Easier Than Easy/Playing With

Basic Trope: A video game has a mode that is easier than an easy mode.

• Straight: A game has an easy mode, and a mode that is even easier than easy mode.
• Exaggerated: A game has an easy mode, and a mode that makes it impossible to lose and guides the player through the game.
• Downplayed: The easier mode isn’t that much easier than the easy mode, or some form of Easy Mode Mockery is in play.
• Justified: The difficulty selection is offered in universe a plot device and an option that is easier then easy is present.
• Inverted: A hard mode is included, and then an even more difficult mode is available.
• Subverted: A mode that is easier than easy is present, but it doesn’t actually do anything.
• Double Subverted: While the easier difficulty option didn’t make a difference in the normal game, the final boss is significantly easier.
• Parodied: The easier mode reduces a complex strategic first person shooter survival horror game into an linear corridor with no enemies and encouraging statements as the player walks to the end of the game.
• Zig Zagged: Not all game mechanics are affected by the difficulty selection, leading to wild difficulty spikes and valleys.
• Averted: The game only offers a normal easy mode, and no easier mode than that.
• Enforced: The executives want to make a game with a niche audience due to difficulty more accessible to the average gamer.
• Lampshaded: A character comments that ever since the hero turned on the easier mode in their Devine settings, the big bad forces of evil haven’t been seen.
• Invoked: A godlike character sees the hero fail many times in a row, and offers to make all of life’s problems go away with an easier mode.
• Exploited: The big bad uses the easier mode for themselves.
• Defied: The big bad deletes the easier mode to stop the player from foiling their plans too easily.
• Discussed: During an easier mode playthrough party talks about how their adventure is relatively easy and without peril, and ponders a world in which that was not the case.
• Conversed: The party in a modern day urban fantasy game boot up a multiplayer game and talk about the mode that is easier than easy mode.
• Played For Laughs: The Easy Mode Mockery is dialed up when playing in easier mode.
• Played For Drama: The easier than easy mode is accomplished in universe via a Deal with the Devil, leading to a bad end.
• Intended Audience Reaction: Makes players on normal easy mode feel better by comparison, and players who need the easier mode a chance to play the game.