Words: 1476 Approximate Reading Time: 10-15 minutes
I recently played through Nine Sols, a Metroidvania that I…mostly liked. I’ll set aside my issues with it, because I wanted to talk more about the genre of Metroidvanias in general, and through that the lens of genre and design more generally.
Because I found myself as I was playing Nine Sols coming upon impassable areas that left me wondering something. A ledge that’s too high. A gap that’s too wide. A barrier that can’t be broken. Within the language of Metroidvanias and game design more generally, these are usually keys for telling you that you are supposed to come back later. That you’ll get some kind of ability to get through those hurdles: a double jump, an air dash, an attack to bust through barriers.
What I found myself ruminating on was whether I would, in fact, find those things. Would the game actually give me these abilities, or was I actually just not exploring properly? Maybe instead there was a pathway I had missed that would take me to the other side of this obstacle. Maybe there was some kind of switch to extend a bridge or destroy the barrier or raise the platform.
Am I making the right call in deciding that I’m supposed to come back later?
The simple answer is “yeah, almost certainly.” But the why behind that answer opens up an interesting question. Namely, what would happen if the answer was “no”?
Genre as Design
If we think about games through the lens of genre, we will likely think about various components of a game that make a game feel like it belongs to that genre. A Metroidvania should have exploration and backtracking and development through equipment and abilities. A role-playing game should have lots of quests so you can explore the world and feel like you have something to do. We can create all sorts of definitional elements as we see fit.
There are also components that are going to become commonplace within these genres because they help the game itself feel like it progresses. A character might gain more mobility options as they play, to make exploration feel a bit different as they go through the same areas multiple times. You might get access to an area you’d seen before, which gives you a sense of anticipation and payoff. These are not parts of how we categorize games, but just elements of design that are meant to make us feel excited or happy at the right times.
But there’s also components that come into design because they existed before. When some piece of gameplay has been done over and over again, such that it feels like a staple of the genre – something we all expect.
In a Metroidvania, a double-jump might be considered one of these components. There are a multitude of ways in which you can block access to certain areas, so placing a ledge out of reach until you can jump twice isn’t necessary. But it is so ubiquitous at this point that it might feel strange when one of these games doesn’t have a double-jump.
So what happens when things “go wrong,” if you will? To what extent can a developer look at a Metroidvania they are creating, and say “I don’t want to put in a double-jump” without any issue?
The simple answer would be, of course, that there shouldn’t be a problem. Surely the game won’t be designed around having that second jump, so the player won’t encounter obstacles that require it, and thus they won’t get stuck.
But that simple answer relies on the premise that all obstacles have only a single clear solution.
If a ledge is placed too high, perhaps I am supposed to wait until I have a double-jump. Or maybe I need to find a different way around. Or maybe I need to leap off of an enemy. Or maybe I need a different skill entirely. The same problem can have multiple solutions, not merely in theory, but within the game itself. Sometimes the solution is intended by the developer, and sometimes it’s not.
Which means that the language of design becomes fuzzy. What does a high ledge mean?
There might be ways around this. Proper teaching of the player can help them understand the internal language of a game. Show them a high ledge, and then introduce them to a solution that you plan on having them perform repeatedly – go search for a button, go find an enemy to bounce off of, etc., etc.
But that teaching will itself leave open certain problems. If every obstacle has the same basic solution, then it will become difficult to push players to think outside of the box. And when they run across an obstacle that they are genuinely supposed to tackle later, how are they supposed to know?
That language is important because for any one of these obstacles, there are several possible interactions from a player.
If the obstacle is passable and the player attempts to pass it, they’ll likely succeed. No issue here.
If it’s unpassable and the player leaves presuming they will get something for it later, they made the right choice. Again, no issue.
But if the obstacle is passable and the player decides to come back later, they might be annoyed if they never find that specific piece of equipment or ability that was supposed to help them. They might backtrack later to realize that they could have bypassed that obstacle hours upon hours ago…and perhaps the reward is so minor that it feels laughable.
Conversely, if it’s unpassable and the player attempts it, they might spend a significant amount of time banging their head against a wall that they can’t break down. Either they leave with the belief that they’ll get something later, or they’ll decide to try again later. Either way, it’s a feeling of frustration. They may believe there’s some special trick, when the “trick” is just playing the game more.
Ideally, those who can speak the language of a game should know when there’s a problem to be solved, and when they’re missing something. But that requires the language of the game to be sufficiently clear to the player. Meaning both that the player has been taught that language, and that the game is consistent with its usage of that language.
And that is where genre provides a useful shortcut, but also a dangerous one. By relying on past games or elements that are common within a genre, we can rely on that interplay between player and game. The player has an expectation, and the game fulfills it. I see a high ledge, it must mean I can’t get there right now, so I’ll come back later when I have a double-jump.
But by being part of a genre, how much of the expectation is sedimented into players’ minds? At what point does deviating from earlier games effectively set a game up for…perhaps not “failure,” but some kind of problem? If I don’t include a double-jump, will players still play with the expectation that there will be one, and how will the lack of it paint their experience?
All of this is not to say that every Metroidvania must include a double-jump ability, nor do they all include it. Rather, the genre of a game is influenced by the games that make up that genre, which establish a set of design principles that create a common language. That language in turn impacts later games, and also the players and the expectations that they have about a given game within the genre. It is when those expectations get disrupted that we all collectively find ourselves effectively sailing in uncharted waters.
Concluding Remarks
Perhaps one way this essay could be ended is by revealing the secret. Did Nine Sols in fact have this double-jump ability? But I think it better to leave that ambiguous. Perhaps my expectation was correct, or maybe I was too hasty in my retreat. In a sense, isn’t part of the joy of games that sense of discovery?
Instead, I want to end by noting how this is not a concern specifically about the genre of Metroidvanias. I think it is a genre that serves as a useful lens, because so many of its design principles feel almost cemented over the past thirty or so years. There are interesting things being done within the genre, but there is almost a baseline that is hard to unsee once you realize it’s there.
And that opens the question about what other ways in which genre can dictate design. What other elements of design do we see in certain games that we might take for granted because of the genre they belong to? What behaviors have we cultivated simply because we have carried them out in game after game after game?
Abstracting Games 