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《超级食肉男孩》关卡5-3的设计巧思

发布时间:2013-10-24 14:54:19 Tags:,,,

作者:Hamish Todd

《超级食肉男孩》是一款充满设计巧思的游戏。我想借这篇短短的文章重点谈谈关卡5-3的设计细节。

作为一名关卡设计师,最“明显”的工作通常是在一堆紧密相关的挑战中做出一系列难度递增的关卡。“游戏难度匹配玩家(逐渐提高的)技能水平”是希望创造“流状态”的设计师最看重的。但如果你要挑战这个说法,你可以尝试《超级食肉男孩》关卡5-3中的做法。

我们要讨论的基本上就是这个关卡末尾的“避开锯条”挑战。以下是截图:

SuperMeatBoy level(from gamasutra)

SuperMeatBoy level(from gamasutra)

首先要说,要通过这个部分非常困难,甚至对游戏主角来说。当角色撞到墙时,上升的冲劲还继续保持——这里,你要把这个势头结合到通关策略中。

第二,这个部分出现在一个大小合适、难度适中的关卡的末尾。以下是整个关卡的截图:

super meat boy(from gamasutra)

super meat boy(from gamasutra)

正如我所说的,我们的挑战还很远,在关卡的末尾。对于跑到锯条前或甚至只是看到它的玩家来说,他们将面临严酷的考验。

这个考验很有意思,其实是与抗重力球有关——与我们所看到的挑战毫无关系。在《超级食肉男孩》中,这种情况是经常发生的——最后的障碍与所有之前的障碍无关(且通常更容易)。这些“结局”安排使游戏呈现为非常丰富多彩的结构。

尽管乍一看,我们的挑战比通常的末尾挑战更有难度。这是一个“谜题”,需要我们思考和实验。但玩家在这两方面的能力似乎是受到不公平的限制,因为这个挑战出现在关卡的末尾!

如果你的一次努力失败了,你要过一会儿才能再次尝试。因此你的尝试经验是有固定时间间隔的,所以你不可能好好思考。再加上惩罚这么严重,反复实验自己的通关策略会让人觉得很可怕。也许你在《黑暗之魂》中也可能经历类似的情境,但在《超级食肉男孩》中,这是一个更加“动态”的体验。

但更聪明的地方还没说呢!看看关卡开头的特写:

SuperMeatBoy(from gamasutra)

SuperMeatBoy(from gamasutra)

关卡的开关与结尾是对称的。但想想你之前是如何通过它的,你会发现与在结尾有区别。为了通过锯条,你必须趁锯条滑进去时顺着墙跑下来。如果你不幸碰到锯条,那么你的死亡会让你损失少于1秒的进度。按游戏的标准,这个关卡的开头部分是极其简单的小障碍,你想都不想就能完成了,但当其实相同的挑战出现在关卡的末尾,你当然会三思而后行!

这里,游戏是对你提出礼貌的邀请,给你一个机会变聪明。玩家要做的是利用这个部分再次检验自己的实践。在关卡开头,你是沿着墙往下滑,在关卡平均末尾,你要沿着墙往上跑。

SuperMeatBoy 4(from gamasutra)

SuperMeatBoy 4(from gamasutra)

SuperMeatBoy 5(from gamasutra)

SuperMeatBoy 5(from gamasutra)

对玩家来说,整个关卡的镜面对称是一个非常直观的线索,因为天花板边缘有细细的红线(管道?)。另外,《超级食肉男孩》还有一个特征是立即重刷,也就是把你从困难的末尾挑战部分直接传送回练习的地方。这一切都帮助玩家领悟“练习”的意思(游戏邦注:虽然因为玩家行为,很少能“保证”他们理解这个信息)。

开发者本可以换一种模式安排关卡。他们本可以把最后的部分放在关卡的开头。本可以直接了当地提示玩家“这是挑战,请按一般的方法完成它”。但《超级食肉男孩》增加了另一个有趣的层次,也就是“关于策略的策略”。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Untold Riches: Super Meat Boy level 5-3

by Hamish Todd

Super Meat Boy is full of great design. This is a short post looking at one particularly clever little thing that happens in level 5-3.

As a level designer, the “obvious” thing to do is often to make a level out of a bunch of closely-related challenges, in ascending order of difficulty. “The difficulty of the game matches the player’s [escalating] skill level” is what is prized by designers who look for “flow”. But there are interesting things you can do which defy this thinking, and 5-3 presents a good example of this.

Basically we’re talking about one specific sawblade-avoiding challenge at the very end of the level. Here’s a picture:

First to say, getting past this part is very hard, even for Super Meat Boy. Upward momentum is conserved when you hit a wall – here you’re required incorporate that into a strategy.

Second thing to say, this thing comes at the very end of a decently-sized and difficult level. Here’s a picture of the whole level.

(There’s a bigger version on this page)

As I say, our challenge is on the far right, at the end of the level. For the player to get to it or even see it, they’ll need to have run quite a gauntlet.

The gauntlet is a few interesting challenges related to anti-gravity balls – which have nothing at all to do with the challenge we’re looking at. That happens a lot in Super Meat Boy – the final hurdle is unrelated to (and usually easier than) all the preceding hurdles. These “denouement”-like things can give a game a very colourful structure; anna anthropy has talked about the way this is done in NightSky.

On the face of it though, our challenge is much crueller than the usual end-level challenges. Our thing is “puzzle” platforming; it asks for contemplation and experimentation. But the player’s capacity for both of these seem to be unfairly limited due to its placement at the end of the level!

If you screw up an attempt, it’ll be a while before you get try it again. Therefore your experiences of it are spaced apart, so you can’t contemplate it so well. Plus since it’s so punishing, experimenting with strategies could feel awful. This might be the kind of situation you’d expect to encounter in games like Dark Souls, but not in Super Meat Boy, which is meant to be a more “dynamic” experience.

But it turns out there’s something more clever going on! Here’s a close look at the start of the level:

This is symmetric with the end, our challenge. But think about how you’d get through it and you’ll see it’s different. In order to get past, all you have to do is slide down the wall while the sawblade’s out of the way.  On the offchance that you hit the sawblade, your death will lose you less than one second of progress. By the game’s standards this is a laughably, pointlessly easy mini-hurdle, something you can blaze straight past without a second thought – but after you’ve seen what the end of the level looks like, you certainly should be giving it a second thought!

What’s happening here is that the game is making you a polite offer. It is giving you the opportunity to be clever. What the player can do is to use this place as the practicing ground for its mirror-reversed twin sibling. To practice, you slide down, then try to get back up.

The mirror symmetry of the whole level is a visually appealing clue for the player, as are the small grey lines (pipes?) near the ceilings. Also, Super Meat Boy is famous for its instantaneous restart, which here would be teleporting you from the difficult final thing straight to the practicing place. All this helps nudge the player to the idea of “practicing” here (though with player behaviour, there are seldom ever “guarantees”).

Realize that they could have done this differently. They could have had the final part earlier in the level. It could have been a straightforward “here is a challenge, deal with it by normal means”. It would have been perfectly fine that way. But Team Meat added this interesting extra layer, this “strategizing about strategizing”.(source:gamasutra)


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