Linear vs. Freedom Part II: Mutable World

In the first part, I talked about was that the designers of games could cleverly craft their worlds so as to subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) guide players along the intended path.

Now I'd like to talk about way #2: Attempting to change the game world in reaction to the user's behavior.


This is almost never done. Games almost never do it. For the most part, game environments are designed as either static, unchangeable things, or in some cases (roguelikes, in particular) as randomly generated levels that are different every time, but consequently, usually fairly bereft of intentionally crafted puzzles or challenges.

Now, I have nothing against roguelikes. (Some of my best friends are roguelikes!) And the model of the world being fixed makes a lot of sense from engineering, asset-management, and scenario planning angles. The fixed world is nice because you get to draw maps, (which is fun) and means that players can talk to each other meaningfully about where they are in the game. It also means that you know in advance what spatial relationships exist between interesting things, and can manipulate them as needed. (Especially when it's useful to force the player to go through something before seeing something else.)

What I've gradually become convinced of is that neither fixed worlds, nor completely random maps are the final solution. Looking for a moment the pencil-and-paper role playing scene, it is telling that all of the conventional wisdom points GMs away from fixed worlds, or random worlds. (Which I guess are also fixed worlds, but from a different source.) In tabletop gaming, when stories work, it is frequently because the GM carefully adjusted the world, and the order of events, in such a way as to make a better story. The more that is fixed in advance, the less the GM can move around later to make a better story.

This works because good GMs know the same secret that stage magicians do: If you don't tell them what the trick is in advance, then you can change the trick as you go to whatever seems most appropriate. In stage magic, this is usually called a "magician's choice", or equivocation. In tabletop RPGs, it is usually called "good GMing".

In tabletop gaming, this sort of approach tends to lead to highly memorable storytelling and situations. So why can't the same thing be done in computer games? Obviously, the computer won't be able to approach the finesse or creativity of a good GM. But there is no reason that I can think of that a game couldn't adjust the world to make it more fun for the player.

The only places I can think of where I have seen this sort of thing done is in the Mars segment of Adam Cadre's Photopia, and maybe some weird, experimental stuff like Warning Forever.

Consider – When the player sits down, they know nothing about the world you're giving them to explore. If they explore east, and find a shrine where they learn how to double-jump, and then explore west, where they find some caves that require double-jumping to progress, they're likely to say “wow, that was lucky, good thing I went east first!”

But what is to stop the game from putting the shrine what ever place they go first? And the caves wherever they go second? The player doesn't know the map, except for whatever minuscule portions of it they have seen first hand. They don't know what is supposed to be where. Maybe some other player went south first. And found a shrine where they learned to double jump. And went north second, and found some caves where they had to double-jump to progress. Players are used to assuming the world is a fixed entity, but is there any reason that we as designers have to follow that rule?

What if the game, rather than operating on a fixed map, was instead set up as a series of things the PC was supposed to experience? Which the game would put on the map in order, as the player explored areas they hadn't seen yet? It would be sort of a quantum map. Any place the player had explored would be “locked down”. If they went there later, it would always be the same. But any place they hadn't explored yet was undefined until they went there, and the game would fill up the undefined spaces with whatever it felt like the player should see next.

The participants in Project Horseshoe this year described the player's experience as a “watery pachinko machine of doom”, but they seem to be approaching it from the point of view of predicting where the ball will land and how to design configurations to get the ball where it is supposed to go. My thinking is rather – It's a pachinko machine, so the ball is going to bounce off of things as it falls, but there is no reason we can't change the positions of the pegs as it is falling.

This kind of design would give us some fairly powerful tools to craft the flow of the user experience. Suppose that somewhere in the game, there was a boomerang. And there was also a boss, for which defeating it required the boomerang. If the locations of both of these things are fixed, then there exists a chance that the player will try to go to the boss before they have the boomerang, and then either be turned away, or fail. If the locations were mutable though, the programmers could know in advance that the player would have gotten the boomerang before they fight the boss, for the simple reason that the boss and his area won't even show up until the player finds the boomerang.

This could work the other way, too. Say the designer has some neat puzzle in mind, where the player is supposed to see the puzzle, and later find a key, and then remember to go back to where they found the puzzle. Say for some reason the designer wants to make sure that the player finds the puzzle first, before the key. This would give them a way of insuring that, and making sure the user experienced it as designed, rather than stumbling on the key, finding the puzzle later, and going “that was easy, I had the key laying around and it just went right in.”

Usually when games want to deal with things like this, they do it by blocking off parts of the map, often in arbitrary-seeming ways. (“Sorry, you can't leave town yet, the bridge is still under construction.”) This would give the player (apparent) freedom to wander wherever they wanted, and have no need to box them in because they didn't have an item required for the lands beyond.

