Game Teardowns for New PMs: How to Analyze Features Like a Product Manager

Why this topic matters

Most early-career PMs struggle with understanding why a game works, how systems interlock, and what design choices influence behavior. Game deconstructs are the fastest way to build design literacy, develop intuition, and learn how to think in systems.

But this post isn’t about teaching you how to do a teardown. It’s about teaching you how to think like a PM when doing one.

And at the end, you’ll find examples and tools to help you start practicing teardowns right away.

What a Teardown Actually Is (and Isn’t)

A teardown is not:

• A game review
• A UX feedback doc
• A list of things you liked or disliked

A teardown is a systems analysis. You are reverse-engineering:

• What player behavior is being incentivized or reinforced
• How systems are interconnected
• What assumptions the design makes about player motivations

It’s how you go from being a player to thinking like a product owner.

There are multiple levels of teardown:

• Feature-level teardown (e.g., how the Battle Pass or Daily Quests are designed)
• Game area teardown (e.g., monetization systems, progression flow, combat loop)
• Full game teardown (end-to-end analysis of systems, loops, and live service design)

We’ll start with the most foundational: the feature-level teardown.

Step-by-Step: How to Run a Feature Teardown

Most PMs stop at describing how a feature works. The real insight comes from understanding why it works the way it does.

Let’s walk through the teardown of a Daily Login Calendar system (though this approach also works for battle passes, shops, gacha, and other key systems).

1. Surface the User Experience

• Take screenshots of every screen involved.
• Map all entry points, click paths, overlays, and reward claims.
• Track what’s communicated to the player and when.

2. Track Tuning and Behavior Loops

• Engage with the feature daily to observe:
  • Reward structure
  • Streak or milestone bonuses
  • Penalties or resets when days are missed
  • Paid accelerators or monetization hooks

Ask:

• What player habits or incentives is this encouraging?
• How is friction being used—lightly, heavily, or not at all?
• How does this change over time?

3. Analyze the System Layer

• What role does this feature play in the broader economy?
• Is it a resource faucet, habit reinforcer, or engagement anchor?
• What tradeoffs were made in tuning (e.g., streak pressure vs. casual friendliness)?

4. Compare Across Games

• Find similar features in 2–3 other titles.
• What’s similar? What’s intentionally different?
• What assumptions does each version make about its players?

Key Questions to Guide Your Teardown

Use these to shift from observation to product thinking:

• What problem is this feature solving?
• What assumptions is it making about player motivation?
• What behavior is it trying to shape (e.g., log-in habits, session cadence, spend timing)?
• What tradeoffs does it reveal—between simplicity vs depth, generosity vs monetization?
• Why might the designers have omitted certain mechanics?

The Three Layers Every PM Must Study

When doing a teardown, it's not enough to just observe what the player sees. You need to develop multi-layered awareness. These layers help you think through design impact, product strategy, and tradeoffs across disciplines.

1. Player Experience Layer — What the Player Sees and Feels

This is your entry point. It’s about what’s visible and felt:

• Core loop and session structure
• Player motivations and moment-to-moment pacing
• How fantasy or genre promise is delivered
• Where joy, confusion, frustration, or delight happen

This layer answers: What is the player doing and feeling? It helps you empathize with the player journey and assess if the feature delivers on its promise.

2. Systems Layer — What the Feature is Doing Under the Hood

This is where product decisions live. It includes:

• Progression mechanics and difficulty curves
• Economy flows: resource sinks and sources
• Gating systems, cooldowns, rewards, and upgrade pacing
• Dependencies with adjacent systems (e.g., events, shops, quest tracks)

Here you ask:

• How is this designed to influence behavior?
• What assumptions does this system make about player playstyle or goals?
• Why was this tuning or structure chosen over another?

This layer helps you understand not just how the feature works, but why it works this way in this particular game.

3. Live Ops Layer — How the Feature Sustains Engagement Over Time

Features aren’t static. Especially in live service games, everything exists within a calendar and content cadence. This includes:

• Event structure and refresh timing
• Shop rotation, offers, bundles, and sales
• Meta loops that keep players returning over time
• When and how content is refreshed (e.g., dailies, monthlies, seasonal resets)

Ask:

• How does this feature connect to ongoing cadence and retention strategy?
• Is it reinforced by events or monetization moments?
• How is freshness created — through novelty, FOMO, or systemic progression?

Teardowns that stop at surface-level UX miss the critical connections between player experience, system incentives, and live service dynamics. To build intuition and communicate with your cross-functional team, you need to work across all three.

Why This Matters for Young PMs

Teardowns are not just a learning tool. They are how you:

• Develop product sense and intuition
• Understand tradeoffs between user delight and system constraints
• Communicate more effectively with cross-functional partners
• Make better decisions when prioritizing, tuning, or de-scoping features

And most importantly? They give you the reps needed to become a strategic decision-maker.

What You Should Do Next

Want to level up your teardown skills? Here's how to start:

1. Pick one live service game you play or are curious about.
2. Choose one feature (e.g., daily login, battle pass, gacha system).
3. Document the experience layer: screenshots, click paths, what’s surfaced.
4. Track tuning over 7+ days: value pacing, resets, monetization, engagement triggers.
5. Map it to the system and live ops layers: how does it tie into progression or retention?
6. Compare that feature to 1–2 other games. What’s similar? What’s different? What does it tell you?
7. Log your “aha” moments. Note when something feels satisfying, confusing, or over-tuned.
8. Ask designers or analysts for feedback. Use your teardown to build cross-functional fluency.

Do this once a month, and your product instincts will compound faster than any course.

Want a teardown template to help you start? Stay tuned — it’s coming next.

Also, consider using tools like GameRefinery, Sensor Tower, or data.ai to:

• Discover trends in feature adoption
• Benchmark design patterns across genres
• Validate hypotheses with market-wide data

They won’t replace first-hand teardown work, but they’re excellent companions for contextualizing what you see in-game.

You can also learn a ton from commentary-style teardowns, like those from Deconstructor of Fun. These cover everything from feature deep-dives to full game ecosystem analysis:

• Daily Missions in Puzzles: Why Should We See Them More Often? — A feature-focused teardown that dissects the design and engagement power of daily mission structures in puzzle games
• Marvel Snap: The Definitive Deconstruction — A system-level teardown unpacking progression pacing, monetization, and Second Dinner's card-battler strategy
• Brawl Stars: To the Moon — A live ops and ecosystem-scale deconstruction showing how Supercell rebuilt and scaled a mature game

These aren’t traditional walkthroughs — they’re strategic commentary on feature design, player behavior shaping, and long-term monetization from a PM perspective.