Full disclosure: I have a Picross addiction. If Pavlov is Nintendo and Picross is a bell, I’m the salivating dog.
They release a new game in the series, I buy it, and the next 20 hours of my life are a blur as I perfect every puzzle.
Having said that, my excitement for the sudden release of Picross S on Switch was huge!
An important new feature was touted: multiplayer. New to the series, two players would be able to “play cooperatively, or compete to see who can place the most tiles!”
This was a game-changer! I have a friend from Picrossers Anonymous who would love to relapse with me and go head-to-head!
Well, Nintendo wasn’t fully honest with their description of this functionality. Technologically, it’s all there: two players can control cursors on the same screen, and it works. It’s fun to help each other out and solve puzzles together.
Competitively, the structure is non-existent. There’s no separate “Vs. Mode” or anything of that nature, it simply tallies up the number of tiles filled in by each player. The game doesn’t keep score over multiple rounds or celebrate a victor. The players are left to point out that their score was higher and rub it in their “opponent’s” face.
That’s not the extent of the issue, either. This game is impossible—I repeat—impossible to be treated competitively. It leaves the door wide open for cheating and unfair play.
I mentioned my fellow addict above. We got to playing a few rounds of Picross S together and it wasn’t long before he had outsmarted the game. Whenever I placed a tile, he would follow behind my cursor and overwrite it with a tile of his own color, taking my points for himself.
Picross S lets competitors get away with whatever they’d like, and also creates another problem by not awarding any points for blocking off tiles. Placing an X on a space that won’t contain a colored title is a critical part of Picross gameplay, but gamers are punished in multiplayer mode by not receiving any points, leaving their opponent to score off their work.
My advice to Switch owners: Purchase this title and enjoy it as a single player or cooperative affair.
Words to Nintendo: Be careful how you advertise your games; it’s important to be honest about what’s included in the package.
Update: Nintendo has adjusted the wording on their Picross S online listing to read ‘Unique to the Switch version, 2 players can now play simultaneously! Enjoy with friends and family!’
That’s better.
On the Nintendo Switch eShop, there’s a 2-dimensional Breath of the Wild for sale.
It’s called SteamWorld Dig 2.
This is an indie title by Image & Form. You don’t have to like steampunk culture or have beaten the original to enjoy this title, it stands on its own as a must-play.
Everything that you loved about the the open-world Zelda adventure is here, in this little downloadable title.
Strictly speaking, Dig 2’s genre is most like a Metroidvania, but fans of Breath of the Wild will feel right at home in the game’s underground caverns.
Did you like defeating shrines? You’re in luck; with caves, puzzles must be completed to earn collectibles and power-ups. Just like shrines, caves feature additional hidden secrets apart from the main objective, for explorers and completionists.
Like Link’s stamina mechanics, the main character (Dorothy) has meters for water and light that the player has to keep an eye on and take into account while trying to reach new areas.
The game can be played nonlinearly, any time you wish to take a break from the main plotline to enhance your strengths.
Filling in Hyrule’s map by locating towers is not unlike uncovering new caverns and locating fast-travel points.
Special abilities can be unlocked that are very similar to the Champion Abilities in Zelda. I activated an especially helpful modification in SteamWorld which I lovingly referred to right away as “Mipha’s Grace.” Even the HUD elements share attributes in common, like how the special abilities indicate on-screen when they are ready to be used.
Don’t miss this title! Even if you don’t feel like you’re ready for “another Breath of the Wild,” keep in mind that this game is much smaller. SteamWorld Dig 2 doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.
It’s also plenty unique, with a creative world, interesting characters, and fun gameplay loops that keep you coming back and digging deeper.
It’s not the games. It’s not the price. It isn’t the user interface or the branding.
The secret selling point is that the Switch is fun to use.
It’s physically fun to play with.
That dumb snapping noise that plays in all the commercials? It underscores one of the core benefits of the experience.
Seeing the hardware’s multiple configurations raises intrigue, then the tactile feedback received when sliding the pieces together does all the convincing.
Nintendo used to say Playing is Believing, but they advanced this concept a step further by creating believers before the console even powers on.
They say “ignorance is bliss,” which can be true.
If you’re enjoying a meal that accidentally touched the ground, you’re probably better off not knowing that.
