new post

drafts/A Bit Too Much (God of War: Ragnarok).md

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 <p><figure><img src="/images/2024-05-27/a.png"></br></img></figure>
-<time datetime="2024-05-27">2025-05-27</time>
+<time datetime="2024-05-27">2024-05-27</time>
 
 No matter what the designers of Ragnarok intended, its many systems of character building are not interesting.
 

drafts/Game Within a Game.md

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+<p><figure><img src="/images/2024-08-18/a.jpeg"></br></img></figure>
+<time datetime="2024-08-18">2024-08-18</time>
+
+A series of traits for a digital program converge. The program isn't meant for productivity per se, but to entertain. This is a game. A number of games sharing these traits are made. This is a genre. The traits might be called mechanics. If the mechanics of two genres meet, we might be looking at a mash-up, or one genre using aspects of another.
+
+A grappling hook in a sidescroller is a mechanic, but not from another genre. A whole levelling system of stats and acquired skills, seems to be from the RPG genre, but can be used in the sidescroller genre, like in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. If enemies drop physical experience points to pick up, and your equipped weapon levels up, but also loses levels when you are damaged, that's a system from outside the sidescroller genre.
+
+I'll just list a few systems. They might be battle systems, or meta progression, or something in between. Maybe you can pick an element and insert somewhere else, or think about how it's not often reused. They should be supplemental systems, and not core.
+
+__TRANSFORMATION__ 
+
+Touch (eat) something to transform for a while. Pac-Man did it, and it's good. It's barely a system yet, and it's a bit hard to define a genre for Pac-Man, so it's hard to say if it's outside the genre. Mario built upon it.
+
+Old mario games are generally 1 health point, instant death. But pick up an upgrade, and you transform. A mushroom turns you into the titular Big-Tall Mario. This also grants you an extra health point. The many other upgrades convey abilities and two extra health points. If you take damage you either revert to Larger-than-life Mario, or to Mario without human rights.
+
+Kirby's Adventure moves the complexity elsewhere. Now you eat the enemies to upgrade. It feels different, but is essentially the same. Honestly why haven't any shooters done this? I know it seems obvious that weapons are picked up and changed on the fly... But why not try something different?
+
+__ZELDA MAGIC__
+
+This is a funny one. In some of the games, Link gets a green bar of magic, which limits the usage for some of his tools. In Wind Waker, it signifies that he's becoming something of a wizard, Harry, and that only those with magical potential can use these items. It's a nice narrative twist on what are ostensibly just magic points.
+
+__DYNAMIC EXPERIENCE POINTS__ 
+
+This classic is so clever. Quote has a few varied guns available. Each is mechanically different. Enemies drop physical experience points that quickly disappear, you have to touch them to increase the level of your currently equipped weapon. Once you reach a threshold, it'll upgrade, and behave differently (most often better). But careful: taking damage makes the weapon lose experience too! Wonderful active risk/reward in this one.
+
+__GUNSTAR COCKTAIL HEROES__
+
+This game has 4 pretty different guns available. But pick up another, and you can either use the other, or combine them for a new kind of gun. Works with the same type as well, for a total of 14 guns! And it's all done in the heat of some pretty intense fighting.
+
+GEARS OF WAR
+
+Just a little twist: if you time a button press correctly while reloading, it finishes instantly. Time it correctly, it takes longer. Don't do anything, it takes the normal amount of time. Something to gamble, something to master.
+
+__TIME ACTION MAGIC RESOURCE__
+
+4 Heroes of Light, Bravely Default, and Triangle Strategy:  just a little action point currency that you manipulate directly and indirectly. Simplifies the unwieldy abstraction of MP, makes the time management of actions more concrete. ... Why aren't there shooters with action points?
+
+__COMBAT CRAFTING__
+
+I wanna give my own The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit a little shout out here, but clearly The Last of Us had already done it, and very well. That said, it shows how a seemingly similar system works differently in a cover-based shooter, compared to a turn-based puzzle game. The idea is that you can craft helpful upgrades during combat, from knickknacks you find before and during combat, from the environment or fallen enemies themselves. It's stressful and thrilling in The Last of Us, and strategic and surprising in The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit.
+
+__KILL TO MOVE, MOVE TO KILL__
+
+Movement is everywhere, but most often it's either completely free or all about limitations. Maybe you can jump, roll, dash, double jump, triple jump, backflip, crouch-slide jump, wall kick, re-jump, ground pound, pound bounce, swing, rapel, ski dive, float, glide, fly, swim, or boost. But they're just actions you do. You can get good at them, and they might be hard to pull off.
+
+On the other side, we got grids, action points, movement points, stamina, charges, energy. Systems might occur here, but in most cases, they're not sub systems to a main gameplay, but the entire focus.
