The second step is to come up with every available mechanic you can use with that basic idea. In Super Hexagon, the objective is Don’t Die. In VVVVVV, the center of the game was that you could switch gravity and walk on the ceiling. If one fan’s speculation is anything to go by, this should be a step-by-step guide to designing like a Terry Cavanagh facsimile. I don’t actually know the process Terry Cavanagh uses to make his games, but I’ve reverse-engineered how I think he does it. Nobody understands this balance better than Terry Cavanagh. Then they let their new mechanics dance with their old ones. They know the exact moment a mechanic gets old, and they introduce something fresh just before players realize they’ve gotten sick of something. 3 and Castlevania: Bloodlines and Super Meat Boy are masterworks.
There aren’t enough games that actually focus on getting this quite right. Shadow Warrior doesn’t really do it enough. Unfortunately, a lot of games struggle to find the exact balance between the two. But those are the exceptions most games we play aren’t outliers. Every mechanic should feel fulfilled.īoth Tetris and Wario Ware, of course, have excuses for staying at their respective extremes. You don’t want to give players who are enjoying a particular mechanic to get blue balls when you switch to something new. You need some quiet time to allow a player to appreciate the genius of your obstacles. Too much of this makes the game feel like a whirlwind. The inverse of this is Wario Ware, where a game never stops adding mechanics. After you’ve seen the seven block formations the game offers, you’ve seen it all. This is why some people are so baffled about the popularity of Tetris. Without new mechanics, your game will never remain fun forever. This is the balance that makes or breaks a game’s pacing and keeps players from getting bored. If you barely do so at all, your game will get stale quickly. If you incorporate a new mechanic too soon, you run the risk of neglecting your other mechanics. Introducing mechanics well is a matter of balancing progressive and emergent design. I have no idea if this is what’s generally accepted, but I like the ring of it. I like to use mechanical introduction as a blanket term for these two forms of design. Theorizing every inventive way you can use a mechanic is key in game design. You can have the distances between pits and belts vary. You can have spike pits of varying lengths. Of course, you can combine these two mechanics in a lot of different ways. This extends the longevity of your mechanics. You can have conveyor belts and spike pits separately, but when you combine them, your game suddenly becomes more interesting. This is when you use two mechanics together to create something interesting. Progressive design keeps things from getting stale. When you’ve used your mechanics in every way you can think of, you have to add something new. This is adding a new mechanic to your game. There are two ways to keep your game’s mechanics interesting. It’s absolutely genius and instrumental in appreciating video games, design, the creative process, innovation, ingenuity, etc., etc., etc. It doesn’t matter if you plan to go into game design some day or if your grandson once managed to convince you to try out Bejeweled. You need to understand Terry Cavanagh’s approach to game design.
Part 1: Why Being Cavanaggesque is Striking I still hold that VVVVVV is a masterpiece, and, in its own minimalist, addicting-as-amphetamine logic, the same might just be said of Super Hexagon. He might only have three relevant games, and one of those ( Don’t Look Back) might be pretty bad, but I’ve gotten more enjoyment from VVVVVV and Super Hexagon than I have from most game consoles’ entire libraries. This was developed by Terry Cavanagh, who, if Shinji Mikami has truly retired, probably stands as my favorite active game designer. I can think of no more fitting game for a sixth review than Super Hexagon.
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