The way the deadline system interacts with the dungeon system in Refantazio strengthens both features. Each chapter tasks the player with completing a dungeon before a deadline. Failure to do so results in a game over.

However, the player does not know how many days will be needed to complete the dungeon until it is done. The dungeons can be massive and the player starts each day with limited MP. Once that MP is exhausted, the player has little choice but to end their dungeon exploration for the day and try for completion on the next day.

By itself, this would have a degenerate solution; to simply do the dungeon first and, once the dungeon is complete, to use the remaining time to chase sidequests. However, the higher your level, the likelier it is that you can complete a dungeon in fewer days and at lower cost. Similarly, building a relationship sometimes provides a bonus that makes the chapter dungeon easier.

The game thus makes the sequencing of what you will do in a given chapter an interesting decision. Underscoring this, the game has more ways for you to use time than it has time for you to use.

Thus, to generate this dynamic requires the following pieces:

  • A deadline with enough give for the player to do sidequests.
  • Sidequests that make the main quest easier.
  • Tasks that take unpredictable amounts of time.

The dynamic of dungeon runs ending due to a lack of MP is well worth looking at. The boss of each dungeon must be harder than the encounters that precede it, so it follows that if surviving a boss is a challenge, surviving an encounter probably will not be, given the systems of Refantazio. Instead, the game makes MP conservation the primary player concern. Sloppy play must be made up with limited items. Furthermore, gambling on a normal attack rather than an MP-consuming attack can result in losing health and health is most easily recovered through spending MP.

I love how this dynamic uses the systems of the game and the importance that it places on time to emphasize how large and challenging the dungeons are. The player must choose to abort the run, and even though a lack of MP makes it a forced decision, the decision point is weighty due to the cost of each day. This makes the chapter dungeon feel weighty as well, especially when contrasted with the bounty dungeons.