We’re always within a small distance from insects, but if they’re not bothering us… ignorance is bliss.
Other times, being ignorant just leaves you feeling left out. Like for the gamer who’s never played a Final Fantasy title in their life, and the discussion turns to the series.
Here’s what it sounds like to me, someone who has never touched the popular RPG franchise:
“Oh man, when are we ever going to get the proper follow-up to Twelve?”
“You know, Three is actually Six in Japan.”
“I’m holding out hope for Fifteen Two.” (What is this, Cribbage?)
“Why did it take so long for Seven to get remastered?”
“One and Four are available on iOS, but you’ll have to buy an original PlayStation to access Five.” (Clearly, I’m making all of this up.)
Final Fantasy games are referred to simply by their number designation, which makes conversations around them even harder to follow for newcomers.
When people start talking FF, my eyes glaze over.
Sometimes I wonder if I should play the entire series just to be in the know.
“It’s so hard to find the NES Classic Edition! Why can’t Nintendo just put all those games on a cartridge and call it a day?”
It was the same story with the Super Nintendo version.
Nintendo fans and collectors, left baffled by supply issues, often bemoan the fact that these collections of retro games aren’t made available for Switch.
What if Classic Editions weren’t miniature reproductions of the original consoles, but simple game carts or eShop downloads?
Pros:
+ More convenient
+ Cheaper
+ Portable
+ Easier to purchase
+ Less clutter
Cons:
– You don’t get the original controllers
– Only lasts one console generation
– Less of a collector’s item
– Not as nostalgic
– Well… you can’t hack it to add more games.
Personally, I’m really glad Nintendo chose to recreate the consoles. I’ve been wanting NES to return to store shelves for a decade, but I never predicted the genius of shrinking it down to the size of your palm and preloading it with games.
I can also now say that I own an SNES, which is the only console I missed while growing up.
It’s easy to beg Nintendo to make things more convenient and cut some corners, but the experience just wouldn’t be the same.
35 hours. That’s how many I put into Picross S for Nintendo Switch. It was an impulse buy at $8, “cheap” by many standards, but its true expense was my time.
My days contain 24 hours, like yours, but not many are leftover for gaming. What precious little minutes remain for entertainment must be wisely spent, and I failed to do so with Picross.
Don’t get me wrong; I love the series. But this particular title didn’t offer much by way of new or exciting material. My first few hours were motivated by fun, and I played a bit longer in multiplayer, which was a worthwhile experience with friends and family.
The rest of my time was spent out of compulsion. Nintendo has successfully trained me as a collector, so earning the medals on each group of puzzles felt rewarding at first, but ultimately became a chore. I truly noticed the problem after completing all 150 levels, then immediately setting out to do them again in Mega Picross mode. The SAME puzzles!
I wanted to be 100% done with the game so that I could move on to other, more fun titles. Therein lies the issue: I didn’t have to complete the game to move on. I should have closed the software, let it rest, and came back in a few weeks or months.
What I endeavor to do in the future, and I encourage you to as well, is make wiser choices with your gaming time. Maximize your fun. If a game isn’t doing the trick, sell it. If you can’t get rid of it, forget it.
Our time on this planet is short, so recreation should be used for relaxing, improving skills, and most importantly: spending time with people we care about. Whether that’s your friend or your spouse, gaming can be a great way to grow bonds.
You don’t have to prove anything to anyone by being a completionist. For goodness sake, there aren’t even achievements on your Nintendo profile! And you don’t owe it to yourself to slog through a game just because you purchased it. You wouldn’t eat every bite of a meal at a restaurant if it tasted bad, or pained you to swallow, right? The same applies here.
Nintendo has been diversifying their income of late. Not content to only sell you a console per generation and a shelf-full of games, offerings have increased to amiibo, special editions, and add-on downloadable content.
Rather than earning $40 off of Metroid: Samus Returns customers in North America, Nintendo was given twice the amount by hardcore fans who bought the limited box-set and amiibo two-pack.
There’s a new pricing model on the rise, and Nintendo calls it the DLC Expansion Pass. Some might remember Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as the game that introduced the Expansion Pass to us, but this method of DLC delivery was first utilized in Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, where two major add-ons were sold in one bundle and fulfilled over time.
