RECIPES
Known formulas converting inputs to outputs — three wood and two iron make an axe — as the atomic unit of crafting economies.
- SOLO-DEV COST LOW
- TIMING REAL-TIME / TURN
- COMMON IN SURVIVAL · SANDBOX · AUTOMATION · MMO
Minecraft's recipe book (eventually formalized from folk knowledge into UI), Factorio's recipe graph (whose dependency tree is effectively the game's tech tree and logistics problem in one), survival staples like Valheim gating recipes behind first-time material pickups, and MMO profession books all run on the same primitive. Designers structure production as recipes because the formula is legible economics: a recipe declares exact exchange rates between materials, which makes every item's true cost computable (and every gathering trip purposeful), turns the item catalog into a dependency graph designers can pace (gate the steel recipe and you've gated everything downstream), and gives progression a knowledge dimension — learning recipes is advancement that weighs nothing and can be gated by discovery, purchase, quest, or experimentation. Recipe graph depth is the genre dial: shallow two-ingredient recipes keep crafting a pit stop; Factorio-deep chains where outputs feed recipes feeding recipes make production itself the game. Key decisions: recipe acquisition (known from start, unlocked by progression, discovered by pickup — Valheim's material-triggered reveals elegantly pace ambition), exactness versus substitution (rigid formulas are clear; tag-based inputs like 'any wood' reduce inventory pedantry), and the interface burden — searchable, filterable recipe books are mandatory past a few dozen entries, and pinnable 'what do I still need' tracking is the feature players actually use. Pitfall: recipe sprawl without hierarchy — hundreds of flat entries where most items are dead ends (crafted once, never relevant again) bury the recipes that matter; a recipe catalog is a promise that each formula has a purpose, and padding it with filler teaches players to stop reading it.