level design – Parry Everything

Door Key Mechanics

It’s been a short, busy month, so this time I wanted to talk about something that might be of particular concern to me, specifically. One of my pet peeves. A real bee-in-my-bonnet moment. I’m going to get into why this particular design pattern bothers me so much in a moment, but first what am I talking about?

You ever find yourself at the heart of a deadly dungeon, having just slain a cursed demon dragon of darkness? Of course you have. You open up the chest he was guarding, and viola! A super cool, exciting, new weapon, spell, or other tool. You’re so hyped to get back out in the field and use this thing, but first you’ve got to figure out how to use it to make your way out of here. You start playing around with it, but pretty quickly you find that its use cases are rather… limited. Maybe it’s a whip that doesn’t really damage enemies – but it’s sure useful for hitting distant switches to open doors! Maybe it’s a freeze gun. It’s cool – I mean it can’t freeze enemies or bodies of water, but it can freeze waterfalls, to unblock doors. Maybe it’s a grappling hook! You can’t control the grapple or decide where to use it – it just pulls you to fixed targets so that you can reach previously inaccessible… doors.

You have just encountered, what I like to call the Door Key Mechanic. It’s a game feature masquerading as a fancy new play mechanic, but it’s not really. When you zoom out, and take a high-level top-down look at what all these mechanics actually do in the context of the play space… they just open doors. Maybe they pull specialized switches that then open doors. Maybe they disable electric fences so you can get to the doors behind them. Maybe they transport you to doors you couldn’t get to before in a predefined way, but that’s it. Above all it is interactivity that makes game mechanics compelling to me, and these are interactive in the most rudimentary way possible – do the thing, and a door opens.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with having features in your game that specifically exist to remove some gate to the player’s progress. These sorts of items are all over the place. I mean, literal keys, for one. It’s an important purpose to fill. The presence of an inaccessible door is inherently tantalizing to the player, and finding an appropriate key gives a sense of puzzle-solving or excitement. The trouble comes in when it’s something a lot more complicated than a key or a special inventory item pretending to be more important than it is. Need some examples? Let’s do some examples.

I think the most egregious example I can think of is the last game produced by Sonic The Hedgehog creator and indicted insider trader Yuji Naka, Balan Wonderworld. It’s a great instance of what I’m talking about, because it also highlights the crux of the problem. You see, this game had several marketing angles, such as Naka’s involvement, the visual and stylistic echoes of cult classic games like NiGHTS Into Dreams, and most relevantly here, the fact that the game would feature EIGHTY different costumes! Each with unique abilities! Or in other words, game mechanics. Ignoring that several of the costumes are just variations or upgrades of others, we have to interrogate how meaningful and interactive these costume mechanics actually are.

A child in a pig costume runs over to a silver piston in a grassy field and slams the ground with its bottom, forcing one piston down and causing a different piston to shoot up. The child jumps onto it and grabs a gem.

Well, we have a ground slam for a start, the Pounding Pig, which doesn’t do anything except hammer posts and break blocks – basically just opening specific doors. There are jellyfish and dolphin costumes, which do little else but allow access to water terrain that otherwise gates you. There’s a spider costume that allows you to climb webs, which are also just simple obstacles – doors in other words. The Itsy-Bitsy Elf costume “Allows the wearer to pass through tiny doors” and nothing else. Lickshot Lizard sounds like a grappling hook, but it only works on stationary targets that are trivial to target – it’s just opening a door with extra steps. Happy Horn activates an event when stepping onto a pre-placed stage. Functionally the same as a key item. Gear King allows you to use specific gear switches, to open doors. Hothead lets you light torches to open doors.

A child in a rock star costume runs over to a stage in a grass field and plays a short concert to some monsters, and they turn into gems.

Riveting Stuff.

Important to note that ‘door’ here proverbially means any simple gate preventing player progress, but a gate of minimal player interactions. Flipping a switch causing a bridge to appear. Destroying a block to reveal a staircase. That’s all the same as opening a door. Like, there’s Balan‘s Laser Launcher costume…

“A robot costume that shoots a laser from its chest. Use the laser to break blocks and flip switches.” -Official Website Description

I can use the robot to open doors, OR open doors you say!? Okay granted, a lot of these very simplistic costumes in Balan can also be used for combat, but that is such a bare minimum. Doorkey Mechanics make one wonder ‘why is this even here?’ Like, why do you need a spider costume to climb webs? Most game characters can just do that, like on their own.