Of course, Nintendo is one of the last companies in the industry to adopt the practice, but now that they have, there’s no looking back.
Seeing the success of Mario Kart 8 and Breath of the Wild, Nintendo and Ubisoft created an Expansion Pass strategy for Mario + Rabbids and Fire Emblem Warriors.
It’s a brilliant business model for a number of reasons.
Players are encouraged to purchase additional content as early as day 1, when excitement for the game is at its peak.
The people most likely to give a business money are the ones who are already giving it money.
Revenue earned from advance DLC purchases fund continued development, where teams can keep working with existing assets for some time, rather than switching to a more expensive project from scratch.
Expansion Pass owners are extremely unlikely to sell their game for some time, delivering a blow to the used market.
100% of DLC sales go straight to Nintendo, not split with a retailer.
Prevents the base sticker price from climbing.
The benefits are self-explanatory, but the final one could use some unpacking. High-definition video games have been $60 for a considerable amount of time (over a decade). Nintendo gamers held onto the $50 threshold a bit longer thanks to Wii’s standard definition output.
The cost of a video game feels high. It’s the better half of a hundred dollars. But it has remained low relative to two major factors: 1) Development costs are rising, not declining. 2) Inflation is constantly active.
Watch our Pricing Through The Ages video to get an idea of how quickly the dollar loses value. You need more “money” to purchase the candy bar today than you did five years ago. Despite this, software prices remain steady.
That’s why Nintendo has been diversifying, and the Expansion Pass is a win-win strategy. Gamers get to support the developers of titles they care about, and Nintendo gets to stay in business!
Nintendo’s reward program has evolved and devolved over the years. There was a really nice sweet-spot during the Wii era, where lots of great games earned you points and those points could be redeemed for awesome physical prizes. I enjoyed that period and collected a lot of exclusive merch that made me feel like a part of the—well—club.
Things are different with today’s program, My Nintendo. The approach pivoted from rewarding surveys to gameplay accomplishments and task completed instead, which is a sensible exchange. However, with the new program, we’ve firmly waved goodbye to physical goodies like tote bags and hanafuda cards, left to spend our Gold and Platinum coins on in-game outfits, themes, and digital wallpapers.
Turns out, it’s no replacement. I was excited at the onset of My Nintendo, as a few games were offered for redemption: WarioWare Touched!, a DS title, and a Zelda-themed Picross game exclusive to the loyalty service.
Eager for more rewards like this, I quickly became disappointed when I found nothing worthwhile to spend my coins on.
Worse, the digital currency was a ticking time-bomb. Expiration dates loomed over my Nintendo piggy-bank, which threatened to disappear if I didn’t hurry up and spend it on a bunch of themes I would never use.
I don’t feel particularly rewarded by Nintendo, which is a problem when you consider that I’m their best customer: a day-one early adopter, a collector, a completionist, and a brand ambassador dedicating my life to working for them free of charge.
If their customer loyalty program isn’t for me, then who is it for?
Do you love huge, generalized sweeping statements? Well, you’re in luck!
Indies are way better than 3rd party developers.
When I play a 1st party Nintendo game, the polish is undeniable. I can practically taste the quality assurance oozing out of every aspect of the game.
Playing a 3rd party title is often a disappointing affair. I’m reminded how much less effort they put into their menus, onboarding new players, readability, and the overall stability of the experience.
Indies, however? I’ve had the pleasure of completing multiple independently-developed games that feel as if they belong in Nintendo’s own stable of IP. They often approach development the same way Nintendo does, creating a unique mechanic and building an entire world around it.
These self-published titles come with lower budgets and therefore have less marketing. They have to compensate with more ambitious pitches; it takes a lot to stand out on the Switch eShop, with handfuls of games being dumped onto the store weekly.
An indie game tries to do less, and with that narrower focus comes a more concentrated dose of polish.
For the most part, independent games are structurally and functionally tight. You can learn what’s expected of you in a matter of seconds, just like an old arcade or NES game.
They are more often labors of love, made by people who don’t come home with a check twice a month from an employer but quit their job to work on the idea that they just can’t get out of their head.
Indie games are less restricted by businessmen who demand a carbon copy of what’s already selling and are free to experiment with art styles and non-traditional music.
