January 2022 – Parry Everything

Boss Breakdown: The Ender Dragon

I had one of those weeks. You know the type. An update for worldwide phenomenon Minecraft, survival-based multiplayer sandbox game in which all the world is cubes that can be deconstructed and rebuilt as the player desires with enough energy and time, came out recently. So some friends decided to boot up a new multiplayer server, and there goes all of my free time for the week. We just accomplished Minecraft‘s nominal win condition for its survival mode, the condition which triggers the game’s strange credits sequence; killing a creature known as the Ender Dragon.

Minecraft is a game that, by its very nature does not lend itself to a win condition at all. Even in survival mode, at its core Minecraft opens itself to players defining their own goals and aspirations. Perhaps you wish to build a tall, imposing tower, or a glass city under the sea. Maybe you just want to explore and find beautiful landscapes, or dig into an enemy stronghold and steal their treasure. Maybe you want to raise animals, or start a zoo, or automate the production of gunpowder. All of these things are possible in the game, and none of them really have anything to do with, nor contribute to, the process of killing a dragon, at least not directly. Minecraft isn’t really a combat game, you see. Sure, it has combat in it, and there’s even some nuance to how it works, but it isn’t exactly a challenging set of deep mechanics one is naturally predisposed toward mastering, especially when Minecraft is so rewarding towards its other forms of play, such as digging, landscaping, crafting, and building. All that aside, it was decided Minecraft would have an overriding game-defined goal.

So met with the quandary are we, how does one design a boss for a game in which, A: combat is barely involved, and B: is primarily a game of non-combat mechanics like traversal, building, and uh, mining and crafting. The Ender Dragon is an interesting example of this idea in practice. There are a lot of cool ideas the design of the Ender Dragon utilizes to make it interesting within the context of Minecraft’s unique suite of sandbox game mechanics. If I were to make an appraisal of its overall success in this regard, I’d say the Ender Dragon is… okay. It is at once somewhat convoluted yet also simplistic, and more than a little janky. I’ll get into a little more detail, but overall the fight is fun, and though I don’t think it is the utmost pinnacle of this idea, it is one of the most popular – Minecraft is played by millions, and is in a unique position to examine this idea of boss fights or boss-fight like gameplay engagements for games that are not primarily about combat.

From a first person perspective, a person stands atop a high obsidian pillar, while shooting arrows at a black dragon made of cubes, who flies and circles in the distance. Another minecraft guy stands atop a second nearby pillar and shoots fire arrows at the dragon.

The Ender Dragon encounter is primarily a player-directed boss fight, meaning that the pace and rhythm of the fight is directed by the player, rather than by restricting rules of the boss’s environment. The player directs their interaction with the environment, rather than the other way around. The Ender Dragon is a large black winged beast that breathes fire and flies around an isolated island in an empty void. Her behavior consists of several states which she cycles through, with a preference for certain states over others depending on the status of the structures surrounding the outer edges of her boss arena, called End Crystals. The dragon will dive at players occasionally, and being buffeted by her wings can send players careening off into a lethal fall if they’re not careful. Whilst circling above, the dragon will launch fire balls that leave pools of deadly fire-like substance that persist for some time. Minecraft does not have extremely robust combat mechanics as I mentioned, and dodging usually just means moving to where the danger is not. The fire pools can be irritating, still, them lingering encourages players to dig and build around persistent obstacles.

From a first person perspective, a person digs into the side of a stone wall with a pickaxe, then further up to reveal purple sky above the dug hole. Outside the whole, several blocky minecraft guys scramble around a pool of purple fiery gas. — Burying yourself underground is a viable strategy, like some sort of gopher or marmot

So essentially what’s going on, is that these Ender Crystals want to be destroyed. Some can be sniped with projectiles, but some have protection that needs to be dug through, and to do that you need to build a scaffold up to their elevated location. If you don’t destroy these, the dragon stays in the air and restores her health. The design is suggesting the player utilize their building skills to solve the problem, which is good. Building is one of Minecraft‘s most fun and robust features, so it’s good to lean into for a boss fight. It’s a little straightforward though, there isn’t much developed knowledge of building technique needed to build up to these crystals. What’s most restrictive is simply the intimidation factor of the dragon, and outside of that there’s not much to it, as far as the end crystals are concerned.

Another strange quirk of this fight is the presence of many Endermen monsters in the area. Endermen are some of the strongest, most deadly, and most aggressive enemies in the game, but only when provoked. They can be provoked by attacking them, or by centering one’s camera on theirs. The Enderman’s relatable aversion to being perceived translates to a need for avoiding eye (camera) contact with them. I can’t speak too much for others’ strategy, but I always find myself look down at my feet during this encounter, as though my character is just really embarrassed to be there. It’s strange challenge – having to be wary of where your camera is pointing, not just where you character is standing. It does fit with the dragon being an Ender Dragon, as the Enderman monster, which can be encountered outside this fight, and isn’t all that uncommon in the overworld, always abides by this eye-contact rule. It does give the player another plate to spin, but it may feel claustrophobic and a little artificial to some. I can’t help but wonder how this fight might be improved if the designer can rely on the player having full freedom of motion with their camera.

