Game Design Vol. 1 - Mario

If you look at the visuals from 1998’s Tomb Raider III to 20  years later the difference in visuals is phenomenal, but if you look at a Mario game from 10 years ago the difference in visual fidelity is actually fairly small. So while Sony and Microsoft are pushing consumers towards all the pixels your eyes can handle, how are Nintendo and Mario still selling well?

After completing Sonic Mania recently and revisiting Super Mario 3D Land on the 3DS, I decided to dive in to what makes Mario platforming so good.

Constant Player Success

One of Mario’s greatest strengths is  giving the player the feeling of constant success and it’s ability to pretty much never be frustrating. It never feels like a level design tricks you, or screws you over as a player.

There is an audio and visual reward given to the player for every enemy killed. Time rewards, coins, pop up coin time trials, secret boxes, music notes, star coins, Toads throwing  special items, there is just a constant chance to gain a reward and give the players brain a constant hit of Dopamine.

There are half a dozen varied ways the player can gain an extra life during a level as well. This generous life giving opportunities also reduces further any feeling of frustration when failing, as the consequences of failure are minor.

Here is an  example below of this not working well in Sonic Mania, it has far too many surprise and unforeseen failure states that are often not avoidable. This highlights Sonic Mania’s design not achieving what I highlighted Mario does so well.

The above problem could of been resolved if the tubes were spaced further apart so the players rebound position does not unexpectedly get them killed after attacking the objective as designed, the middle tube could of been removed, or the timings reworked. I have had more unexpected deaths like this in Sonic Mania than I can count, and this really hurts the overall experience. I guess this is a good example of the opposite of constant player success.

Sometimes Mario sets you up for a soft fail but it’s deliberately done so you learn a game mechanic used in more challenging situations coming up later in the level, like the red and blue switch jump platforms above, the player is encouraged to fail in a safe environment as a learning tool.

Adaptive difficulty

If you fail a few times you will get a box which helps you complete the level more easily. If you keep failing, rather than having the player never be able to progress further or get so frustrated they don’t want to play the game any more, the game allows you the option to fly to the end of the level. Although that last option is a bit extreme for most games I think more games could make use of smarter, adaptive difficulty even if it is subtle and not player facing like the system in Resident Evil 4, where if you fail a few times it will slightly scale back the number of enemies.

Replay value
Both games offer solid replay value, but in different ways. Mario draws you back in with the goal of finding all 3 gold star coins. With Sonic there is nothing to achieve by replaying the level, but the levels have so many alternate paths you could play a level 3 times and have 3 different experiences,whereas with a Mario level, the route is far more linear, so offers less new experiences upon replay.

How Mario beats Sonic for second to second gameplay

A let down in the Sonic gameplay design is the score at the end of level means very little to me, especially on a boss stage where 90% of the time you will finish with a single digit amount of rings. Collecting 2 of 3 star coins in Mario feels more of an accomplishment.

A poor design decision is letting the  player get to a state where they reach the final boss part of the level but with not much time left and die mid boss fight, triggering a "time over" failure state.  They could of solved this by freezing the clock when you reach the boss. It is just unnecessary player punishment.

Sonic is based around going fast, but the design is it’s own worst enemy as it is the going fast that often leads to frustrating gameplay with almost zero seconds to react to a danger that can cost you 122 gold rings, and your life... punishing. 

The slower pace of Mario allows the player to examine the path and then formulate a plan of how to best beat that section of the level. The slower speed allows more technical, skillful, varied and less random frustrating gameplay.

For all the positives, one thing that Mario sacrifices over Sonic would be a sense of Adrenaline, with not much pressure and not much to lose you will never get this high adrenaline feeling from the player. 

Although I point out some negatives in Sonic Mania here I am a big Sonic fan and I thought the teams did a good job rebooting the first game I ever loved. When the gameplay flows it really is great. However Mario's overall gameplay design reins supreme in this developers opinion.