Ludum dare heck deck1/29/2024 ![]() The Curse of Monkey Island had a “regular” mode and a “harder mode” with more puzzles, but no “easy mode”. In cases in which difficulty is applicable, there is rarely only one way to implement it. I can also think of un-gamey interactive experiences such as Proteus, The Stanley Parable, Mountain, or Windosill, where difficulty is just not applicable. I can think of some persuasive games, for example Depression Quest, Dys4ia, and You Have To Burn The Rope, whose central idea would be undermined by difficulty settings. Some games can’t have difficulty settings. During playtests, I have often observed players struggle and fail at a certain point because they tried the wrong strategy over and over convinced that they could win by executing their flawed strategy perfectly rather than thinking of an alternative. The level/boss/timings/attacks for all skill levels. Put the required tutorialisation earlier in the game, or to re-design ![]() More clearly telegraph what is required to overcome the challenge, to Give the player “more health” to tank the hits. In my experience, about nine times out of ten, when you identify aĭifficult section in the game during playtesting, it needs to be dealt I’d rather make platforming easier in order to put emphasis on puzzles. That means I’d rather make a boss fight just a little moreįorgiving by default than give the player the option to grind. Puzzles to be difficult and engaging, not the stuff around it, and Iĭon’t want the player to be able to grind his way through the meat of the game by spending effort on all the other When I am making a game, I try to focus the difficulty into the game’sĬore gameplay, and in the core loop. Instead of being “easier”, these games took the sting out of failure states, and got the player back into the game quickly. There is a very different concept of difficulty, failure, and losing. But Super Meat Boy was innovating on Super Mario World by being easier in one way and much, much more difficult in another. With lives and mushrooms and coins, and when you are low on of lives, you might be tempted to go back to the equivalent of “Donut Plains” to farm some 1UP mushrooms. Super Meat Boy could have been different, Most importantly, unlike Super Mario World, neither game has a penalty for dying 50 times in a row. Skipped, just getting back into the action instantly with a singleīutton press. There was no “Game Over” screen, no death animation that could not be Super Meat Boy wasĭifficult, but levels were short. In VVVVVV, the landscape was riddled with autosave checkpoints. Instead, VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy both had a binary state of life or death. Other games had regenerating health, or let you restart over and over from the last Overwrote your save in a low-health state you could paint yourself into aĬorner. Used to have autosave or save slots, but also lives and health, so that when you When VVVVVV and Super Meat Boy came out in 2010, they were radicalĭepartures from established concepts of game difficulty.
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