Metroidvania: A Comparison of Context and Design Implication

November 18th, 2010

“Metroidvania” is a stupid word for a wonderful thing. It’s basically a really terrible neologism that describes a videogame genre which combines 2D side-scrolling action with free-roaming exploration and progressive skill and item collection to enable further, uh, progress. As in Metroid and Koji Igarashi-developed Castlevania games. Thus the name.

Jeremy Parish on Metroidvania.

Metroid and Castlevania share a collection of remarkably similar mechanics and design elements which have lead to the term that I reference above, Metroidvania. The pair are similar games mechanically, but are covered in very different contextual wrappers. One franchise is a series of isolated space adventures, the other chronicles a family’s fight against the dark lord Dracula. There are many ramifications in the design that are born out of contextual necessity, leading into the core of these two games and driving a fork between them. Before we get to that though, let’s make a list of the basic properties at the heart of this pseudo genre.

Castlevania tends to fluctuate iteration to iteration in regards to the ability and combat systems (Tactical Souls system, Glyph system etc.), but otherwise these elements remain fixed.

Differences

I’ve split the contextual differences into a range of key categories noting each game’s contextual obligation and then a summary of the differences in design that have arisen from it. As a clarification on what exactly I’m trying to get at, here is an excerpt of conversation that I recently had with blogging buddy Richard Terrell on the matter:

I don’t think that all of my examples have strong influences on the design (and you can tell as I didn’t back them up with examples). Rather I highlighted contextual constraints and then theorised a bit over what this means for the designing of the game. So, there’s not always a clear thread between what I say and what’s in the game, but instead there’s a connection between what I say and something the designers probably had to consider

Subsections

(Subsections are the areas branching off the main map, ie castle gardens, Tourian, Norfair)

Castlevania

Metroid

Outcome: Metroid games have a great deal of flexibility in the theme governing each subsection as the alien world context is quite broad. Nintendo do stick to a familiar elemental theme though as it’s a clean way to classify worlds and forms for interaction (lava crust platforms, destroying overgrowth).

In Castlevania there is relatively less freedom as the design of all subsections are limited to whatever constitutes a room in a castle. Players can therefore expect familiar room types to be present in every game, like the gardens, library and clock tower. Extending creativity beyond these constraints would only damage the credibility of the context. In order to avoid this inherent limitation, Portrait of Ruin introduced paintings that transport the player to different areas and Order of Ecclesia expanded the game out from Dracula’s castle to a fully realised world map system.

Abilities

Castlevania

Metroid

Outcome: Samus has more abilities than her counterparts in the Castlevania series as there is only a finite number of upgrades that can be added to a human character before they essentially become less and less human. On the other hand, a powersuit exists inside the realm of science fiction which grants Samus a wide range of abilities from beams to morphballs and grapples.

If considered realistically, it’s quite strange that the protagonists in the Castlevania games can walk on water, float in mid-air and use their heads to bash through walls. There’s certainly an element of the supernatural appropriate to the horror context. The transformation mechanics, where the player takes the role of a various creatures, also draws on this part of the context.

Stringing

(Stringing is how the games draw the player from one area to another).

Castlevania

Metroid

Outcome: Castlevania is varied in how it uses inventory and abilities to lead players to the next part of gameplay, however inventory items aren’t nearly as effective as new play mechanics when it comes to creating the “click” for players to follow. In Metroid, the player is only ever strung along by the interactions made possible through the powersuit. These interactions are embedded into the environment in the form of hazards and unreachable areas which make perfect sense given the volatile alien landscape. So, where Castlevania games often have a more limited primary ability set and thereby rely on more peripheral elements like inventory or character transformations to string players throughout the game world, all stringing in Metroid is accomplished through the interactivity granted by the powersuit. For the player it’s much easier to understand something through their own actions as opposed to static objects in a menu (keys and whatnot). This comparison is like comparing learning through reading a book as opposed to learning by doing.

