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[SirNiko]

I had an idea just like this in the Pitch Your Game thread.

Metroid style platformer. The player starts with an inventory filled with upgrades (high jump, morph ball, long shot, etc.) After a short tutorial stage, player finds themselves at the gates of the castle. There they have two choices: proceed to the final stage and defeat the final boss, or explore one of the side areas of the game to acquire one of the seven doohickeys that contain the boss's power.

The catch is that each doohickey weakens the player, in the form of voluntarily giving up one of your upgrades. As a result, each stage becomes progressively more difficult than the last. I'm not sure whether all stages should be completable with no upgrades, whether a strict order must be followed to win, or somewhere between the two. Metroid Zero Mission did a good job designing a world that had sneaky alternate paths for low-item runs, similar design would be required.

Multiple endings abound based on how many doohickeys you collect before fighting the final boss. The more things you collect, the weaker the boss will be.

The ultimate ending obtained by all seven doohickeys reveals the boss to be a perfectly ordinary cat, which is more than a match for your level 1 commoner player at that point. An epic battle of trading normal attacks ensues.

I agree with Tromack, the funny thing is that a lot of games that have character progression have upside-down learning curves. All those abilities equate to nuking monsters effortlessly. In Metroid: Other M the final dash through the hall containing every monster in the game is a cake walk thanks to the Screw Attack. The moment you score Knights of the Round, every boss in Final Fantasy 7 gets even more trivial than before. Symphony of the Night is hardest when you fight the first boss, because you have shitty weapons and no potions. It's the last boss that's actually easy, because you just chug Full Restores and swing your sword that fills the screen.

I think think Character Regression is a mechanic that could serve as far more than a one-time concept, it could be adopted pretty regularly into games and work in many situations.

[Xion]

Next, we take away the sword. So now we have to make sure that the player can avoid all enemies, instead of requiring them to kill some.

this last point seems like the kind of benefit people are talking about to a regressive system. Rather than the game being harder because your sword doesn't do as much damage to the enemies, the game is harder because you have no sword. You have to develop a whole new strategy for every single enemy encounter, including the foes that used to be super easy level-1 type creatures.

Also, for the other examples earlier in your post, you're assuming some kind of strange linear progression through the game involving new areas and the gradual stripping of every single ability. Not saying you couldn't do that but regression as a mechanic has far broader applications than that - such as repeatedly traversing the same space with diminished abilities, or not taking away every single damn ability a character has, but just a few - which ones and when depends on the game, that's where the whole role of the game designer comes in and shit. Not just algorithmically turning the player character into a paraplegic.

You could also have both progression and regression in a game, perhaps simultaneously to balance one another out, or as a kind of parabola where the player reaches their peak power at a mid-game climax and then begins losing abilities from there on out. And if you want to give them back their powers eventually don't do it before the final boss and make it a cakewalk. Make them fight the final boss crippled as they come, and give them the power-fantasy shit as a reward, using it to blast their way out of the collapsing facility or something.

It just ain't like progression has to be a linear Get Power or a linear Lose Power. Make it a rollercoaster or something.

edit: also none of that would "invert" the learning curve since you'd still have to learn how to deal with each of the situations without the abilities you once relied on. Figuring out how to get through a cracked wall without bombs is still an ability that can be obtained, just not as an item in the game but as a process in the mind of the player. You have to trick a ram enemy into charging into it, or find some other mobile explosive that isn't constantly on your character's person, or or or - these things are part of the learning experience as much as how to use any tool given the player. And, as Tromack said, knowledge isn't something that you can actively 'lose' due to processes of the game. Maybe it can become obsolete, but getting a new, more powerful sword renders your old sword obsolete as well. I see no reason why not to try changing the priority of things which are made obsolete in games - information, items, abilities, etc.

[SirNiko]

It also has occurred to me, this happens in many puzzle and strategy games.

For example, in Lemmings, the "Fun" levels are frequently the same levels as from the "Mayhem" difficulty, except the player is stripped of many of their powers in Mayhem. You must replay a level that before was easy but now is very difficult because you are very limited.

In Populous, early maps gave the player many powers and the enemy very few. As the game progressed, the player gradually has to cope with situations all over the spectrum, such as an equally powerful foe, the loss of certain useful abilities, and very unequal battles where you and your foe have entirely different power sets. The final mission leaves you almost powerless against a superior foe, forcing you to win via wits.

And Xion's point is critical, it's important for games with development (progression or regression) to feature the same situations at different power levels. When you're constantly forging forward the progression becomes pointless, since you could have easily just made monsters stronger instead. The player should encounter the same foes and obstacles as before so they can see how their strength has altered how they interact with the environment. The easiest way is to include doses of backtracking. The catch is, for a progressive game the backtracking poses no threat and becomes dull. In a regressive game, the backtracking presents a new and interesting challenge (unless the player did it 'the hard way' the first time).

I also feel like a reference to players who do Final Fantasy runs without gaining levels or beat Zelda swordless is appropriate here, but I'll let somebody else do that.

[gimymblert]

Actually any old scoring game like pacman or space invader or tetris, etc... is regressive, the more you progress the less you have option, the more clutter you get.