+
+Doom's (2016) system where you weaken enemies, get close, finish them off, they drop healing items, and you continue. Melee is risky, distance is death. Now that's a beautiful little sub system.
+
+I tried adding a system of limited movement actions that could be regained by killing, in Like a Pig. It's still a good idea, since it forces deliberate movement. Yet in practice, you don't connect your sudden stops with running out of leg fuel, and there's no connection between killing, and getting to move again. I haven't given up on solving it though.
+
+__ANTHEM'S DELIBERATE COMBOS__
+
+In Anthem, some guns have a primer effect: shoot enemies until they are affected. Once they are, shoot them with a gun with the detonator effect. Lots of effects and be combined, and it encourages experimentation.
+
+__MOTHER 3 MUSIC BATTLES__
+
+I don't like these, cause I suck at them. That said, I madly respect them: tap the confirm button during a normal attack. Time it with the beat of the music to make a 16 hit combo. Just because I suck, doesn't make it not brilliant.
+
+__PIKMIN. JUST ALL OF IT__
+
+Oh look at me, I'm just John Fucking Mario, coming to show all you idiots how to make an entire RTS on a console: You're the cursor, your units are both bullets and workers. They have easily distinguishable traits, and need constant, intuitive micro management. It's incredibly difficult to make something so complex yet so simple and intuitive. Doesn't get half the praise it deserves.
+
+__PIKMIN AGAIN__
+
+You know what? Let's do another: Pikmin 3 has bingo battles. You race to collect junk on your respective bingo cards. You win by getting an entire line. It transposes the simple concept from other place into this multiplayer mode, and it works wonderfully.
+
+__GEEZ HOMER I THOUGHT SOMEBODY WITH TWO HEALTH BARS WOULD BE PRETTY HAPPY__
+
+God of War uses the idea of a stagger-metre delightfully, though it's most often not necessary. Either you deal damage with weapons, or you stagger with your fists. Lots of Final Fantasy games use staggering as well, from a whole ecosystem of "use Assess to discover a pressure point, then pound it until they stagger " in FF7 remakes, to the chain bonus builder in FF13. There's also the staggering locks in Octopath Traveller, where you have to hit each lock type to induce a stagger state. It's very clever, but in practice makes even the simplest enemy a tedious task. Dissidia Final Fantasy does something like it, but it's too complex to even begin describing.
+
+__ALTERNATIVE HEALTH__
+
+What if you don't even have health? In Yoshi's Island, health is sorta the baby you drag around. Get hit, and your health-baby will float away. Catch it quick!
+
+__RECHARGABLE HEALTH__
+
+I don't know who invented it, but Halo popularised it. Before, if you lost health in a westernly developed game, you'd have to scrounge for health kits. Suddenly, you just find cover and wait a bit. Honestly, why hasn't anyone used this in a side-scrolling game, or a vertical shooter?
+
+__REVERSE SHOT__
+
+In Sin & Punishment 2, you can reverse all missiles by striking them with a melee attack. Good luck pulling it off consistently though! Very simple, satisfying, and dangerous. 
+
+__CHARGING__
+
+Metroid, Zelda, MegaMan. Hold a button. If you hold it for a while, you get a stronger or special attack. Not quite a system yet. Cave Story has more than one stage, so there's a risk of charging and not dealing damage while charging, and possibly wasting your time. Fighting games do the same, though the mechanic feels inherent to the genre, compared to somehow charging energy in Zelda. Another World built upon it, with wildly different mechanics upon charging. Videoball based its shooting system upon Another World, but finally turned it into a system: tap to shoot, charge for continuous push, long charge for smash, which is reversible, and over charge for shield, which is a consolation for wasting your charge. It ought to exist in an actual shooter (and I take it that it was supposed to in Shadows of the Damned).
+
+__TOOLS WITH SPELLS__
+
+This one is so widely used that no one considers it anymore, but let's just try and separate the system from the games. The original real-time strategy games like Dune 2, had units you moved around, and they could attack. I might be misremembering, but I don't recall them having extra skills that could be used occasionally. Warcraft changed this, by adding a set of so-called spells to various units. No longer were your units just pens and marquee tools that could kill. Each unit suddenly had a repertoire of sub-tools. This system within a system continues today in many similar games like Dota 2, but also shooters, where you select a character to play as, and it is defined by a few select abilities and equipment from the outset.
+
+__SHOPPING__
+
+Speaking of shooters and how your character is defined, let's round this off, by looking at Counter-Strike, a game that I respect, but thoroughly loathe to play. Each round of this kill-the-other-guys-basketball-without-basketball, has you use the money you received from how well you performed in the previous round. It's a decidedly keyboard-based interface, but it doesn't have to be. It changes how each round plays, encourages friends to invent impromptu rules ("guns only, guys"), and doesn't really belong in the setting (why wouldn't these guys arrive at the situation already equipped?). Very clever, rarely copied. Kinda odd.

