Plan and test game mechanics

A mechanic needs an observable rule: an action, a change in state and feedback to the player. Before adding more systems, test whether the first action, win condition and restart work together. The existing guides below provide the starting workflow and debugging checks.

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Prepare a game for publishing

Publishing starts with a game that can be tested, understood and maintained. Check the available creator controls, audience settings and safety requirements before a release. Use the publishing guide for the sequence, and the troubleshooting guide for an actual blocked step.

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BC-0175 · TROUBLESHOOTING

Editorial review 2026-09-26

Fail Condition Does Not Trigger

For a fail condition that does not trigger, distinguish the hazard event, any intended protection or recoverable damage, and the terminal failure rule. Verify that the event should end this particular round state before making every contact lethal. Then check that recognized failure stops the right actions and leads to recovery.

Symptom

An event expected to end the attempt does not produce the intended terminal failure.

Immediate action

State the hazard or limit, current protection, round phase and the intended terminal rule.

Diagnostic branches

Protection or checkpoint recovery legitimately keeps the attempt active.: Inspect that recoverable rule instead of treating every continued round as failure to detect a hazard.
The terminal event has no visible acknowledgement.: Record the exact contact or limit event without changing its geometry to force a result.
Failure feedback appears while prohibited round actions continue.: Request a coherent terminal state that stops the specified actions.
A competing win or timeout creates inconsistent outcomes.: Define the intended priority and retest the boundary without silently changing difficulty.

Least-destructive change

Correct terminal-state recognition while retaining intended protection, challenge and recovery rules.

Retest

Protected and terminal cases produce different intended outcomes.
After terminal failure, prohibited round actions cannot change the outcome.
The next attempt begins without stale failure feedback or unintended continuing hazard effects.

Escalation

Carry the protection/event/outcome trace to a focused behavior repair if the defect persists. No specific collision property, health API or universal priority rule is assumed by this editorial checklist.

Working notes

Write the failure predicate and its exceptions. A hazard may consume a shield, return the player to a checkpoint or end the attempt. Those are different authored rules. Describe the player's actual protection and phase before contact so an intended recoverable setback is not mistaken for ignored failure.

Observe whether contact or the relevant limit is acknowledged. A hit effect without a state consequence differs from no visible contact response. Do not increase hazard size or remove protection as a diagnostic shortcut; either change could make a different event occur and hide the original missing boundary.

When the terminal condition is truly met, inspect the game's resulting permissions. Can the player still move, gain round score or complete the goal when those actions should have stopped? A failure panel layered over active play is an inconsistent terminal state, even if its appearance looks correct.

Name how the game handles competing terminal events. If timeout and success could coincide, choose and document the intended priority rather than accepting whichever message appears first. Preserve the existing difficulty and recovery inventory while fixing that state transition, then inspect the next attempt for leftover hazard or failure state.

Examples

Protection distinction: hazard contact consumes the intended shield and play continues. That is not a missed terminal failure unless the design says no protection remains for this event.
Proposed repair: When the player contacts the existing hazard during active play without the specified protection, enter failure and stop round scoring. Keep protected contact behavior and the current retry inventory unchanged.
Inconsistent outcome: a fail message appears, but the player can keep collecting toward the win. Record the still-permitted action and request a coherent terminal state rather than merely restyling the fail panel.