From a first person perspective, a person shoots a bow and arrow at a black dragon made of blocks, flying around in circles below. The person stands atop a tall obsidian pillar.

In the bottom left corner of the display, a dialogue states that several allies have been killed by Endermen. — The Endermen live up to their name

One of the things I find most commendable about the design of the Ender Dragon is how open to various forms of problem solving it is, and how it accounts for the many methods a player might used to dethroning it. Minecraft offers players a huge number of tools with which to solve problems as they explore the world. For instance, the dragon usually is flying around the sky, out of reach of Minecraft‘s most common weapon, the sword. It can, of course be shot with range weapons such as arrows, but the dragon will also frequently land to rest after the End Crystals are dealt with, making it vulnerable to melee attacks. This is one solution. Since the dragon will land and stay stationary for a time, it’s also possible to load up her roost with explosives and set them off like a trap.

From a first-person perspective, a person runs up to a roosted Black dragon made of cubes and places a white bed on the ground, which then promptly explodes in their face, catapulting them into the sky. — Yup. Working as intended.

The dragon’s fire can be dangerous to those walking across her arena’s surface. Of course, Minecraft, being a game about building and digging, it’s totally possible to dig a safe series of tunnels under the arena to move around, or build up cover to protect from the dragon’s fire balls. Climbing up to reach the End Crystals poses another challenge, one that can be tackled in several ways. Shooting the crystals with projectiles is possible, but some are encased in shields that need to be removed. Building up to them with blocks is an option, or placing water (which can inexplicably be swam up in Minecraft) also works. Gravity is an ever-present threat in this encounter, so it’s wise to have some way to address it. Careful use of water can break any fall, or enchantment to one’s boots renders great falls less lethal, or you can drink a potion to fall more slowly. The point is, in Minecraft there are a myriad of ways to approach any given problem, and the dragon neatly accommodates nearly all of them.

From a first person perspective, a person is falling down the side of a tall obsidian pillar. As they approach the ground, they dump a bucket of water onto the side of the pillar, whose contents miraculously breaks their fall. The person then eats a slab of steak. — The tools of dragonslaying: steak, a four poster bed, and a bucket of water

The existence of the crystals is evidence of this. They exist apart from the dragon, at stationary, elevated points. If you want to destroy them up close, they require you to reach their elevated location, likely with building. Building during a dragon attack is a pretty compelling idea, and having to build up to your target seems like a natural fit for a boss fight in Minecraft. There is some inherent risk and reward to how one approaches building up to them. You can build straight up, or try for a more cautious staircase, or perhaps build up to one crystal, then create a bridge to the others.

Another advantage of Minecraft‘s immense suite of problem solving tools is how it frames the fight against the dragon. It is a difficult undertaking, even with a group of friends cooperating. There are a lot of hazards to look out for, so preparation is key. Minecraft is, in a lot of ways a game of preparation. Each night, hostile monsters will appear and overwhelm the unwary, but a solid roof over your head, and an ample supply of food will get you through. Bigger challenges in Minecraft harbor greater risks, and protective enchantments, armor, potions, special food, animal companions, building materials, etc. can all lighten the load. There’s a special sense of camaraderie when all of your buddies convene at a central location to swap enchanted bows and arrows, high-quality armor, and buckets of water in preparation for a great adventure. The Ender Dragon’s accommodation for all these varied modes of tackling problems is one of the best parts about it, regardless of other shortcomings. It’s the context and framing of this boss fight, I think, that creates its greatest moments.

Blocky minecraft guys in armor run around an enclosed space made of gray bricks. There are boxes, chests, and supplies piled around the room. One guy runs up a staircase at room's center and repeatedly crouches and stands. — Just messing around is truly the essence of this game

Whether Minecraft players wanted it or not, the Ender Dragon is the unambiguous overriding goal of a Minecraft ‘playthrough’, its final boss. Is the Ender Dragon a culmination of the skills and knowledge a Minecraft player accrues during their journey to the End? Well, kind of. The levels of preparation and supplies gathering players can engage in is huge in scope. There’s all sorts of stuff you can gather and build to prepare for this fight, and gathering/building is one of the most fun things you can do in the game. In my opinion, the experience is only heightened when a group of friend communally pool their resources to maximize the chances of success. The fight itself is a little convoluted, with the disparate Ender Crystal targets, apart from the dragon itself, but also somewhat dead simple in the very limited suite of behaviors the Ender Dragon can actually engage in. Having to utilize building or similar methods to reach the Ender Dragon’s crystal weak points is compelling and fits with Minecraft’s gameplay, although it’s a somewhat blunt and simplistic implementation. I find the Ender Dragon’s overall design commendable in a lot of ways, and I do look forward to the challenge as a fun communal activity with friends, but it feels under-designed in several ways. Sometimes putting a dragon boss fight into a game like Minecraft feels like hammering a square peg into a round hole. Still, I think there’s a lot to praise about and learn in regards how to approach these sorts of challenges in games that don’t primarily utilized combat as a central game mechanic.