A small armored alien, Ratchet from Ratchet and Clank, traverses a small gap in a broken bridge amidst a futuristic sci fi metropolis. He does so using an energy tether thrown into a rift portal.

“Does it do anything?”

“It allows you traverse this door bridging a very small gap.”

“Yeah but does it do anything??”

It’s easy to criticize Balan. Door Key mechanics pop up in some of my favorite games too, though.

I adore A Hat In Time. It’s a delightful, fully-featured, cute, and compelling indie game in the style of classic 3D platform games. It feels great to control, it’s pretty to look at, and it’s just an overall fun time. We need more games like A Hat In Time. That said, of the six hats available in the game, which each provide unique abilities, I couldn’t help but wish the Ice Hat and Brewing Hat were more generally useful. The sprint hat makes you dash at breakneck pace, allowing you to bound over great distances – it’s super fun and super useful. The Kid’s Hat helpfully guides you where to go if you ever lose your way. The Time Stop Hat does what it says. However, the Ice and Brewing Hats flip switches and break barriers, respectively, only in hyper-specific scenarios. They can technically be used in combat, but I never once felt it was prudent to do so next to just, say, smacking enemies with my umbrella.

The Door Key Mechanic is a sliding scale, too. Game mechanics can be more or less door key-like. Hi-Fi Rush, a game I should really talk more about sometime, has mechanics that are Door Key-adjacent in the form of your party’s assist moves. Macaron’s punch assist breaks down hyper-specific walls and Peppermint’s gun assist shoots switches, but they can both be used in combat. The difference between Hi-Fi and say Balan, is that Hi-Fi Rush has very robust combat mechanics where that addition is not a footnote. Assists can be woven into combos and used in a variety of ways, defensively or offensively, to uniquely color each player’s experience. That’s interactivity, and that’s what makes a Door Key Mechanic less noticeable. The Legend of Zelda series has been occasionally guilty of making legacy items more door keyish. For instance, take the hookshot / claw shot item.

When first introduced in A Link To The Past, the hookshot was a metal spike on a spring loaded chain that could latch onto blocks, chests, rocks, and pots to pull Link rapidly to the target location. Not only that, but it can grab distant items and pull them to link, hit switches, stun some enemies, and outright defeat others. It’s used for unlocking doors, sure, but also for combat and traversal in interesting ways. Its uses are fairly prescribed, but not so much that it doesn’t feel generally useful.

In the sequel, Ocarina of Time, the hookshot was brought into 3D and it became even more generally useful. It still activates switches, pulls in items, stuns some enemies at a distance, and defeats others, but now in three dimensions. In addition, the list of things it can latch onto has been expanded to include most wooden or soft surfaces, like climbing vines, tree branches, rooftops, and rafters. The hookshot doesn’t just latch onto specific predefined targets, it also lets you grapple to anything it can stick into around the world! And there’s a logic and consistency to this general use that makes it feel like an organic part of that world. That kind of flavoring and context can also help alleviate the sense of artificiality that Door Key Mechanics invoke.

Later Zelda games would not be so magnanimous with the use of their hookshot analogues. The hookshot in The Wind Waker feels noticeably more limited, with fewer viable targets. Where in Ocarina of Time there were a lot more organic environmental targets to hit, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess lean somewhat heavily into literal bullseye targets, and floating targets, obviously specifically placed for Link’s benefit. The difference is stark in Skyward Sword, where the clawshot is used for little else other than clearing gaps to reach brightly colored, artificial bullseyes that exist in the world without context. The interactivity of the clawshot in Skyward Sword is severely limited.

My point is not that the more limited hookshots make these games bad – but rather that it makes specifically the hookshot item in those games a lot less compelling. Compare it to the Shieka Slate spells in Breath of The Wild, which can be employed almost anywhere, and used for almost anything – crossing gaps, attacking, blocking projectiles, climbing cliffs, retrieving items, escaping… flying, if you use them just right. That’s interactivity.

Here’s another Zelda example. In Majora’s Mask for the N64, the ice arrows allow you to shoot projectiles encased in freezing magic. Shooting the arrow at any body of water. *Any* body of water, an icy platform is produced, that Link can walk on. I’m sure you can already imagine the applications of that. This is in addition to the arrows being useful for stopping waterfalls, freezing enemies to use as platforms, or freezing them just to more easily defeat them.

