Klei Entertainment, the developer of the upcoming Shank 2 side scrolling brawler, has shared a clever bit of insight on how much impact a longer respawn time can have on players.

Shank was a great game that delivered a stylized and quite bloody experience, which allowed gamers to pull off all sorts of crazy moves.

Now, with Shank 2 currently in the creation process, developer Klei Entertainment has looked back on how players went through the original game. The team saw that, while there were plenty of unique strategies that could be used, players mostly relied just on a few moves throughout the whole game, making the experience feel quite repetitive.

In order to prevent this with the new game, the developers tried different solutions to make players think about their strategies, not just mindlessly mash buttons. While the game gradually introduces new moves for the protagonist, a simple little tweak made the biggest impact: lengthening the time between a player’s death and his respawn.

“By adding a slight delay of few seconds, two very important things happened,” Klei Entertainment’s Jamie Cheng revealed. “First, players slowed down; the forced pause made players noticeably change posture to a more relaxed state, and stopped button mashing as much. This is very important, because the game very much rewards finesse and reacting to the enemies, rather than just pure offense.”

“Second, they were able to see the hints that we give upon death, whereas previously they skipped right past it. This not only served the purpose of seeing the hint, it also prompts players to think more about their actions, and wonder about what else they could do.”

After making this change, players started experimenting with other moves and generally had a greater time with the game, while the team realized just how important even small tweaks could be.

Shank 2 is out for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 later this year.