drafts/Hartmann - A Dice Game.html

@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
-<p><time datetime="2022-02-06">2022-02-06</time></p>
-<p><strong>SETUP</strong><br />
-- 2-5 players and 1 six-sided die.<br />
-- 6 different tokens. You need 2 * number-of-players of each type (4 for
-2 players, 6 for 3 players).<br />
-- each side of the die matches 1 kind of token.<br />
-- the first player to get 1 of each token, wins</p>
-<p><strong>ON YOUR TURN YOU MAY EITHER:</strong><br />
-- roll the die and take a matching token<br />
-<em>OR</em><br />
-- discard all tokens of three different types. You then gift one of
-these tokens to another player.</p>
-<p>You then then pass the die.</p>
-<p><strong>IF YOU GET 3 OF A SINGLE TYPE OF TOKEN, YOU MUST
-EITHER:</strong><br />
-- discard 2 of that type of token and choose another player to receive
-the third token.<br />
-<em>OR</em><br />
-- discard all 3 of the token AND gift 1 token of a different kind to
-another player.<br />
-- as you can imagine, this can create a chain reaction.</p>
-<p>Does this game already exists by a different name? The simplicity
-kinda surprises me, so I have a hard time believing I invented it.</p>

drafts/Politics of Arithmetic and Terminology.html

@@ -1,52 +0,0 @@
-<p><p><figure><img src="/images/2021-10-16/a.png"></br></img></figure>
-<time datetime="2021-10-16">2021-10-16</time></p>
-
-<p><em>image is the Japanese cover for Dragon Quest 1, Painted by Akira Toriyama.</em></p>
-
-<p><strong>Prelude</strong></p>
-
-<p>Why are the numbers in my game what they are? They aren't refined enough for any distinguished game designer to ever even snort disapprovingly at me across the hall at GDC. Nor are they flamboyantly big enough to give anyone a mathematically swollen sense of self-worth. </p>
-
-<p>In case I haven't yet had the chance to corner you in a dark alley and explain the intricate and quite provocatively ingenious ideas behind my game while I gut you like a fish 🐠, allow me: <em>The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit</em> is about winning small, cutely violent battles against demonic rabbits, by manipulating them using your magics and your knowledge of the rabbits' behaviour.</p>
-
-<p>While making the game, I started to ponder the numbers. They'd been picked without too much forethought, and it seemed like it was finally time to think about what the right numbers were for representing the Player's health, how much damage the enemies dealt, and various other, mechanically interesting but irrelevant to the story, details. From here is the processed, GMO-filled version of those thoughts.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Arithmetic</strong></p>
-
-<p>Have you heard of a perfect information game? Like Chess. You are aware of all your options, and all your opponents' options, and stats, and immediate ramifications at all times. It's very clean, beautiful even. Everything is laid bare, and the only gambling is whether one of the players falters or takes a bait.</p>
-
-<p>It's design-by-practicality really. It's easier to make a game if all the rules can be contained inherently in the pieces. It would require a lot more resources to have each element contain additional data, like numbers to describe wellness, physical strength or, most outlandishly, personal history (lol).</p>
-
-<p>A lot of complicated video games like to have bigger and more numbers. Stats that indicate minute attributes, and values so big that an increase in power becomes almost tangible. It's been like a kid in a candy store: "you like data and games? Here's a machine that can let you play games and handle all the data you could possibly want." Some might disagree, but it isn't even a bad thing. I love these games, and I think they would be absolutely tedious if I had to manage all the data myself. Consider <em>Final Fantasy 7 Remake</em>, which doesn't include the option to store combinations of equipment into reusable sets, or filter on the Materia items according to type, or store the loadout of Materia in sets. It’s a drag to pause this thrilling adventure every five minutes in a late stage of the game, to fiddle with an incredibly, and increasingly, long list of arcane jelly beans. I'm not sure the pieces in Chess would have had living equipment, whose own lived experience would be tracked individually, had the creators had the choice, but on the other hand, we sure didn't have digital games for a long time before <em>Vagrant Story</em> happened.</p>
-
-<p>I've seen an opposing line of thought in strategic and tactical games by developers less tied to the whims of popularity (so much so that that line of thought feels like it has become the zeitgeist): integers should be small. One to five, never eleven. Humans cannot comprehend such voluminous digits, they say. They’re inspired by European board games, and really, it makes sense. Thinking this way is a tool to achieve a lot of interesting choices. The argument is that choosing between ‘Attack’ and ‘Fire Spell’ is an almost superficial choice, even if the result of this choice, is built on the back of a <a href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Damage">monstrous calculation and/or algorithm</a>. Rather sensically, the belief is that each choice should have interesting results and allow for new interesting choices. I seem to remember a talk by Jonathan Blow about how games that didn’t provide anything, by his definition of course, worthwhile, were akin to unethical in that they robbed players of their life. The “by his definition” has become quite important to me. I like Blow’s ideas and creations, but he and I don’t like the same games. In fact, I very much enjoy a lot of games he would find unethical in their design. By his definition, I cannot deny what he says, but that’s the thing: if you get to decide the definition of something, you can win any argument. That’s where this “smaller numbers, interesting choices, worthwhile investment” sort of breaks down. It leaves room for people to like certain games for their stories, but insists that the game design of them is something one must trudge through to enjoy the only worthwhile aspect. It denies the value of good tactility, of spectacular results, of freedom from consequence, of familiarity.</p>
