Category: Platformer

Posted on

Game Ramblings #44 – Runbow Pocket

More Info from 13am Games

  • Genre: Platformer/Racing
  • Platform: New 3DS
  • Also Available On: Wii U, Windows, Xbox One

This is a strange one in a lot of ways.  Runbow is the second retail title I’ve seen (and own) in the US that is specifically New Nintendo 2DS/3DS exclusive.  Despite platformers being entirely dependent on good physics, the weak physics also ended up being something I could ignore because the core mechanics of the game were simply good enough to ignore the problems I was running into.  The short format of the levels also ended up being a significant draw to playing this in a portable fashion.

I suppose it’s worth getting the physics problems out of the way because it really is the main drawback of some of their design decisions.  Jumping itself is generally pretty stiff, and while it’s predictable, doesn’t have the same smooth variable feel that a lot of better 2D platformers end up having.  Because of this, I was becoming more dependent on overcompensating my jumps, then air dashing to adjust my landing positions if I under or overjumped my intended landing area.  However, dashes in general have an awkward pause at the end of the action.  While this wasn’t generally a problem, the inherent core idea of getting to the end of the level as fast as possible is negatively impacted by the loss of momentum, even just from a feel perspective.  The act of landing on platforms also had some issues.  I was never really able to pinpoint whether it was the small size of the screen or simply a game feature, but it felt like platforms had some amount of magnetism if you were “close enough” to landing on the edge of one.   This combined with the stiff jump meant I was second guessing a lot of precise jumps that were over more significant gaps.  For most platformers, this would all combine to be the death of the game, but luckily the core mechanics of the level progression were good enough to let me ignore a lot of this.

From a high level the core mechanic across the entire game is that the platforms, traps, and in some cases shields around enemies in the foreground and the level’s background are made up of a handful of primaryish colors.  If they match, the platform effectively disappears.  This right there is what elevates the game to something fantastic, and the amount of depth that the devs pulled out of a seemingly simple idea surprises throughout.  Each level has some way of playing off this system to actively change what things can be collided with.  This can run the gamut from the entire background changing in rhythm with the music to waterfalls of flowing color to shapes moving across the scene seemingly at random.  You’re simply dropped in and given a few seconds at the start to figure out what’s going on and react to it so you don’t lose time running through.

The format also worked fantastically as a portable experience.  The longest levels typically hit goal times around 1:15 or so, but were typically only in boss levels.  Most standard levels fit into the 20-40 second range.  The idea of grabbing my 3DS, hitting a couple levels while waiting on something, then putting it away has always been a draw of the platform, and this fits the bill nicely.  The fact that there’s a ton of content (nearly 200 levels in just the core game) means that I can be poking at this for a long time, even ignoring the replayability of going for low times across all levels.

This is definitely a bit of a unicorn.  It’s a New 3DS exclusive, a platformer with awkward physics that I didn’t hate, a game experience suited for portables that shipped last on a portable, and despite it all is a fantastic time to play.  A lot of that goes into a great style that is wrapped directly into the core mechanics of the game, giving a lot of mileage to what is at the surface a really simple idea.

Posted on

Game Ramblings #41 – Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

More Info from Yacht Club Games

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: Vita
  • Also Available On: Windows, Linux, OS X, PS3, PS4, Wii U, 3DS, Xbox One, Fire TV

TL;DR

  • As mechanically tight and satisfying as the original Shovel of Hope campaign.
  • Fills a neat void as a prequel story to the original campaign.  Gives a lot of great backstory to one of the original bosses.
  • Changes to core mechanics greatly benefit traversal-based puzzle solving and bring a nice twist to combat.

Let’s get this out of the way.  If you’ve never played Shovel Knight, go grab the original campaign right now.  It’s one of the greatest examples in the past few years of a mechanically solid 2D platformer, regardless of the fact that it then goes even further and solidly represents an 8-bit style to great effect.  Specter of Torment is now the third campaign under the Shovel Knight umbrella, covering the prequel backstory to the Specter Knight boss from the original.  It brings some interesting mechanics with the change in weapon that really benefit the expansion overall.

The big obvious change here is that you’ve got a scythe instead of a shovel.  This has some pretty big ramifications to both combat and traversal.  Straight away the shovel bounce is replaced by a lock-on melee dash used for both traversal and combat.  For traversal, this ends up giving a lot more interesting and challenging traversal options.  Enemies, obstacles, and projectiles can all be used as traversal targets, meaning that entire rooms can be traversed without touching the floor.  This is used extremely effectively in getting the Specter through auto scrolling segments where falling down would mean death.  There’s also entire runs through boss fights where I would combo dashes the entire time without touching the ground.  While the original campaign was pretty quick paced, Specter had an entirely higher level of speed, and greatly benefited from this change.  While this will feel pretty immediately familiar to players of the original, at this point I’m leaning towards a greater enjoyment of this expansion purely because everything feels so fast.  It’s one of the best feelings a game can bring when I sit there comboing enemies while juggling them in the air, and it’s rare to see a game nail it so well.

