Game Stencils by Greta Hoffmann ↗
← Research log
No. 05
Sep 2026Diagram

“Mechanical depth” is two things

Sketch: a jump mechanic made deeper in four steps, drawn as state graphs

One jump, made deeper step by step: first more possible states, then a non-binary state change, then an edge curve driven by several parameters. Drawn as state graphs, the steps do not change the same thing.

The term mechanical depth seems to conflate changes to the size of the graph and changes to the curve of the graph’s edges.
#depth#state graphs