A black dragon made of cubes slowly rises into the air as it disintegrates, a purple light emanating from it, then it explodes.

And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream…

If Your Game Needs a ‘Skip Animations’ Button It’s Too Slow

I notice a lot of people turn off battle animations in Pokémon games. It’s kind of wild this is even something they considered right? I mean it makes sense on the surface, RPGs like Pokémon can be time consuming and people often play it on the go, or lead busy lives. But let’s take a step back here. We’re streamlining by cutting out the battles? Isn’t that, like, most of the actual game of Pokémon? To be clear I don’t think people are wrong to utilize this feature, I use it too. But why has it come to this? Why does the central gameplay mode of Pokémon have to be so time consuming it becomes tedious to the point of cutting its art assets out of the equation? I think this is really something happening within the game itself – if your game needs a ‘skip animations’ option to be playable by enough people to warrant the existence of a ‘skip animations’ option, well, the title’s right there. Options aren’t bad. It’s not that the option is there that bothers me, it’s that so many people, myself included, feel compelled to use it. Perhaps there’s a greater issue here. Pokémon games’ combat is turn-based. The player can take all the time they need to formulate a strategy each turn, but once their choice is locked in, the battle plays out before them. They aren’t directly participating so there’s no stress or pressure on the player tied in with the speed of the game… unless waiting long periods of time stresses you out.

I want to head this all off with some proposed solutions to the problem I’m about to describe in greater detail. I don’t want to come off as overly negative, but rather constructive. I love Pokémon dearly, but I feel as though it has at times struggled to meet the expectations of its own success. Personally I feel as though it is showing its age now more than ever in a number of departments. There are techniques that have been employed by Pokémon‘s contemporaries that allow combat, even turn-based combat, to be very breezy and flow seamlessly. One of my favorites is one employed by the popular Persona series of RPGs, a franchise that, lord knows, started out as a slooooow and ponderous combat experience in 1996. Lessons were learned from this, though, and by 2008, Persona 4 was establishing one of the smoothest and most appealing turn-based combat systems in the business, an advantage that would serve the explosively popular Persona 5 well eight years later.

A gray-haired Japanese high school student stands in a dreamlike space resembling both a castle and TV set, with a distorted background.

Several monsters resembling giant mouths stand before him. He crushes a crush in his hand and an ethereal samurai warrior appears before him. The warrior shoots a bolt of lightning at one of the monsters.

This scene plays out a second time, except the samurai appears much more quickly and the lightning attack resolves faster. — The saved time doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up over a full length game!

In Persona 4, whenever the player uses the same move on multiple turns in succession, the animation for that move is sped up, and the action is truncated. The player just saw this animation in its entirety seconds earlier, after all, there’s no need to run it into the ground. This simple consideration drastically eases the repetitiveness of spamming the same move in turn-based combat, something you might find yourself doing often in Pokémon. In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, when an attack fails to connect with a character, the information is conveyed visually and the action transitions very rapidly to the next step of the turn. The word ‘MISS’ is barely on screen for a second, as the game does not dwell on and minor things. I’m sure I can think of more, but techniques for keeping turn-based combat flow smoothly aside, Pokémon just really has a problem with the structure of its attack animations in general. To be clear, I mean the special effects like lightning that occurs when a move is used, not the motion of the pocket monsters themselves, though that’s its own can of worms. They just tend to be far too long, and often could communicate the same level of awe, excitement, dread, or wonder in half the time or less.

Several men and women are brawling an ubran Japanese market street. A thug takes a swing with a knife at a man in a red suit, but he stage-falls onto his back, dodging the attack. A second thug takes a swing with a baseball bat at a woman, but she backpedals and the attack misses. — What the attack missed? Okaythatscool moving on.

It occurred to me while watching The Pokémon Company’s recent animated short Bidoof’s Big Stand with a friend. How striking and appealing the (admittedly truncated) battle scenes were in this 3D animation! So much character and charm. Compare this animation for the move ‘earthquake’ in 2016’s Pokémon Sun and Moon to the same move in Bidoof’s Big Stand.

The pokémon Rhydon, a bipedal rhino made of stone roars, and the ground turns to brown cracked stone which rumbles and moves up and down. Several seconds later the rhydon's opponent, the pokémon magmortar which resembles a large, round bipedal dinosaur made of flames, flinches from the attack. — Roughly *five* seconds start to finish

The pokémon golem, resembling a bipedal lizard with a round boulder for a torso, stomps the ground with one foot, and jagged rocks jut from the ground as fiery cracks appear in the earth. The pokémon bidoof, a small beaver, then runs across the cracked earth and spins around the golem. — Roughly *five* seconds start to finish

It’s not perfect. The earthquake move in Bidoof’s Big Stand for one could probably communicate a bit more force and impact before I’d ship it in a game, but that could be accomplished without inflating its screen time, easily. The fighting in the animated short exaggerates its action in ways Pokémon games probably never could given that their battle animations must be generic and prefabricated to be used by hundreds of interchangeable creatures, but I must insist that Pokémon as a game franchise can get closer to this level of dynamism and flow. It could be as simple as a baseline speed pass for each battle animation. Maybe earthquake doesn’t need to be on screen for a full five seconds. Maybe thunder doesn’t need as much anticipation as it’s getting. Maybe the transitions between turns could be faster. Game animation has a lot of conventions of minimizing anticipation and downtime, making visuals as reactive and instant as possible, and this is for good reason. The benefits extend to all sorts of interactive systems, not just action-y or real-time ones.

