Honing vs Innovating in Game Design
Published: 2024-07-20
This is a cool song, although it might be too chaotic for reading music
Was Tetris⌠inevitable?
If Alexey Pajitnov hadnât created the game circa 1984, would somebody else have instead?
Of course you can ask this question of any video game, or any innovation in anything. But Tetris stands out to me as an game worth asking this questions about because itâs so⌠Perfect.
Tetris was complete the day it came out. A few simple ideas came together to create a game that was so simple but so interesting, understood in an instant but could be enjoyed for a lifetime. All of itâs few systems work perfectly with one another to make a game where there isnât really anywhere left to take itâs design (dispite many, many, many, MANY attempts). The Tetris of 1984 is effectively the Tetris of today, with little modification. Tetris was and continues to be, a perfect video game.
Tetris is the final form of itself.
Iâll be the first person to tell you that ideas donât spawn out of the ether from nothing, and we can trace back the origin of Tetris to math concepts and Pajitnov playing with Tetromino puzzles as a child, but something about itâs simplicity and elegance makes it feel like it just manifested completely finished out of the primordial soup. I canât imagine a world without Tetris, it feels so obvious. How many more Tetrises are there? How many more genres of games are there that nobody has thought to make yet? Do other games and genres have a platonic ideal, a final form that itâs waiting to achieve? If so, how do we reach it?
As game designers, we push the bounds of what we know to be possible, but we also focus in on and refine the things we already know are possible, both in an effort to make games more fun, engaging, interesting, and good.
I have broadly categorized these two types of thinking into honing and innovating.
In writing this post Iâve realized that this concept I thought was fairly simple has complexities only discoverable once you give yourself the task of trying to understand it. Instead talking about the entirety of this concept, Iâll frame my thinking using two games.
So letâs talk about Scrolling Shooters, or âshmupsâ.
(also this post might be a little hard to understand if you have no concept of the games Iâm talking about, this wouldâve probably been better as a youtube video or something, who knows, it might become one later.)
Shmups are Simple.
Theyâre what a âshooterâ used to be before DOOM. You dodge the bullets that come from the top of the screen and shoot up back at the things shooting at you. Sure there are evolutions to the genre like twin stick and 3d-rail shooters, but letâs stick to classic shmups.
1993 The Tokyo based game Studio Treasure released Radiant Silvergun to Japanese Arcades (Later ported to the Sega Saturn, and modern consoles later).
In the 90s shmups were on their way out and there was a rich lineage of existing ones to reference. Many of the designers and developers at Treasure grew up playing shmups and had a deep understanding of the genre. They took what they knew worked, and honned the ideas present throughout their inspirations to create what many consider to be the best shmup ever.
A description of Radiant Silvergun.
Radiant Silvergun is a big ol juicy game filled with a lot of things.
You got 6 different kinds of shots!!:
- a straight cannon
- homing laser
- side bombs
- rear shots
- lightning beams
- homing missiles
You have 3 separate weapon levels. Through use (and through your boss destroy percentage), the weapons become more powerful by leveling up. You also having a âRadiant swordâ which allows you to nullify pink âsword bulletsâ that build up your swords meter. at max meter, your sword becomes a giant cleave that gives you full invincibility throughout the animation. There is also a combo system. Enemies are either red blue or yellow. Only Kill enemies of the same color to increase your chain. There are also occasionally âsecretâ chains in certain sections of levels that require you to kill enemies in specific color orders. The levels are winding and interesting with lots of different setpieces and environments the player goes through. They really pushed the level design of shmups as far as they could take it.
Radiant Silvergun is a game is formed through a lot of different, seeming separate systems that all come together through genius design to create one of the best shmups of all time. Itâs really good itâs on steam now! play it!
But with the peak of shmups being achieved, where would treasure go from here? Radiant Silvergun is filled to the brim, they took everything from the genre they knew worked, and honned it into the perfect form of itself. They couldnât make a sequel with more systems to try and fold into all the existing ones. They demonstrated their understanding of the shmup genre to a level unmatched by others.
So instead of honing any further, they innovated.
In 2001, Treasure released Ikaruga.
âOh, thatâs the one were you switch colours right!?â
If that was the thought that occurred to you when you read Ikaruga (or clicked on the mobygames link and saw screenshots of it), then thatâs kinda indicative of the point that this post is trying to make. Ikaruga is a very odd yet very simple shmup that is designed around one mechanic.
Every single mechanic in Ikaruga
- Everything is either white or black. you can swap your ship between white mode and black mode.
- You absorb same color bullets opposite colour bullets kill you.
- You have one type of shot. You deal double damage by shooting enemies with the opposite color.
- You have a missile barrage (good ol Itano Circus) that you can fire by spending a your absorbed bullets.
- Enemies of the same color as you return fire upon death.
- Kill enemies in groups of 3 of the same color to maintain your combo and increase your score. you get an extra life every 3 million points (and every 5mil after that).
Thats every mechanic!