-
-<p>That list of, let’s call them, virtues, isn’t part of what is normally discussed when discussing game design in the English-speaking world. Maybe it isn’t anywhere. Sure, making stuff feel good to interact with is important in all interfaces and surely in the UX world as well, but it isn’t normally something that in game design, is seen as equivalent to “interesting choices”.</p>
-
-<p>This leads me to an odd situation, where most expressed thoughts around game design, are trying extremely hard to define, almost on an atomic scale, what is what in games, and at the same time, are arriving at conclusions that completely dismiss a great many of the games I’ve enjoyed over the years. If they aren’t outright dismissed as inherently poor design, they are disregarded for anything but their stories, and in the last ten year especially, these stories too, are dismissed out of hand as either offensive in an increasingly prudish culture, or too fantastical in a subculture that is constantly trying to prove how worthwhile it is (this is an idiot’s way of saying he likes anime tits and buttholes, and Japanese game design).</p>
-
-<p>The odd situation becomes clear when I try to design something of my own, inspired by the works that I like, and I wish to draw on the theories of my peers, but realise, my peers are vehemently opposed to the design in the works I enjoy and reflect upon. My own game, <em>The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit</em>, has evolved over the years, and currently (hopefully finally) arrived at being sort of a Japanese Role-Playing Game. Except… it doesn’t have experience points, levels, equipment (in a traditional sense) or a plethora of throwaway battles. You have a very limited number of actions, everything is defined in low integers, and all the battles (so far at least) are designed. It has a bunch of inter-connected systems, and none of your (very few) moves have similar effects. It doesn’t sound very much like a Japanese RPG, when I put it like that. Yet I have no desire to create a game of hard, tactical choices. I rather like how a player who isn’t very engaged with the systems, can find they’re own enjoyment in JRPGs, while the dedicated player can show their prowess through their knowledge of (and sometimes dedication to) the systems.</p>
-
-<p>Hopefully I don't make it sound like I'm under the impression that all non-digital games don't require a lot of data management. Many data heavy and data management heavy games exist, and it's worth remembering that Dungeons &amp; Dragons, the genre-defining game itself, sprang from a more data-laden branch of strategy games.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Terminology</strong></p>
-
-<p>Just for those that arrived late, let's recount that early video games like <em>Ultima</em> and <em>Wizardry</em> took their inspirations from D&amp;D, and that the original and quintessential Japanese Role-Playing Game, <em>Dragon Quest</em>, which spawned its own sub-genre (in our mind, I'll get to that) was specifically inspired by <em>Ultima</em> and its ilk. In the most sci-fi nerdy sense, we have a case of branching timelines here people! What the Japanese people call an RPG diverted from what we call an RPG, at such an early stage, that appending "Japanese" in front of it, only makes it less grokkable. I'll dig into it later, but the gist is that the two types of RPGs are so unrelated that we seem to comprehend very little of what is the design theory behind RPGs in Japan, since we always refer back to how we've formulated our own understanding of RPGs. Outside Japan, RPGs would be defined by their meticulousness to details surrounding personal character development, and by how involved the player would be allowed to be in the outcome of the narrative. Surely I've enjoyed the battles in these games, but I must admit, it's often a bit trite. Complex spells in <em>Baldur's Gate 2</em>, and the occasional usage of the environment in some games alleviated this. It's actually kind of curious that the genre isn't called Fantasy Simulation Games. These elements didn’t just become the defining traits, but also virtues to uphold and strive for.</p>
-
-<p>Compared to this, Japanese RPGs are focused stories, where the battles continue to be abstractions of the idea of battles, and over time a focus on adding and removing interesting, but very real-world-unrelated, sub-systems to the battles, and how the player characters evolve over the course of the playtime became more important. As the player improves their understanding of the game, they not only get access to new abilities, but often reach an understanding of what is already there, so that they may tackle even greater threats. Often though, they don’t have to do this, in order to participate in the story. Put in the terms that people use outside Japan, the RPG genre in Japan is a mix of what is often called an adventure game (a linear, character-driven story, perhaps with puzzles to solve), a strategy game (in that the battles become strategically difficult if you choose to invest in this area, not that the battles are like those of the games of <em>StarCraft</em> or similar (although that has also happened a few times)) and to a smaller extent an RPG (in that your characters evolve over time according to your choosing, based on a subsystem that controls this).</p>