In a desert environment, Mario throws his cap at a goomba, a brown mushroom monster. As his hat lands on the goomba's head, mario becomes ethereal and zooms into the goomba's form, 'capturing' it. This takes place over the course of 1.5 seconds.

A similar scene plays out as mario 'captures' a bipedal turtle and an anthropomorphic bullet. — Games have been condensing exciting visual effects into smooth, seamless transitions for decades. Mario’s ‘capture’ visuals looks just as impressive as any five-second-long pokémon move, easily.

The difference in timing between the in-game earthquake and Bidoof’s Big Stand is staggering to me. I feel as though the Bidoof’s Big Stand earthquake communicates the idea of an ‘earthquake’ just as well, if not better, than its in-game counterpart, in less than half the time! A difference of three seconds might not sound much on paper, but bear in mind that in a pokémon game, you’ll be seeing moves like this, on average, about six times per battle, at minimum. Small increments in moment-to-moment gameplay like this matter. More likely you’ll see moves like this play out repetitively dozens of times per battle, over the course of hundreds of battles that take place in your standard Pokémon game. Arceus help you if we count all the redundant narration about status and field effects that pauses the battle to re-explain itself every turn. This is so much dead air to add to a game, it’s no wonder Pokémon‘s ‘skip battle animations’ feature has become so popular. And why shouldn’t it? I know I use it. I mean, I want to enjoy Pokémon‘s battle animations, many of them are genuinely a joy to watch, but I can usually really only muscle through a chunk of the game before turning them off for long periods of time. They just hamper the flow of the game too much for me.

I believe that games are greater than the sum of their parts. Games can have great music, great writing, great animations, or even great gameplay, but it is only in the confluence of these things, in varying balances, that the true strength of games as a medium comes out. I hate having to skip Pokémon‘s battle animations to avoid feeling burnout. I want the game’s various bits of art to come together beautifully. So, it begs the question, is there something perhaps less essential than the visuals themselves that can be cut out to improve the flow of Pokémon‘s battles?

And that brings us… To the Battle Dialogue.

Pokémon‘s Battle Dialogue is one of many idiosyncrasies Pokémon has brought forward through its many generations. It’s a small window at the bottom of the screen that essentially narrates what’s going on in battle.

A pokémon will take part of an action, this action will resolve completely, and then the Battle Dialogue will narrate it, before any reaction to this move takes place. The result is an incredibly stilted and lifeless visual accompaniment to Pokémon‘s otherwise excellent battle system that so often holds it back. Take the pokémon move ‘self-destruct’ for example. It’s an old classic from the original gameboy Pokémon games. In the following scene, you will witness the literal events of a clay doll monster violently bursting into a fiery explosion, causing its opponent to become so injured it can no longer stand. See how these events are visually translated, in a way that only Pokémon can.

The pokémon claydol, a many-eyed idol-like monster is tackled by its opponent manetric, a yellow and blue canine. The claydol then uses self-destruct, causing an explosion to emanate from its body. Several seconds later, the claydol faints. Several seconds after that, the manetric faints. — What on earth did I just witness.

I hope my point is becoming clearer here. Thanks to the strange reverence held for the Battle Dialogue, which is always given visual priority, there is no sense of real presence to these creatures, no impression of cause and effect. It’s more like the pokémon are pantomiming their moves. Pokémon has, over the years, become more and more attached to the idea of making their collectible monsters and their world feel real and inviting, like a place you could actually visit. Newer Pokémon games have featured Pokémon pet simulator mini-games, wider areas of exploration, and a more complete impression of the world the games take place in. The problems with Pokémon‘s visual presentation, especially in its battles, feels utterly antithetical to this design goal to me. I know there are certainly technical and production limitations that are causing issues like this, but I felt compelled to bring it up anyway as these issues can never be fixed going forward if they aren’t given voice, and moreover perhaps us other developers can learn something from it. It’s a topic I don’t see discussed much among the *ahem* many other popular topics in Pokémon *ahem ahem* discourse.