Because of the emphasis on speed over safety, the items that are earned throughout the campaign also play into this.  Rather than being generally offense focused, a lot of the items are generally interesting helper items.  There’s a healing item that allows you to take greater risks and focus more on slash combos over a defensive play style.  There’s a hover item that lets you stay in the air to extend combos or get to a platform out of reach.  There are items that spawn a secondary clone of the Specter, as well as one that spawns a projectile firing skeleton.  In general, the items are used to effectively extend the speed focus on combat, rather than being used as purely secondary weapons, and all play into making sure the speed of encounters is kept as high as possible.

Overall this was a pretty solid expansion that I think ends up surpassing the original from a pure gameplay perspective.  Like Plague of Shadows, it’s also a nice touch to see the backstory to one of the original bosses, and give them more life than simply being a target of the Shovel Knight.  Given development of these campaigns seems to be continuing, with the King Knight’s campaign being up next, the Shovel Knight as a platform seems to have a lot of life.  We’ve now got three campaigns that all play fairly differently, and Specter of Torment shows to me that they are only improving as they go along.

Posted on

Game Ramblings #39 – The Swapper

More Info from Facepalm Games

  • Genre: Puzzle/Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows/Mac/Linux PC (Steam, GOG), PS3, Vita, Wii U, Xbox One

TL;DR

  • Fantastically well crafted puzzle/metroidvania style game
  • Interesting sci-fi driven story presented with a light touch, invites players to connect a lot of dots on their own
  • Great visual style based on a unique clay-model construction

The Swapper at its core is a game that derives straight from its title.  You play a lost explorer that finds a tool allowing them to create and swap with exact clones of themselves.  This is wrapped in a set of pretty simple mechanics and a Metroidvania-esque traversal that expand out into a huge amount of puzzle depth.  This is combined with some good visuals, and a simple but effective audio backing to create a really fantastic game.

When dealing with a puzzle game, the obvious question is whether or not the mechanics work to create interesting puzzles, and in this case, the answer is a resounding yes.  The swapper tool that the player has can only spawn new clones (to a limit of player + 4 clones) and shoot a projectile to swap to a clone.  Clones then all follow the same inputs that the main player character is doing, moving as a largely controlled herd.  However, the lighting in the levels can disable these abilities; blue lights disable clone creation, red lights disable swap projectiles, and purple disables both.  On its own, these combine to slowly ease you into the gameplay, with some of the early puzzles being some clever mix, with the player creating and moving around to platforms that are out of reach of just plain jumping.

One of the first things I noticed when I got the tool is that when I was creating clones, the game would go into a super slo-mo state.  At first this didn’t make much sense to me, until the puzzles started requiring multiple swaps in mid-air, then it became another fantastically fun ability to use.  Later puzzles started introducing gravity manipulation and pressure pads, mixing all of them together into rooms where the control of your clone herd became the ultimate goal.  By the end of the game, the puzzles were becoming a devious mix of creating clones, warping between them, and finding ways to either recombine with or kill clones in order to keep up completion of the puzzles.

The puzzles are backed by a really strong visual style.  One of the things that brought this game so much acclaim was that they quite literally created clay models for their source art, and that’s very apparent while playing.  The lighting they used was typically extremely dark, allowing for a great use of a flashlight to lead the path in hallways, then the strong colored lighting for puzzle mechanics.  I’ve thrown just a few screenshots I took below to give an idea of what the game looked like, though it certainly looks even better in motion.

It’s also worth noting that this has one of the more hilariously fucked up story endings I’ve ever played.

Story Spoiler

Given the core gameplay concept, it’s not too big of a surprise that there’s the possibility of swapping with other people, and there were some hints throughout that it had already happened. The end of the game takes full advantage of that. After crash landing on the planet below, a rescue ship finally finds you, but cannot rescue you due to lack of quarantine facilities. The game presents you with two options, die on the planet alone, or swap with the rescuer without anyone knowing what happened. The second option then takes this a step further, and gives you control of the rescuer you swapped with, causing him to fall off of a cliff to his death. Because of the rescue ship’s lack of knowledge of the swapping device, they simply saw it as the player character jumping off a cliff as a suicide.

In the end, hilariously unexpected, and a pretty fantastic way to wrap up the core mystery behind how you were going to actually get home.

[collapse]

In general, I was somewhat caught by surprise by how much I enjoyed this game.  I’m generally a fan of Metroidvania-style games anyway, but without combat I wasn’t sure where this would fall fgor me.  However, the game had a really smart difficulty curve, introducing one or two mechanics, then doing a series of puzzles to reinforce the new mechanics. Ultimately, there were probably 30 or so puzzles to complete, interspersed with general traversal where story elements were introduced, and it felt pretty appropriate in length.  As far as puzzle-based games go, I can’t think of another I’ve played lately that I’d recommend as much as this unless I go back to Box Boy 3, and I think that says all that I need to say about it.