-
-<p>This detour is meant to illustrate the reason as to why I might have been looking at the reasoning for the numbers in my game incorrectly.  Without realising it, I had created a game where numbers should be small, for a few good reasons. The implicit result of small numbers was that each choice had to matter, like in strategy games, like <em>Into the Breach</em>. The problem was that I was creating a game that was most closely related to an RPG in the Japanese sense, and they’ve created a gameplay aesthetic where choices CAN matter, depending on your level of investment, but they don’t have to.</p>
-
-<p>When framing Japanese RPGs as a sub-genre, they are misconstrued, and every design choice ends up seeming like an oddity in comparison to what an RPG ought to be, and in game design these choices run counter to some (rather dogmatic) principles. Look, it's fine. Many of those that wrote down their design ideals in the last 10-20 years, did so while saying (kinda): "this is based partly on what I like, and trying to understand why I like it" (like what I'm doing now). They've become almost textbook (I guess sometimes actual textbook) definitions of what should be considered best practice in game design.</p>
-
-<p>I thought it'd be elegant if I could unify the many elements in my game design, so that mechanics were tied to each other through reasoning and likewise gave rise to the numbers. As I contemplated and tweaked the numbers, I encountered this conflict between what small, discreet numbers culturally indicated, and what my intentions for my game were. One day I made a canteen of coffee and rode my bike into the forest. In the early autumn beech forest, I climbed a small hill and found a nice spot where I could overlook both the nearby trail and even the ocean. Sipping on my coffee and a sourdough bun I'd bought a few minutes earlier, it started to dawn on me: sure, I needed to reconfigure my game. At the same time, I should start realising that I wasn't making an arcade-like version of a strategy game. At heart, my game was a miniature Japanese RPG, and thirty years of genre conflation had made it difficult to arrive at the legitimacy of this conclusion.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Getting Out of The Water</strong></p>
-
-<p>There's this fantastic conversation between Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, and Shigesato Itoi where they discuss why <em>Mother 3</em> had to be cancelled for the Nintendo 64. Of the numerous thoughtful observations, among them is Itoi saying "An RPG is a system where symbols come together, and something happens which is portrayed in even more symbols."(<a href="https://yomuka.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/earthbound-64-cancellation-interview-itoi-miyamoto-iwata/">here</a>) While the point of that part of the conversation is very much about how Mario games make concretisations of what would be abstract in a Japanese RPG, the flipside is that Japanese RPGs of that era were able to represent vast and complex narrative structures and game design, within simple symbols of storytelling. It's not a concise genre definition, but I think it distinguishes this bifurcated genre quite clearly.</p>
-
-<p>This text was initially meant to be about my ponderings on my game, in an effort to understand certain aspects of my game design. As I worked on it, and my own misunderstandings became clear to me, I feel like I achieved this understanding, that is about which genre <em>The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit</em> actually tried to be part of. Unfortunately I also realised that the Japanese RPG isn't really well understood from a modern, English-language game design perspective. As I was going over whether or not this text was achieving what it was meant to, and what I needed to write to do this, it became apparent that this side-effect of understanding is bigger than I'm ready to take on right now. It'll take more observations, research, analysis, and discussions. It's as simple as "what <em>is</em> the Japanese RPG", but I can't settle for a banal enumeration of characteristic traits. Itoi's observation is certainly good, yet even it requires a bit of contemplation, and doesn't answer other questions I feel fit into this topic, like how <em>Animal Crossing</em> doesn't fit the genre of "Japanese RPG" yet it feels right calling it quintessentially Japanese and simultaneously an RPG. Genre-breaking traits like  warfare simulation in <em>Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings</em> or action combat in <em>Final Fantasy 7 Remake</em> also muddle the issue. I fear to even bring up <em>Giftpia</em> or <em>Bloodborne</em>.</p>
-
-<p>At a certain point, it almost becomes a question of what is it for a game to be Japanese, and not specifically an RPG from the Japanese game design heritage. By then, I'm right back at what I was writing about in university ten years ago.</p>
-
-<p>These are all thoughts for the future. For now, I got the answers I was looking for, and the rest I chip away at some other day.</p>

