the anchor and the hooks

Here are two definitions:

Anchor: A structure, system, or genre very familiar to the player. It allows us to assume a certain amount of things as learned.
Hook: It’s an element that attracts the player to our game. It tends to be some kind of distinctive feature.

And how they connect:

To sell something familiar, make it surprising. To sell something surprising, make it familiar. ― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: How Things Become Popular

If the word “sell” doesn’t resonate with you, think of it as a metaphor for making what you do interesting to someone

This is where the idea of using a specific game or narrative genre comes into play.

From the “box art” of our game, the mechanics, character design, and more; using familiar elements helps the player navigate our experience.

That’s why we want to know what anchors our game has.

Design around these anchors so that the player starts from the familiar.

And let’s not be snobbish, please.

Whether we like it or not, everything we do has anchors.

And if it doesn’t, it will be confusing and discarded.

On the other hand, if what we do is a copy of something familiar, the player will hardly find it attractive.

This is where hooks come in.

We want to have the highest number of elements that are attractive to the player.

This can be a story promise, a writing style, a genre subversion that is novel. Or all of these things together.

The reason we want to be very explicit with the anchor and hooks is very simple: we are helping people understand and talk about our story.

If we can make our story have a phrase like: “It’s X but Y”

Where X is the anchor and Y are the hooks.

We make our players’ lives much easier.

This is commonly known as the “Elevator Pitch”.

This is not strict, but can be with or something similar.

Here are some examples:

Slay the Princess is a choice-driven psychological horror visual novel/dating sim with dramatic branching, light RPG elements, and hand-penciled art.

Anchor: Psychological horror visual novel/dating sim
Hook: dramatic branching, light RPG elements, hand-penciled art.

Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG that uses isometric pixel art and combines mechanics borrowed from RPGs, Visual Novels, adventure games and interactive fiction.

Anchor: text-based RPG
Hook: illustrated with isometric pixel art (since it’s text-based, this is a hook), combination of mechanics from different familiar genres.

A note:

There are more hooks in these games when you go through the descriptions, and more when you play them.

Not everything goes into the Elevator Pitch, only those that are more impactful.