In a dark interior pipeworks chamber flooded with water, Link from The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask. Link shoots two magic ice arrows into the water, creating two ice platforms, which he hops across.

In the remake, the developers opted to instead restrict how these arrows can be used. There are shiny blue sparkles on the surfaces of water where the ice arrows were intended to be used. Shooting them there creates the usual ice platforms, however… they also opted to prevent the platforms from ever being created elsewhere, severely limiting the interactivity of this item, and risking the player engagement. Originally, the ice arrows were a tool – a new avenue of possibilities that gets the player thinking and invested in what they’re doing. The latter version makes them a prescribed door key to access only a very specific planned path, with no engagement required on the player’s part. I find game mechanics most exciting when they expand possibilities, not limit them.

In an interior pipeworks chamber flooded with water, there are some conspicuous sparkles on the water. Link from The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, shoots magic ice arrows at each sparkle, although misses his target once, and the ice arrow fizzles on the water.

Heaven forbid anybody be required to do some lateral thinking while playing a video game.

When developing a new mechanic or feature for your game that might be a significant undertaking, ask yourself some questions; does this feature open up interesting interactions or decisions? Does it expand the play space? What are its use cases? How does the player interact with it? What does it accomplish? If the conclusion is that the feature accomplishes a similar level of interaction to simply unlocking a door with a key – if its use is no greater than removing a proverbial gate to the player’s progress, consider whether the feature is even worth developing, especially early on. Some of these features, such as the Balan Wonderworld costumes offer very little interactivity or engagement, but would have cost a huge amount of development resources for character models, bespoke animations, sound effects, and program implementation. The decision to add a feature is not one that should be done without forethought. Think about what each of your new features actually adds to the experience.

Link from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time runs up to an ornate golden chest in a dank dungeon. Light pours forth from it, and slowly, dramatically, Link holds aloft a golden key inset with a red skull jewel.

A key opens doors…

Splatoon’s Salmon Run: Fine-Tuned Machine of Industry

Got Splatoon on the brain, so that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. The game’s preeminent horde mode, added in Splatoon 2, and expanded in Splatoon 3, to be specific, Salmon Run. So essentially I adore Salmon Run, it’s some of the most fun I’ve had with a horde mode in a game, that is, a mode in which waves of enemies hound a team of players in hordes, as the players are tasked with holding them off. In Salmon Run, four plucky young squidkids and octoteens are on the clock to collect golden salmon eggs for their employer. Each run is divided into three waves of increasing difficulty, which can take a number of different forms at random. During each wave, hordes of minor salmonids of a small, medium, and large variety will hound the players, and occasionally larger ‘boss salmonids’ will appear. They are more dangerous and harder to take down, but each drop a number of golden salmon eggs, which then must be carried, one at a time per player, back to a centrally located basket to meet each wave’s quota of golden eggs. Fulfill that goal, and you progress to the next wave. I’m going to go over my perspective on the various elements that make Salmon Run work so damn well. It starts with the maps the game mode takes place on.

A Space Where Moments Happen

Salmon Run maps seem pretty simple on the surface. Smaller than Splatoon‘s versus maps, and usually approximately circle or square shaped. They all hold a few interesting features in common, though. For one, they all feature a large amount of elevation variation. This is important, as most salmonid cannot directly climb walls like players can, and thus will have to path around and through the level’s various ground passages. That’s important too, those passages. The heavily varied elevations create a lot of corridors and enclosed spaces. These enclosed spaces can lead to players getting trapped with enemies, in dangerous situations. That’s the point, Salmon Run maps tend to be less open to facilitate this up-close encounters, to really engage the players with how their enemies move and operate. Strategy becomes essential to keep yourself from being cornered. All this creates exciting ‘Moments’ of high action, that keep Salmon Run interesting.

Speaking of being cornered. Ever notice how all the Salmon Run maps are similarly shaped? Specifically I mean, if we are to assume they are basically the shape of a square, then three of their ‘sides’ are always exposed to the water, where salmonid always spawn from. The fourth side, is not.