Preventative Measures

Castlevania

Metroid

Outcome: We can see again that Castlevania uses a series of devices (magical barriers and environmental conditions) which work against the interactivity of the primary mechanics. In Metroid, almost all measures holding the player back (environmental obstacles such as heat pressure, underwater mobility, damaged landscape, large chasms) can be cleared by using the primary mechanics. Because Castlevania games have so few of these (player abilities), other, less interactive, means stand in as substitutes.

Land Formation

Castlevania

Metroid

Outcome: The majority of rooms in Castlevania games are fixed box shapes comprising the architecture of the castle. There are also common architectural elements in all Castlevania games, such as the staircase to the top of the castle and the clock towers. In Metroid, there are no geographic limitations to abide by besides a single room that has an open roof for Samus to lower her ship down into and save stations.

Enemies

Castlevania

Metroid

Outcome: Generally speaking, Metroid‘s enemies are more naturally suited to the landscapes because the creatures are contextually bound to the landscape. So, bats will live in caverns, creatures that live in firey areas can spit lava, obscure-looking enemies live in the dark world etc. The contextual connection in Castlevania isn’t as rigid. Enemies only need to abide by Dracula, mythology and horror contexts as well as the context of the respective room they’re situated in (evil dolls in a doll house, for example). This implication makes the enemies in Castlevania feel more like foreground elements, guests that have made their way into the castle and not regular members of it.

Protagonists

Castlevania

Metroid

Outcome: The Metroid games must figure out new and inexplicably less believable reasons to rob Samus of all her gear at the beginning of the game. While Castlevania games can start anew with each entry and significantly change elements of the context (time period, character’s gender, backstory etc). Castlevania‘s narrative is something of a family legacy, where the story of Samus is a legend.

Conclusion

The comparison above highlights the way context dictates game design. Also clearly build a case against some of Castlevania‘s design decisions. This I wanted to intentionally explicate on as these properties were a sticking point throughout my recent playthroughs of Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow. As a critical player of these two franchises, it’s the differences which stand out to me more than anything else. That is, what Castlevania does to Super Metroid is more apparent than the fact that Koji Igarashi-developed Castlevania games are Super Metroid variants. While I do criticise the series here, I do thoroughly enjoy these games. It’s just that they’re markedly inferior to the Metroid games.

I can’t go without recommending Gametrailers’ excellent Castlevania retrospective. The folks at GT to a killer job with these features, with lots of background research and good production values. Also stay tuned as I have a stack of Castlevania games which I haven’t yet played in my collection, so expect more analysis on this series in the future.

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Modes of Play in Puzzle Quest

November 14th, 2010

In my past article Puzzle Quest – Variation, Lastability and Repair, I diagnosed the problem with Puzzle Quest‘s lack of variation as:

“The main problem is that progress in Puzzle Quest is tied to the underlying system of abstraction (player statistics, equipment, companions) and not the core rules of the game (a modification of Bejewelled). Therefore, while the numbers change, the core gameplay remains largely the same throughout the entire experience. This is all compounded by the fact that every quest is invariably a battle; the same battle played over and over again with only mild statistical variation.”

And suggested that this issue can be overcome if Puzzle Quest were to use a model of variation similar to puzzle games where the conditions governing play are altered as to change the way the player uses the primary mechanics. In puzzle games, these are often referred to as play modes (standard, survival, etc). If Puzzle Quest‘s quests comprised of a series of modes instead of the one mode that it has (matching skull gems to deplete opponent’s HP which I will dub “battle mode”), then the game would be significantly more interesting to players.

Alternative modes can be created by adding or altering the key elements of play. The screenshot below presents the “competitive Bejewelled” elements nicely:

Below are my propositions for alternative quest formats that could be added alongside typical battles to diversify the “competitive Bejewelled” gameplay.

Time Defence

This could be set under the pretense that your kingdom is being attacked by rival armies. This mode follows the rule of “battle mode”, but introduces a time limit which runs down as the participants are taking their turns. When the time is up, the player with the least HP retreats from the battle (so as to save what’s left of their weakened army). In order to stop players from drawing the first attack and then waiting for the timer to expire, both participants will gradually take damage from crossfire. Namely the player will take the grunt of the crossfire in respects to an AI opposition as to fully prevent the player from exploiting the “wait and wither” tactic once they’ve taken a sizable chunk of HP out of their opponent.

