The Difficulty Depth Chart™
Two charts, one dive
Every game gets two readings on the same water, and keeping them clear is the whole point:
- The Depth Chart (D1–D5) is the grade: how hard the game is to learn, Surface to Abyss. One verdict per game. That's the stampable badge.
- The Dive Plan (T1–T5) is the training: five stages from your first plunge to mastering the depths. Every game gets all five.
The grade tells you how steep the climb is; the Dive Plan is the climb itself. A brutal D5 and a breezy D1 both come with a full T1-to-T5 plan, the D5's is just a harder ascent. Difficulty varies game to game; the shape of the training doesn't.
Why water?
It's the one metaphor, and we add no others. Depth is something everyone already feels: the surface is safe and bright, the abyss is dark and cold. That intuition does the explaining for us, in the grade, the visuals, and the section names.
What the grade measures, and what it doesn't
One axis only: how hard it is to get in and get competent, the barrier to entry over your first few sessions. Everything else is deliberately out of scope, because mixing other things in is exactly how difficulty scores turn to mush.
- How steep the on-ramp is: the controls, the first "I get it" moment, and how harshly the early hours punish a beginner.
- How alone you are: whether the game and its community actually teach you, or leave you to flounder.
- Comparable across genres: a card game and a flight sim land on the same honest scale.
- How good the game is. That's taste, and you don't need us for it.
- How hard it is to beat or master. A different axis entirely. Dark Souls is famously hard to beat, but its controls are simple, so its learning curve is a D3, not a D5.
- How long it takes. A 200-hour RPG can be a gentle D2; a 20-minute roguelike can be a brutal D4.
The five grades
Whole grades only. No decimals, no half-steps. A game is one of these five.
Jump right in
Playable within seconds. The game teaches itself as you go; no prep, no guide, no friction.
Learn a few basics
A small handful of ideas to grasp, then the game opens up. A five-minute orientation is enough.
Some preparation recommended
Worth reading up or watching one good video before you dive. A little prep saves an hour of confusion.
Significant learning curve
Real study and deliberate practice before it clicks. Plenty of players bounce off here without a plan.
Brutal from the start
No easy way in. Punishing early, steep throughout. The honest call is sometimes "don't jump in." We render this one as a warning for a reason.
The Dive Plan: T1 to T5
The grade is one chart; this is the other. The Dive Plan is the training every game gets: five stages, T1 to T5, that take you from your first plunge to the deepest end of a game. Every game gets all five.
T1 · PlungeGet in the water
First contact: the controls, the goal, the core loop, enough to be playing.
T2 · ReefWhere it gets fun
The basics click and the game opens up. The moment most players fall for it.
T3 · FlowReal competence
The systems become second nature; you play well, not just survive.
T4 · MasteryThe deep mechanics
Advanced technique and the knowledge that separates good from great.
T5 · TrenchBeyond the game
Endgame, expert challenges, and the extra missions we build for the games worth it.
Two landmarks worth knowing
The Reef (T2) is the moment a game becomes fun, where most players decide to stay. The Trench (T5) is beyond-the-game content we build ourselves: extra missions and invented challenges for the games worth going that deep on.
Where a creator has made them, each stage carries a short video lesson. Pictorbit's are landing soon. Email-verified player comments and votes attach to the Dive Plan, stage by stage, not to the grade, so the community shapes the training without moving the verdict.
The 6-point rubric
Never a vibe number. A precise internal score is computed from six fixed measures, identical for every game, so any two games are directly comparable.
From six numbers to one grade
Each measure is scored 1 (easy) to 10 (hard). We average the six into one internal number, then map it to a whole grade by fixed bands:
The precision lives in the engine; the published badge is always a clean whole grade. Every sub-score and a written justification is stored, so the breakdown ("why it's a D4") is always shown and a critic can verify it. The rubric is locked, so grades don't drift as we add games.