Do yourself a favor and enjoy indie games, thereby supporting these small studios. They both need it and deserve it.
NX rumors began shortly after Wii U launched. People were quickly eager for the next big thing.
Closing in on Switch’s first year, and Nintendo fans aren’t fidgeting for news on its successor. We’re content. Eager for certain game announcements, yes, but satisfied with the hardware.
“What do you want in the next Nintendo console?” Even enthusiasts are having a hard time answering that. A more powerful Switch, I guess?
And I would agree with that. Friends texted me right after the Switch reveal video, asking me what I thought. My response: What more could you want? It’s got all the buttons, it’s HD, and you can play on your TV or take it anywhere.
In many ways, we’ve arrived. Similar to the cellular market, where your phone looks about the same as it did 4 or 5 models ago, the Nintendo hardware line is maturing.
Could you imagine a follow-up console to the Switch not being portable? You don’t want to think about that, do you? Rest assured, the hybrid strategy is here to stay.
With Nintendo, that is. Competitors like Microsoft and Sony might not adopt it so quickly because of their emphasis on graphical power.
You can think of those companies as desktop PC makers, whereas Nintendo has differentiated itself as the laptop provider. Not leading the charge in technical specifications but in form-factor.
There certainly are advancements still waiting to be made in the gaming industry, make no mistake. In five years or less, we’ll likely have the opportunity to purchase a 4K Switch tablet with VR capabilities.
But Switch represents a revolution in how Nintendo makes their flagship consoles.
When you walk into a store and purchase a new video game, you get more in return: a display case, a printed cover and (sometimes) instruction manual, a cartridge housing the game’s data, the ability to lend the copy to a friend, and the option of selling the copy when you’re done with it.
Downloadable versions provide none of the above benefits (though you could definitely argue for the convenience factor). They cost the same as a physical version, but take up more space on your hard drive or memory card, and are far cheaper for the publisher to distribute.
With digital games, creators don’t pay for printing discs or cartridges, packaging, shipping, or shelf-space at stores. They also don’t split any profit with retailers.
You would almost think the downloadable version should be cheaper.
Further confusing the matter are stores like Best Buy and Amazon, where you can actually get retail releases at a steep discount. It feels backward.
The reason Nintendo and its competitors are afraid to cut gamers a deal on digital versions is that it would make retailers upset. Their relationships with WalMart, Target and others would be severely damaged as gamers flocked to online offerings to get the lowest price.
Why doesn’t Nintendo just cut its retail ties and only offer their games digitally? They’re not ready yet. The majority of sales still take place in brick and mortar, but that is starting to change.
Someday, a Nintendo console might not come equipped with a cartridge slot. And just maybe, downloadable games will be a little cheaper.
(Or not because of inflation, the rising cost of development, server infrastructure, and Nintendo being a business trying to make money. But one can dream.)
I’m one of the first people to happily wave goodbye to the 3DS.
It’s low-resolution screen looked behind-the-times the moment I laid eyes on it on launch day. However, there is one aspect of its visuals which I will miss: glasses-free 3D.
Nintendo pulled something incredible off by releasing the only mass-market device employing the technology. Personally fine-tunable by a slider, no less!
The company also made a wise move in never requiring 3D visuals to advance in any games, ensuring those too young, who had eye problems, or just preferred flat images, weren’t forced to see in 3D.
But boy was it helpful.
Super Mario 3D Land, for example, is a fantastic title that takes full advantage of the unique screen hardware. I have a harder time lining up precise jumps on my Switch.
I often see newly released games being appraised for their graphics, controls, music, and price.
What the industry needs more of a focus on is simple: fun.
A game can have terrible graphics, no soundtrack, and clunky controls, but still be a lot of fun. Conversely, a beautiful and imaginative game can be boring and punishing.
Video games are a form of art, but that doesn’t mean they need to be treated with as much weight and gravitas as other mediums. Some critics don’t understand this and neglect to consider the fun factor, so take review scores with a grain of salt. A 7/10 game might be the most fun you and a friend have ever had.
I’m a collector. I have multiple shelves in my house dedicated to Nintendo, lined with cases of games, amiibo, preorder bonus merchandise, or Club Nintendo rewards (remember those? They used to be physical). My biggest console library belongs to Wii, and I hope to outnumber those games with Switch software this generation.