There are dangers, of course. Player knowledge is the biggest one. If they knew that the game would always give them the “temple of the boomerang” on the 5th unexplored screen they went to, then it sort of destroys the illusion of exploring a world. Also, if they know how it is working, (or are just perverse) they can cause problems by various behavior patterns. For example, what would stop a player from running around and “Defining” the whole map, first thing? You might be able to work out some limitations, but ultimately, it would require some careful design on the part of the programmer to make sure the player didn't “fix” too many locations by looking at them, and thus restrict the game's abilities to place things in unexplored space by reducing the amount of unexplored space left.

Also, it there would have to be SOME limitations or the players could define an infinitely large world by just exploring indefinitely. Due to the constructed nature of it, save-game storage space would probably have to scale linearly, so this would not be especially desirable.

Finally, it would probably limit replay value, since, much like a magic trick repeated too many times, on a replay, the player would realize how it all worked, and it would become less of an exploration, and more about just trudging along until the game decided to trigger the next event. It would remove the illusion that the player could affect the game's pacing. The same logic that makes sure they can't go too far without getting what they are looking for would also make it hard to get it early.

I think a game set up like this could work. And would be an experience unlike anything else out there right now. But a lot of work needs to be done before then, and a lot of problems need to be solved and thought through. But still. Who says the world has to exist before you look at it?

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Linear vs Freedom, Part I: Invisible Rails

Playing Aquaria lately has got me thinking more about player exploration, how fun it is, and how tricky it is to get right without sacrificing other game aspects to. Read on for some random game design musings on walking the balance between making sure the player doesn't get stuck, and letting them feel like they have complete freedom to explore.


It's always been a hard problem. How do you make the player feel like they can go anywhere they want and explore, without worrying that they'll go
somewhere they can't do anything yet, and become frustrated? If you make a giant world with multiple ways to go, there is no way you can ensure the
player will go the way you want or expect. Some of them will go some random other ways, possibly towards obstacles they can't overcome yet.

The usual complaints that this brings out in a user are:

• Why did the game let me go somewhere I'm not supposed to go?


• Spent time coming here and have nothing to show for it.


• Have to spend more time getting back to someplace interesting.

These are things feelings that we, as game designers, usually want to avoid or minimize. Logically, it seems like there are two general classes of solution:

1. Attempt to change the user's reaction to the game world's behavior.


2. Attempt to change the game world in reaction to the user's behavior.

So first let's talk about #1. Trying to modify the user's reaction. This is by far the most common approach taken, and there are several ways to approach it. Most involve attacking these common complaints directly. Here are some solutions I've seen games use:

• Provide obvious in-game clues when the player is somewhere they are not supposed to be. This can range from subtle (jumps that are obviously too far) to heavy-handed. (Voice tells them "I'd better come here later after I can double jump!") If overused, it runs the risk of making the game feel too directed, but does make it fairly unlikely the player will waste much time trying to do something they can't, if the game itself tells them "go do something else for now."


• Related to the above, provide obvious in-game clues for what areas *are* open to the player. A compass that points to open areas, a helpful person who makes suggestions about where to go next, blinking icons on the map, etc. Again, this runs the risk of feeling too linear if used too heavily.
• "Lock" areas so that you can't get to them until you're able to navigate/explore them. Make the entrance to the land of long jumps require the double-jump boots to even get into. One hand, this also gives you a good way of making sure that the player understands some mechanic, by forcing them to demonstrate it to get in the door. On the other hand, this too runs the danger of "feels too linear", since if used overmuch it requires players to explore areas areas in a fixed order, and can give them hints about what is expected of them within.
• Provide easy ways back after dead ends. Examples include things like one-way doors, ledges to jump down from, and free teleports back to one or more fixed locations.
• Provide useful (but limited) general transportation. Make it easier to get from one end of the game to the other. Teleporter networks (sometimes disguised as something else, like horse routes, or sea turtles) seem to be the most common way to make this work.
• Provide multiple rewards in all directions. By scattering enough small but significant rewards around, players can at least feel like it wasn't a wasted trip, since they still got something useful out of it. Legend of Zelda's pieces of heart containers are a good example of this sort of thing.
• Just let them actually go anywhere they want, and do whatever they want. The danger here is that if they can just go to the end of the game, they may skip a lot of your carefully designed content, so using this well requires that the game be set up in such a way that this is either impractical for some reason, or acceptable to the designer. (Good example of this: Fallout. Nothing stops you from going straight to the final dungeon, if you know where it is.)