It did take the geniuses who came up with Radiant Silvergun to come up with the design ideas for Ikaruga concept (and we can trace back the origins of the idea to Treasure wanting to simply the combo system in Radian Silvergun, and wanting to add a way to go through bullets like the shield in Shinrei Jusatsushi TarĹmaru).
Anyone can go âletâs make a color swapping shmupâ, and the idea of a shmup where you can switch colors (simply to deal bonus damange) was present a year earlier in Dimahoo. But coming up with every single specific mechanic in Ikaruga that complements and revolves around the concept of switching and absorbing is the true stroke of genius from Treasure.
Why Ikaruga is very smart:
- Same color enemies sending return fire obviously allows you to gain charge through killing enemies, but more subtly it also makes you think before shooting, as shooting a same color enemy then swapping will cause you to get hit by the bullets you had them create, as the return fire bullets home in on you to make collecting them easier.
- Dealing double damage to opposite color enemies greatly increases risk/reward, as you cannot absorb their shots.
- The missiles are much more powerful than your standard shot but is gained through absorbing shots, so thinking about how youâll absorb bullets to get the charge, and when to release it, are factors in thinking about positioning and about what color to be.
- The comboing system is the most elegant addition, and is an interesting point of comparison from this to Radiant Silvergun. in Radiant Silvergun, combing is also well designed and thought out and fun, but it is arbitrary. Enemies are 1 of 3 colors for the sake of comboing, itâs just one separate system in a game full of separate systems that all come together. Ikaruga ties combing directly into itâs central mechanic of colors. Enemies arenât black or white to be comboâed, theyâre black and white because thatâs what the entire game is about, comboing is simply a natural extension of the existing color system. (that and the devs thought having you ignore 2/3rds of the enemies on the screen for your score felt bad)
- Colors and comboing also make how you route your kills across a stage tremendously important, to try and maintain a combo throughout.
Ikaruga on the surface might appear to be quite similar to other shmups, I thought so as well. But through a more careful consideration you realize that Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga are actually quite different at their cores.
Ikaruga isnât just âdouble the number of bullets on the screen and make half of them a different colorâ, as having the player be able to essentially switch between two different states of bullet location at any time means that the way you prepare bullet patterns fundamentally changes. You canât really take patterns and enemies from Radiant Silvergun and throw them in Ikaruga and expect it to work.
Ikaruga in itâs innovating ends up becoming radically different compared to other shmups. Itâs far more methodical, more puzzle-esque, itâs not about reacting to enemy patterns in quick succession, itâs about solving the many âpuzzlesâ the game throws at you involving spread patterns, return fire, combo routing, and when to switch. The game is almost entirely deterministic, with each of itâs 5 levels being a song whoâs sheet music you must decipher before starting to learn to play all the notes it asks of you.
Itâs really good, and really interesting, and really hard! I still havenât beaten in on one credit! Itâs on Steam! Play it!
Ikaruga is a game whoâs design is based solely around one idea or mechanic. Radiant Silvergun by comparison is much less focused and is put together by taking what was known about the genre and trying to make the best version of a shmup they could create.
Honers vs Innovators
To Innovate?
This innovation method of thinking is very common among indie developers. Making a game in an existing genre with a primary gimmicks has simpler complexity, and the scope is generally lower. I assume having a frame of reference like âcolor swappingâ made the potential idea space for new levels much smaller compared to what it was for Radiant Silvergun.
Innovative thinking allows you to not have to be concerned about being derivative, because the differences of your game compared to existing ones is obvious.
Innovative design also helps your game be novel. Which is helpful for making your game stand out. Remember how you (probably) remembered Ikaruga as âthat color swapping shmupâ? It immediately gives Ikaruga a place to live where itâs not as closely directly competing with other games in itâs genre.
Simpler more innovative games are also easier to understand from a design perspective, I was able to go through all the reasons why Ikarugaâs design is so smart, but with Radiant Silvergun itâs less about overarching ideas and more about specific choices of good design through itâs levels.
To Hone?
There is be value in simply taking the complexity thatâs already been figured out by existing games, and making new scope for it. Most beginner Indie Devs also look for novel ideas to innovate and work on their complexity/system design skills. However Scope/Level design skills are something that a lot of new devs often neglect. How many of your jam projects end up being 1-2 levels? Your games innovative systems are only as good as the environments and situations you give your player to use those systems within.
Thereâs no need to make a Proof of concept for ideas that have already proven themselves to work.
Instead of concerning yourself with figuring out if your innovative idea works, you only need to make levels and gameplay that can demonstrate the idea working. Games like Celeste for example donât really do radically new things, they just take existing ideas and execute on them very well.
Parking your gameâs design so closely to others isnât a bad, but it makes it harder for you to easily demonstrate why people should play your game instead of the existing games itâs like. Especially when youâre new to making games and the games you make arenât very good yet.
So to summarize:
If you want to focus on improving your system design skills, come up with some innovative gameplay systems.
If you want to focus on improving your scope/level design skills, come up with interesting ways to apply existing gameplay systems you already know work.
And thatâs it!
More posts on the way. Iâm just like the thinker, except not a bronze sculpture in france. And I think about making video games instead of the human condition.