Shop/rest stops
Designated safe nodes between combat where players spend currency, heal, upgrade, or manage their build — the breathing room in a run's rhythm. Slay the Spire's shops and campfires and Hades's between-encounter vendors punctuate tension with moments of decision and recovery. Designers use rest stops to pace runs (tension-and-release), to create resource-spending decisions (heal now or upgrade for later?), to provide a build-crafting opportunity, and to give currency a meaningful sink. Key decisions: what's offered (healing, card/item purchases, upgrades, removal), the currency economy that constrains choices, node frequency and placement in the run's structure, and whether choices are exclusive (Slay the Spire's campfire: rest OR upgrade, not both). Pitfall: rest stops that always offer an obviously correct choice waste the decision — the interesting version forces real tradeoffs (heal versus power, buy versus save) tuned so the player is always slightly short of resources, keeping every stop a genuine dilemma rather than a routine top-up.
- Dev effort: Small
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: roguelike, deckbuilder