The I-Can-Do-That Mastery Ladder
Engineer four thoughts in sequence — I can do that, I did that, I know what's next, I can do that too — and repeat until mastery.
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 93%
Asked how you find the sweet spot on the difficulty graph, Elan gives a four-thought sequence rather than a number. First: I can do that. Then the game confirms it: yep, you can do that. Then, within seconds, the complication lands and stops the player dead — the thing that worked a moment ago will not work now. The two follow-up thoughts must arrive in quick succession: I know what I have to do, and I can do that too. Rinse and repeat. Tim's testimony from playtesting is the payoff: like learning a drum pattern, you can feel new neurons coming to life because five minutes ago you could not do this and now you can.
Origin
Elan built the model over a decade of designing casual games at Exploding Kittens, refining the phrasing while tuning Coyote's modifier cards. Tim frames the question through Bushnell's law of Atari fame — a good game is easy to learn and difficult to master — and Elan supplies the mechanism underneath it.
Core principles
- 01Bushnell's law is the target — easy to learn, difficult to master — but it is a description of the destination, not a method.
- 02The first thought a person must have on encountering the thing is 'I can do that', and it must arrive before they have tried anything.
- 03The product must then immediately confirm it: they try, and it says yes, you can do that.
- 04That confirmation lasts only a few seconds, so the next thought must be 'I understand the path to mastery' — I can see how to get better at this.
- 05Immediately after that comes the fourth thought: and I can do that too.
- 06Then you break it — the thing they just got good at stops working, and the loop restarts one level up.
- 07Hitting the loop repeatedly means you are holding somebody's hand from the beginning to the end and they will achieve a real sense of mastery.
- 08Making a thing too easy is trivial and making it impossible is trivial; the sweet spot is the only genuinely hard target.
How to run it
- 1
Manufacture the first thought before first contact
Design the description, the box and the first sentence of the rules so that hearing about it produces 'I can do that'. Elan treats this as non-negotiable and prior to any actual play.
Pro tip Coyote opens so easy that players say there is nothing to it — that reaction is the design working.
Watch out If the pitch produces curiosity but not confidence, the ladder never starts.
- 2
Confirm it in the first attempt
The experience must immediately reinforce the belief: they try it and it says yep, you can do that. The player thinks, okay, I thought I could do it, I can do it, this is great.
Pro tip Confirmation before complication — never reverse the order.
Watch out A tutorial that corrects the player in their first attempt destroys the belief you just installed.
- 3
Break it within seconds
Elan is explicit that the confirmation only lasts a few seconds. A modifier card comes out and it has to stop the player dead in their tracks: the thing I just did and was good at is not going to work here.
Pro tip The complication should invalidate the specific skill they just proved, not introduce an unrelated one.
Watch out Wait too long and the player has already decided the thing is trivial and put it down.
- 4
Make the new path visible
The next thought must be 'I understand the path to mastery' — I have to rethink my strategy, or I have to get better at something else, and I can see what that something is.
Pro tip Coyote ranks its modifiers by difficulty so players can see and choose the ladder they are climbing.
Watch out A complication whose solution is invisible reads as unfairness, not as challenge.
- 5
Make the new skill immediately reachable
The fourth thought — and I can do that too — has to follow in quick succession. The distance between seeing the path and being able to walk it must be short.
Pro tip Tim's drumming analogy is the felt version: you work at the pattern and suddenly it starts to click just a little bit.
- 6
Rinse and repeat, then hand control to the player
Keep hitting those two beats over and over. In Coyote the endpoint is that you are in full charge of how easy, moderate or difficult you make the game, up to published table configurations of increasing brutality.
Pro tip Publish a top rung nobody can reach yet — Elan says he has never seen anyone complete the hardest configuration.
Watch out Automatic difficulty scaling removes the player's sense of authorship over their own climb.
In the wild
Coyote's base rhythm is a two-beat pattern round the table — boom boom, then one player performs their move and says it, then boom boom and the next player. Elan describes the moment they experimented with a modifier that made it three bumps instead of two: boom boom boom, then a move. One playtester simply could not do it, and Tim admits he was one of those people, his brain starting to melt out of his ears. Each person, they found, has a very specific super strength and super weakness that the game surfaces.
→ A tiny rule change that reliably breaks the skill players have just mastered — a textbook rung on the ladder.
Elan compares the effect to learning drums — your right hand does this, your left hand does that, your right leg does something else, and you think there is no way. You work at it and suddenly it clicks, and you can feel new neurons coming to life. In a very early Coyote playtest his eyes went wide because he could feel new things happening in his brain: five minutes earlier he could not do the pattern, and now he could hold it even as the table added another card.
→ The first evidence that the difficulty ramp was producing genuine, felt skill acquisition rather than just frustration.
Elan runs the same four thoughts on retail buyers. He forces them to play, acts as the game's biggest cheerleader, and orchestrates a scenario where they have as much fun as possible: at the start he needs them to think I can do that, a minute in he needs them to think oh, I did that, what's next, oh, I can do that next thing too. Right at the point where they think they know what the next thing is, he pulls the game away and starts the sales pitch.
→ The ladder doubles as a sales instrument — buyers are left drooling at exactly the rung where they wanted one more turn.
Common mistakes
Tuning an average difficulty instead of a sequence
Tim's observation is that making Coyote too easy is a simple game to make, and making it basically impossible is also very easy. Both are averages. The sweet spot only exists as a repeating four-beat sequence, which is why it is incredibly challenging to hit.
Letting the confirmation phase run too long
Elan says the 'yep, you can do that' feeling lasts only a few seconds. Designers who let players enjoy competence for a whole session lose them to boredom before the first complication ever arrives.
Introducing a complication with no visible solution
Without the third thought — I understand the path to mastery — the obstacle simply reads as the game beating you. Skipping straight from 'that no longer works' to a harder round produces quitting, not climbing.
Assuming a simple-looking game required simple work
Tim's warning is that any game you consider simple and enjoyable had an absurd amount of development, testing and revising behind it. Treating the sweet spot as something you stumble into is how designers ship the easy version or the impossible one.
Is it for you?
Best for
Designers of games, courses, onboarding flows or training programmes who need a repeatable structure for escalating difficulty.
Not ideal for
Deliberately brutal experiences whose appeal is the wall itself, or tools where any friction at all is a defect.
From the transcript
“when you first encounter any game, the first thought that has to go into your brain is i can do that”
“the next thought that has to go into your brain is, i understand the path to mastery”
“i think i can do that. yes, you can. now you can't anymore. but you know what you have to do and you can do…”
“you are just holding somebody's hand from the beginning of the game to the end of the game and they're going to get great at…”
From the episode
#821: My Two-Year Secret Project, COYOTE — The Strategies and Tactics for Building a Bestseller from Nothing with Elan Lee of Exploding Kittens