All of these methods are largely examples of the subtle nuance that is the level-designer's art. They all revolve around crafting the world in a way that guides the player toward the areas that the player is expected to experience next. I like to think of this as the "invisible rails" game model. Granted, in some cases, the rails are built out of game rules (lack of keys or items) and in other cases, the rails are built out of player ignorance (not knowing where to go or what to do) but in all of these cases, the general goal is to make the game world in such a way that the user feels completely free, but is blocked or discouraged if they try to deviate too far from the planned experience.

These approaches have served games well so far, but as the fine people who partake in Project Horseshoe have been telling us, the best stories in games are often the ones that the player feels like they have a play a large part in creating themselves.

This post is already getting pretty long, so I think I'll break it up into separate posts. In part 2, I'll talk about the second, seldom used approach of modifying the game to adapt to the user.

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Aquaria Playthrough Diary 5

Read on for more of my Aquaria experiences! In this exciting episode, I expound on things I like and dislike about the game, while aquiring Phat l00tz

I have started to find some treasures to put in my cave. Found a glowing (and undoubtedly cursed or otherwise infused with evil) Krotite statue, which sits balefully in a small chamber. And more pleasantly, found a giant seed that grew into a gorgeous pink garden thing. Oh yeah, and I found a blue banner from Mithalas last time I swam around there.

As an aside, I'd like to take a moment to express some of the things that I think the game is doing very well right now.

Stuff I Like:
First, I really like the sheer joy of swimming around the lush environments. I really like the various sea-beasts I get to interact with in fun ways. I really like swimming through schools of fish, or clinging to the backs of peaceful leviathans. (Take me away, magic sea turtle!)

I like the amount of variety they've managed to put in the ambient environments. I like how everyplace looks different, and how much obvious care and love went into designing all the areas for me to swim through.

Gameplay wise, I really like the sparse, intuitive interface. (With a possible exception for the menu, which vaguely annoys me for reasons I'll go into later.) The singing is great, and swimming around is easy and fun.

I really like the feeling of exploration. I feel like I can go most anywhere and that there is always a new horizon waiting to be crossed.

I also like the concept of Naija's cave. I've seen it done before, (Suikoden, for example, or Skies of Arcadia or Breath of Fire 2) but the concept of a player base that grows as you adventure is a compelling one. I look forward to seeing how it looks by the end of the game. (Although a minor complaint - I wish I was finding more stuff that actually had a use besides decoration. Decoration is neat, but feeling like you're outfitting a hideout with new verbs is neater.)

I find myself really liking the cooking system here, as well. The idea of recipies that are general is a good one. I like the idea of “any meat + leaf”, and letting you pick whatever you want that is a meat for the first part. The “2 in the field, 3 at a kitchen” rule is nice too. This is one of the nicest crafting systems I've seen in a while and I enjoy it a lot.

Stuff I Dislike:
Things I dislike have to start with the menu. I find it difficult and counter-intuitive in places. Also, dragging food onto Naija's mouth is a little too “cutesy”, and not being able to have the recipe menu up while cooking just feels like an impossible oversight.

I also feel like, while the environments are nice, sometimes I wish they had more “meat”. The fact that swimming and attacking are so easy sometimes works against the game, since getting from point A to point B often just involves swimming in the same direction for a long time, possibly launching homing bullets. And while it's awfully pretty, if you've seen it before, it starts to get old. It's obvious that the designers wanted to address this at least somewhat, since they included the magic warp turtles, but still it feels annoying sometimes

Compounding this issue is that there is a lot of space. There's just a lot of places to go. And while a small percentage of them have new or neat things in them, a lot of them are just there. They do add a nice sense of scope, but they also sometimes feel like a grind to go through. “Oh, ANOTHER lush blue room full of fish to swim to the other end of. Ho hum.”

I realize that I sound inconsistent here. I love the feeling of exploration and space, but feel that the spaces are too big. I think the issue is that they are fun while swimming through the first time, but after that, repeated exposure makes them start to wear thin. And this is a dangerous game for them to get into, since creating a constant stream of new content takes a lot longer for them to make than it does for me to experience.


Back to gameplay:
Anyway, back to today's experiences:

Back in the kelp forest, found a big eel thing I could swim past as a tiny fish, but it lead to a dark cave that I couldn't see much in. All that I found were weird little leaches that for some reason slowly GAVE me health. Still not sure how those worked. But they glowed blue while doing it, so I assume it was intentional.

Naija mused that this place was big, and she was worried she might go feral in it. I guess that's something you worry about when you live in the ocean, maybe? Not sure, but it did amuse me a little.

The leafy sea dragon flew by bombarding me with fire again, but the shield spell let me mostly ignore him, even though he is fairly disconcerting.

