Platformer Subgenres: Definitions and Complexity in Enemy Design vs Level Design
I'm going to look at platformers as falling into three broad catagories distinguished by the types of activities that are emphasized within a given title.
Action-Centric: Take for example, the Mega Man games. The main focus is on destroying enemies as opposed to taking time to explore the game world, or navigating the level through streams of skilled motion. These focuses define the other two sub-genres. However, there is still a considerable amount of skilled platform navigation apparent that seperates this type of game from what we would call an "action" title, such as Gunstar Heroes, where most platform interaction is incidental and facile.
Motion-Centric: Here I'm going to bring up Sonic again. Enemies are seen more as obstacles in one's path than as predators here; this sub-genre is all about using the level as a gymnasium with interconnected vectors of fluid character movement between its instrumentalities of motion, which are the key objects in this type of game.
Exploration-Centric: This sub-genre blossomed considerably with the advent and refinement of 3D platformers (Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie as examples, respectively.) While platform navigation is crucial here as it is in the motion-centric design, it does not so heavily focus on being used as a means of facilitating fluid character acrobatics. Instead, the player accomplishes goals in the game world chiefly by means of exploring the game world thoroughly and solving puzzles of varying difficulty. So, instead of a world like a gymnasium, here we're presented with something more akin to a playground; less pressure is centered on performance, and more on the acts of play and discovery.
So, what is the point of defining these sub-genres? Why these particular distinctions? Using these definitions, clear differences appear in the design of these games in terms of: number of distinct enemies per level; complexity of enemy behavior; placement of platforms, GE's, ME's, items, and enemies; number of possible routes through a level; and even art direction (which I won't deal with much here).
To begin exploring these differences, I'm going to jump back to the example of Mega Man. Level design here is spartan and exists as a faciliation of the interactions between the player and usually a group of enemies that occupy the same room (a room in this series defined as those spaces seperated by a momentary pause in action as the screen shifts violently toward the direction which reveals the conceptual "entrance" to the next room.) There are occasional sections where platform movement and behavior must be studied carefully, (such as the two rooms in Ice Man's level where blocks phase in and out of existence in particular patterns) but these seem to function as self-conscious yet successful attempts to break the monotony of the level design. These sections however are not the principle focal points of the levels, and are thus subverted by the player's conflict with the enemies; platforms serve more often as stages for combat than as instrumentalities of motion or exploration.
In contrast to the simplicity of the level design, the enemy design and beastiary size itself is rich. The player must then adapt to several patterns of enemy behavior in order to successfully make her way through the level. When several of these patterns overlap, multi-phased orchestrations of dodging and attacking are created by using the available information gleaned from prior experience with the enemies in order to survive.
These interactions between character and enemy stand in sharp contrast to those typically found in a Motion-Centric title like Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Within a given level, there are usually only 3 types of enemies, wheras in Mega Man the average number is closer to seven. Not only that, but the patterns of a Sonic enemy tend to be simpler than those of a Mega Man one. For instance, in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the crab known as "Crawl" in Casino Night Zone simply moves back and forth in relation to the player and can only be destroyed from behind; and the crab known as "Shellcracker" in Metropolis Zone stays in place and extends its larger claw when approached, and is vulnerable from above. On the other hand, one example of a Mega Man 3 enemy is "Hammer Joe", who stays in place, but periodically throws something like a ball and chain at Mega Man, and is only vulnerable to fire just as he is about to release his projectile, and only from the front. Mentioned here is another distinction; while the enemies in Sonic mostly do damage by running into the player, many more Mega Man enemies use projectiles as well as their bodies to harm the player. Even further, enemy density in Sonic games is more sparse than in Mega Man. Within the space of a single screen, two enemies might be visible in Sonic 2 where there could be four in Mega Man.
So, the ultimate result of this design choice in Sonic 2 is that the player does not have to adapt to as many enemy patterns, and thus can more quickly respond to their prescence, and can deal with them more simply. This simplification of player/enemy interaction is necessary given the focus on constant, fast movement in the game; if enemies in Sonic games had patterns which took a considerable amount of time to decipher and thwart, as do some in the Mega Man games, it would uncomfortably break the flow of the game. Say the player has just sped out of a loop de loop; she does not want then immediately want or expect a 10-second encounter with an enemy in her path. In the Mega Man games however, movement is much slower and less integral to the core gameplay, so the more involved enemy patterns are appropriate to the pace set by its landscape and GE's. And thus as the enemy interaction in Sonic games is more limited, the richness of GE placement and interaction can be greatly expanded for the purposes of promoting a different kind of gameplay.
