DECONSTRUCTING #008: Dead Cells - Or How to Get Inspired the Right Way

INTRO

Working in a creative field it is almost impossible not to be influenced by the works done before. We all have our favourite games, movies, books, TV series, you name it. On top of that we all feel more or less nostalgic for something we enjoyed countless hours as youngsters. Those things often play as a blueprint for what we’re trying to create, some more and some less than others, but they’re still there, lurking in the subconscious mind.

Game development particularly, is a media where influences are very clearly there as the inspiration. In some games it might be just some little thing from the dev’s favourite game, not even that clear to most players. In some the source of inspiration might be way more obvious and some games could even be considered as remixes or sequels which were never made (“a spiritual successor”) of/for some older game. Many devs try to create their version of their favourite thing or things, or something they saw the potential falling short, molding it as something they always wanted it to be or thought it should have evolved into.

Like in any entertainment media, games are also mashing up different “genre specific” things. And what not a better way to add something old and something new into the mix, than mashing up different features, which usually are considered being just in some particular genre. And by this way create something that can well stand as its own entity.

Enter the Dead Cells, a game me and my few friends have been playing a LOT lately. Dead Cells is one of those games which clearly has got a quite an amount of inspiration from not only one, but few games. And by saying this, I am by NO means criticizing the dev, Motion Twin, no. This is a song of praise, for a dev who really did understand what they took and what to mix it with in order to create something special. Like a Michelin star rated restaurant chef, who knows what some spices add into the dish, how they work together and what it needs as a main ingredient to be the masterpiece dish.

In this article I’ll be analyzing (as well as speculating) the things I see as Dead Cells’ main sources of inspiration – Rogue Legacy, Roguelikes and Castlevania/Metroid-combo. I’ll be deconstructing how Motion Twin used those inspirations in order to create something of their own, a true masterpiece of gamedesign, as well as pushing the current buzzword , “roguevania”, forward, as something we might need to actually start thinking as a legit sub-genre (note: many people already think that).

DECONSTRUCTING #007: Making Mario levels for a little kid – notes and observations, PART 1

INTRO

When I first heard, that Nintendo is about to release the Super Mario Maker for 3DS [SMM for now on], I was instantly super hyped. The reason was, that I’ve been lately playing all kinds of platformers on 3DS/2DS with my 4 year old daughter, especially Mario games. This announcement sounded like a golden opportunity to swat two flies with one strike – quality gaming time with my kid and trying to learn the craft of level design at the same time. For this game I happen to have the perfect audience right at my home AND the timing of the release just couldn’t be better.

I instantly started to think about how I could make enjoyable levels for a 4 year old, or for younger kids in general. While playing with my kid, I’ve noticed, that many games, that aren’t so called “games for kids”, start with great levels suitable for little players, BUT the difficulty spike goes wildly up (for a little kid that is), usually after the first world, at the latest after the second. This creates often a situation, where a little player plays the same few levels over and over again, but they still would like to see the game further.

I wanted to start to study that part before the spike – what makes some levels so well suitable for little kids, that they want to play them all over again. And what better way to do that, than actually get one’s own hands dirty. Of course this quickly lead to an idea, that this could be a good opportunity to make an article, which is not “only” about analyzing (the work of others), but also actually DOING level design and present those results. Naturally it also came as an opportunity to study how a young player learns the tricks and all the things an adult level designer has added… or how those things are missed.

Without further ado, let me present the notes of the process. I hope you, the reader, will get something out of this: an inspiration, tips for what to do and not to do, a food for thought etc.

DECONSTRUCTING #006: How Resogun made the visual mayhem work?

INTRO

I believe it’s very clear to everyone who has played Housemarque’s Resogun, that is has a lot of huge explosions, tons of effects, mobs of enemies, all kinds of particles flying in every direction, humans to rescue and massive amount of bullets, sometimes all of them on the screen at the same time. I also believe, that the same crowd feels, that it is a game that, despite all of this mayhem thrown on our retinas, super-rarely suffers from an un-clear presentation – it is always clear where the projectiles are, where the enemies are and where your ship is. But how was this achieved?