What if, perhaps, we entertained the idea of eliminating the Battle Dialogue altogether? Now, it isn’t as though it serves no purpose. Pokémon derives much of its success from being friendly to the young and casual as well as appealing to the hardcore and diehard. The Battle Dialogue inarguably conveys information in a clear and unambiguous way, all the while reinforcing the rules of the game through its constant narration, but is it really the best and only solution for accomplishing those things? Surely, at the very least, longtime fans would woefully miss iconic phrases like “It’s super effective!”. Perhaps, but streamlining Pokémon‘s visual information could mean repackaging iconic visuals in new and exciting ways. Perhaps “It’s Super Effective!” could live on as a visual or particle effect itself, not just plain text. Yes, big changes like this may be a hard sell at first, but if Nintendo’s other recent output the likes of Breath of The Wild or Bowser’s Fury has taught me anything, is that nothing need be unassailably sacred, and sometimes fans are just waiting to fall in love with something new, even if they don’t know it yet.

When all’s said and done I don’t think my vision for a faster, breezier version of Pokémon battling is the only ‘right’ choice. But I do think Pokémon could stand to peek at its peers’ homework from time to time and modernize the way it presents itself a bit. Some of the things that greatly harm the pace of Pokémon are entirely inventions of a game designed for an 8-bit calculator of a console. Some of these things I feel the franchise has outgrown entirely, and some could be re-contextualized in a more modern way. There’s some considerations in art direction to be made too that could smooth out some of these rough edges. In this article I proposed removing or rearranging a lot of things, but honestly much of this could still remain optional. I just think it’s emblematic of an issue that could be assuaged through design rather than blunt force, if a lot of people are choosing to turn off the thousands of man-hours that went into making your game look appealing.

The pokémon pikachu, a yellow mouse, shoots lightning into the sky, which roils in the clouds before falling onto pikachu's opponent, a small brown fox-like pokémon called eevee, in a column of lightning.

The same scene plays out again, but this time edited down with bits and pieces of the animation sped up.

It runs agilely as if on wings…

Dota 2’s Dark Willow: Effective Audio-Visual Feedback, and Mechanical Synergy

Dota 2 is a game of the genre MOBA, Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. In simpler terms, it’s a team-based game with a focus on combat and strategy. It’s played from a bird’s eye view, and features a number of colorful fantasy heroes to choose from. Dark Willow, the mischievous, slightly sadistic thieving fairy is my personal favorite, and I wanted to just jot down my thoughts on how effectively her abilities are communicated through audio-visual feedback.

Birds eye view of a tropical rain forest. A fairy glides down a pathway.

Text chat:
Someone says "usually pick turbo just to dark willow"

I respond "That was my plan" — “Let’s have some fun, shall we…”

Audio-visual feedback is as it sounds; the fairly basic concept that important information should be communicated to players implicitly through their senses, and that things like affirmations of success or confirmations of failure should be communicated in this way. For example, if a player character swings a sword, that sword swing should make a distinctly different sound whether it misses its target, strikes an enemy, or strikes a wall. It should probably look distinctly different in each of those cases as well.

Dark Willow has five abilities. Bramble Maze allows her to sprout a circle full of equally spaced bramble bushes at a distant location. Enemies will have only a narrow space to squeeze between the brambles, and if they touch one they are rooted to the spot and damaged. Shadow Realm allows Dark Willow to hide in a shadow form, immune to most attacks, then burst out with a powerful shadow attack. The longer she is hiding, the stronger the attack, so long as the ability does not wear off first. Shadow Realm can later be upgraded to fire a barrage of shadow attacks. Cursed Crown is a curse Dark Willow places on a target, causing it and nearby allies to be stunned exactly four seconds after the curse is cast. Bedlam causes Dark Willow’s wisp minion to orbit her, firing destructive magic at nearby enemies. Terrorize projects the wisp to a distant location, causing any enemies at that location to be terrified and sent running toward their base.

Birds eye view of a tropical rain forest. A number of heroes do battle in a river. A series of blue concentric circles indicates where a bush full of brambles is about to sprout. When the circles are lined up with enemy heroes, the brambles rise up and capture them. — Here you can see me line up exactly where the brambles should be placed, so I can catch multiple targets, thanks to the handy previsualization UI.

A lot of Dark Willow’s power as a hero comes from the synergy between her various ability mechanics. Bramble maze does a great deal of damage and holds foes in place, but they have to touch the brambles for this to happen. Luckily, Dark Willow has the ability to force enemy movement in the form of Terrorize, clever of use of which can cause enemies to flee in terror into her brambles. Cursed Crown is a strong stun that can disable multiple opponents but only if they are standing together, which is why Terrorize, in conjunction with Bramble Maze, is so effective at sticking enemies together. Dark Willow can dish out immense damage with Bedlam, but only if she gets close, and she is not very durable herself. Luckily, Shadow Realm renders her immune to most dangers, which she can use in conjunction with Bedlam. The fact that Shadow Realm can cap off this combo with a burst of damage is a nice compliment to the more sustained damage of Bedlam, which can be more easily reacted to.