I found some sea-slugs with spines though, that feel just downright artful. They are spiky, but they move when you sing their color. And the first batch is positioned next to a bunch of enemies that shoot lots of projectiles. (sea urchins, it looks like, although they remind me of the little crawly things from metroid) And the first batch is colored so that if you sing the shield song, they'll move. Well done! I actually had noticed they moved before I cast shield, but when I renewed my shield later I found myself very impressed with this as a method of tricking the user into discovering a mechanic. Very nice, Bit-Blot! Very nice indeed!

Later, a shark ate me, and I stopped to go play City of Heroes with some friends! Some days you eat the shark, and some days it eats you, I guess.

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Aquaria Playthrough Diary 4

Kelp forest is a win!

A quickish entry this time. Didn't have as much time to play today, and just noodled around mostly places I'd already explored. But click through, to read on about my amazing experience in the kelp forest!

First off, the giant snake-rock-things are great. They look just like normal moss-covered rocks, until you get close, and then they rear up, like some sort off ancient leviathan, and half-heartedly try to bite you. (They don't seem terribly fast. But they're rather big, and neat looking.)

Second - I found a place called the “fish cave”. It is a puzzle. It is great. I was a little nervous, since singing the song on all of the rocks (in every combination I could think of) didn't yield any results. I was a little worried that there was something I was missing that I needed here, but after trying to sing in the middle (and seeing the fish glow) I was able to muddle through it. I really liked that puzzle. Even though I had already guessed the reward, it was still rather satisfying.

Also found a giant turtle, who kindly agreed to swim back to the first giant turtle with me. Back in the home waters! Hurrah!

I took the opportunity to swim around my cave and see if I'd missed anything. Nothing in the cave, but the word on the front of the cave helped a lot towards my cracking of their secret code. Based on the “Mithalas” sign, I knew that the cave enterance said H_M_, and so it was a simple guess that it read “home”.

I swam around and enjoyed the home water area a bit more. I notice now the giant fish directly under home now has some properties I hadn't noticed before. For one thing, I can cling to it, and pretend to be riding, even if I can't figure out how to make him go. But also, sometimes when I sing, his eyes glow with the color of the note. Also, ONCE (when I was opening up a plant beneath him) he came ZOOMING down at me. Kind of freaked me out. (I thought he was trying to eat either me or the plant.) But I haven't gotten him to move again since then, so who knows?

I also finally got around to checking out a back entrance to the energy temple I found a helmet. With some more words written above it. Being paranoid, (and curious) I tried to decrypt them before grabbing the helmet. (Hey, what if they said “face-eating helmet jellyfish” or something? I put nothing past Bit-Blot!) I'm pretty sure they just said “Flesh is Weak” though, which while vaguely sinister sounding, probably still means that it's safe to take. (And gave me a few more letters for my crypto-book!)

I also took a swim through the boss room (using the “I'm a fish!” shortcut) and was pleased to see that his giant stygian corpse was still laying there where I had left it. Nice touch!

And then I saved my game and stopped for now. More soon! I'm starting to really get into this game at this point, and am enjoying it quite a bit. (I think I got a friend to try it out too, after describing it to him as "sort of a cross between echo the dolphin, Castlevania:Symphony of the night, and Loom.")

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Aquaria Playthrough Diary 3

You mean I could do that the whole time?

More rambling thoughs on my continued adventures in Aquaria. In this exciting instalment, I search the wrong direction again, meet limpets and snails, and gradually become a cold-blooded underwater killer. Also, I met a seahorse!

More beyond the fold...

So I didn't have a whole lot of time today to throw at Aquaria, but I snuck in a good 45 minutes during time I probably should have been asleep. When we last left off, I had decided to go play somewhere else, since I didn't seem to be able to get too much further in the Mithalas chapel.

I wandered around for a while in the open waters and tried different directions. Two moderately frustrating things happened. First off, the direction I chose to explore was more or less a bust. I was looking down, and after finding a lot of environments filled with pretty fish, annoying little ramming-squids in shells, and not a whole lot else, I hit a dead end. Every time I went down further, I hit a message complaining about how dark it was. (And to be fair, it was getting pretty dark.) Ok, so I can't explore here any further either. Great. Not that bad, but since I had just come from another dead-end exploration area, it was a little irking.

(While I really like the feeling of free exploration this game engenders, it is awfully frustrating when all avenues of exploration end up busts, and you have to backtrack. I'll probably expand on this later in a separate post.)

The second frustrating thing was really more of a failure on my part. My inhibitions finally went away. The stupid little ramming fish killed me one too many times, and I started going energy form and incinerating them with my mind. I'm not proud of this, and if they didn't follow you practically forever, I probably would have been content to just avoid them. But they chase you a really long ways, and I finally decided, “them or me, I guess.”