Thanks to http://megaman.co.uk/ and http://www.sonichq.org/ for enemy information.
Action-Centric: Take for example, the Mega Man games. The main focus is on destroying enemies as opposed to taking time to explore the game world, or navigating the level through streams of skilled motion. These focuses define the other two sub-genres. However, there is still a considerable amount of skilled platform navigation apparent that seperates this type of game from what we would call an "action" title, such as Gunstar Heroes, where most platform interaction is incidental and facile.
Motion-Centric: Here I'm going to bring up Sonic again. Enemies are seen more as obstacles in one's path than as predators here; this sub-genre is all about using the level as a gymnasium with interconnected vectors of fluid character movement between its instrumentalities of motion, which are the key objects in this type of game.
Exploration-Centric: This sub-genre blossomed considerably with the advent and refinement of 3D platformers (Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie as examples, respectively.) While platform navigation is crucial here as it is in the motion-centric design, it does not so heavily focus on being used as a means of facilitating fluid character acrobatics. Instead, the player accomplishes goals in the game world chiefly by means of exploring the game world thoroughly and solving puzzles of varying difficulty. So, instead of a world like a gymnasium, here we're presented with something more akin to a playground; less pressure is centered on performance, and more on the acts of play and discovery.
So, what is the point of defining these sub-genres? Why these particular distinctions? Using these definitions, clear differences appear in the design of these games in terms of: number of distinct enemies per level; complexity of enemy behavior; placement of platforms, GE's, ME's, items, and enemies; number of possible routes through a level; and even art direction (which I won't deal with much here).
To begin exploring these differences, I'm going to jump back to the example of Mega Man. Level design here is spartan and exists as a faciliation of the interactions between the player and usually a group of enemies that occupy the same room (a room in this series defined as those spaces seperated by a momentary pause in action as the screen shifts violently toward the direction which reveals the conceptual "entrance" to the next room.) There are occasional sections where platform movement and behavior must be studied carefully, (such as the two rooms in Ice Man's level where blocks phase in and out of existence in particular patterns) but these seem to function as self-conscious yet successful attempts to break the monotony of the level design. These sections however are not the principle focal points of the levels, and are thus subverted by the player's conflict with the enemies; platforms serve more often as stages for combat than as instrumentalities of motion or exploration.
In contrast to the simplicity of the level design, the enemy design and beastiary size itself is rich. The player must then adapt to several patterns of enemy behavior in order to successfully make her way through the level. When several of these patterns overlap, multi-phased orchestrations of dodging and attacking are created by using the available information gleaned from prior experience with the enemies in order to survive.
These interactions between character and enemy stand in sharp contrast to those typically found in a Motion-Centric title like Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Within a given level, there are usually only 3 types of enemies, wheras in Mega Man the average number is closer to seven. Not only that, but the patterns of a Sonic enemy tend to be simpler than those of a Mega Man one. For instance, in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the crab known as "Crawl" in Casino Night Zone simply moves back and forth in relation to the player and can only be destroyed from behind; and the crab known as "Shellcracker" in Metropolis Zone stays in place and extends its larger claw when approached, and is vulnerable from above. On the other hand, one example of a Mega Man 3 enemy is "Hammer Joe", who stays in place, but periodically throws something like a ball and chain at Mega Man, and is only vulnerable to fire just as he is about to release his projectile, and only from the front. Mentioned here is another distinction; while the enemies in Sonic mostly do damage by running into the player, many more Mega Man enemies use projectiles as well as their bodies to harm the player. Even further, enemy density in Sonic games is more sparse than in Mega Man. Within the space of a single screen, two enemies might be visible in Sonic 2 where there could be four in Mega Man.
So, the ultimate result of this design choice in Sonic 2 is that the player does not have to adapt to as many enemy patterns, and thus can more quickly respond to their prescence, and can deal with them more simply. This simplification of player/enemy interaction is necessary given the focus on constant, fast movement in the game; if enemies in Sonic games had patterns which took a considerable amount of time to decipher and thwart, as do some in the Mega Man games, it would uncomfortably break the flow of the game. Say the player has just sped out of a loop de loop; she does not want then immediately want or expect a 10-second encounter with an enemy in her path. In the Mega Man games however, movement is much slower and less integral to the core gameplay, so the more involved enemy patterns are appropriate to the pace set by its landscape and GE's. And thus as the enemy interaction in Sonic games is more limited, the richness of GE placement and interaction can be greatly expanded for the purposes of promoting a different kind of gameplay.
Thanks to http://megaman.co.uk/ and http://www.sonichq.org/ for enemy information.