This will cause salmonid, again always approaching from the beachheads, to surround players as they navigate, but never directly from behind, as that would feel unfair. So the minor salmonids; tiny small fry, player-sized chums, and larger imposing cohawks, all walk toward players at a moderate speed, usually in lines and clumps, then try to melee attack. The damage dealt by each, and the damage each can incur before being dispatched is proportional to their size. It might be one’s inclination to largely ignore the unruly masses and focus solely on bosses, but this would be a mistake, especially as that aforementioned difficulty scale begins to skyrocket. There is one wall for players to back up against in the face of the coming forces, but they also must keep an eye out for flankers, constantly. peripheral attention becomes essential. Reacting for flanks is another of these exciting ‘Moments’. Waves of high danger follow waves of control, forming Salmon Run’s interest curve.

Game is Hard

So one thing that a cooperative experience like Salmon Run needs is longevity – something for players to latch onto so they keep coming back. One way Salmon Run achieves this is through an adaptive difficulty system. Based on how frequently a player is winning at Salmon Run, an invisible difficulty scale will begin to go up for them. Higher difficulty scales mean more frequent salmon spawns, and higher egg quotas. The higher scales demand more and more efficiency of the players.

So, cleverly, Salmon Run starts out very forgiving, allowing players of any skill level to begin to succeed and claim their rewards for the game mode. What I find commendable is how unrestrained the upper echelons of this scale is. A lot of the fun of horde mode comes from the horde- tons and tons of enemies coming at you all at once. Through grit and determination, you can overcome.

An octopus girl is surrounded by fireflies as she picks up a golden egg with a net. She swims through blue ink to escape a frenzied mosh pit of enraged salmon, who flail at her with frying pans. She swims frantically away. — More like Salmon RUUUUUUUUUUN

Salmon Run also includes a lot of wrinkles and surprises, such as the special event waves, where the rules of the game are tweaked slightly. For example, high tide might shrink the play area, making the next round very claustrophobic. What is all this for, then? Well, like the level design which emphasizes situation awareness, every aspect of Salmon Run from its maps, to its enemies and bosses reinforces specific fundamental skills in the Splatoon player’s toolkit. Players are randomly assigned weapons they are forced to use, reinforcing general adaptability and understanding of the game’s mechanics. The maps are laid out to reinforce situational awareness and navigation skills. Specific bosses reinforce specific weapon-handing skills. As the game’s difficulty ramps up, so does the speed of the game, and the skills needed for mastery are further and more rapidly drilled into the player.

Entity Cramming

“Entity Cramming” is a term originating from Minecraft, a game which allows a very large number of entities like players, enemies, and animals to coexist in a very small space. Salmon Runs can get very cramped, very fast. Especially at higher difficulties with very high spawn rates, or during high tide, at which the viable play space shrinks. There is a need to combat the problem of overpopulation in a small space, to keep the game running smoothly and feeling fair. A lot of salmonid bosses possess some way to impede player movements or player attacks, or both. Even beyond that, with too many enemies present, it would become unfeasible for four meager squids to fight back, which would create an overwhelming and unfair disadvantage for the minor mistake of acting just a little too slow or inefficiently. There’s also the random chance that bosses might occupy the same relative space.

To combat this, salmonid bosses represent an inherent risk-reward factor. With many of them bunched up, there is great risk to approach them, but many slamonid bosses represent an opportunity to clear wide swathes of salmon all at once. There are bomb salmonid, for example, which explode and deal damage to their allies when defeated. When enemies are bunched up, players with wide-reaching area-affecting weapons can take out multiple of them at once. All bosses explode into friendly ink, which is toxic to some salmonid. The new Slammin’ Lid boss, added in Splatoon 3, will utterly crush any salmonid beneath it, bosses included, if it is goaded to use its slam attack.

An octopus-girl in a slopsuit approaches a green UFO piloted by a fish. The UFO hangs over two giant fish with bombs strapped to their heads. The UFO flashes, them falls directly onto the giant fish like a rapid hydraulic press, crushing them utterly into an explosion of orange ink. — Good Cod that is satisfying

So with this built-in risk-reward for salmonid bosses, it’s never too daunting when they team up. With a clever and careful approach, bosses can be used as weapons to take out other bosses! So while difficulty scaling leads to huge hordes of enemies, it also creates this rubber-banding effect where huge hordes of enemies can actual mean an increase in overall efficiency, where you’re dispatching two or three bosses at once, along with their smaller minions, rather than just one. At high levels of play, golden egg collection can skyrocket to huge profits.

Teamwork Teamwork Teamwork!

