Leon's Microblog – June 2018

This videogame isn't perfect and I hate that. I'm going full Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen on this. So long former friends, I'm off to Finland to sit motionless in a silent palace forever.

AS AN INCIDENTAL DATA POINT, I also committed myself to a 0 berry clear, based on a rumour it gives a different ending (it doesn't) (it's the same ending but the whole cast is disappointed in you) (which I think betrays the stated promise that berries are "just for fun" but w/e).

A lot of the lategame also felt padded… like, say, the boss fight in 6. Did it really need like twelve rooms when it's supposed to be a stunning reversal of power in favour of Madeline? Just pick the best five and move on, sheesh. 7, while fast, also should've been even faster.

Anyway… favourite world storytelling-wise was 3 (Resort), predicatable though it was. Least favourite was 5 (Temple), mainly because I wanted a bit more subtlety to it, or at least less unnecessary explanations.

This is really a compliment to how compelling the earlier storytelling was - it did feel like it was building up to a point much sharper than it was. I really want to equate this game with Scott Pilgrim, another Canadian sensation, in terms of style and execution.

The sharpest barb of disappointment is probably that Madeline's reason for specifically climbing that mountain wasn't really there – because I feel most of the symbolism of this mountain, to both her, her depression and Shadowline, was just left on the table.

Not to say that SNES platformers like Kirby Super Star necessarily pale in comparison to a Kirby 64 (whose environment design, while decent, isn't quite in Super Star's league) but it's easy to see how much, say, Robobot's very good world design is also helped by its camera.

I feel like an equivalent Ultima ending can't really exist in a videogame as long as the software enforces every one of its rules. Even stepping out of the software, editing a save file or whatnot, still feels like you're bypassing or hornswoggling a machine.

The fact that it is a physical game, literally a book, means that its rules are only enforced by the player themself, which makes the act of cheating an act of resisting only yourself – which I feel makes it very different to videogame "cheats".

floating islands minor eyesore but uniform blue crystal undersides suggesting source of flight is great economic worldbuilding coupled with blue crystal on main platform itself; sky otherwise unbroken and soothingly coloured. OVERALL: 2/2, "THANK GOD (IT BEATS WII U BY A LOT)"

background worldbuilding STRONG; ocean-draining tiered waterfalls striking, as is ice pillars jutting from water in unnatural angles; vaguely Eastern-European buildings clustered on islands with foliage to offset grayness; flocks of magenta birds give AMAZING colour contrast;

ugly broken Gothic masonry is at MINIMUM; different-sized arches not too distracting; foliage and water could be bigger but both sorely absent from Wii U; tiny lotus pool a brilliant touch; lack of trees made up for by high horizon line and unobtrusive, wide scenery;

(Some might argue that we already have this kind of game, and it's called a Metroidvania - its intermittent stream of quality-of-life items selectively eliminating limitation after limitation as the game goes on.)

I imagine that an array of puzzles that take the same or similar obstacle elements, and show how they are trivialised or transformed in varying ways by different "power" elements, like how roguelikes' levels are transformed by their power items, would make a compelling game.

There isn't really much combinatorial hay to be made from Spelunky's jetpack - it's fairly obvious how it changes things - but the feeling of gradually realising how many deeply-ingrained limitations it lets you suddenly ignore is what makes it so striking.

I often think of roguelikes' "power items". These are rare items that drastically change the run, and cast a shadow over the next run when they're gone. Think of Spelunky's jetpack, or a strong Isaac item. There's often many of them, and each dominates the run in a different way.

That wouldn't even necessarily mean "wasting" deep puzzle elements on shallow introductory puzzles. I think what defines an introductory puzzle's solution is that it reveals *power* inherent in the puzzle's elements, and shallow things can be powerful.

Do I feel that entire games of just "simple" introductory puzzles should be made… even if the game is puzzle-driven? I think you could make a game where every puzzle is as impactful as an introductory puzzle, where every solution was revelatory.

I actually think the complexity of a puzzle negatively impacts its overall memorability, and that only the solution's narrative meaning or aesthetic meaning (such as its ironic simplicity) counteracts this relation.