I’m also a tightwad. I prefer saving money over spending it. I don’t mind waiting months or years for things to go on sale before buying.
How does one balance the urge to collect games, when trading or selling them can help financially? It’s a tough choice.
I’ve purchased 9 Switch games in the system’s first 7 months and sold 3 of them. Sure, it was opposed to my goal of expanding my collection, but they weren’t great games. I’d rather have a small amount of excellent titles than a larger batch where you don’t know what you’re going to get.
When deciding to keep a game or not, first acknowledge that it’s probably disappointed you. If it hadn’t, you likely wouldn’t be debating what to do with it.
Next, this question is super helpful: Do I want to introduce my kids to this? Whether you’re a parent or not, it helps put things into perspective. Video game collections are best not when they take up a lot of space, but when you can proudly open up a box with your ten-year-old and tell him or her to pick anything; you know you’ll have a great time.
Do I want to play this with my daughter in fifteen years? No, it’s not the best one in the series. Sell this one. We’ll play the older version.
Keep the best, get rid of the rest! You’ll have more space and more money to put toward better experiences.
1. If I earn something, just give it to me. Don’t tell me I earned it, then explain how I have to tap through menus to retrieve my reward. Just give it to me.
2. Crafting is not the best thing since sliced bread. Just because Minecraft was super popular doesn’t mean everything needs to be crafted from now on.
3. Simplify the exchange rates. I don’t want to pay real money for leaf tickets to buy a mining pass to collect gold in order to exchange that for bells so that I can use the bells to purchase digital furniture. The expression is “cut out the middleman,” not “let’s create an army of middlemen.”
I’m younger than you might guess. I was only 12 years old as I was saving up for the launch of Nintendo Wii.
I had never been more excited for a video game console, and I was literally counting down the days. On my wall calendar, I flipped forward to November 19th, 2006 and wrote “WII DAY” in big marker. I then proceeded to work backward and mark a countdown on each preceding day, up into the 60s!
Many families lucky enough to locate a Wii on store shelves would get to open their shiny new system for Christmas that year, but that wouldn’t do for me. As a 12 year old, I performed every extra chore I could find until a stack of $500 ensured I could buy the console and whatever games and accessories I wanted, on launch day.
Ever since then, I’ve been hooked on getting my games the day they come out.
Release date announcements go straight into my Google Calendar (sadly, I no longer hang a physical one on my wall) and I receive reminders as the launch comes nearer.
Whenever Nintendo launches a new title, you can find me at the store either at a midnight launch, or right when I get off work.
It’s an event. Every time.
But why—why is it so important to me that I experience new games on the first day? Wouldn’t it be smarter to wait and read some reviews? Delaying my purchase even longer could land me a discount.
The game industry moves fast. Conversations online quickly turn to the latest and greatest, so participating in gaming communities is easier when you’re up to speed.
There’s also a heavy dose of excitement that comes with being an early adopter. You get to go into a brand new, creative piece of art before it’s talked about like common knowledge on podcasts or had its surprises spoiled in YouTube thumbnails (our channel doesn’t do that, by the way).
It’s fun to be on the cutting edge. Sure, you get cut every once in awhile, but the thrill is worth it.
Have you ever stopped and added up your recent gaming purchases, just to see how much your hobby is really costing you?
The Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is an abbreviation that get’s thrown around a lot oil the gaming industry, indicating what most stores charge for new hardware and software as recommended by the publishers.
However, the amount on a price tag isn’t the true cost associated with gaming.
Price ≠ Cost.
Time: You spend much more time equity on a game compared to what’s come out of your wallet. Even if your job pays minimum wage, your time has a high value on it that is quickly surpassed when sinking hours into the latest open world adventure or competitive shooter. (Related: “Making Your Gaming Time Matter”)
Mood: It takes some maturity and self-awareness to think about how you’re thinking. Oftentimes, video games are liable to alter our moods. We usually like our titles to be somewhat challenging (as opposed to a cake-walk), and there’s a fine line between difficulty that enhances your accomplishment and difficulty that causes frustration. It’s okay to walk away from a game that’s interfering with real life, in any way, shape or form.