Birds eye view of a tropical rain forest. A fairy sneaks up from the trees on a man made of lightning. A bramble sprouts beneath him and captures him. The fairy flies up with her wisp, which tears him apart. — Clever use of synergized game mechanics can make your player very powerful

Because it is so important to coordinate your various abilities together like this, it is essential the player can develop a seamless feel for how the various timings, cast ranges, and nuances of her abilities work, without having to look at a detailed explanation. That’s where audio-visual feedback is essential for making gameplay mechanics like this synergize in an effective way that’s satisfying and fun for the player. Dark Willow’s Shadow Realm is an excellent example of this.

Birds eye view of a tropical rain forest. A fairy is surrounded by shadows before a red circle begins to glow around her feet. It becomes more distinct over time. — The red aura around Dark willow becomes more and more distinct as the shadow realm attack becomes ‘ripe’ for unleashing.

First off, Shadow Realm is kind of a complicated ability when you break it down. When its button is pressed, Dark Willow becomes subsumed in shadow and immune to most enemy attacks, which is easy enough to understand. However, during this period Dark Willow is also charging up an attack. This shadow attack reaches the peak of its potency after 3.5 seconds of charging, but the ability itself ends after 5 seconds. So there is a period of 1.5 seconds in which it is optimal to use Shadow Realm’s attack competent. That’s a little unintuitive, or rather it would be if not for the audio and visual considerations. After 3.5 seconds of Shadow Realm, Dark Willow is surrounded by an additional visual effect: a red circular aura that surrounds her and gives the impression of peak power. As soon as Shadow Realm begins, a distinct and almost melodic humming sound begins to emanate from Dark Willow, it gives a sense of building power and changes over time. Its intensity crescendos after exactly, you guessed it, 3.5 seconds. The humming then peters out for the remaining 1.5 seconds, giving a strong impression of when the attack should be dealt.

Birds eye view of a tropical rain forest. A fairy becomes surrounding in shadows as a wizard is caught in a bramble patch. A wisp flies around the fairy and attacks the wizard, before the fairy throws her own projectile, but it fails to kill the wizard. — Here, I crucially missed the shadow realm cue, and my attack fails to kill my target. Entirely my own misplay, but emphasizes the importance of those cues.

This sort of feedback is also helpful for those opposing Dark Willow. Without having to count, any player can get a pretty good idea of when Dark Willow is most likely to release her shadow attack. Giving easy access to this sort of information is conducive to a healthy competitive game, allowing complex strategies to form. Knowing what your opponent is capable of, if not necessarily what they intend to do, you can act and react to game events as they occur. Acting and reacting is the core of competitive gameplay. If each player doesn’t have the right information to available for them to utilize, there is no counterplay, there is no game.

Curse Crown is a very interesting example of this concept. It counts down, loudly and with a visual timer represented by four icons for each of the four seconds in the countdown, but this countdown is a strategic benefit to both Dark Willow and her victim. The victim will know that standing near allies when the countdown pops means putting those allies in danger. Dark Willow will be eagerly awaiting for her victim to become stunned and helpless, so she can unleash her most powerful offense. The strong visual feedback makes for a better experience for both the victim and user of the spell. By giving both parties this important information as a readily apparent graphic and audio cue, they can both formulate plans to deal with the respective obstacles to their goals, which is itself the fun of the game.

Birds eye view of a tropical rain forest. A fairy sends a wisp out to scare a giant lizard man, who flees in terror. Where the lizard man stood, a zombie comes back to life, and chases the lizard man together with the fairy. — With terrorize, enemies are driven off of my allies, and with shadow realm, I can further pursue and subdue them.

As the victim is stunned, Dark Willow may try to line up a Bramble Maze on them, to further damage and disable them. Typically, you’d want to place the brambles in the enemy’s path, so they move into the bush themselves. If they are stuck in place though, one can carefully line up the bramble to appear beneath your target’s feet, thanks to a convenient target-preview interface that will shadow the Dark Willow player where exactly they brambles are going to appear. For the opponent’s part, the brambles are distinctly shaped, leaving little ambiguity as to where it is and is not safe to walk.

As you may have gleaned, Dota 2 can become fairly visually loud, with ten individual heroes all throwing out impressive and explosive spells like this. That’s why it’s so important to keep a distinct visual not only for each ability, but a distinct visual style for each hero as well. It should be unambiguous when it is Dark Willow in particular using her spells, so that enemies and allies have a fair amount of information with which to react. Dark willow’s visual effects are uniformly composed of dark violets and maroons, evocative of shadowy undergrowth and wild flowers, which is also thematically relevant to her character as a dark fairy. Big and important abilities that can completely shift the tide of battle, such as Terrorize, tend to be louder and more immediately noticeable, in proportion to their power.

Birds eye view of a tropical rain forest. A large number of heroes do battle. A fairy throws increasingly powerful projectiles at a lightning man. When the lightning man falls, a friendly zombie is frozen in ice, and his allies are forced to attack him. This ends when a fairy sends her wisp to terrorize nearby enemies. Afterward, the fairy turns to throw her projectiles at a fleeing wizard. — In an extended battle, there’s LOTS to keep track of, so knowing the visual and audio cues becomes an essential skill. It’s better to make that learning curve as painless as possible. It may be hard to track Dark Willow in all this mess at first, but look out for her midnight color scheme.