posts/A Bit Too Much (God of War: Ragnarok).html

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 <p><p><figure><img src="/images/2024-05-27/a.png"></br></img></figure>
-<time datetime="2024-05-27">2025-05-27</time></p>
+<time datetime="2024-05-27">2024-05-27</time></p>
 
 <p>No matter what the designers of Ragnarok intended, its many systems of character building are not interesting.</p>
 

posts/Game Within a Game.html

@@ -0,0 +1,94 @@
+<p><p><figure><img src="/images/2024-08-18/a.jpeg"></br></img></figure>
+<time datetime="2024-08-18">2024-08-18</time></p>
+
+<p>A series of traits for a digital program converge. The program isn't meant for productivity per se, but to entertain. This is a game. A number of games sharing these traits are made. This is a genre. The traits might be called mechanics. If the mechanics of two genres meet, we might be looking at a mash-up, or one genre using aspects of another.</p>
+
+<p>A grappling hook in a sidescroller is a mechanic, but not from another genre. A whole levelling system of stats and acquired skills, seems to be from the RPG genre, but can be used in the sidescroller genre, like in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. If enemies drop physical experience points to pick up, and your equipped weapon levels up, but also loses levels when you are damaged, that's a system from outside the sidescroller genre.</p>
+
+<p>I'll just list a few systems. They might be battle systems, or meta progression, or something in between. Maybe you can pick an element and insert somewhere else, or think about how it's not often reused. They should be supplemental systems, and not core.</p>
+
+<p><strong>TRANSFORMATION</strong> </p>
+
+<p>Touch (eat) something to transform for a while. Pac-Man did it, and it's good. It's barely a system yet, and it's a bit hard to define a genre for Pac-Man, so it's hard to say if it's outside the genre. Mario built upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Old mario games are generally 1 health point, instant death. But pick up an upgrade, and you transform. A mushroom turns you into the titular Big-Tall Mario. This also grants you an extra health point. The many other upgrades convey abilities and two extra health points. If you take damage you either revert to Larger-than-life Mario, or to Mario without human rights.</p>
+
+<p>Kirby's Adventure moves the complexity elsewhere. Now you eat the enemies to upgrade. It feels different, but is essentially the same. Honestly why haven't any shooters done this? I know it seems obvious that weapons are picked up and changed on the fly... But why not try something different?</p>
+
+<p><strong>ZELDA MAGIC</strong></p>
+
+<p>This is a funny one. In some of the games, Link gets a green bar of magic, which limits the usage for some of his tools. In Wind Waker, it signifies that he's becoming something of a wizard, Harry, and that only those with magical potential can use these items. It's a nice narrative twist on what are ostensibly just magic points.</p>
+
+<p><strong>DYNAMIC EXPERIENCE POINTS</strong> </p>
+
+<p>This classic is so clever. Quote has a few varied guns available. Each is mechanically different. Enemies drop physical experience points that quickly disappear, you have to touch them to increase the level of your currently equipped weapon. Once you reach a threshold, it'll upgrade, and behave differently (most often better). But careful: taking damage makes the weapon lose experience too! Wonderful active risk/reward in this one.</p>
+
+<p><strong>GUNSTAR COCKTAIL HEROES</strong></p>
