If you play a lot of run or optimization-based games, whatever the genre, you probably know all too well what it's like to be stuck in the early parts of the game, resetting it over and over. Sometimes it can even be the first few seconds of the game.
Restarts build frustration, which degrades consistency, which leads to even more restarts. It's easy to trap players in a small chunk of your game, getting them annoyed & probably even resentful. After a while of being stuck in this loop, a game's fun factor can get flushed down the restart toilet vortex.
Restart syndrome (or RS going forward) happens when the players deem a run not worth continuing because of some mistakes early on. This can either be the result of their lack of skill, their lack of confidence, tunnel vision or a game's internal logic. Some things which cause restart syndrome aren't something you, as a developer, can directly affect. Moreover, at high enough levels of optimization, restart syndrome is nearly unavoidable.
That being said, it's worth isolating the causes and figuring out if something can be done about them. I'll focus on shmups & scoring systems, but really this can be applied to anything else like time or even "style".
Extreme Mechanical Contrast - Players aren't rational, they won't stop doing something simply because it's too hard for them. They will beat their heads against the wall until either the challenge or their skull crack. If the difference between doing something perfectly and doing it a bit sloppily is insanely huge then players will always try to go for it. Reducing the range of outcomes to something more reasonable can fight RS.
Exponential Scoring - If your scoring/movement system is set up in a way where one gain leads to further gains, the player's score gain will resemble a graph with an exponential curve. Any small mistakes will mean that players will be missing out on that exponential gain. Minimizing the exponential element via lower Mechanical Contrast or lower overall importance of the snowballing in the overall scoring system can help fight RS. A hard cap on whatever multipliers or variables are leading to the exponential curve will also help minimize RS.
Persistent, Limited Resources - If your game has strictly limited resources and no cap on how many resources players can carry with them, then you're encouraging RS because any resources will cost the player. Even in survival terms, it makes the chances of clearing the game much lower, and the cost of restarting will often be relatively low. Making sure your game has a resource cap & more total resources than the player can carry will help fight RS. Consider giving players opportunities to recover back to their default state, or at least close to it.
Lack of Skill - This one you can't really do much about. Sometimes players just won't have enough consistency, let them suck.
Lack of Confidence - Sometimes players have the skills to clear games during "bad" runs, but they don't have the confidence to continue with the run. This falls into several categories, but here are some that you can alleviate :
- Uneven Skill Spread - Sometimes players aren't comfortable or consistent enough to tackle the later parts of your game. Usually, this is a result of uneven practice, mostly focused on the early bits. The goal here is to make practicing later parts not only as convenient as possible (via practice modes available from the start, great checkpoints) but also fun. You can use incentive structures inside the practice mode itself. Why not have optional goals players can go for which earn them ranks and let them, say, unlock extra ship colors? Checkpoints with leaderboards? Extra modes such as boss rushes are also a good way to encourage more holistic practice. Ideally, you want players to practice the final parts the most, because those are the ones they'll play the least during full runs.
- Tunnel Vision - Players will often focus too much on getting That One Run, and try to maximize their chances of getting it as much as possible. This is very difficult to prevent, but having some meta-goals which reward consistency across many runs should help a lot. Even something simple like graphs tracking run performance over time. The goal is to make every run feel legitimate.
Optimization - This is the end of the line. Once a game gets optimized enough and all score/time gains become important, restart syndrome will creep back in. At that point there's basically nothing you can (or even should) do. Just let the players suffer. :)
Fighting Restart Syndrome with game logic is a bit costly - not only does lowering Mechanical Contrast make your game harder to get into, but lowering the snowballing/exponential effect of resources will often make it feel like the early parts of the game don't really matter. The psychological stuff is more "free" in that regard, but you gotta be careful not to get too overbearing & let players feel the pain.
