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Last week I did a video design tour of World of Goo, deconstructing the design choices
that made it great.
And now I'm making the second in this series.
Knytt Stories by Nifflas is one of my favorite 2D platformers, so I'm going to talk about
some of the design lessons we can learn from it.
Its major strengths are in its precise controls, strong progression, complete challenge and
lightweight footprint.
First, lets talk about control.
In a platformer, the player will spend most of the game running, jumping and climbing,
so it's important to make those actions as intuitive and precise as possible.
With better controls, you can make more complicated levels without making them frustrating or
unfair.
The overall difficulty of the game is a combination of the difficulty of controlling your character,
and the difficulty of the challenges your character faces.
And it's much more satisfying to have an agile character defeating complex challenges then
a clumsy character defeating simple ones.
So how does Knytt Stories achieve such precise control?
First, there is a lot of friction.
You can stop or change direction very quickly, with only enough inertia to smooth out the
motion.
Since this is a PC game, you can't just press the left button a little bit in order to walk
slowly.
So theres a separate walk button you can hold down for slow movements.
The air controls are interesting because it uses the exact same parameters as the ground
controls.
For example, if you jump to the right and the release the right arrow, you quickly stop
and fall straight down.
Of course, this is totally unrealistic, but by using the exact same controls for movement
on the ground and in the air, this controls system is easy to learn and makes it simple
to preform difficult jump maneuvers.
Another way that Knytt Stories simplifies jumping is to have a low terminal velocity,
so that you never fall too fast to control.
The progression in Knytt stories is tied closely to the controls.
To explain why this is important, first I should explain what I mean by 'Progression'.
Progression answers the question: 'Why do I want to keep playing?'
'What am I working towards?'
Each level in Knytt stories has a nominal objective like 'Turn off the evil machine',
or 'Save the animals'.
But since this is a fictional world, I usually don't care about it too deeply.
On the other hand, when I find a challenge that I can't pass, and I quickly have a new
goal that I do care about, I want to find the ability that I need to pass the obstacle.
I say that this is strong progression because I'm not searching because the game told me
to, I'm searching for it because I want to, so that I can see whats passed that challenge.
I said that the progression is closely tied to the controls, because the upgrades change
how you navigate the world.
For example, some of the skills you learn are wall climbing, double jumping and gliding.
You usually have to backtrack a little bit after finding these, but the backtracking
is actually fun here.
You get to breeze passed areas that seemed really difficult a few seconds ago.
Here I have to do some really precarious platforming to get the double jump, but now going back
is really easy.
This game supposedly has and easy and normal mode, and I'm playing on normal.
Really, it's more of a hard or extremely hard, compared to most other games.
It's hard because it offers what I would call 'a complete challenge'.
You have to keep track of where you are going and why, and then figure out how to get passed
all of the challenges in your way, and then you have to actually do it.
You have to worry about strategy, tactics and execution all at the same time.
In most modern games, you only have to worry about one thing at a time, for example, by
having a magic line tell you where to go.
However, people are smart, and we can do all of these things at the same time.
I find it a lot more rewarding to face this multilayered challenge, and it's one of the
few games that I can play without feeling that my brain is going numb.
There are a few cheap deaths that you couldn't possible see coming, but death in Knytt Stories
usually only sends you back a few seconds, and you respawn instantly, no load screens
or anything.
There is one scene where a harmless, spikeless creature pops out of the ground as a warning
to you that you should be careful, and it would be nice if that happened every time
you found an area like that.
But monsters are really impressive in their variety.
Many huge game releases ship with about 6 different kinds of enemy, but Knytt Stories
has dozens of them, not counting the ambient wildlife.
The enemies all have different behavior too.
Since you can't hurt them, you really have to look at them carefully and figure out how
they work.
One of my favorites is this guy, who jumps whenever you jump, so you have to run under
him with precise timing, or have the ability to jump higher than he can.
Another one I like fills the room with ball lightning, creating instant jumping puzzles.
And of course, I can't forget the Ninjas.
This game has a consistent theme of having a light footprint on the environment, which
even extends to the game itself.
It runs in a small window, uses almost no CPU power and only 600 Kilobytes of RAM, a
thousand times less than many other games.
This is good for players like me because I can play it while a movie is rendering or
a game project is compiling.
This game uses very simple technology, but these tile sets and crossfading background
tracks are very effective at creating a distinct look and atmosphere for each section of the
level.
Niflas is a musician as well a a game designer and pixel artist and it really shows in the
attention to detail in the sound design.
The protagonist is a small girl in a nightgown, about 16 pixels tall, highlighting and contrasting
the dangerous and expansive world.
She is easy to destroy, has no weapons and never hurts anything.
This is very unusual in games and I find it really relaxing.
Maybe I've just been living in the Bay Area too long,
but it seems like a very positive message, that she can save the world without harming anyone.
And it's a refreshing change from characters like Lara Croft who barrels through uncharted
rain forests killing every endangered creature she can find.
The last thing I would like to mention is that the entire game I've been talking about
is one huge level, with no load times or breaks of any kind, and it will probably take a couple
of hours to get through it.
There are about 5 more levels by Niflas on his website that are the same level of quality
as the main level, and there are hundreds more levels made by fans.
One level that really stood out is called 'This level is unfinished', which is a really
interesting idea that have never seen before.
A level called 'A strange dream' shows off a lot of fog effects that help give depth
to the background, since using a blur effect would look really bad with pixel art.
There is a lot more I could say about Knytt Stories, but really you should just try it
for yourself.
Did I mention that it's totally free?
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