Their hardest and latest puzzles, conversely, often require "painting the corners" of the game's mechanical possibility space – they Finish The Game, but the player usually isn't really emotionally invested in complex corner-cases, and often can scarcely remember them afterward.

Even puzzle-driven games' introductory puzzles are often more compelling than their hardest puzzles, because of how much they reveal in one flourish. The very first Braid puzzle that you solve by just rewinding, or the first time you use portals in Portal to cross a wide gap.

Adventure games also have "climax puzzles" at their ends, puzzles where you /know/ what the solution is the moment you see it, because the entire plot has been priming you for this moment. Far from being "trivial", the mere fact of their easiness is what makes them feel powerful.

The majority of adventure games' puzzles are just that – enclosures where you only have one or two interactive elements, only one combination of which makes sense, but the act of performing the solution creates the entire scene, reveals the plot as written.

The surprise for me is not just that they were revisited at all, but that they were even in Rondo Of Blood back in 1993 in the first place, given how modern they feel, how much they counter the standard stage-based action game intuitions of the era.

A lot of people probably found them disappointing, but I personally think they're brilliant, giving the end of the fight a much more dramatic climax than just the usual long-winded non-interactive death animation, WITHOUT ruining the drama by letting the player lose.

In the original, these had no real purpose except to A) add further characterisation and theatrics to the boss, B) engineer tense "close calls" for the player on first playthrough, and C) reduce the end-of-level life bonus. In Curse Of The Moon, the third one doesn't even exist.

It's ALSO absolutely not an inferior path through the game. I think these sorts of alternative payoffs should be introduced using a puzzle or action level that CANNOT be solved, where it is the only canonical path, solely to emphasise this.

There are only 4 known kinds of non-linear game narratives: Choose-your-own-adventure graph Open-ended simulation Pile of found-footage documents with no obvious ending Futuristic storytelling AI improvises the entire story live, to exactly your tastes

To be clear, "don't worry about it" doesn't mean to not worry about a non-plot that has Mario run around for 3 hours with no other interpersonal interactions, but to not worry that because the aforementioned story can depict dozens of block types, better stories cannot.

Of course, something like a 50-level puzzle game fixates on these mechanics for far longer than a heist story ever would… well, any story that's dozens of chapters long surely must have a narrative structure that gives those chapters meaning, or else why would they exist?

This question is asking "how do I make a human story from a game about platforms, timer switches and powerups" but I think about how, say, a heist story can be human despite being about the mechanics of safes, laser sensors, elevators, etc.

I think an untapped vein here is recognising that actually dropping a counterspell is also a moment of sheer vulnerability; they're said to often be far more valuable in the hand than out.

This just reminded me of that playing-card game which is predicated on playing cards facedown as if they were other cards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheat_%28game%29 I hope there's a CCG that makes constant bluffing a core mechanic to this extent.

I'm assuming there are CCGs out there where that isn't the case, where the rules state that you /could/ search your deck for an illegal card type, and your opponent can bet some resource to challenge you if they suspect ill-doing (and can punish you if correct).

What 3D World taught me is that if Nintendo finally applied the full Mario Sports Roster formula to a full-fleshed platformer – we're talking eight to twelve characters, with both Peach AND Bowser – they'd finally be representing the series in a unified, consistent fashion.

Why does this MarioWiki screenshot look like a meme

At this point, setting games in an increasingly formless Mushroom Kingdom, much like the "rescue Peach" plot, only communicates how little the games care about whether the levels and worlds mean anything at all, whether anything in the game matters if it's all interchangeable.

One more thing: this game's worlds may lack a cohesive identity but I do really appreciate that the entire game is set in "the Sprixie Kingdom" with its own inhabitants who have their own overworld houses, instead of just the Mushroom Kingdom again for a sixth game in a row.

I'd probably be less hard on this if it was ever more than just the same animations every time, but it never is – not in the Galaxys, not in the New SMBs, not in these 3D games. Just hundreds and hundreds of squandered seconds.

Another disappointment I forgot: the notification bloat when you finish a level – a bane of the series since Galaxy, comparable to the battle transition bloat in Pokémon from gen 3 on – isn't improved here, with star and time tallies, map screen flags popping, and so on.

(I should mention as an extra point of dark humour that even after disabling both security protections in my browser, the article's embedded videos use Flash.)

