Interesting Choices

About this model

This diagram models a decision-making process within the context of a game, specifically simulating the "Starting Bonus Selection" phase in a scenario reminiscent of *Slay the Spire*. At the beginning of a game session, players are presented with three distinct options to enhance their starting position: removing a card from their deck, upgrading a card, or obtaining a random relic. Each of these bonuses is represented by a separate pool node, indicating that the decisions made here are mutually exclusive and significantly impact the game's progression. The source node initiates this process, providing a generic "Black" resource that flows through a gate which then randomly distributes this resource to one of the three pools, simulating the player's choice. No specific values or conditions modulate this flow, ensuring that each option has an equal chance of being selected, which mirrors the balanced nature of decision-making in games where players weigh their strategy against the potential benefits of each starting bonus. This mechanism highlights the importance of initial choices and their potential to shape gameplay experience, providing an insightful abstraction of strategic planning in interactive entertainment.

“Interesting Choices” is a diagram in the Machinations Community by Anıl Akhan.

You can open the original diagram in the Machinations app, press Play to watch how resources move through it, and change its values to see how the system responds. Machinations is a visual tool for designing, simulating and balancing game economies and other systems, where resources flow through sources, pools, drains, converters and gates. In a diagram, a source creates resources, a pool stores them, a drain removes them, a converter changes one resource into another and a gate decides where they go next.