The criteria are deliberately abstract so they span wildly different games. We rate "time to competent," not "how hard is building a base" or "how hard is a boss." That's what lets a falling-sand sandbox and a voxel RPG sit on the same honest scale.
The math, shown
Five real grades with the six sub-scores that produced them. Each measure runs 1 (easy) to 10 (hard); a weak tutorial or a thin community scores high. This is the breakdown we store for every game.
| Game | Ctrl | Time | Depth | Punish | Onboard | Comm | Avg | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hades | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2.2 | D1 |
| The Witcher 3 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3.0 | D2 |
| Dark Souls | 4 | 4 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 1 | 5.2 | D3 |
| League of Legends | 6 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 8 | 2 | 6.8 | D4 |
| Cataclysm: DDA | 8 | 9 | 10 | 8 | 10 | 7 | 8.7 | D5 |
Read the Dark Souls row
Its punishment score is a 9 (brutal early deaths) and its onboarding a 7 (it explains almost nothing). But its controls are a 4 and its community a 1, one of the biggest wikis in gaming. Average 5.2: a clear D3. The thing that makes Dark Souls infamous, how hard it is to beat, never enters the rubric. We grade the climb in, not the summit, which is why it lands two full bands below Cataclysm.
Two grades, same axis
Like Rotten Tomatoes, but the only question is "how hard to learn."
The Depth Chart grade
Our in-house analysis: the six-point rubric computed into one grade, approved by our team. The authority is the transparent method, not a personality, so it works with zero outside input. A named expert can co-sign a grade and earn a byline, but one is never required.
Player grade
The community votes on the same axis. Each vote is email-verified (a confirm link), so a fake email can't pad the count. The grade stays hidden until 10 confirmed votes: below that we show the count, never a fake low-volume grade. Hitting 10 also flags the game for our full evaluation, so players decide what we grade next.
The gap is the story
Like Rotten Tomatoes, a game can have our grade with no player votes yet, or player votes before we've graded it. When both exist, every hub features the gap. If we call a game a D2 but players say D4, that disagreement is the most useful thing on the page, and the most shareable.
How a game gets on the chart
Two tracks feed one scale:
- Benchmarks. We grade well-known games by hand so the scale stays calibrated: a D3 means the same thing whether it's a soulslike, a 4X, or a card game. Benchmarks anchor every other grade.
- Underserved games. A weekly engine surfaces games with a passionate community and no good guide yet, the ones that need the full Dive Plan most. Anyone can submit one. A person approves every grade before it publishes; nothing is auto-published.
Questions, answered straight
Is the Depth Chart a review score?
No. It only measures how hard a game is to learn, never whether it's good. A brilliant game and a forgettable one can share a grade; quality is your call, not ours.
A game is easy to start but hard to master. Which grade does it get?
A low one. The grade follows the learning curve, how hard it is to get competent, and that is what "easy to start" means. Mastery isn't difficulty-to-learn; it lives in the deeper Dive Plan stages, T4 Mastery and T5 Trench.
How can a card game and a shooter sit on the same scale?
Because the six measures are abstract on purpose, time-to-competent, punishment, onboarding, not "how hard is a boss" or "how hard is a base." That is exactly what makes a falling-sand sandbox and a tactical shooter directly comparable.
Why isn't a famously hard game a D5?
Because the grade is the on-ramp, not the skill ceiling. Most "hard" games are hard to master but simple to pick up, so they sit mid-scale. The rare D5s are brutal from the very first hour, not just at the top.
Can a grade change?
The rubric is locked, so grades don't drift as we add games. But a specific game can be re-graded if the game itself changes, a patch that adds a real tutorial, say. Enough verified player votes also flag a game for re-evaluation.
The Depth Chart badge
The grade is delivered as a stampable mark, built to live on third-party pages: game sites, store listings, streamer overlays. D5 always wears a warning treatment. Every badge carries Review and AggregateRating schema so engines extract the grade unambiguously.
Get the badge
The real seal: D5 always wears the amber warning.