"Never Just One Problem"

A design concept I've been thinking about a lot recently is making sure the player rarely has just one problem to deal with. This started when I watched a video from the YouTube channel "Josh Strife Plays" titled Was it Good? - God of War (2005) where he goes on to talk about the various design decisions that made God of War such a remarkable game. You can watch it yourself, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snFATnSgdNY

I find this to be a genuinely fascinating bit of design knowledge, because it seems like such an obvious thing to implement in your game, but it can be very easy to forget as a level designer. Now in something simple, like a Mario game, this is very easy to spot. I recall the channel "Game Maker's Toolkit" made a number of videos talking about the formula of Super Mario levels, where they introduce two mechanics in isolation with a safety net for the player, before slowly mixing them together with escalating challenge. But this is a concept that can be applied to any game, not just Mario. And these combinations of challenges can easily be expanded upon for more than just one level. 

But what convinced me to finally make this post was the Doom 2 map pack "Machete" by Doomworld user A2Rob, because it does an excellent job of combining challenges to make sure the player stays engaged. The one map in particular that stuck out to me as such a good example was when the player is locked in a room with giant crushers on each corner that cover 90% of the space. Meanwhile, you also have to share the crusher room with a bunch of demons chucking fireballs at you. The crushers will take care of them if given enough time (yeah being ground to a meaty pulp isn't an instant kill in Doom). But if you just try and stay out of the path of the crushers, you have almost no room to dodge the enemy projectiles, and also give them an opportunity to approach and overwhelm you. So you're left with this encounter where you have a brief window of time where you can run out in the open and relocate before the crushers come back down. It was great fun and a good challenge.

Now as a level designer, it can be very easy to assume that simply having multiple enemy types in an encounter is enough variety to keep the player engaged. A few bullet-firing human enemies here, a few projectile-spewing monsters there, and that's all you really need, right? Maybe sometimes, but we can definitely do better. Instead of just having some bullet-firing enemies on one side of the room, why not have a sniper that restricts your movement? What about a totem that will keep resurrecting enemies until you take it down? Maybe the player has to contend with a limited arsenal or move set for one level? Now none of these are particularly original ideas, but it's important to keep perspective as to why they keep appearing in games. Because they are very effective means of getting the player to change their tactics and keep them engaged with the mechanics, rather than falling into a mindless pattern.

I also want to take a moment to briefly rant about how one mission in MWII(2022) almost did this but then copped out at the last minute. They have a whole setup about walking through the steam tunnels, trying to avoid laser tripmines. So that's one problem that we get to deal with in isolation. Then, we move into a room without traps revealing that there are some enemy soldiers still in the tunnels. So that's our second problem used in isolation. Okay, now we get to start combining these elements, which it kind of does? One guy runs out from behind a corner while the player is crawling prone under a laser, but it's treated as more of a jumpscare than anything. So far, we are following the ideal, game design 101 pattern of introducing and combining elements to create a fun challenge for the player. Having two elements in isolation before starting with an easy challenge that combines them, and then the final step is to ramp it up, right? Well... no. The game just leaves this idea behind and we transition to more open combat. I was expecting it to culminate in a setpiece where each side of the arena is armed with tripmines, with maybe a few in the middle that we have to avoid for good measure, and we have to deal with enemy soldiers shooting at us from some battlements. Maybe we could find a switch to deactivate the lasers to make the fight easier? I dunno, it seems that the developers thought if we spent too much time in the tunnels we'd get bored, but it seems like such a waste to throw away that setup.

Anyway, I'm thinking I might make a short Doom 2 level to practice with this sort of thing. It's definitely something I want to try and consciously think more about while working on levels.