I tried to read the Iwata Asks page for this game and it failed to AJAX any of the actual article text because A) all the JS files are blocked because their URLs are HTTP, and B) the main JS file contains hard references to a third-party tracker that my adblocker blocks.

The sheer amount of items and effects that can plausibly come out of, or even be made from, a ?-block in this game compared to basically any past installment means that it's finally living up to the promise of surprise and wonder that the ? mark always suggested.

IF MARIO IS MUSHROOM THEMED WHY ISN'T IT CALLED CHAMPIGNON'S ROAD

*plays this stage* 3D World please just @ me next time http://youtu.be/wsoKoiSoBQc

I can understand, in that the more versatile tanooki theme let them make enemies with tail-whips and/or floating and/or transforming, while the cat power just offers pounces, scratches and wall-climbs, with the latter two requiring existing limbs… but it's still a regression.

(Planeswalker cards are creature-ish cards that have "loyalty" as a flavourful kind of HP, and can only cast one of a selection of spells per turn that either gain or spend loyalty.)

Sans ① Legendary Planeswalker - Sans (1) +1: Whenever damage is done to Sans until your next turn, you may slide Sans out of the battlefield, then slide him back. If you do, prevent that damage. 0: Nothing happens. -1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1: Your next beginning-of-combat step can't end.

This is really the big thing that holds this game back – its identity is mostly just "3D Land continued", just another set of 3D Land's "worlds" that were just spinning level icons in menus.

It's honestly a real shame, because the levels' environments would be quite compelling if they had even any mutually-provided context whatsoever. Even the New SMB games are better than this, and their levels are very boring visually.

I mean, think of world 7 in SMB3, or Forest of Illusion in SMW: every level in those contributed to their themes, both environmental (piranhas/forest) and mechanical (pipes/mazes). Here, there's desert levels in the castle world and beach levels in the ice world, etc.

I'll admit I'm rather disappointed at how this game continues the trend of aimless, ill-focused worlds – level themes and environments scattered arbitrarily through the game, possibly to adhere to a strict difficulty curve, instead of suggesting some sense of place.

Favourite enemy so far are those blank-staring rats that run against treadmills and automatically jump over obstacles that the player needs to as well – I'm headcanoning them as this kingdom's humbler, more canny counterpart to goombas.

Yeesh, the way this game fleshes out the Mystery Box timer rooms from 3D Land is incredible. The ones in 3D Land were forgettable puff; these ones are like supercharged DKC2 bonus levels (one of the few things this game does faster than those from the SNES era).

On Captain Toad: while ostensibly in the same role from Galaxy of comic-relief parallel-journey character, his presence then was too incidental and far-between (more a fault of Galaxy's ugly pacing) to give him much impact. I like how this game uses him in comparison.

Even minor things like the soccer balls and baseballs that you can kick - both part of the cat theming, and also clever indication that these objects are kickable and throwable - provide a bit of extra whimsy. (I'm reminded of the work done by Sunshine's kickable durians.)

I appreciate how often this game offers varied objects to pick up and throw, and varied objects to wear – there's a world of life and meaning separating an ice level, and an ice level where you can grab a snowball or jump into an ice skate.

W-what's this? Are you saying that *I* created 3D World? Well, I never…

About the Cat Suit: in 3D Land the conflict between its slow-run small-jump platforming and the Tanooki Tail meant its signature ability (flight) was cut; this suit wisely replaces flight with wall-climbs, which allow similarly grand ascent but can't arbitrarily replace jumping.

Five levels in and we get a Bowser's Castle level filled with sparkling ocean water instead of lava. It's one of this and Odyssey's big breakaways from the legacy of SM64: asking "what if Mario games didn't /always/ look like constant blaring flat colours"

The best part is that it takes the shell's original SMB1 utility - ploughing forward through enemies - and lets you choose the risk: getting hit by the shell vs falling in a pit in the shell. A bonus in environmental versatility for next to nothing.

One level in and already there's a great mechanic using existing Mario elements: grab a shell, then duck to ride inside the shell. It's like the New SMB powerup but without eating a powerup slot, and it's like SM64 shell-riding but the original shell mechanics are still there.