How to create an engaging and satisfying gameplay loop

Have you ever been playing a game and, before you know it, invested countless hours into it without even noticing the time pass?

Chances are, you've been caught by a really good gameplay loop that keeps things interesting and unique. Creating a game presents a plethora of challenges, and one of the significant ones is ensuring the game keeps the user's attention.

This blog post focuses on what a gameplay loop is, what makes a gameplay loop engaging, and provides tips on how to optimise your gameplay loop for the best possible experience.

What is a gameplay loop?

A gameplay loop consists of the core actions that a player will repeat while playing the game. It's a repeatable process that drives the player to continue playing. It can be as simple as jumping over obstacles and reaching a flag or as complex as farming sets of armour from different areas across the map.

Some Examples

For demonstrative purposes, I have chosen two games that are of very different genres to look at for the gameplay loops to help show the similarities and differences across games.

Slay The Spire

STS is a game where you climb floor after floor of a spire, the encounters getting more difficult as you climb, but your character grows stronger due to the rewards you gain on the way.

The basic gameplay loop for Slay The Spire is:

Go up a floor -> Complete an encounter -> Get rewarded.

This gameplay loop isn't difficult to understand, but it works so well. It gives us different situations each time, as they don't know what will be on the next floor. They then have to deal with that floor, whether it's a fight or some kind of special event, then take the rewards and use them to deal with the next floor.

There are a few things in Slay The Spire that help consistently bring us back for more:

Random Encounters
Diverse Loot
Decisions
Unique Gameplay

Slay The Spire keeps things fresh, as although there is a set amount of encounters, there's enough of them that you never know how your run is going to go.

On top of the random encounters, you can be rewarded with a lot of different loot, whether it's a powerful card, a unique relic, or a fight-ending potion. This means that even if you end up seeing an encounter you've seen before, it's still likely to be a new experience because you will have to deal with it differently.

Encounters can also have distinctive decisions to be made that will drastically change the way you need to play, sometimes making a big sacrifice for something that could turn out powerful later in the run.

These three mechanics mean that Slay The Spire has a high replayability as each game is going to be different from the last, keeping things fresh and interesting. This hooks us in as they can play it over and over without becoming bored with the same repetitive loop.

One of the other important things to note that keeps people invested is that in some runs, you can become exceptionally powerful and beat the game without any sort of difficulty. This is extremely satisfying, especially if you have regularly struggled to beat the game. This makes people want to play the game more, to get these high-roll builds.

Rainbow Six Siege

Now, having unique encounters isn't necessarily the only way to keep a game interesting. Multiplayer games that rely on skill and competitiveness also keep us coming back. One such example is Rainbow Six Siege.

The game takes two teams of 5 us, taking turns to attack or defend an objective. Rainbow Six Siege has significantly fewer random elements to it; however, it has a lot going on and a high learning curve.

We can spend lots of time getting to know the individual operators (characters you play as) in this game and learning how to play against them. As both sides are constantly adapting to each other and trying to beat each other to the objective, it becomes difficult to win again and again, but when you do win, it's extremely satisfying as you have successfully outmanoeuvred the enemy team, which is no easy feat.

This satisfaction from us winning games motivates us to play more, and in turn, get more satisfaction.

Tips for creating an engaging gameplay loop

Any gameplay loop should consist of a challenge, a solution, and a reward. This keeps us beating the challenges, with their solutions, and getting the rewards, then wanting another reward.

So, if you're trying to make a gameplay loop, you need to look at all three of these aspects:

Challenges

You need to make sure the challenges your loop puts forth are interesting and unique. This may be done by including randomness, it may be done by putting player against player, but overall, you just need to make sure it gets a player's attention, and doesn't become boring.

It can be mostly the same, but it needs to change slightly each time; it needs to not be the same challenge over and over again.

The challenge may be a boss, a difficult level to navigate, or managing your resources to build your city. Make sure you use strategies to make these things stay interesting. Have a few bosses so you don't know what you're going up against, have randomly generated platforms for navigating levels, and have natural disasters strike that can ruin your resources and make you have to adapt.

Solutions

Once you've got your challenge, you need to give us the tools or abilities to overcome it. The solution is the action the player takes to beat the challenge; this is where the real gameplay lies. Whether it's deckbuilding, shooting mechanics, resource management, or mastering movement, the solution needs to feel responsive and satisfying.

A good solution should feel like the player earned the victory through skill, strategy, or clever decision-making. If a player beats a tough boss, it should feel like it was because they learned the patterns, timed their attacks well, or adapted their build, not just because they got lucky. That sense of mastery is key.

It's also important to offer multiple ways to solve the same challenge where possible. This allows for player creativity and agency. Can they sneak past guards or go in guns blazing? Can they use a brute-force approach or a carefully planned strategy? Giving us freedom in how they solve things adds depth to the loop and encourages experimentation.

Rewards

Finally, you need to give us a reason to want to keep playing. This is where rewards come in. A reward can be anything that gives the player a sense of progress or achievement. It could be a new gear, a story reveal, a visual upgrade, or simply the feeling of getting better at the game.

The most effective rewards are the ones that feed back into the loop. For example, in Slay The Spire, cards and relics not only feel rewarding, but they also make you stronger for the next challenge. In Rainbow Six Siege, the reward is often the satisfaction of a well-earned win or improving your rank.

Rewards should scale appropriately with the effort put in. If a challenge is tough, the reward should feel worth it. And it's even better if the rewards lead to new ways to play, new strategies to try, or help you build towards that powerful moment where everything clicks.

At its best, the gameplay loop becomes a cycle of: challenge → player mastery → meaningful reward → new challenge.