The Problem: The Attention Economy. Speed and and combat are in a tug-of-war for complete player attention. Games typically ask one of: “watch where you go” or “watch where you aim”.

• Genre Analysis: Movement shooters (despite the name), don’t do both, as they use narrow linear level design to handle the “go” for you so you can focus mostly on “aim”.
• My Goal: Because EXO features open, infinite-scale movement, I had to decouple Perceived Speed from Mechanical Difficulty via engineering UX.

1. Flavor mechanics: Feeling even faster.
• Kinetic FOV: Coded dynamic camera to stretch FOV, pull camera back, and provide camera lag to exaggerate the sense of speed and increase visibility.
• Reaction-assist: (in engineering phase) Engineered a “Dynamic Time Dilation” system. When the player ADS’s at high speeds, the game slows down slightly to give more aiming frames.
• Input Compensation: Built velocity-scaled Heat-Seeking and (in engineering-phase) Aim-Assist. As speed increases, the acceptance angle widens.
2. Gamifying Information: Rewarding infinity in segments
• “Number go up” isn’t enough for a speedometer, as constant gradual change doesn’t feel like change. To make infinite scaling feel rewarding, I shifted from analog data to Rhythmic Milestones.
• Break speed into “Stages”. Upon gaining X MPH, the player triggers a specific input (Space 2x). This results in a burst of movement and raised velocity cap, turning speed management into an engaging, rhythmic loop rather than passive observation.