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bios-hzrd · 11 months ago

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I wrote this script for a video essay, but I'm worried that it sucks and frankly I have other shit to work on, so I'm gonna dump it here and maybe come back to it later if anybody thinks its actually worth being made into a video.

Flow, Speed’s Complement

Flow is your ability to play the game at an uninterrupted pace. If you touch an enemy, do you get back up and keep running, warp to the last checkpoint, or do you die, watch a small death cutscene, and get warped to the last checkpoint. This will be a breakdown/analysis thingamabob of points where the game intentionally breaks the flow for various reasons.

I’ve split flow breaks into two major types: extrinsic and intrinsic. It’s important to note that flow breaks are not something to hunt down and exterminate in the goal of making the perfect speed game. They are useful tools, but if you aren’t careful they get incredibly frustrating

Extrinsic flow breaks usually come into action when the player slips. They’re factors outside of the core gameplay loop that serve as punishments for failure such as getting knocked back when you get hit and dying when that happens too many times.

They usually punish the player by wrenching control away and sending them back a bit. Sending the player back is usually considered a necessary evil, as while it does feel bad through cutting into the player's progression and harming the flow, it forces the player to redo and practice a section to prove their mastery which will make the game more fun in the long run. Most games design themselves around the player beating the level once, and as such want to make sure the player has done it properly by the end.

I find it pertinent to note however that other games like to design themselves around beating the game again to prove your mastery. Pizza Tower and Ultrakill come to mind. Both of these games have a ranking system, and are clearly designed around the player returning to their levels once they have beaten the game to get the best rank. As such PIzza Tower and Ultrakill are more lenient with allowing the player to stumble their way through a level. Pizza Tower even makes the player immortal for most of the game. This goes a long way to making these games both exhilarating unbroken thrill rides for the people who play through it once, and tough as nails tests of personal mastery for those who go back for a second round. The first run maximizes flow, while the second ramps up the challenge.

Getting back on topic, taking control away from the player on the other hand, is something that should generally be cut out as much as possible. In ye olden days, you die, and you have to wait for an entire animation to play, then you get warped back to the last checkpoint. That kind of waiting builds up and gets on the players nerves. Ultrakill pulls up this screen when you die. The great thing is, that the second it appears you can press the shoot button, you know, that thing your finger is already on, to immediately load state back to the last checkpoint. It’s fast, snappy, and intuitive. No waiting, no menuing, just get back in the game. If the player not being able to play isn’t a mechanic of your game, make them able to play as fast as you can.

Getting knocked back was originally used because games wanted to give enemies a sense of collision, discourage damage boosting, and clearly signify to the player that they’ve gotten hit, but you’ll want to consider if that’s something your game actually needs. For example, how lenient is your health system? Cuphead gives the player three hits per level, and that number only goes down. The player is already avoiding damage at all costs and knockback is unnecessary. In Pizza Tower you regularly break the sound barrier, knockback is an obvious signifier that the player has gotten hit, and a significant enough punishment on its own in a game about going fast that the game gives the player infinite HP. You’ll have to apply your own judgment.

You want to put consideration on what conditions trigger your extrinsic flow breaks. Putting some slack on the line allows the player to not be perfect, and still have an experience that flows well. Health, checkpoints, and lives are very common leniency systems that allow the player to screw up a few times before they get sent back. Personally, I love to play games that maximize flow to let you play fast and loose. Crash into shit, get up, and keep running. Precision platformers are not my jam. As such when health is implemented into games, I’ve usually preferred it when it is viewed as a resource to be managed, not an ever looming axe pendulum telling you to cut the pace and be careful.

Meta Knightmare has a fun example. The game is a rerun of the main campaign, except now you’re in speedrun mode. The games put a timer on your head and you need to bolt to the finish. When you kill enemies, you get MP or meta points. When you need to heal, you have two choices. You can either deviate from the main path a bit to grab a health pickup, still moving at the same speed but dropping your time, or burn some Meta Points, saving time but losing a resource that could be used on other stuff. It integrates itself into the systems in a fun and unique way.

