2025-04-21 21:14:11 EDT

M: While I was driving yesterday, I had an idea for gaming. The core idea of being Fibonacci scaling. I was trying to think of a projectile weapon that would seem completely useless and probably be useless – except for on a particularly strong boss. It would be scaled so that the Fibonacci sequence applied – you know, two damage, then three, then five, etc. – and then using a Street multiplier would do damage to the other enemies. Executed correctly, it wouldn’t be better than most weapons in most situations and maybe a little worse than average. Then you have a boss that is essentially immune to everything, barely losing a noticeable amount of health when shot by anything. At which point, if you’ve written off the Fibonacci gun, you might think this is impossible – but if you were paying attention, you realize that after, I don’t know, the standard hundred shots or so that a boss in any other situation would take, you’re taking off nearly a 10th of his health with that 101st shot. Now my question is, do you know of any games with a weapon or dynamic like this? And if so, what are the general thoughts on it? because executed correctly, the version I’m thinking of would either be fun to use – that is, the mechanic is entertaining, but not that useful outside of this context, so it’s fun and exciting when you finally get to use it for a real purpose – or designed to challenge, such as making the ramping up of the damage contingent on some degree of skill, like hitting within a few pixels of the last shot each time in order to amplify the damage, or both.

G: TL;DR: No widely known game uses Fibonacci-scaling weapons in this exact way, but a few games experiment with exponential damage scaling or secret weapons that seem useless until a key moment. Your idea is original and very viable, especially if tuned for “narrative payoff” or mechanical skill. The closest parallels are combo systems, damage ramps, and meme weapons that become secretly OP.

Similar Mechanics in Games

1. Damage Scaling / Ramping Weapons

“Progressive damage” mechanics exist in games like:
- Borderlands (some guns ramp up fire rate or damage over time).
- Risk of Rain 2 (many items scale multiplicatively over time, and bosses get huge).
- Hades (some weapons like the rail can ramp if upgraded right).
Combo-based games (e.g., Devil May Cry, Bayonetta) reward precision/consistency, but usually don’t tie combo length to damage in a Fibonacci-like way.

2. Meme-to-Meta Weapons

EarthBound has the “Toothbrush” and other joke items that seem useless but sometimes have secret uses.
Final Fantasy games (especially Tactics) often have underpowered items that only shine in specific encounters.
Enter the Gungeon has joke weapons like the “Bullet” that evolve dramatically or synergize absurdly with certain builds.

3. Fibonacci / Exponential-like Growth

Idle games (e.g., Cookie Clicker, Universal Paperclips) often use Fibonacci or exponential cost/gain curves.
In The Binding of Isaac, exponential or multiplicative synergies (e.g., Brimstone + Tammy’s Head) create sudden breakpoints where damage becomes insane.

But none of these rely on the strict Fibonacci mechanic you're describing, especially not in projectile tracking or specific boss-centric utility.

Why Your Idea Works

Narrative Payoff:

Players love “Chekhov’s gun” design: when something seemingly irrelevant early on turns out to be the key to success later.
Your Fibonacci weapon is the anti-Red Herring: it looks dumb, but was designed with purpose.

Mathematical Tension:

Fibonacci grows slowly at first (2, 3, 5, 8...), but by the 20th shot you’re doing 6765 damage, which is deliciously exponential without being obviously so.
Perfect for a boss with tens of thousands of HP, immune to burst damage.

Skill Contingency Variant:

The “must land each shot near the previous one” version introduces:
- Mechanical skill
- Spatial memory
- Tension (break the chain, lose the buildup)

If You Build It

It could be tuned in a few flavors:

Combo gun: Fibonacci resets if you miss or wait too long.
Tuning knob: Fibonacci index increases slower, like once every 2–3 successful hits.
“Sniper’s Gambit”: You must hit within a tight window (e.g., within 5 pixels of the last shot) to increase the index.
Soft fail: Missing a shot drops the index by 2, not back to 0, to keep the player engaged.

Could be a great secret weapon, easter egg, or payoff for close observation and persistence.

Possible Downsides

If not telegraphed at all, players may think the boss is unbeatable.
If telegraphed too obviously, it loses mystique.
Needs a design where Fibonacci growth doesn’t break balance unless it's meant to.

Summary

No, nothing quite like it has been done in mainstream games in that specific Fibonacci + boss-resistance + payoff structure. You're onto something fresh. And depending on how you gate or scale it, it could be a brilliant tool for player satisfaction, challenge, or secret discovery.