The real key to excelling at Salmon Run is efficiency, and efficiency is teamwork. It is virtually impossible to accomplish some of this game mode’s higher-end challenges without utter mastery and knowledge of your role on the team. The randomly assigned weapons ensure each player accels and struggles with some specific task. Long ranged precision weapons can take out unshield bosses from a distance with ease. Heavier wide-area weapons can dispatch crowds of small salmonid *much* faster that snipers can. Some weapons can defeat salmon from safety whereas others have to get up close and personal.

Later on efficiency becomes to important, that if you are ever swimming around with a full tank of ink ammunition, you are kind of a liability. My advice to ace Salmon Run? Always be doing something, whether its clearing small enemies or ferrying eggs. Rescue teammates as quickly as possible – four sets of hands outperform two or three. Everyone has a role to fill, even if that role is just moving eggs around, because you’re weapon is ill-suited to the current event wave. In Splatoon 3, a new event wave called the Tornado was implemented to highlight this. Large quantities of eggs spawn far away from the basket, so the four players must form an assembly line of sorts to taxi them across enemy territory. Kind of reflects the rough work environments that the game uses as its horde mode backdrop, huh? In fact, there’s a lot of parallels to game development in general..

An octopus girl in a slopsuit swims back and forth across blue ink, each time grabbing a golden salmon egg in a net, and hurling it up a ledge to a friendly squid kid, to whom it is handed off. — Pictured: The Production Pipeline

The Main Event: The Bosses

The bosses in Salmon Run are fun, inventive, visually creative, goofy, funny, and irresistibly compelling. They all fill specialized niches in the gameplay, and each reinforce a skill for the player. They all have specific rules for how best to deal with them. There’s a lot, so I’m going to rapid-fire-style review them in a series of mini boss breakdowns and see how they fit into this scheme, with a little more detail given on the new bosses added to Splatoon 3‘s Salmon Run.

Steelheads are giant salmon with bombs in their heads. They arm the bombs for a moment, then throw them as a player approaches. They teach precision aiming, as their weak point bobs about while it’s vulnerable. They also reinforce reactiveness to bombs and ground hazards – a common danger in Splatoon.

Steel Eels demand the skill of tracking moving targets, their weak point constantly on the move, and occasionally blocked by their own shield-like bodies. Terrain navigation is crucial here too, as getting sandwiched by one against another enemy or wall means death.

Scrappers, or Jalopies, as I like to call them, teach the skill of flanking. They always turn to face attacking players, and they are shielded from the front. Using teamwork, one player can distract or stun from the front as they other takes them out. This is one of the ‘kiteable’ bosses, which can be lured by the player to be very close to the basket when they die, leaving eggs right there. Retrieving golden eggs past salmonid enemy lines

Stingers are of a class of salmonid bosses I call ‘globals’, as they can damage players from anywhere on the map. Stingers use a long-range beam unimpeded by terrain. Stingers teach players a hierarchy of needs for the game. It’s near-impossible to kill every enemy as they spawn. Just reaching your egg quota and surviving is paramount. You have to triage your attention to what’s most important. Stingers are important. You’re excelling when you put out fires before they happen, and addressing Stingers quickly is a good example.

Maws can also be kited to the basket for easy eggs. They teach how to swim away while placing a bomb, which generally kills them. A surprisingly practical skill, as bombs cost a lot of ink, but swimming replenishes it. Efficient!

Drizzlers are a global salmon which create damaging rain that also ruins friendly turf. They teach lining up shots, and maintaining relative positions between player and enemy, as they are most easily dispatched by deflecting their projectile back at them. Lining this up is strict, to aim well!

Flyfish. Ooooh Flyfish. Perhaps most infamous of all salmonid. They are hovering mobile missile vehicles which periodically fire squid-seeking missiles at players who must be moving to avoid them. This is global. They are easily one of the most dangerous bosses to keep alive, so a great marker of Salmon Run mastery has become one’s ability to safely and efficiently take them out. Taking them out quick is a true marker of friendship between allies. They teach precision use of the grenade sub-weapon, as you must land a grenade in its open missile launchers after it fires. Twice. Once for each launcher. It also teaches patience, and the truth of your own mortality.

An octopus girl in a slopsuit swims through green ink to throw a grenade into the open missile launcher of a hovercraft being piloted by a salmon, just as its second missile launcher as been destroyed in a similar way by a friendly squid kid nearby. — Any man who can one-cycle a flyfish with me, I would trust with the life of my child.