The limitation set by the timer creates gives more value to advanced spells which take longer to build up and therefore creates a stronger risk/reward dynamic strategies which have short term and long term benefit.

Hand-to-Hand

Hand-to-hand battles is “battle mode” stripped of all abstraction. Both opponents take a fixed amount of damage based on their 3-gem matches, spells cannot be cast and the number of skulls that generate randomly increase with every turn (as to build to a climax). This mode simulates a real hand-to-hand battle in “competitive Bejewelled” and concentrates the players focus on matching skulls and nothing else.

Mana Climb

Players are stripping an area of mana dry and need to fill a majority quota of mana before their opponent. Matching skulls will take mana away from the other player. This mode is an inversion of the “battle mode”, but in effect allows healing (the inverse of damaging the opponent).

Armour Removal

When battling an opponent with very thick armour, the player must first break the armour by making matches of 4 or more. Any matches less than 4 gems do not take any damage off. Once the player breaks the armour, then the battle resumes as normal. These matches would be a little tougher as the opposition can take pot shots at the player while they’re chipping away at their opponent’s armour. There’s a precedence then to quickly make matches of 4. When the armour is in play, experience and money gems could be disabled as to speed up the game.

Bomb Assault

Bomb gems are added to the board, each bomb is given a number which indicates the number of turns until the bomb explodes. When a bomb explodes, it damages the combatant who is in relative proximity. The closer the bomb is to a combatant, the greater damage sustained from the explosion. Since the board is 8 gems wide, there is no safe area for a bomb to go off. The player must therefore try to make combinations that will move the bombs away from themselves and to the opposite side of the board.

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Puzzle Quest, Bejewelled, Limitations and Repair

November 11th, 2010

After I had more or less written my article on Puzzle Quest and variation, I shared my ideas with Richard Terrell who tipped me off to another element of the game which left a strong impression on me. To quote what he said: “Bejeweled is a weak puzzle game because the highest level you can play is very close to the first tactics/strategies you come up with” and later “You make matches on the screen. The bigger the match, the more random gems fall. Because no one can guess the random gems, you’re left to only work with what you see.”.

(As a further impediment to Puzzle Quest, when taking on higher level opponents, it appears that the AI is aware of the random gems and strategises around it, so as to line up large cascades (in-game term referring to matches that drop into place) and award themselves extra turns.

Richard challenged me to think of a solution to this tricky design limitation and this is the best I’ve got:

To remove the randomness of the drops and allow for higher level play, the player ought to see the “off-screen” gems-so why not just reveal it, but not let the player interact with these gems? It makes sense that the revealed, non-interactive part of the board should be 5 gems tall as this is as much as can be cleared vertically in a single go.

My solution also creates other issues though. 5 gems of vertical height is more than half the height of the board. How can this much information be contained on the screen without squishing the board? Also, only revealing 5 gems ahead would only extend the level of play to possibly to 2-3 turns ahead. What if the player is planning even more moves ahead, looking to capitalise on the extra turn granted from a 4-5 gem match or by lining up several strings of cascades (very high level play). I have an interface solution for this as well.

Instead of treating the board as something immobile, add scroll buttons or bars to the right side of the board and allow the player to freely peek at the gems cued up. Interface-wise, this would already fit in fine with the PC version which has its own minimising, maximising and close buttons taken from PC applications. A logical limit for how many rows of gems the player can view would need to be set also. In the DS version, the player could switch between a view of cued gems and the statistics menu in-game.

This solution fixes the random element of play which can become particularly frustrating at times, while also allowing for higher level play. Something that I’m not so sure on is whether gems that are not on the board should count for matches on the board. Hmmmm… back to you Richard. ^_^

Keep reading for my suggestions on alternative quest modes!

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