I mentioned lives too though. They’re essentially a cap on the number of times you’re allowed to be sent back to the checkpoint before the game boots you out of the level to try again. As a mechanic they allow the player a few deaths, create tension when they’re low, and force the player to redo things they haven't mastered. Lives are most associated with the traditional Mario system, which I’m not especially fond of. Allowing the player to just stockpile the things over the course of the game gives a lot of inconsistency to when the player will be punished for repeated mistakes. At the final boss players could either have a thousand lives or two. The player can either stumble their way through tripping on every step, or smash their head into the wall until it breaks. I like Splatoons system much more, where the player is given 3 lives per level. It gives the lives system some proper consistency and lets its strengths shine.

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Intrinsic flow breaks are mostly addressed in the speed games that I’m so fond of. The main idea in these games is keep going, keep going, never stop, and intrinsic flow breaks exist to give the player something to minimize through their gameplay.

For a simple example, In Gravity Circuit enemies are everywhere, and kinda gotta kill anyone in front of you. To do that you can either punch them a few times, or you can throw a dead guy at them. Punches slow you down, as you have to sorta stand there as they die, sometimes dancing around their attacks. The basic idea is that after a few fistings the enemy gets exhausted and you can pick them up and fucking yeet at the next guy, then pick that guy up and do it all over again. Throwing opponents is seamless and gives the game a nice flow.

You try to keep the chuck train rolling to avoid that intrinsic flow break of beating a man to death with your bare hands as much as you can. You have to sometimes, but do it as little as possible.

Now for the subtleties, I’ve found two factors you want to avoid: Stops and Slows. Stops are interrupts that make you physically stop in place. Gravity Circuits punches are a stop, so is Peppinos shotgun in Pizza Tower. It can be brief or a bit drawn out. Point is it kills your momentum. Slows are when you have to slow down, either you physically move slower, or you take a route that gets you to the place you want to be slower. For example earlier when I mentioned Meta Knight taking a slight detour to grab food, that was a slow.

You press a button to throw a bomb, hold it and you charge up a bomb blast. This blast launches you forwards into the air, and you move faster. You can use a double jump to remain in the air, but once you land you’ll slow down to normal speed again. Interestingly, when you throw a bomb in the air, if you try to charge another blast, you’ll brake and lose all horizontal momentum, then fall to the ground. Midair bombs are a stop, landing and starting the blast charge on the ground is a slow. It’s preferable to land than brake. However your decision making is decided by your need to land. If you try to charge a blast in midair, you will land before you have a charge. You need to find safe spots, which drives your choices. You blast forwards, and you need to recognize whether you want to keep flying and let yourself land where you will, or stop and take the immediate safe ground. Take the risky slow or the safe stop. All of this to avoid the extrinsic flow break of getting hit. These actually tie together quite nicely, as you can charge up a bomb blast while getting knocked back. You still don’t want to get hit, but if you do you can smoothly re-enter the game's flow state.

There's no defined way that it should be done. Games just come up with their own ways to implement them into their gameplay loop, by making the game about trying to optimize their usage. In Downwell you rack up combos by jumping on the heads of enemies. To do this you can press shift to fall more slowly, but you slow down by shooting bullets out of your boots, and the more you shoot unnecessarily, the more likely you kill the enemies and prevent yourself from landing on them.

Further, downwell has a multiplier mechanic called Gem High, where any gems you collect from bouncing on enemies are multiplied for a limited time, so you need to bounce on as many enemies as you can, as fast as you can. Timers work well with getting the player to cut down on slows.

Pizza Towers Gustavo and Brick brings in a very intriguing example of letting the player cancel a move that has an intrinsic flow break at the end of it by using level gimmicks. The double jump has the player crash into the ground, which stuns them for a bit, but there are these mushroom trampolines that cancel the animation.

Once again I don’t really have any clear cut standards to explain, just fascinating examples to potentially take inspiration from. Flow breaks are a very engaging element that help the player appreciate the flow state even more. Extrinsic ones exist to strongarm the player into playing the game properly, while intrinsic ones give games with a constant flow an interesting mechanic to play around. If there's any unmentioned games that you feel play around with or challenge these principles feel free to share.

#game design #pizza tower #plague knight #shovel knight #kirby super star ultra #meta knight #meta knightmare #gravity circuit #downwell

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