Congradulations, Derek and Alec. You've turned me into an underwater killer.

I was feeling a little annoyed at this point, since I didn't have a clear direction, and was irate that the game seemed to be forcing me to do something I didn't really want to do. (The environments are awesome, and I don't REALLY want to blow up their inhabitants if I can help it, particularly with the creepy energy form.) But then a couple of things happened in rapid succession, and the game is full of awesome again.

First: I met these really annoying little limpet things. This in itself was annoying, (although they were very well realized, and it was very obvious from right away just what they did. Nice design and sound effects.) But then in trying to get them off, I spun the mouse around, and made a whirlpool and flung them off. Then, a few moments later, it dawned on me what I had just done: I'd never done that before at all, but it seemed the natural motion for getting stuck things off of me. I found myself wondering “have I been able to do that all along??” (Answer: yes) Well played, Bit-blot. Well played indeed.

Then, I found a cavern full of sea-snails. Which looked awesome. I find Aquaria to be at its most full-of-wonder when I'm just enountering beautiful undersea things that aren't trying to kill me, and that I can just swim around and enjoy, and interact with. (I discovered I could pull the shell off of a snail. And more amusingly, if I let him climb on a boulder, I could carry the bolder around with him climbing around the edges. Kind of high maintenance for a pet, but fun nonetheless. I named him “Pickles” and enjoyed him for a good 5 minutes before getting bored lugging a giant boulder around for him to climb on.)

And then I found a sea-horse. To be fair, I'd seen a couple of them before. They were red, and floated around near things like save-crystals. I'd feared that they were something I was expected to blow up in order to replenish my supply of meat or something. (Which bothered me since I didn't really want to blow them up.) But then I discovered that the mouse glowed when over them, so I tried interacting with one. Naija went up and sort of hugged it. Great work, Naija. You, er... caught it. Well... done.

It wasn't really clear what next. I didn't seem to be able to carry it home, and I couldn't swim while holding it. I was about to give up, when I happened to try singing. (I was going to see if I could use the binding-song on it to carry it around, or possibly see if I could make a shield big enough for both of us.) What happened instead was that he moved.

This, I have to say, was rather neat. I could direct him around by singing different notes. And he swam a little faster than I usually do, and is a little safer, to boot. But more to the point, it was just downright FUN, swimming through areas on the back of a seahorse.

I also noticed at this point that Naija's song is tuned to work well with the music. Heck, in places, you can even almost sing along, or accompany it. I have to say, that swimming through the lush, beautiful undersea locations on the back of a seahorse, while directing it with music, and trying to make the music accompany the background music, is really one of the neater game experiences I've had in a while. So... Well done, Bit-Blot. That was a rare moment.

I am a big fan of any time the game can make something that both new, while still being intuitive enough that the user can have the joy of figuring it out for themselves without having to break the 4th wall and tell them. So to get not one, but TWO such experiences, in rapid succession (spinning whirlpools, and directing seahorses with my song) was pretty good stuff.

I also found a kelp forest and started exploring it. It had a neat sea-spider thing leaving sticky threads around. Neat mechanic! Also, some leafy sea dragon thing showed up and violently bombarded me with glowing green things. This looks like a neat area, and is hopefully where I'm supposed to go next, since Naija hasn't warned me away from it yet. I'll explore it more tomorrow, but it was great to end on a positive note.

Really enjoying the game at this point, and wishing I didn't have to work in the morning, so I could play it some more...

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Aquaria Playthrough Diary 2

My further adventures in the world of Aquaria. I am enjoying the game quite a bit, but I has taken me far too long to find more time to play it. Anyway, my continuing adventures.


Wandering through the Mithalas Chapel.

Wow. They finally managed to make some enemies that I don't mind going all energy-form on. The... not sure what they're called yet, but evil fish men things are passably nasty looking, but the possibility of shared heritage makes me leery of blowing them up. But when I start meeting giant blobs with laser-beam eyes, my compulsions go away. That thing was rather neat looking.

Also, regarding art direction – The red vines that infest places are truly nasty looking. Especially the pulsating fleshy lumps. Nice also with the dichotomy between the normally brilliant blue world, and the evil red vines. It's funny, normally I associate red with danger in this game, which makes me really wonder about the save-game crystals, since they are rather obviously red. Is this just to make them more obvious? Or do Derrik and Alec have some sinister plan involving them?

Also – there is a lot of weird writing around. I suspect it means something, and part of me wants to copy it down, and play amateur cryptographer. I'm hoping that it will become more meaningful later in the game though. Mostly because if it doesn't, the neurotic side of me will probably make me play through most of it again to see it all. Or check the forums, I guess.


