A game that I’ve been enjoying a lot recently is Fields of Mistria (FoM). It’s like Stardew Valley (SV) but with many quality-of-life changes and (in my opinion) better design in certain aspects.
One set of mechanics I love in FoM is the fighting/combat in the mines. Different enemies should be fought in certain ways. Slimes are best fought by jumping to dodge and then ground-slamming to attack repeatedly. Rock monsters spit out pebbles at the player; the first-order optimal strategy is to copy the slime attack, but it only causes 1 dmg. Jump-and-slam is an easy way to both dodge and attack, but as the player descends in the mines and monsters increase in difficulty/health it quickly becomes inefficient. The higher damage attack choice requires the player to time their swing to hit the pebble back at the rock monster, which causes significantly more dmg at ~16 points per pebble.
In contrast, in SV different monsters have different movement patterns—slimes will jump quickly at the player, ghosts slowly creep in, serpents fly quickly at the player—but fighting every enemy requires essentially no strategy. The first-order optimal strategy, and really only strategy, is to walk right up and swing repeatedly.
The combat in FoM also varies movement/combat patterns across the same species of monster. Different color slimes have unique jumping patterns. Rock monsters vary pebble-spitting frequencies. In SV, each type of monster maintains the same attack pattern throughout the entire game; a green slime attacks just the same as a purple one. FoM’s design choices force the player to adapt new fighting patterns as the difficulty increases, creating challenge by forcing the player to strategize across different enemies and different levels of enemies.