The Slammin’ Lids (god I love that name) are one of two new Salmonid that seem to be purposed to teach one of the two new movement options in Splatoon 3. The lids are easiest to kill by baiting out their slam attack, then mounting them while they’re on the ground, to kill the pilot. The easiest way to do that, is by using the new Squid Roll, which allows rapid turning while swimming through ink. They are also one of the best example of the entity cramming solutions in Salmon Run, as I’d shown earlier. Their main threat is the impenetrable shield they produce beneath themselves, which can obscure lines of fire while they pump out small salmonid to shore up the enemy forces. They aren’t high-priority targets, but can become dangerous if they take up advantageous positions.

The Fish Stick is a toward carries by a rotating contingent of salmon. The stick is easily dispatched using the new Squid Surge, which allows one to rapidly ascend a vertical surface. The Fish Stick fills a new niche in the game mode, which is the use of the player’s wall-scaling abilities, and introduces an enemy that is itself terrain that can be inked. What’s really interesting is that the Fish Stick’s terrain remains in play even after it’s defeated and its eggs are retrieved, opening new strategic options for players. This can be a double edges stick though, as while the extreme vantage is usually safe, some salmon like the maws or dreaded fly fish can use its small surface area to trap players.

The Flip Flapper is a salmon dressed like a dolphin which drops rings of enemy ink where it is about to dive. Filling in this ink with friendly colors before it lands, stuns it and renders it vulnerable. I love this thing because it teaches the teamwork of efficient ink coverage. Nothing worse than teammates who waste time inking something you’ve already inked. Working together, these dolphin wannabes are no challenge, but they also serve Entity Cramming well, as they are very weak to the splatter from other enemies nearby being killed.

Big Shots are tough guys with lots of health that stay on the sidelines. I think what these guys are meant to teach is how the AI operates and reacts to player movement. You see, the Big Shot is a global who uses a machine at the beach to launch wave-generating projectiles toward the basket. Very inconvenient. What is, convenient, though is that the player can use the same device to launch golden eggs toward the basket. Toward, not in, mind you. Another player still has to be there to cash the eggs. If they don’t, salmonid will come in and snatch them up, making the players’ efforts a waste of time. What’s more, is that spending too much time on the beach, which I might remind you is where salmonid come from, can mean quickly becoming overrun by enemies, and trapping you in a place which is very dangerous and inconvenient to reach. Teaches teamwork and restraint.

And octopus girl holding a bathtub uses it to throw green bubbles at a giant salmon on the beach below who is fiddling with a wood-chipper like machine, and is then exploded into green ink. An allied squidkid below loads a golden egg into the machine, which is then launched across the field of view. — Couldn’t have gotten better footage of that egg being thrown by the Big Shot if I’d planned it

There are a few more event-specific bosses, but that was a lot, I think, so we’ll leave it at that.

EMERGENCY!

JUST KIDDING! They couldn’t have a sequel without upping the ante a little, right. At (slight) random, after winning a few Salmon Runs, the new King Salmonid Cohozuna will appear. You have a mere 100 seconds to send him back to the briny deep in order to secure the special fish scale rewards he provides. Really, there isn’t much to him or his AI beyond standing as a suitable final challenge to really test the player’s mastery over all these bosses and systems. His implementation is pretty clever, though.

He has a LOT of health, so normal weapons will simply not do enough damage to vanquish him on their own, not in the time allotted. To beat him, you’ll have to leverage golden eggs, which can, in this bonus boss round, be thrown with zero ammunition cost. They deal massive damage to him, and the only way to get them remains the same: defeat the boss salmonid that accompany him. You’ve only got 100 seconds, your team, one special weapon, and the ink your back, so I hope you’ve been practicing your aim and reaction time.

He seems to prefer to follow the last player who damaged him, so he can be tanked somewhat. He’s not that dangerous on his own. He’s slow, and only has two real attacks. One where he belly flops right in front of him – so keep somewhat at a distance. His other is a jump, which does heavy damage where he lands. Be ready to move. Other than that, it’s his health and his bulk that is the challenge. The team needs to work together to get enough eggs to bring him down, while positioning him such that he is not a threat to the team, and such that he is not covering vital resources with his body. It’s a stiff challenge, but if you really push your self and put a full understanding of all the little things Salmon Run has been teaching you, it’s very doable. A suitable finale to any work day.

