I have played a bunch on the train into work for the last 10 years… I am at level 10035… I also have a excel table of level date and number of gold bars I have at that point when I hit big checkpoints
No, I don’t think that the levels become harder. They also gift so many free boosters to the players that it is way easier than 10 years ago when I first played the game.
I also feel like that after failing a level too often, that the game is cheating for you so that you don’t lose interest.
The game is “cheating” all the time. All the successful games with thousands of repetitive levels, go whale fishing and have engagement promoting strategies.
The general strategy is:
Introduce core mechanics “organically” over the first few levels, then keep a periodic “loading screen tip” reminder
Add a harder level every several easier ones
Introduce “boosters” with a few free ones
Dis-associate booster cost from real money cost by having an “in-game currency” (not actual currency) with some non-intuitive conversion ratios
Add a second kind of free-ish in-game currency to keep players used to making in-game purchases
If a player runs out of boosters, give them some free ones after a while
Improve user engagement with regular reminders and periodic offers
Promote FOMO with limited-time offers
Add mechanics with obvious MiniMax-ing strategies, that are however impossible for a person with a normal life to MiniMax, while offering a way to use in-game currencies to correct for that
Keep adding cosmetic changes
Introduce slightly new mechanics once in a while every a lot of levels, combine mechanics together if you’ve run out of ideas
For each level, have a predefined setup that makes it extremely easy to solve, along with normal generators that make them hard to solve
Use the easy setups to showcase new mechanics and boosters
Use the hard setups to make people want to spend boosters, and buy them, and use real money to purchase in-game currency to do that
Ideally, have a level generator with tunable difficulty that can be adapted for every user
Offer whales big spenders exclusive VIP levels, that require a lot of spending to win
Add one or more “leaderboards” for big spenders to showcase how much they spend good they are
Remove real world time clues for big spenders, don’t let them realize for how many hours they’ve been throwing their money away
If a big spender drops their spending or engagement level, shower them with offers, assign a personal manager, offer invitations to real world events… whatever it takes (up to a certain % of their expected monthly spending)
Periodically expand the game with hundreds and thousands of “new” levels… which follow the same rules
Bonus points if you add “seasons” and a “season pass”.
Extra bonus if you place and cross-promote a number of games with the same strategy but different cosmetic themes.
Casino mode: have thousands of “games” all in one, with different cosmetics, complex winning modes, and very simple mechanics (press button to spin, press button to auto-spin 1000 times, etc)… but in most jurisdictions you need to calculate and disclose the exact odds of winning in each mode for every level generator.