Five Things I Love In Games: Gimmicks

Calling these Gimmicks for lack of a better term. Maybe will find a better way to organize these as more collect… For now, onward with the brain dump!

One of my jam games in Dino was called Super Elevator Level, and it was all about this concept. (That game was also all about the screenshake).

The elevators themselves are super fun (Streets of Rage, Ninja Turtles, etc), but what I love is the last level of Streets of Rage 2 - an elevator that eventually comes up flush with the carpet of Mr X’s office.

The implication is that he’s been up there the whole time, looking down a massive elevator shaft, pushing goons and minibosses into it as you fight your way up.

This explains another open question for some Beat Em Up levels: where are these goons falling from?

There’s also alot of elevators without walls in these games - if they had walls, there’d be no way to know things were moving (unless we get back to the screenshake, of course).

The thing about these mario-kart bananas - it’s letting the player weigh in on the level design.

I love setting a trap for the racers behind me - this is the same feeling as placing an enemy, a jump, a wall in the level itself. The player gets to set up some surprise for the other players.

I love that concept - I’d love to find similar elements for my own games, especially via my Async Mario Kart project (clearly a work in progress).

So much to love about Animal Crossing - this time we’re here for the Dialogue SFX. The chitter aka bebelese aka animalese is an entity to itself, and so for now, I just want to focus on one sound - that heavy piano smash when something blows a character’s mind.

I think this happens when Blathers is presented with an insect? Or when a villager hasn’t seen you in 14 months? There are other times, but not sure how else to force it.

Other games probably do this, but Toe Jam and Earl is what I’m thinking of.

The player statuses are in a progression, from Dufus to Goner. I’m not sure if it’s linear or based on play, but the writing is great and is most of the delight.

That’s the main lesson I want from this one: a little bit of copy-fun goes a long way. Games are more than just the physics/mechanics - the love and delight comes from attention to the little things. For me this builds back to supporting ease of injecting those creative moments - tools like ink or whatever lets your writers and artists play the game themselves.

Some of the TJE titles (incomplete, from memory):

• Dufus
• Pointdexter
• Genius
• Goner (when one of the two of you are out of lives)

Goner leads nicely into the next one - would have been fun to ‘Continue’ in Toe Jam and Earl, the lack of which explains why I’ve only completed it one time. (Besides it being a randomized roguelike, ofc).

Running out of lives in a Beat Em Up must have evolved from the Arcade style - pay to continue playing.

The opportunity to try another character on it’s own is super fun and something I want to work into my games.

Why doesn’t Super Smash Bros do this?

This mechanic lets you switch from a fast to a heavy player, or vice-versa. Mix it up!

A fun version of this is in Streets of Rage 3 - you can unlock players during your playthrough that were not available on the start screen, then switch to them after losing your lives. This lets you play as Shiva or Roo (if you know just how to unlock them - I’ll save that for a future thing-I-love).

I’ve played with some related ideas in my mind garden before - a game where you ‘collect’ players to switch to, always playing on the ‘last’ life of whoever you are right now. Feels like a parasitic ghost or spirit…or maybe the nice version of that? It’s an idea, vaguely called ‘Perpetual Beat Em Up’.