A giant 30-foot-tall salmon flops toward an octopus girl wielding a an automatic ink-gun. He is being pelted from the sides by golden projectiles. He turns around, then bursts into green ink in a fantastic explosion. A squidkid declares "Booyah!" as the four cephalopod teammates, now friends, celebrate. — That’s teamwork!

The Cohonclusion

Where. That felt like a gauntlet. We all get through okay? Yeah so I love Salmon Run, to reiterate. It’s got so many little clever design considerations to acutely tune the experience and promote active thinking while playing. Sure, it’s great fun to goof around in with friends, but even at a casual level, enough exposure to the game mode will gradually train certain behaviors that make you better at it. I think that’s a sign of some absolutely excellent game design, that deep consideration of incentives and how minor tweaks to Splatoon‘s gameplay setup will reinforce certain behaviors. Salmon Run is also just where some of Splatoon‘s considerable creativity comes to the fore. I mean “Slammin’ Lid”? An eel made of shower heads that forms an impenetrable wall of showering ink? A mothership that is a warehouse container full of smaller crates that deploy salmon? Come on. This stuff is gold.

An octopus girl swims across orange and green into into a torrent of orange produced by allied weapons. She is showered with golden eggs as salmon burst around her. She grabs one and throws it into a large basket.

DO YOUR JOB!

Mega Man X: The Dash and The Wall Kick, Power and Applicability

Mega Man X, released in 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, marked a big step forward for its sister-series Mega Man, as well as for 2D action games in general. It’s a game about robots, fighting robots, with cool weapons and powers. The protagonist of Mega Man X was cooler, sleeker, just a liiiiiiiittle bit more Bladerunner (maybe like 10%) and slightly less Astro Boy. The titular Mega Man X was made to be stronger, faster, more capable than his older predecessor. Nowhere was this made more apparent than in the movement system, which included two new movement mechanics, the Dash, and the Wall Jump.

The fighting robot Mega Man, starting with Mega Man 3, is able to slide, which changes his hitbox for registering enemy attacks to a wider, shorter rectangle, meaning it could be used to dodge certain projectiles, while also making him move slightly faster in quick bursts. The Mega Man X dash was an evolution of this, retaining the change in hitbox while also greatly magnifying the speed of the ability. It was made more powerful in that sense, but also made more generally useful with an additional technique. Jumping out of the Mega Man X Dash would allow the player to clear greater distances with their jump, as the Dash’s bonus speed would not dissipate until they hit the ground or a wall from said jump.

The protagonist of Mega Man X can jump into a wall, cling to it, and slowly sliding down its length. When jumping from this wall slide, he can gain additional height by jumping off the wall. The interesting thing, is that because of the high degree of aerial maneuverability in this game, it’s possible to change direction mid-air immediately after a wall jump, and reattach to the wall at a higher elevation, effectively allowing the player to climb any vertical surface. This is known as the Wall Kick. 2D action games, obviously, have two axis of movement, though generally one access is rather strictly limited, the vertical axis. The Wall Kick gives a vector of control over this space while maintaining the advantages of limitation through gravity have on the game world. Giving the player a limited method by which they can break the rules of gravity offers the overall design a certain dynamism. The player now has two modes of operation they can switch between on the fly without even thinking about it – aerial oriented and ground oriented.

Secrets and extra areas like this are littered all over the place, giving the levels a rewarding sense of scale

These two moves, simple though they are, were designed intentionally to be extremely powerful, and extremely dynamic by giving them a huge possibility space with a wide range of use cases. Wall climbing can be used to avoid attacks near the ground, to reach hidden areas, or to get over and behind a troublesome enemy. The dash can be used like a dodge to quickly position the player out of harms way, to clear a level faster by stringing dashes together, or to clear large horizontal spaces with the dash jump. Those are just a few examples. With such a broad range of possibilities, this empowerment of the player greatly raises the skill ceiling of this games, making mastery more rewarding, while broadening what can be done in the design of levels and bosses. It’s the applicability of these moves, in particular that widens the possibility space. Mega Man X can climb any vertical surface, and dash at any time. Because these moves are always available, the game needs to be designed with them always in mind.

