The Game Feature I Keep Redesigning (And Why I Keep Getting It Wrong)

jun yan — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:00:43 +0000

I have a love-hate relationship with inventory systems.

Not with games' inventory systems — with my own. Every time I start a new project, I swear I'll build something elegant. Clean. Intuitive. And every time, by the third iteration, I'm staring at the same pile of design decisions I've already made twice before and somehow still got wrong.

This is the story of my inventory system, and what it taught me about scope creep in game design.

Version One: The Naive Stack

The first version was simple. Items go in slots. Slots fill up. When slots are full, you can't pick up more. Clean. Limited. Fair.

The problem: it wasn't fun. Players started hoarding — keeping one healing potion for 40 hours because they were afraid they'd need it later. The entire economy of the game stalled because nobody wanted to spend anything.

Classic. I thought the answer was more slots.

Version Two: The Expanded Grid

More slots. Stack limits per item type. Categories — consumables here, quest items there, equipment somewhere else. Also not new. Also not my idea.

This worked better in some ways. Players stopped hoarding as aggressively. But now they were spending time navigating menus instead of playing. The inventory had become a chore.

I started noticing something in playtests: people would avoid fights because fighting meant sorting through their bags afterward. That's a design failure.

Version Three: The Auto-Sort

Version three tried to solve the chore problem with convenience. Auto-sort after every combat. One-click inventory cleanup. Stack merging on pickup.

The result: players still had too much stuff. They just sorted it faster.

What I hadn't fixed was the root issue — I was giving players too many items and too many ways to get more. The inventory was a symptom of a loot system that didn't respect the player's time.

What I Eventually Figured Out

The real problem wasn't the inventory UI. It was the design assumption underneath it: that more options equals better gameplay.

It doesn't. More options creates decision fatigue. Decision fatigue makes players avoid choices entirely — which means they stop engaging with your carefully designed item variety.

The inventory system that actually worked for my project had fewer item types, more meaningful drops, and a hard cap on total items carried. It felt restrictive. Players complained at first. But they also engaged with every single item in the game, because there were only so many to think about.

That's a lesson I keep relearning: constraints create engagement. An inventory with 20 slots and 20 items is more interesting than one with 200 slots and 500 items.

The best inventory system I've ever used was in a game that didn't let you carry anything between levels. You kept what you had, used it or lost it, and every pickup mattered.

I keep trying to build something more complex. It keeps being worse.

Maybe next time.

Why Open World Games Are Getting Bigger — And What That Means for Game Design

jun yan — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:53:06 +0000

There's a quiet arms race happening in game development right now — and it's not about graphics, or physics, or even AI. It's about size.

Open world games keep getting bigger. Breath of the Wild was considered expansive at launch. Elden Ring made it feel small. Then came Starfield, GTA Online maps, and titles we haven't even named yet — all pushing the boundaries of what "large" means.

The Size Problem

When a game world grows, the challenge isn't just content creation — it's coherence. A world of 200 hours becomes a liability if players can't answer simple questions: Where am I? What should I do? Why does this matter?

The problem isn't storage. Players have room. The problem is attention budget. Every developer has a finite amount of design energy to spend on meaningful interactions. When that energy gets spread across 400 square kilometers instead of 40, something has to give.

What Shrinks When Worlds Grow

Looking at the trend, three things consistently degrade as open worlds expand:

Quest density drops. More area means fewer handcrafted encounters per square meter. The result? Padding. Fetch quests. Radiant systems that feel procedural because they are.

Signposting disappears. In tight, linear games, players always know where to go because the game carefully directs them. In sprawling worlds, developers rely on compasses, quest markers, and waypoints — crutches that can undermine the sense of discovery.

Worldbuilding gets thinner. A focused 20-hour game can build a coherent lore, nuanced factions, and meaningful NPCs. A 100-hour open world often feels like a series of zones loosely connected by a map.

What Works

That said, some games have cracked the code. Elden Ring's approach is worth studying: massive scale, but every area has a distinct visual identity, its own threat profile, and carefully placed discoveries that reward exploration without requiring it.

The key is density of meaningful interaction, not raw acreage. A courtyard with three things to discover, thoughtfully arranged, beats a field with thirty meaningless markers.

GTA V's map is large but tightly designed — each area serves a narrative or gameplay purpose. Breath of the Wild's empty spaces feel intentional, designed to create the sensation of traveling through a real landscape rather than touring a content checklist.

The Industry's Reckoning

We've reached a point where the question isn't "can we build a bigger world?" — we clearly can. The question is "should we?"

More studios are starting to answer that honestly. Focusrite design, vertical slice development, and carefully scoped worlds are making a comeback. Not because big worlds are bad, but because a smaller world done well will always beat a bigger world done halfway.

The best game world I've explored this year wasn't the largest. It was the one that made every corner feel like someone cared about what was there.

That's a lesson worth remembering as the arms race continues.

DEV Community: jun yan