How these actually work

Battleship is a game of pure luck pretending to be deduction. What has to change so that a good guess beats a lucky one?

Graph Paper Dungeon — A stick figure on graph paper, drawn like a bored teenager did it in the back of a maths exercise book.

An endless runner has one input. Where does depth come from when the player can only choose when, and never what?

Wave defence collapses into a solved opening. How do you make the first thirty seconds different every time without making them unfair?

The crop-spread algorithm is the best system on this arcade. Why does growth that obeys simple neighbour rules feel like it has intent?

Precision platforming punishes with restarts. Can a cat knocking books off a shelf carry real difficulty without the restart being the punishment?

Asteroids is momentum with no brake. What does a scoring model reward when the ship is always drifting?

A raycaster has no vertical axis and no room above a room. Which constraints of 1992 are worth keeping on purpose?

Turn-based tactics is chess with dice. How much randomness can a board game absorb before planning stops mattering?

Kart racers need rubber-banding to stay fun and it makes winning feel unearned. Where is the honest version of that trade?

A belt-scroller is a crowd-control puzzle wearing a brawler's clothes. What makes being surrounded readable instead of unfair — and how do you prompt an entire art set for it?