The goal of the Digital Game Mechanic Index (DGMI) is to be an interconnected, encyclopedic wiki documenting video game mechanics. With time, we hope this site will grow into a handy reference guide to help game designers understand the context of mechanics they’re interested in and make decisions about their own games. The priorities of DGMI are to describe mechanics and to illustrate connections between mechanics.

The current site represents the work of the first generation of the DGMI team, and will continue to grow as future teams pick up the torch. We invite you to thumb through our existing articles and imagine how you’d use this tool as a game designer.

Total number of articles: 45

All articles

advanced movement technique	air dash	attack	burst movement option	cooldown
coyote time	critical hit	damage over time	endlag	execution barrier
fastfall	gating mechanism	grappling hook	grid-based movement	input buffer
invincibility	jump	just frame	knockback	knockback as a movement option
landing lag	long jump	manual blinking	maximum health reduction	moving platform
once-per-jump rule	party combat	perfect dodge	platforming	quick time event
ragdoll physics	recoil	self damage	skill tree	slide
slow descent	sprint	sprint jump	teleport	temporary health
time limit	tri-axial movement	turn-based combat	walk	wall jump

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