I finally beat the 3rd floating glob of eye-lasers. They got progressively easier as I started figuring out what to do. (Answer: Swim in circles around it and spam energy bolts.) And sure enough, they lay a little more guilt on me for blowing things up, in the form of a cut-scene in which Naija bemoans having to blow stuff up, and enjoying it. Well, at least I know it's not just me being overly-sensitive. The designers clearly WANTED it to be a little uncomfortable.

In urelated news, I finally figured out (from putzing with my icon screen) that the strange device I found before was a “Jelly Beacon”, which apparently draws small jellyfish towards it. It is unclear how that helps me. On one hand, making a healing poultice requires jelly oil, but I draw the line at blowing up jellyfish to harvest their oil. If they wanted me to do that, then I humbly submit that the designers shouldn't have made the jellies so harmless and appealing.

So, back in the cursed depths of the overgrown chapel, I seem to have finally made it to another boss. A giant coral shark thing. First impression – these things would be a lot more threatening if I couldn't just turn on my shield and ignore their attacks while I study them. Not that studying seems to help much in this case. I bounce a bunch of his shots back at him, but even though he flashes, it doesn't seem to do much. I try turning energy and shooting him a bunch, but still nada.

I figure out early on that I can use my “tractor beam” song on the floating stinky fishman, but it's not clear what to do after that. I spend some time trying to make the boss eat him by accident, but the only time that seems to work is if he also eats me, so I suspect that this is more the “how to avoid being eaten” strategy than an actual way of damaging him. Wait, scratch that, he will eat me either way, even if there are no stinky fishmen around.

It seems like blowing the stinky fishman up while the boss is near might hurt the boss, but it's hard to tell. The metagamer in me is pretty sure that there must be something I need to do with the stinky fishmen, (since the game starts me with one, and gives me a way to make more of them) but it's not clear yet what that is.

It takes me a VERY long time to realize that I can turn the normal fishmen that the boss spits out into stinky ones by luring them down by the smelly fungus. I suspect I was supposed to have learned this relationship sooner, but somehow I missed it until now.

One other complaint about this boss, from a layout point of view: He takes too long to get to, whenever he kills me. Every time he kills me, I have to swim through a fairly long tunnel to fight him again. Granted, it has a current in it, so I can go fast, and it's moderately pretty (if rather disturbing) but still. It's that much more time I have to spend every time I die. (And I have to swim a bit further, since there is a “heal to full” potion I need on the way, that I can't save after getting.)

Since I'm still not even sure if I'm hurting the boss, this means that it's turning into a fairly frustrating fight. It would be nice if there were a save-crystal right before the boss room, like there was in the energy temple. Or if there were an option for when I died, that it would start me back out near the place I died.

A thought occurs to me. Maybe I'm not supposed to be fighting this boss yet, because I lack some skill or song. Ok, metagame time: Naija said something similar herself before, but it was in a weird place (a save-game room) and I hadn't beaten up all of the eye-laser-blobs yet, so I assumed it referred to them. Maybe what was SUPPOSED to happen is I was supposed to get this message after killing the eyes, to warn me away from the boss? The save-game room appears to be on the same “map” as the path to the boss. Maybe that message plays when you get to this “map” for the first time, if you don't have something you need?

Looking around, it looks like there are no save points AFTER the one-way current. The only save points on this map both have ways to back out near them. I think that means it's time to go explore somewhere else. Or of not, I might as well go wander around while I try to figure out how to deal with the shark.

Design takeaways I got from this experience:

• Shorten time between “player death” and “retry” to as low as possible.
• Give very clear feedback if something is not harming something. (Megaman 2 still has, in my mind, one of the best. “tink!” sound, and bullet ricochets away.
• If the player is not going to be able to continue, tell them. And if they ignore it, tell them again periodically, in case they're like me and too thick to get it the first time. (Maybe every time they fail?)
  

On my way out, I pass by the ruined tablet that (apparently) proclaims this to be the city of Mithalas. Screw it. I'm starting to keep track of which letter is which. Assuming the tablet does say Mithalas, there are enough characters, and the A repeats in the right place. Notebook started.

Moving on... I meet swordfish for the first time. I discover that they don't like me. I also discover that if I'm towing a big rock, I can hide behind it, and they bounce off and get hurt, and I laugh. I also discover that if I drag a big rock through a school of fish, it kills them and turns them into fish oil. Who knew rocks were so useful? Somehow I feel less bad smooshing fish with a rock than I do blowing them up with my mind.

More exploration later.