NOTE: I do work at Housemarque, BUT I was not part of the Resogun team. At that time I was 100% bound to Alienation, which was developed at the same time. This little fact made this article quite an interesting, if not a bit intimidating one to write, as I’m actually analyzing my colleagues’ work here, without consulting any of the people involved in the development at the time I was studying the subject. I hope this is as interesting one to read as it was to write and study.

DECONSTRUCTING #005: A Study On Modern Gamepad Controls

INTRO

Gamepads have been around for ages. The basic concept, directional control for the left thumb and action control or secondary movement  for the right thumb, a convention, that is pretty much still being the standard, was nailed already back in 1982 by Nintendo (more specifically by a gentleman called Gunpei Yokoi) with its Game & Watch game, Donkey Kong (bragging alert: a game system I actually happen to own, bought back in 1985 or something, still in working condition! J ).

It's amazing how far ahead of its time this little device was and how influential standards it set.

DECONSTRUCTING #004: Interconnected core design in ADOM and Rocket League, PART 2 of 2

DECONSTRUCTING: Interconnected core design in ADOM and Rocket League, part 2 of 2

Here's the second part of my two piece interconnected design article. Without further ado, let's dive right into the business.

CASE ROCKET LEAGUE

The more I’ve thought about Rocket League’s design, the more I’ve started to think, that it is simply a design masterpiece. I personally think huge part of the reason for this lies, like the title suggests, in the interconnections: it’s a sum of many different core design features, that ALL compliment, one way or another, the end result and some or all the other features. But Rocket League is a bit more complicated in its interconnections than ADOM (part 1 of this article duo), though the principle is still the same. Rocket League is just more like a spider’s web, where the end result (the actual game) is the spider feeling all the threads in its legs. It is unbelievably well balanced in this sense, how all the elements live together in a complex beautiful harmony, helping each other to reach out their full potential.

And just like in spider’s web, in Rocket League’s case the features aren’t as strictly dependent of each other as in ADOM’s case – remove one thread and the game would probably still work, although depending of a feature, more or less likely not as well as it could, if the “web” would be whole.

DECONSTRUCTING #003: Interconnected core design in ADOM and Rocket League, PART 1 of 2

DECONSTRUCTING: Interconnected core design in ADOM and Rocket League, part 1 of 2

INTRO

This time I wrote about a one solution to a meaningful hi-level design – interconnecting core design features. I’ll use two games as examples, which are very current at the moment AND which I’ve been, “surprise, surprise” playing a LOT, and thus once again thinking a lot of. These two games are ADOM (aka Ancient Domains of Mystery), which just recently debuted in Steam, and a “little” phenomena called Rocket League. But there is also a bigger reason for choosing these exact two games: they both share, even though representing a whole different style of games, one distinct feature. They both have executed masterfully the interconnection of their main core design features, which all perfectly contribute to the end result as well as complimenting other core features, creating a very meaningful design.

In sake of pure reading pleasure and my limited free time, I decided to chop the article in two parts, this being naturally the first part.

DECONSTRUCTING #002: Level Design Construction of Odallus: The Dark Call

DECONSTRUCTING: Level Design Construction of Odallus: The Dark Call

INTRO

Odallus: The Dark Call (referred as Odallus from now on) is one of my favourite games of late. Like Joymasher’s previous game, Oniken, it’s a true homage – a love letter – to the action platformers of the golden era of the genre, the 8-bit home console/computer era. It has a great gameplay and all around level design, but what really reeled me in, was the high level part of their level design, the way they constructed the main progression in their game.

NOTE: This article has mild spoilers. Nothing, that I personally think will ruin the game for anyone, but still, it’s something I’d like to mention before anyone reads further.