Opportunity: Related to time management, opportunity cost is a real thing to consider. Sometimes, it’s good to think about what else you could be doing with your time. In other words, what are games causing you to potentially miss out on? Who could you meet, what could you make, or where could you go?
Health: I’d love to believe that there are no health risks with partaking in Nintendo fandom, but my hands tell me otherwise. Carpal tunnel can set in without proper ergonomics, especially if you spend a considerable amount of time on computers on top of your gaming hobby. Additionally, omitting a short stint in the Wii era, time spent gaming is time spent sitting on your God-given cushions. It’s important to balance digital entertainment with some amount of physical activity (don’t ask my advice on this—I’ll get back to you later).
Don’t feel guilty for spending money, time, and other assets on video games. Like you, it’s my favorite way to have fun! Just try to consider the true cost, and avoid debt… monetary, health, or otherwise.
Have you ever been on the outside, looking in on a pop-culture phenomenon?
While the Pokemon games are some of the most popular titles in Nintendo’s stable, I’ve never played a full mainline entry.
I’ve had a weird history with this franchise, and beaten just about everything except the main RPGs: Stadium 1&2, Snap, Colosseum, XD Gale of Darkness, Pokken, a little GO, even Hey You! Pikachu for goodness sake.
I grew up a little bit after the huge wave of Red/Blue/Yellow hype, and have always felt that I missed the bandwagon.
People who have been with the series since its inception are still trading their pocket monsters from game to game, amassing a huge army!
It definitely feels like I would have a hard time just jumping in, although I know they create these games for a younger demographic and take into account franchise newcomers to some extent.
You know what still scares me? It’s all the nuance that’s built up over generations. Developer GameFreak still builds on mechanics that have existed for decades, resulting in an imposing collection of the unknown.
A crossroads approaches. When the Pokemon series debuts on Nintendo Switch, I feel like I’ll have my best shot yet of hopping aboard the speeding train. If I let it pass me by again, I may never catch up.
Even with everything going for it, I just can’t get behind the idea of watching someone else play a video game.
Part of my hesitation is generational; I’m a little bit older than the average LP viewer.
Otherwise, it’s just not how I want to spend my small slice of free time. After work is done, the house is taken care of, and my responsibilities are attended to, I want the controller to be in my hand. That firsthand experience just can’t be replaced.
Ironically, I help run two weekly Let’s Play series, one for Switch and one for Classics. Make sure to tune in live on the weekends!
Note: The following article contains spoilers for Sonic Mania. For those interested in Sonic Mania, I highly recommend waiting until you complete zone 2, act 2 before reading further.
Sonic Mania is amazing. But you probably already know that, either from experiencing it first-hand or from the mounds of praise heaped upon it by the general public. It quickly became my favorite entry into the franchise when I picked it up for myself a few months ago. It’s the “back to basics” game Sega has been promising—but ultimately failing—to deliver for nearly a decade now. Heck, this game is so good, it can even include one of the most egregiously wrong design choices I’ve ever seen and make it one of the most charming set-pieces of the entire game.
And no, that’s not hyperbole, one of the game’s most memorable moments is flat out stupid by conventional game design standards. What moment am I referring to? The Chemical Plant Zone Robotnik fight.
Why It Should be Horrible
The boss of Zone 2 isn’t a boss in the traditional sense; instead, it’s a game of Puyo-Puyo Pop. That’s right, instead of fighting some wacky contraption, Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles faces Dr. Robotnik in a lethal game of Puyo-Puyo. No instructions, no fore-shadowing, just dropped into a game and expected to win.
From a design standpoint, this looks like a bad idea on paper. As mentioned before, the player is given no instructions. Puyo Pop isn’t exactly the hardest game to understand, but the game assumes the player already knows how to play. There’s no pop-up for controls, no instructions on how to clear Puyos from the screen, nothing. If the player is familiar with drop-puzzles like Tetris or Dr. Mario, they may be able to intuit some objectives from the conventions of the format: namely matching colors.
