Sticky Choices Increase Replayability

Some choices are reversible, such as moving armies around a board in Risk or discarding a power card in Spirit Island. Others are permanent, such as constructing a building in Catan or earning an achievement in Innovation. Sticky choices—permanent choices mutually exclusive with others—increase replayability by requiring players to play again to see the other decision branch.

The research mechanics in Slipways are a great example of how permanent, mutually exclusive choices create replayability. For every two technologies you research, your science level advances to the next tier, leaving behind any technologies you didn't research. Thematically, your scientists have grown too advanced for those questions. To explore those branches of the tech tree, you need to play the game again. Contrast this with Civilization, where it is not difficult to unlock most or all tech from an era. Mutually exclusive research paths in Slipways become a reason to replay the game again and again.

Mutually exclusive choices lead to greater build variety because players cannot simply grab everything that looks good. In Heroes of the Storm, each talent tier forces a choice between 2-4 options with no way to revisit earlier talents. Contrast this with League of Legends, where you can level up skills in any order. While a player can focus on different skills each match, the variety of build paths pales in comparison to the talent combinations in Heroes. It requires a secondary progression system via the item shop to stay interesting.

The opposite of sticky choices are choices that can be freely changed or are not mutually exclusive. For example, some games allow you to respec, refunding experience points so you can assign them elsewhere. This makes sense in very long or grindy video games, where players are unlikely to want to play from the beginning again. If your game is meant to be played over many independent sessions, making choices sticky encourages players to return to see what the other paths feel like.