10 Hardest Video Game Genres To Make (From A Game Developer)

"Fractals" is the term used by some designers as shorthand to describe the often-headache-inducing branching trees that gamers love; branching trees (in terms of narrative, character abilities, and more) often mean your game is going to offer the player more choice and agency, but that also means the work required is going to multiply, often several times over.

Branching narrative paths occur when a character has to make (often pivotal) choices which alter the events yet to come. When considering a branching narrative path, the earlier the branch occurs, the more work is going to be required overall.

If, after one hour, your player has to choose between taking the crown to be king of the realm, or leaving the realm to be a space raisin (and each choice leads to a unique eight-hour story), the unchosen option is eight full hours of gameplay some players will likely never see. And if at the end of those stories another binary choice is offered, then you can see how the vast majority of the game you're developing is going to go completely unseen.

You can see how it becomes significantly more value for developers to instead just... create the same amount of content, but offer it all, instead of offering these branching paths.

Fractal progression systems aren't quite as demanding on content, but require a heavy amount of time spent on balance (with the exact same problem, that most players will never even see some of that content).

Branching systems are maybe the only entry on this list that're so time-consuming to make because of what the player won't see, as opposed to what they will.