![]() Vertical platformers often make use of the ability to head out of one side of the screen and appear on the other which can take some getting used to, but it's pretty neat and underutilized in platformers, the game doesn't need to be entirely vertical based to use this, NSMB threw in some stages that did this in the volcano area which was nice variety not seen elsewhere in the game, also some of those pipe world stages in SMB3 though I wasn't much of a fan of them. ![]() What do you think are some of the neat design elements or decisions that actually come out in vertical platformers that don't come out in horizontal ones? Mechanically you have to either implement vertical aiming or attacking while jumping. A lot of weapons or attacks are often leftright, so vertical platformers can introduce threats from above or threats that are difficult to deal with with your weapon stuff. This is sort of true in real life a relatively narrow skyscraper seems "bigger" than a relatively short mall, I guess because we can perceive a building's height but not its depth by immediately looking at it? You keep going up and up and up and when you finish the level, the world map is in the clouds rather than on the ground. One of my favourite levels in platforming history is in Super Mario Bros 3, the tower in world 5 that connects the ground levels to the sky levels. There's a sense of scope or scale involved in vertical platforming. One important design decision for single horizontal screen vertical movement is whether or not the left and right sides of the screen wrap into each other, like they do in the vertical levels in Super Mario Bros 3, which can lead to some pretty interesting "mini-puzzles" in the platforming. Obviously portrait monitors / tate arcade screens / the DS are uniquely empowered to handle increased vertical resolution versus most gaming which is done in landscape. If it's nothing at all, you can get disoriented as to your overall position within the level. With horizontal movement, the ground is relatively constant and is a pretty strong visual element/cue, whereas with vertical movement that role is played by walls or nothing at all. ![]() When your axis of movement is vertical, pits often mean loss of progress via falling, which carries a unique and stronger tension versus in horizontal platformers where you simply die. ![]() When your axis of movement is vertical rather than horizontal, jumping plays a very different role. To me, a few things come to mind when I think of vertical platforming: Like, you could make a thread called "Games where you play as a bird for a main character", and there'd be a big long list of games, but what would really be neat would be to look at the common elements, the way bird characters are implemented versus human characters, etc. So, all these posts are well and good, but I'd like to see someone explain why, other than simply novelty, vertical platformers might be interesting as a category of games. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |