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While playing games we loved, we kept asking the same question. What if the mechanic itself was the challenge?
Games like Hollow Knight, Mario, and other platformers showed us how strong mechanics create lasting engagement. But most of them placed the challenge outside the player, harder enemies, faster obstacles, more complex terrain. We wanted to explore something different: a game where the challenge came from the mechanic itself, from the inside out. That thinking became DYAD.
We studied what made great platformers work, and where the gap was.
Hollow Knight showed how atmosphere and world-building could make a mechanic feel meaningful beyond its function. Mario showed how a simple mechanic, iterated across levels, could grow from accessible to deeply challenging without ever changing its core logic. What neither of them explored was a mechanic built entirely around duality, where the player must operate in two states simultaneously to progress.
Hollow Knight
Atmospheric, mechanic-driven progression.
The world reinforces the challenge.Mario
A simple core mechanic scaled through level design.
Proof that one idea, done well, is enough.The Gap: No platformer we studied was built entirely around mandatory state-switching. That was the space DYAD was designed to occupy.
How do you make switching realms feel necessary, not optional?
The dual-realm mechanic only works if players cannot ignore it. If one realm is more useful than the other, players will default to it and the concept collapses. The challenge was designing a system where both realms are genuinely required, and then balancing that system so the game is hard enough to be engaging but completable enough to be satisfying.
Make neither realm self-sufficient. Force the player to think across both worlds at once.
The solution was structural. Each realm holds items and paths the other cannot access. A level only completes when all required elements from both realms are collected. This means switching is never a choice, it is the only way forward. The mechanic is the game.
GDevelop's event-based logic system was used to build and iterate on the switching behaviour rapidly. Every interaction was expressed as a clear, testable event chain, which actually sharpened the design by demanding precision in how each mechanic was defined.
Playtesting exposed every flaw. Layered level design fixed them
The switching mechanism required repeated playtesting to feel fair. Early versions punished players for switching at the wrong moment due to unclear feedback. Each iteration tightened the logic, making the state transition more responsive, the visual cues clearer, and the consequence of switching more readable.
Difficulty calibration was solved through layered level design. Early levels introduced each realm independently, letting players learn its rules in isolation. Only once both were understood did levels begin demanding they be used together. The difficulty rose through complexity of combination, not artificial resistance.