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Aquaria Playthrough Diary, Part 1

I recently started playing Aquaria. In a word, I'm love'n it. If you haven't heard of it yet, then go check it out, it is very much worth a look. There are parts that are truly inspired. There are also parts that I notice and go “hrm. I wish they'd done that a little differently.” After about an hour or two of playing, it occurred to me that it might be useful to write these down, as a virgin first-playthrough, in case Alec and Derek are curious for [still more] first impressions of the game. (Although I suspect that they've gotten quite a few of them by now.) Happily, through the magic of the internet, I can add my own account to the pile, with minimal cost to myself, and preserve the precious, precious illusion that someone cares what I think. Hooray internet! On to my long-winded impressions!

But first, a brief warning:
I'll probably write things here that are spoilers. If you haven't played through the game yet and care, you might want to not read this.


My very first impression of it was actually somewhat sketchy. I saw it at last year's GDC at the indy games festival. It had looked kind of neat, but it wasn't really clear what the goal was, and it wasn't really obvious what was going on. The fact that it had been left in some random state by whatever the last person to play it had left it in didn't help. So I was confronted by a screen of some sea-elf-girl floating by some rocks. I clicked a little, and she swam around a bit. I think I right clicked, and some indecipherable icons showed up. I wandered off towards more obvious eye candy. Later that night, they won some very impressive prizes and I decided I should probably look at it some more later when I got the chance.

Well, they went and released it before I got that chance, but being in the possession of a laptop, and internet connection, and several weeks off for the holidays, I figured now was as good a time as any.

First off: The title screen is neat. I like the fish that chase the cursor.

Starting a new game, the first cut scene is also nice, if inscrutable. Some kid, in his magical flying city, painting pictures of fish. Then... Cataclysm! It's raining red rocks! So much for your city, kid.

Cut to Naija waking up in her underwater layer. It's very pretty, and the voice-over is surprisingly non-annoying. I like whoever they got to act for Naija. There was a little bit of early panic of “should I know how to do something?” but the beginning tutorial script did a good job of giving me the basics. I like the Loom-style “music makes magic” motif, and the interface for it is great. It's also fun to swim around with the jellyfish. (I really like their long squiggly-things code, as seen in Naija's cape, the jellyfish, and many of the game's eels.) The map is very appreciated, since I am possessed with that special kind of neurosis that haunts gamers, a compulsion to make sure I visit ever area on a map for fear of missing some speck of precious, precious content.

Saving the game seems to require being near a giant red crystal. Since the rest of the game is so aqua-themed in color, they seem a little out of place, but I'm sure they have some meaning. (I find myself wondering if they have any connection to the red rocks that fell out of the sky in the intro.)

The first real moment of magic comes when I get to the area near Naija's house. The background is gorgeous, and there are so many fish swimming around, it really feels magical. Kudos to whoever made the design decision to include a lot of entities whose only purpose is to swim around and enhance the mood. I spent a good 10 minutes playing with the eel below Naija's cave.

Early on there is also a weird scene involving an odd shadowy figure who flies at you, and gives you an odd flashback(?) of a weird, evil-looking sea-elf-thing with glowing hands, swimming in a cave full of things that are shooting at it. Since you can control the evil thing, (which apparently shoots mind-bullets instead of singing, when you click the right mouse button) I ran around and blasted a few things, but shortly thereafter was brought down by the sheer number of things shooting me. Oh well. It is the purpose of early-game cut-scenes to be cryptic. I wonder if it's “winnable”. After I finish the game I may go back and try.

Speaking of cryptic, there are a few other parts of the game that are equally confusing. For example, I found some strange machine (which Naija promptly moved to her cave) but I have no idea what it does. It shows up on the map as little green figure-8 sort of thing, and sometimes while exploring, other things will end up on the map with a similar icon, but I have no clue what they're for yet.

Before too long I got the “lift rocks and stuff” spell, and had some fun dragging giant boulders around, but they're fairly difficult to control. Jumping ahead a bit, there is a cut-scene involving some fish-person attacking people with boulders, which actually looked kind of cool, but if there is any way for me to do that personally, I haven't found it. The best I can manage is to sort of slowly drag it into them, or (if they're fairly immobile) dragging it above them and letting it go, to slowly sink and crush them. Of course, it seldom seems to actually do enough damage to kill anything, so if I want to use it, I have to go back down and pick it up again, drag it back up above them, and repeat the process, in what feels like some strange, sea-elf version of Chinese water torture.

Further exploring, I found a giant turtle who, (from one of the few pieces of promotional art I've glimpsed) I imagine to be some sort of sub-marine mass-transit system, but was disappointed when it informed me that it would have nothing to do with me until I talked to some other (presumably more important) turtle first. I also found some giant pearl, which I dutifully dragged into the giant, pearl-shaped open mouth of a (relatively) nearby statue, and was vaguely disappointed when the door next to it didn't immediately open and reveal new and amazing discoveries. Oh well.

