A couple weeks ago, despite being nearly broke; I
decided that spending one dollar for the iOS app Super Hexagon is worth the
investment. And it was, as one dollar
buying enough content for a blog post topic is quite cheap; compared to, say, a
Borderlands 2 purchase! (Besides, you know, having a ton of fun. Though, it was
not my intent to buy Super Hexagon just for the sake of writing about it.) When
I purchased Super Hexagon and tried it out for the first time, I was visiting
friends at their place at the time. I
didn’t expect this, but the three of us got sucked into passing around my iPad
trying to one-up each other’s high scores – just like at the arcades of olden
times I only hear about.
A few days after competitive Super Hexagon-ing
with my buddies, I fired up Steam and re-discovered Super Crate Box. I played
it some time ago on PC, and I remembered enjoying the game. I was in the mood
to play it again, so I did; and I noticed something: it’s not as fun as Super
Hexagon.
Why was this, though? Both games have much in
common: retro graphics, simple gameplay, one-hit game overs, and the goal of
getting as far as possible before dying. But I have MORE fun with Super
Hexagon. Then I figured it out: Super Hexagon evolves the challenges presented
to the player over time during the gaming session whereas Super Crate Box does
not.
Super Fun Challenge
In the Super
Mario games, you encounter koopas, goombas, and some platformer obstacles in
each level. However, as you progress through Super Mario, you find that there are
red koopas that are “smarter” than the green koopas you first encountered, flying
goombas, different enemies such as flying cheep-cheeps and spinies, and more
difficult and differently-arranged platformer obstacles. The challenges
presented to the player keep changing as the player progresses further into the
game.
Even with the matter-of-seconds gameplay of Super
Hexagon contrasting with Super Mario’s lasting-quite-a-bit-longer-than-a-few-seconds
play sessions, Super Hexagon still manages to increase and vary the obstacles
over time. When you start up a game of Super Hexagon, you aren’t presented with
the same challenge you find when you’ve passed the ten-second mark or thirty-second
marks – and you DEFINITELY don’t experience what you find after you’ve survived
60 seconds. Instead, the game is at its slowest in the beginning, and you start
off with some obstacles with multiple ways to get past them before being
presented with a nearly-hexagon-ish obstacle with only one way to get past them
– and so on and so forth. Super Hexagon’s gameplay changes up things and/or
becomes increasingly difficult as you progress further into the game.
Even better, Super Hexagon doesn’t just throw the
same obstacles at you at each point in time in the game – you might get Easy
Obstacle A in the beginning in one game while Easy Obstacle B is thrown at you
in the beginning of your next game. But this is like icing on cake, and I’m
digressing.
In Super Crate Box’s case, the game doesn’t change
up the gameplay as you progress through the game. It’s the same enemies doing the
same exact thing – over and over again. The same map, the same open area at the
top of the screen where enemies drop in from.
Wait! Don’t worry. I’m aware of Super Crate Box’s
additional maps and the harder modes that have enemies spawn from other places
other than the top of the screen. This is actually what I believe to be a
mistake: you can only play on one map and in one difficulty mode with each
session.
When you play Super Crate Box, it’s like you’ve
got a D12 die for your weapons and another die for what and how frequently
enemies spawn, and you just keep rolling and dealing with the results until you
end up with an unfavorable outcome and lose. If it evolved its challenges like
Super Hexagon does, then the metaphorical die rolled for challenges would
change over time instead of being the same thing rolled over and over again.
Super Other Games as Examples
You might point out examples such as Pac-Man where
the game uses the same map with the same enemies over and over again. However,
as you complete each map, the ghosts become faster and the power pellets don’t
last as long as before. The gameplay still evolves, just only in the difficulty
manner.
Also, I consider Ms. Pac-Man an improvement over
Pac-Man for the reason that it DOES add those additional maps for a player to
play through within one play session. So, Ms. Pac-Man does have both “increase
in difficulty” and “variance of obstacles” as part of the evolution of
challenges presented to the player and this makes it more fun.
And why is having challenges that evolve important
for a game (for single-player games, at least)? People’s brains like learning things. When you learn, your body
makes sure that you feel good (“You’re having fun!”), so that you can keep on
learning. When we play games, we have fun because we are trying to figure out
how to solve the problems in the games – we’re learning. But once a player has
learned everything there is to know about the game, the game becomes tedious
and simply an exercise. This is why Solitaire is not as exciting as Magic: The Gathering when you’re
looking to game (for those who like Magic,
that is) – because you’ve already mastered Solitaire.
On a side note, Solitaire can still be enjoyable
in the sense that it’s relaxing just going through the motions. It’s why some
people bake or go for a jog when they’re stressed or need a time-out.
Personally, when I just want a relaxing activity, one of the things I like to
do is play the original Super Mario Bros. I already know how to beat the whole
game and have saved Princess Peach multiple times – but it still feels nice to play
Super Mario Bros. every once in a while.
So, with Super Crate Box, when I’ve already
learned that two out of the three enemies simply, drop down from above, walk
straight, drop down into the fire, then become faster and run straight until
they die; I’ve stopped learning. When I’ve already figured out how to use each
of the thirteen weapons in the game; I’ve stopped learning. Now I’m just going
through the motions and dealing with random weapons and random rates of
randomly selected-from-three-available-enemy-types enemies.
Super Crate Box is Still Super Fun
Don’t get me wrong: I still have a lot of
fun with Super Crate Box. In fact, whilst writing this and stopping to check
out something Super Crate Box, I ended up having stopped writing for quite a
while and getting sucked into playing it. Gamers gonna game.
It’s just that it’s not as fun to me as Super
Hexagon is – and I am fully aware that games can only be designed well enough
to a certain point to achieve fun before the fun-ness of a game becomes based
upon the player’s gaming preferences. For example, I’m not much of a fan of
first-person shooter games, but I’m sure Borderlands 2 is a great game and does
what it does well.
But even with Super Hexagon’s and Super Crate Box’s
similarities, each game has something different to offer that can’t be compared
with anything from the other game. Super Hexagon has simplistic controls and
music and visuals that contribute toward a unique experience. Super Crate Box is
a platformer, has more personality, and has as a deeper well of unlockable
content that encourages you to play over and over again.
Super Crate Box could have been better. But, keep
in mind that this game is still good, and it’s no slight against Vlambeer, the
developer of the game, as circumstances and certain decisions determined the overall
outcome of the game. And that outcome is a fun game with many fans; a feat that
I have yet to pull off myself.
Until next time, may the challenges your players
face during a play session of your game do what a Pikachu does when exposed to
a Thunder Stone.
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