Audio-Visual Feedback is one of those things you really have to nail, if you’re game’s to be any good, honestly. If a lot of important information is moving around in your game and it doesn’t reach the player in a prompt and unintrustive way, it can severely hamper the experience. Dota 2 is pretty good at it, considering all the challenges of keeping things clear and readable that comes with the MOBA genre. Dark Willow is a particularly strong example, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons I was drawn to her and her playstyle.

The aftermath of a green explosion in an open plain is overlaid with the words 'Radiant Victory'. In response to someone asking 'why did you mid' I respond 'so wed win, like this', to which someone responds 'like milk'.

A scoreboard follows.

You thought you were winnin’?

Let The Player Break The Game Already; Inscryption, Isaac, and Others

While on break for the holidays I found myself finally taking a look at a little indie card battler game I’d heard much about. Daniel Mullins’ Inscryption is a 2021 roguelike card battler in which you build a bestial-themed deck of cards to traverse a table-top adventure scenario game-mastered by a mysterious shadowy card dealer, who seems to be keeping you in a spooky woodland cabin. You may have heard the game is rife with compelling mystery and secrets, and it is, so rest assured I won’t be spoiling anything about the game, merely talking about its combat mechanics sans any story context.

A stone altar is placed on a wooden table immersed in shadow. A set of cards featuring the likeness of beasts is lined up before the altar. A card with a cat is sacrificed on the altar and disappears, but a stoat card is granted the cat's sigil, a special power in the form of an infinity sign on a dagger. — Yeah, you look very honored.

Specifically I want to talk about this concept of ‘breaking the game’, or employing a strategy so overwhelmingly power it almost seems to throw off the difficulty balance. Here’s the thing though, well-designed games like Inscryption and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth want to create this feeling in the player of overwhelming power, which is why they tend to be so brutally difficult at the start. Roguelike games, by their nature, are games designed with the players’ repeated failure in mind, and thus repeated replaying. With each of those failures, generally, new inherent advantages are collected, as well as new knowledge of the game. By game’s end, the player will have accrued a large number of mechanical advantages and game knowledge, allowing them to plow through challenges that once seemed insurmountable. The game designer’s fear of the ‘Dominant Strategy’ is the trivialization of their game mechanics.

Isaac from The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth runs around a burning basement. A purple ring of laser beam moves around the room, contorting and destroying nearby enemy spiders. — This is a combination of three rare items

Isaac from The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth runs around a dingy basement. A purple ring of laser beam moves around the room, contorting and destroying nearby enemies. — This is a combination of three rare items

What’s clever about a lot of the more popular roguelikes, is that they leverage powerful strategies as a way to engage the player with their systems. Knowing exactly what the most reliable and powerful combinations of weapons and items in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth takes time, effort, and exploration, so by the time you’ve ‘broken the game’ so to speak, you’ve already gone through a lot of the game’s interest curve just getting there, and a well balanced game can tilt that power scale back at you. Often in the roguelike Hades I’ve found myself achieving a combo that can absolutely demolish early content, but I’m then brick walled by later enemies, and have to change up my approach, keeping the game dynamic and interesting. These games make the opposition an overwhelming obstacle, so that overwhelming power is not only incentivized in the player, but almost demanded.

I’m tending more and more towards designing the opposition in a combat game to be more powerful, rather than limiting the powers and options of the player. Finding wacky solutions to the problem of ridiculously deadly enemies is fun! Isaac allows you to reach such absurd levels of power that it’s comical, and yet Isaac is so vindictively engaging. Every time I fail in that game I’m just reminded of how much I want to taste that overwhelming power again, I think about all the little ways I could combine and recombine the disastrously large number of powerups existent in Isaac, and I dive right back in. The same is the case for competitive games with deckbuilding elements such as Dota 2‘s Ability Draft, in which one drafts the ability for their player hero from a pool of powers that don’t normally go together in Dota 2‘s base game modes, but can combine to create some ridiculous effects. The possibilities are just so tantalizing, because the designers went out of their way to insure the various elements all meshed with each other in interesting ways, without much need for exceptions or limitation. Dota 2 also has its own roguelike mode that utilizes design sensibilities as I’ve described. Enemies are monstrous, lethal, and oppressive, but clever power up allocation can render what once seemed impossible, routine, and it’s an exciting climb to that point.

A child cries stylized tears that shoot from his body like bullets in a dingy basement. The tears spray out in a shotgun pattern. — Just a couple shot upgrade items..

A child cries stylized tears in a burning basement that shoot out from his body like bullets. The tears are orange, and split into smaller bullets on contact with anything, then those split bullets split again on contact. — Just a couple shot upgrade items..

