10 Best Game Gimmicks That Made Good Games Better

Mercy [Undertale]

Undertale isn’t your average RPG, and that’s all because of the Mercy gimmick. You can choose to fight monsters like a standard JRPG; killing enemies, gaining XP and equipping increasingly more powerful weapons. But the intended path is selecting ‘Mercy‘ from the menu. This weird little feature completely flips the script and changes how you interact with Undertale.

Instead of fighting monsters in battles, you have to solve mini-puzzles to appease opponents. It requires selecting the correct actions from the menu, or by completing a hidden task in the game’s shoot’em-up inspired defense segments, where you maneuver a tiny heart to dodge attacks. It’s a brilliant flip on what we expect from an RPG and Mercy is at the heart of the game.

8-Bit Jobs [No More Heroes 2]

The boring jobs were the worst part of No More Heroes. The brilliantly deranged action of No More Heroes 2 gets rid of the lame open-world jobs and replaces them with different 8-Bit mini-games inspired by classic NES games. Instead of playing tediously boring games in-engine, the game switches to colorful pixel graphics.

You can cook steaks for customers, drive in a rally race while dodging obstacles, or catch bugs in a Zelda-lite dungeon. All of the mini-games only take a few minutes to complete, and they’re just as fun as old-school arcade games. This gimmick marked a trend to revitalize activities in games — it wasn’t enough just to have extra mini-games anymore. You had to make them fun too.

Check out more great gimmicks of gaming on the next page.