From here, bosses start to incorporate this possibility space into the overall plan. If a player is made more powerful, in this case given a broader degree of control over their position in 2D space, then the environment needs to be designed to both accommodate and interact with that power. You’ll notice a lot more verticality in the level design of Mega Man X over Mega Man. Trees, tall buildings, and aircraft are common. The original series did play with vertical movement from time to time, but mostly in the form of moving platforms and falling – not things the player had much control over.

Chill Penguin here is pretty simple, but at least the extra verticality gives him more to do than just running back and forth across the screen

With this added degree of control comes added obstacles. A Mega Man game in which enemies never posed a threat to you while wall-climbing would mean losing the game’s notable blend of combat and traversal for the sake of this new mechanic. Rather than make it incongruous, the Wall Kick feels like a natural extension of Mega Man‘s movement systems, that flows with the established gameplay. What’s more, by introducing threats and problems to solve in the context of using the Wall Kick, the Wall Kick is made to have functional, practical application in and out of combat.

Tall shafts like this become a lot more common as the series goes on. I feel like a ninja!

I know the title of this piece says Mega Man X, but the Mega Man series, overall shows an increasing level of acuity when it comes to making use of the Wall Kick and Dash abilities. The story and general gameplay aesthetic of Mega Man X continued on to the Gameboy Advanced Mega Man Zero titles, as well as the Nintendo DS Mega Man ZX titles, which are direct sequels to the Mega Man X series, despite the change in subtitle. Faster and snappier than ever in both control and combat design, they really illustrate the limits to which the Wall Kick and Dash can really push Mega Man. Mega Man X itself has some fun and memorable bosses, but they only scratch the surface of how the new movement can be leveraged to make new and more interesting boss encounters. X and others like him will find themselves climbing walls to reach weak points, ducking projectiles, and clashing with inhumanly fast foes as the series goes on.

Killing robo goons from below just never gets old. It’s all so seamless

Bosses like Deathtanz Mantisk (which, incidentally, may be the single best name for a boss enemy in any video game ever made. I’m serious. Just, try saying it out loud. You’ll see.) utilize vertical space in really interesting ways, creating a counterpoint to the player’s ability to climb walls. Now not only can the player climb walls, which is fun, but they can outmaneuver their foes by doing so, which is fun and empowering! When this terrifying death-robot zooms across the screen, narrowly missing Mega Man Zero with a razor-sharp scythe blade, as the player readjusts their position with a dash, the sensation of taking part in a sci-fi-anime-robot-battle becomes very real. A high-powered player character creates high-powered situations, if the enemy and level design rises to meet these elevated powers.

Very few games make me feel as capable as a good Mega Man

The best part of all of this is that Dashing augments the Wall Kick, meaning both of these maneuvers can be used in concert to an even more powerful effect. Using to verticality to your advantage is powerful. Moving great distances in quick bursts is powerful. So, moving great distances in quick bursts through vertical space is extremely powerful. Mega Man is able to populate its many entries with some of the most visually impactful and fluidly playing boss encounters in the business leveraging the possibilities allotted by this high level of player power. Growing up on these games, they’ve had a big influence on me, and I tend to, when designing, leaning towers player empowerment. The more powerful a player is, in a practical and broadly applicable way, the more room there is in the design to do crazy and surprising stuff with environmental and enemy encounters. Because Mega Man can traverse so much vertical space so easily, there needs to be wild, sprawling vertical spaces filled with interesting things to see and do, things that wouldn’t be possible if he were more strictly adhered to the ground. There’s something to be said for more limited player power depending on the overall design goals, of course, but Mega Man very succinctly shows the design advantages of allowing the player a great deal of power.

Omega’s encounter has no walls on which to climb, although this is because, as an early boss, he exists to teach you the merits of ducking and jumping projectiles with the dash

The simple combination of a dash and a powerful yet limited method for traversing vertical space has become an extremely effective tool for 2D action games in creating elaborate and spectacular combat systems. It’s no surprise to see surprise to see spins on it utilized in such titles as Hollow Knight, Azure Striker: Gunvolt, and Super Meat Boy. It’s just a very elegant way to give the player a way to leverage the huge amount of air control they have in those games for interesting combat and traversal scenarios. Metroid has been exploring its own take on this concept to similar effect since 1991, actually two years prior to the release of Mega Man X, but no series has quite so thoroughly explored its possibilities as that of the blue bomber.

You may even become as powerful as I am…