Death and Dying in Lothric - Reading List for April 2016 (Patreon)

Hey everyone, as promised I've broken the reading list out into its own thing so both this and the newsletter can stretch their legs.

Each month I'm going to give you loads of recommendations of things to read and watch, including lots of takes on that month's big topic (this time: difficulty and Dark Souls), and advice for game designers from professional developers.

Death and Dying in Lothric

This month, it seemed like every critic around had to have their say on Dark Souls's difficulty - including me.

In my video, I talked about how From Software puts you in peril and a state of hopelessness to force you to master the combat, to cautiously seek out traps and ambushes, and to get a genuine rush of satisfaction when you beat a titanic boss. And if you really can't do it? Play as a mage, or grind for souls, or summon in a friend.

Spoilers aplenty here, but watch a few seconds of OnlyAfro's video to see how you can beat every boss in Dark Souls without ever lifting a finger.

So should Dark Souls have an easy mode? In the “probably not” column, Errant Signal came to some similar conclusions as me in his video, and Matt Lees too talked about the importance of Dark Souls' difficulty in his terrific essay on Bloodborne's narrative.

And at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Adam Smith reckons not but points to Invisible Inc's panel of tweaks and toggles as an interesting way of providing players choices without giving them the choice an easy mode at the start of the game.

The difficulty isn’t an elitist exclusionary choice, even if some like to see it that way. It’s part of the design, thematically, mechanically and artistically. Repetition and death, and the learning experiences that come with them, are as much a part of Dark Souls as the ability to pause combat or chat to your companions is an essential part of a BioWare RPG.

And this Kotaku article - titled “You'll Never Get Your First Dark Souls Experience Back” - isn't about difficulty but sums up my feelings on why players should strive to get the designer's intended experience on their first trip to Lordran.

As for the “yes, please” crowd, This Cage is Worms takes a look at the arguments above and dissects them, saying “the designed intentions of the developer absolutely matter in some contexts, but to go from that place to a 'easy mode would ruin what we have' is a strange move”.

But the most pervasive argument for adding more lenient modes, for me at least, is in favour of giving more accessibility to disabled gamers. “Git Gud” is pretty insulting when the person you're saying that to doesn't have full control over their arms or another disability.

So designer Rob Fearon says that different difficulty modes could lead to people having a sub-optimal experience, but the benefits outweigh the the drawbacks.

Plenty will break the design. Plenty will provide a different experience for people than the ones we favour or are accustomed to. But with each and every option we add, we’re opening the game up to more people and despite the claims of the armchair designers in comments sections and in forums, folks who will probably still find the game pretty hard going all the same.

For more on this, in a 2009 post, Pixel Poppers talks about how easier (and even automatic) difficulty settings can be perfect for differently abled players. And check out this GDC talk on YouTube for ideas on adding accessibility into games.

Also in the world of Dark Souls, series mega fan Rich Stanton goes deep into the franchise's twisty lore, a Ubisoft designer breaks down the game's tutorial section, this checklist for finding all the secrets might be handy, and this mega-popular video will show you some hidden mechanics in the game (mild spoilers).

Plenty to chew on there. And then take a break from all this heady design talk by watching Shrek, Donkey, and Puss in Boots defend the swamp.

Read and Watch

Goldvision is making some stupendously great stuff, such as this Planetside 2 anecdote that weaves in and out of tangents to talk about the nature of challenge in games.

Turbo Button talks about Yoshiaki Koizumi - a designer at Nintendo who doesn't get anywhere near as much love as Miyamoto or Anouma, but perhaps should? Find out why

A bit of Baldur's Gate DLC caused a stir this month because it featured a transgender character. Rantasmo's breakdown is excellent. He talks about flat and round characters, how it's okay for an LGBT character to be one-dimensional, and about adding texture to a game's world.

Larry Bundy Jr. has a brilliant video about developers who intentionally made certain parts of the game impossible to beat because they ran out of time to make later levels, bosses, or ending sequences. It's mostly old-ass Spectrum cassettes, but there's one surprisingly modern inclusion…

And Other Place is always good, but Andy's take on Life is Strange is particularly strong. It really captures the two moods of the game - that sort of sweet, early-autumnal longing of long days in bed and walking down train tracks, and then the nightmare darkness that lurks beneath the surface.

We've talked before about how systems and sandboxes can lead to amazing stories. Case in point: this Tweet thread about a pet dog and a pet rat in Oblivion.

I love everything about this rundown of all the secrets and easily-missed ephemera in Symphony of the Night - from tossing peanuts into your mouth to discreet growth spurt boots.

Like so many of the items in this article, the breakable ice serves no gameplay purpose but contributes to making SOTN that much more engaging than most other action-adventure-RPGs, and the fact it was made with such love and care shines through in every aspect of the game

Tips from the Pros

Towerfall designer Matt Thorson talks about the physics system in that game, and then spills his secrets of making action games feel good.

When you get hit with an arrow in TowerFall you don't actually die immediately - you freeze in place and the game waits 3 frames (3/60ths of a second) before registering the kill. If you press the dodge button within that time, you catch the arrow and live to fight on. This is such a tiny change, but it makes all the difference. The amount of frustrated people yelling “Bullshit! I dodged!” dropped off significantly after I added dodge saves, and no one actually notices the 3-frame freeze.

Pixels Huh artist Octavi Navarro (who makes very pretty pixel art and is now working on Ron Gilbert's Thimbleweed Park) goes step by step through one of his prints to talk about light and shadow and other techniques in pixel art.

This is an older post but I rediscovered it this month. Crypt of the Necrodancer developer Ryan Clark talks about the most important factors in coming up with a hit indie game.

If you want people to remember your game, to talk about your game, to write articles about your game, etc, it needs to have a hook. Preferably multiple hooks! The hook is some interesting bit of information about the game that compels people to try it, or to discuss it.

Also, Pixar director Pete Doctor talks about coming up with ideas. And for the game developers among you: if you've coded in some hacky-ass nonsense and think that makes you less of a programmer, fear not: even Nintendo takes shortcuts.