Menu Fatigue

The specific exhaustion caused by navigating deep, repetitive menu structures, crafting trees, inventory management, skill allocation, that pulls players out of gameplay flow repeatedly.

In games, this means

A crafting game that requires players to open four nested menus to combine two items, repeated dozens of times per session, produces menu fatigue regardless of how well each individual menu is designed. The cumulative interruption collapses flow state and turns systems into chores. The fix is reducing menu depth, adding quick-access shortcuts, and asking whether any given menu interaction can be replaced with direct world interaction instead.