay variation.
---
# Encounter Design

Use when a level needs a combat, stealth, puzzle, traversal, social, or mixed gameplay encounter.

## Procedure
1. Define the encounter's learning, mastery, narrative, or pacing purpose and the player capabilities available at this point.
2. Choose the core decision or skill the encounter asks from the player rather than adding threats without a gameplay thesis.
3. Shape space, cover, lanes, elevation, sightlines, traversal, interactables, and resource placement around those decisions.
4. Define enemy or hazard roles, spawn or activation logic, objectives, fail states, reinforcement or escalation, and exit conditions.
5. Control information and telegraphing so challenge comes from decisions and execution rather than unreadable surprise unless surprise is explicitly intended.
6. Balance resources, checkpoints, reset time, and recovery so repeated attempts remain instructive rather than punitive noise.
7. Test alternate player strategies and edge positions to identify dominant exploits, softlocks, spawn failures, or one trivial solution.
8. Iterate difficulty and pacing from playtest observation using representative player skill levels.

## Decision rules
- More enemies or hazards is not the same as a harder or better encounter.
- Space and systemic behavior should create decisions together.
- Telegraph threats enough for the intended skill level.
- Preserve viable alternate strategies unless the design intentionally teaches one specific mechanic.

## Quality gate
The encounter is ready when it serves a clear gameplay purpose, space and systems create meaningful decisions, challenge is readable and recoverable, major exploits or softlocks are controlled, and playtests across representative skill levels produce the intended learning and pacing.