Shortly thereafter, I found a place which the game informed me was the “energy temple”. After a brief, but entertaining boss fight in which I sang a giant statue to death, I learned a new song. Yay! And it.... it... turns me into the evil-looking thing from my flashback. Huh. Mind-bullets and all.

The only problem is... they do such a great job of making me not WANT to use the new “energy form”, while also providing a number of situations where it's obvious that I'm supposed to use it. I managed to get through most of the rooms full of enemies with the help of my shield-song, but since the trigger-switches require you to use it, (and there are some gates you can only swim through while “energized”) you can't really get through the temple without it.

But that doesn't help me from feeling a little bit more icky every time I use it. And the demented, nasty-sounding giggles that Naija occasionally gives, while melting sea-life with her brain, don't do anything to reassure me.

(Minor technical nit-pick – The energy bolts seem to fly from one of her glowing hands, but since she doesn't actually bother to point, or move it in any way, it just ends up looking sort of weird. I find myself wishing that they were spawned from her head or something (especially since the cut-scene talks about her making energy with her thoughts) instead of from one of her hands, lazily by her side, as she swims along.)

The energy form brings an interesting decision for the player also – (moral issues aside.) Do you want to be able to attack, or do you want to be nearly impervious to damage? The shield spell does a great job of making you not get hurt, since at this point, there are very few enemies that attack directly – most of them shoot glowing bullets. But of course you can't really hurt them without energy form, where you have no shield. (Well, hurt them without resorting to sea-elf water-torture, at least.)

Which brings us to the boss. Of course the temple had a boss! Who ever heard of a forgotten temple without something huge and horrible lurking at the depths? The Energy Temple is happily no exception to this rule, and its guardian is no disappointment.

Given my aforementioned feelings of distaste towards the energy form, it is only natural that I spent a fair amount of time trying to see if I could best the boss without using it. I discovered that with some careful placement, I could bounce its own projectiles back at it, and that after several of them, it would roar in a satisfactory manor, letting me know that I had [presumably] done something right. Unfortunately, here, the feedback was misplaced. After about 5 minutes of this, I began to suspect that I wasn't actually hurting him any, even though he was flashing when hit, with the standard “boss-hurt-flash” that all video-game players are so familiar with.

I liked what happened next though. I eventually went all energy on him, and blasted him a bunch. And found a pearl! And dragged it back to the statue, figuring I was done. (Neat trick, switching back and trying to grab it as fast as possible to make your escape.) But then I realized that all the pearl did was let you shoot a laser-beam-thing. Ok, lure the boss to the beam. Standard stuff. But then was when the really neat part happened. Since after two or three shots, the boss got smart and didn't actually come into the beam zone any more. The moment when I realized what I had to do (and then did it) was a great one for me. (My solution was to goad him into taking a swipe at me, and fire the laser on his outstretched arm as he swung.) Nice moment, that one.

After a bit more exploring, (with my newfound mind-bullets) I found the “open waters”, which were marvelous (again, more swimming around with fish, somehow extremely fun) and soon after, a ruined city. (Mithala, I think it was called?)

The city was interesting for me, because it had one of my favorite things I've seen so far, coupled with one of my least favorite. Least favorite first: The moray eels that hide in broken houses. These are neat, but... come on. I've seen such awesome, awesome eels by now, gliding around smoothly, without seams or segments. So seeing the 8-bit throwback segmented snakes just felt disappointing, since the game has already demonstrated elsewhere that it can do eels better.

Most favorite thing: The giant, blurry, jelly-fish in the background. Those things are inspired. I mean, the rest of the game has already been extremely lush and beautiful, and showed off Derek's artistry very well, but those jellies were a stroke of genius. It's possible that I'm just a sucker for giant blurry things in the background, but those things were great.

One other comment about the city: It took me a VERY long time to realize that you could swim inside any of the houses. I didn't realize those were even openings, and when I did figure it out at last was by accident, when I swam into one expecting a wall. I wish they had been better defined, especially since the city is so big, and I had to swim back around through it looking for open houses after I finally realized I could go inside them. (The flashback was neat though. Naija's memory recovered!)

One complaint – At this point, it is starting to get difficult to survive without using energy-form to blow stuff up. But they've done such a good job of making me dislike and mistrust the energy form, that I haven't been able to convince myself to do so yet. It kind of caught me by surprise, really. There are so many nice, fun animals around that are harmless, but pretty, that I was kind of caught unawares when I realized that everything around me now wanted to kill me. (I realized it in fact, after being nibbled to death by a school of horseshoe crab, which I had previously supposed to be friendly and just wanting to play.)

I eventually found a throne-room with a save-crystal in it, and went to bed. 2+ hours in. I'll write more as I get further.

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