No matter how overwhelmingly powerful one might become in these games, the games generally stay extremely lethal throughout. That is, even if you can crush your opposition with a flick of the wrist, a couple mistakes may still lead to a loss, especially later in the game. Pulling a bad hand in Inscryption, all of your overpowered cards aside, can still be disastrous if you don’t have a plan to stall the game until you can pull your winning cards. This is a pattern games which employ the concept well have in common – their core gameplay is still reinforced even as the player becomes ‘overpowered’. In Hades and Isaac, you still have to be able to dodge attacks, or you’ll most likely be toast very quickly. In Dota‘s Ability Draft, you still need to have a feel for the game to make the advantageous plays. In Inscryption, you still need to think through your strategy in case of unfavorable scenarios, as described above.

The key is to make things dramatic. The game can quickly swing in either direction based on the player’s performance, and if the player ultimately becomes an unstoppable force, it should be as a reward for a good performance, and therefor not feel cheap. The rug can still be pulled out from under you if you underestimate opposition that is designed to itself be powerful, and lethal. Inscryption‘s particular health system resembles other card battlers, but takes the form of a scale, so the winner is determined by who has dealt more damage as weighted by a literal scale, and the threshold of victory is not much. So in other words, even with your most powerful cards, things can swing quickly. If the purpose of combat in a game is to be an easy vector by which to create conflict for the player to overcome, and the purpose of conflict in a narrative sense is to be dramatic, then combat should be dramatic. I’m personally pretty tapped out when it comes to power ups the likes of “Increases critical strike chance by 0.5%”. Sure, such things have their place, but I think I’m over entire skill trees and player progression systems being centered on the low-numbered variety of powerups. They’re often barely noticeable in practice, even if they add up over time. When a player gets a new card, or a new weapon, it should dramatically shift the balance of power, or change how the game is approached. Really play up that drama. Otherwise, what’s the point of the new element even being added?

In dark cabin a rustic card game is set up on a wooden table, seen from first-person perspective. The player attacks with two cards marked 'wolf' and 'stoat', causing teeth to be loaded on the opponent's end of a scale. The opponent attacks with their own wolf in kind, and the scale swings back toward the player. — Danger in this game is swift and intense, but it swings both ways

Inscryption embodies this philosophy with how its death cards and sacrificial altars work. Death cards are essentially custom cards, created by the player, utilizing elements of their own deck to combine into one card. The player is given a random assortment of cards from their deck, from which they can choose one card’s play cost, one card’s power and health, and one card’s special effects aka sigils. The result is more often than not something far and away more powerful than what can be normally obtained. The sacrificial altars are similar, allowing you to sacrifice one card to permanently transfer its sigils to another, making a powerful card. This system greatly rewards understanding of the game’s mechanic, and is inherently explorative in nature. Player’s are invited to use the game mechanics as a form of personal experession, so they can leave their own mark (in this case literally, as you can also name the card) on the game. A personal favorite of mine was a card with a medium level of power and health, but no play cost, the ability to attack three times, and the ability to return to my hand when killed on the play field. I called him ‘The Immortal Mantis’. Needless to say, getting this card into play was a reliable way to end matches in my favor. And yet, I never felt as though I was cheating the game, or robbing myself of a more compelling and challenging play experience, because Inscryption like Hades, like Isaac, like enemy players in Dota‘s Ability Draft, and like many other roguelikes, because it took a lot of effort on my part to make this power happen. Either effortful forethought, or playing through a challenging game with little power to start, or both. My ability to swiftly end combat encounters feels earned, and misplays can still lead to a loss by virtue of how lethal a game Inscryption is.

From a first person perspective, a map is unrolled on a rustic wooden table, along with a board game figurine. The figurine lands on a card icon, and three cards are dealt in the map's place. One card features a silhouetted figure and the name... Explodia — Ahh yes. Explodia, the Foreboden one.

A stone altar is placed on a rustic wooden table. Several cards are lined up along it, and two are selected. One is sacrificed and disappears to empower the other, Explodia — Ahh yes. Explodia, the Foreboden one.

I think making the player ‘too powerful’ is more a question of how you design their environment, or high you contextualize that power, than it is something to be altogether avoided. Inscryption is one of the most compelling play experiences I’ve had this year, all other advantages it has such as its narrative and world-class aesthetic presentation aside. Inscryption certainly allows you to become ‘too powerful’! Power in a combat game often means a wide breadth of possibilities, and that power can translate directly into a sense of ownership of, and self expression within the game mechanics. There are many ways to ‘break’ Inscryption and Isaac and Hades, but no two players are likely to do it in exactly the same way.

In dark cabin a rustic card game is set up on a wooden table, seen from first-person perspective. The player draws a card featuring a silhouetted figure with the name... Explodia — This card right here is dopamine, in auido-visual format

In that fashion, ‘breaking’ the game, is the game. Outmaneuvering and outwitting your opposition is the essence of conflict. Building systems where breaking free from their perceived constraints is the point of those systems seems somewhat counterintuitive, but I think the continued explosive success of the roguelike genre, especially in regards to games that operate this way, speaks for itself. There is a market for this specific flavor of power fantasy, and there are ways to give the player that overwhelming power without trivializing the game.

Sacrifices must be made…