That leads into the more pressing issue: genre shift. While switching between gameplay styles isn’t uncommon in video games, especially more recent Sonic titles, typically levels that dip into different gameplay formats only switch to genres of a similar nature. For instance, many side-scrolling platformer games include one or two levels that switch over to being a side-scrolling shoot-em-up. This is typically considered acceptable because the two gameplay styles have many similarities. Most notably, both are action games, meaning the skills needed to master them are almost identical. These skills include things like quick-reflexes, spacial awareness to assess threats and their proximity to the player, and prioritization of risks and rewards (such as power-ups).
Where switching gameplay styles gets frustrating is when the new style has little or nothing to do with the concepts of the core gameplay style. A pertinent example of such a gameplay switch is the fishing segments of Sonic Adventure. While many people speak fondly of the game those segments’ mechanics were based off of, Sega Bass Fishing, most people object to the inclusion of such mechanics in an action platformer. That’s not to say juxtaposed gameplay styles can’t be paired successfully, but that contrast typically has to be one of the game’s core principles with everything else designed around it (e.g. DS cult classic Henry Hatsworth).
Where switching gameplay styles gets frustrating is when the new style has little or nothing to do with the concepts of the core gameplay style.
Now compare that to Puyo-Puyo Pop. Being good at Puyo-Puyo requires players to plan on the fly. The player has to decide how to stack and group puyos in real-time to set up combos and react to his opponent’s attempts to interfere. I don’t have the background in Puyo-Puyo to know what exactly goes into high level play, but I can tell you it’s a very different game than Sonic the Hedgehog. This means that the player is expected to use an entirely different skill-set from what the game has been training him to use up until this point. Moreover, this is the only place in the game—outside of an unlockable bonus Puyo-Puyo mode, that is—that the player is asked to exercise these skills.
The moment in question.
Why It’s Awesome
So why does this moment work? There’s several factors at play here. First is the design of Puyo-Puyo Pop itself. First of all, Puyo Pop is a fairly easy game to learn: the computer is playing it along-side the player. If the player doesn’t understand how color matching works, he can just observe the computer match groups of four or more puyos of a single color.
Secondly, this battle is pretty easy. So long as the player keeps the board mostly clear, Dr. Robotnik’s incompetence will do the rest of the work sooner or later. Putting the battle so early in the game was actually a smart move: the encounter’s low difficulty allows the player to get used to the new gameplay style while still fitting the game’s expected difficulty curve.
Third, Puyo Pop is good. Many times when a game dips into a different style, the auxiliary gameplay style is under-developed. The majority of the developers’ time and effort (hopefully) goes toward the core gameplay, meaning mini-games don’t get the time and polish needed to fully flesh-out the concept. The Puyo-Puyo battle gets around this by implementing an already established idea. This way the Mania team didn’t have to haphazardly slap together a new gameplay concept, instead they just had to copy something they knew works.
Many times when a game dips into a different style, the peripheral gameplay style is under-developed.
Now that I’ve gotten the minor stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the two biggest reasons this works. I’m sure many of you are grinding your teeth by now with how I keep referring to this moment as “Puyo Pop”. Chemical Plant Zone’s Robotnik fight is actually a callback to the Sega Geneisis/Mega Drive classic Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (which was technically just a reskin of a Puyo-Pop game, but whatever). This attention to detail and acknowledgment of the Sonic series’ history is a huge part of what makes this bizarre set-piece work. Who in their right mind would anticipate such an obscure reference?
Companies like Sega and Nintendo often reference their past works, but they tend to stick to callbacks that are easy for fans to recognize. Even when a reference is to something more obscure, it’s out of the way and can be easily ignored. Most designers would stick some puyos/beans in the background and call it good. The Mania team, however, decided to put that callback front and center by making it a part of gameplay. If the reference is half of the reason this moment works, the sheer audacity that the designers would even attempt it is the other half. The element of surprise and the obscene amount of creative whimsy this moment embodies is more than enough to make up for any of its “bad” game design.
If the reference is half of the reason this moment works, the sheer audacity that the designers would even attempt it is the other half.
The combination of good implementation, recognizability, and surprise factor all come together to make this one of my favorite game set-pieces in recent memory. While I love analyzing what works and what doesn’t work in games, it’s important not to get too entrenched in sticking to “good” game design. There’s a delight in encountering the unexpected that is all too often ignored in favor of “safe” design practices. Formula is good, but too much results in a game being formulaic.
