Progressimo is a tool for designing gameplay progression. Its purpose is to help you plan the experience of a player over the course of your game, whatever that may be.
To do this, you design a progression plan by creating moments (graph nodes) and creating links (graph edges) between those moments. You can constrain (lock or unlock) player progress using these links or by gating access to moments (using gameplay gates) based on their content.
You can verify and guide your design decisions by creating progression design rules (constraints). These rules govern the designer's (i.e. your) use of progression elements within moments relative to the game's current progression state.
<aside> 💡 The concept familiar to you in the description above will be “gameplay gates”. As for the other terms, formalising different kinds of gameplay into abstract general concepts has meant I’ve had to devise my own, abstract-sounding terms (i.e. “progression elements” etc.). What these terms mean is described below, and hopefully you’ll recognise and understand the concepts behind them based on the concrete examples I give below.
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Game progression in Progressimo is expressed using two abstract types of units: moments (e.g. a game level, a mission or task in a mission, etc.) and progression elements (the gameplay content of moments e.g. enemies, resources spent or acquired, etc.).
Moments are graph nodes that represent chunks of gameplay experienced over time by the player. Moments can be used to represent, for example, levels, tasks, missions or parts thereof.
The function of a moment is to update game progress. The content of a moment comprises changes to the player’s progression state. These changes come in the form of the addition or subtraction of progression elements.
A moment in the progression plan
Progression elements are the content of moments. They can be any type of game content that gets experienced, acquired or spent during the game. For example: skills that the player must learn, narrative knowledge gained, experience points or inventory acquired.
A progression element called "Cash" in the progression elements list
Read more about progression elements here.
Links constrain player progress. They can literally represent space i.e. a path or route between two places; or they can represent abstract relationships e.g. a "path" through a quest made up of a sequence of tasks to complete.