Glossary Entry: Fake Difficulty

Fake difficulty is a form of poor game design. While the exact form it depends on the situation where it appears, the concept is always the same: for whatever reason, the developers weren't able to make something as challenging as they thought it should be, and so they "fixed" the problem in an inept way.

For example, if a boss turned out to be too easy, the developer may place instakill traps throughout the boss room rather than change the boss's AI to actually be challenging.