+
+<p>This game has 4 pretty different guns available. But pick up another, and you can either use the other, or combine them for a new kind of gun. Works with the same type as well, for a total of 14 guns! And it's all done in the heat of some pretty intense fighting.</p>
+
+<p>GEARS OF WAR</p>
+
+<p>Just a little twist: if you time a button press correctly while reloading, it finishes instantly. Time it correctly, it takes longer. Don't do anything, it takes the normal amount of time. Something to gamble, something to master.</p>
+
+<p><strong>TIME ACTION MAGIC RESOURCE</strong></p>
+
+<p>4 Heroes of Light, Bravely Default, and Triangle Strategy:  just a little action point currency that you manipulate directly and indirectly. Simplifies the unwieldy abstraction of MP, makes the time management of actions more concrete. ... Why aren't there shooters with action points?</p>
+
+<p><strong>COMBAT CRAFTING</strong></p>
+
+<p>I wanna give my own The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit a little shout out here, but clearly The Last of Us had already done it, and very well. That said, it shows how a seemingly similar system works differently in a cover-based shooter, compared to a turn-based puzzle game. The idea is that you can craft helpful upgrades during combat, from knickknacks you find before and during combat, from the environment or fallen enemies themselves. It's stressful and thrilling in The Last of Us, and strategic and surprising in The Girl Who Kicked a Rabbit.</p>
+
+<p><strong>KILL TO MOVE, MOVE TO KILL</strong></p>
+
+<p>Movement is everywhere, but most often it's either completely free or all about limitations. Maybe you can jump, roll, dash, double jump, triple jump, backflip, crouch-slide jump, wall kick, re-jump, ground pound, pound bounce, swing, rapel, ski dive, float, glide, fly, swim, or boost. But they're just actions you do. You can get good at them, and they might be hard to pull off.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side, we got grids, action points, movement points, stamina, charges, energy. Systems might occur here, but in most cases, they're not sub systems to a main gameplay, but the entire focus.</p>
+
+<p>Doom's (2016) system where you weaken enemies, get close, finish them off, they drop healing items, and you continue. Melee is risky, distance is death. Now that's a beautiful little sub system.</p>
+
+<p>I tried adding a system of limited movement actions that could be regained by killing, in Like a Pig. It's still a good idea, since it forces deliberate movement. Yet in practice, you don't connect your sudden stops with running out of leg fuel, and there's no connection between killing, and getting to move again. I haven't given up on solving it though.</p>
+
+<p><strong>ANTHEM'S DELIBERATE COMBOS</strong></p>
+
+<p>In Anthem, some guns have a primer effect: shoot enemies until they are affected. Once they are, shoot them with a gun with the detonator effect. Lots of effects and be combined, and it encourages experimentation.</p>
+
+<p><strong>MOTHER 3 MUSIC BATTLES</strong></p>
+
+<p>I don't like these, cause I suck at them. That said, I madly respect them: tap the confirm button during a normal attack. Time it with the beat of the music to make a 16 hit combo. Just because I suck, doesn't make it not brilliant.</p>
+
+<p><strong>PIKMIN. JUST ALL OF IT</strong></p>
+
+<p>Oh look at me, I'm just John Fucking Mario, coming to show all you idiots how to make an entire RTS on a console: You're the cursor, your units are both bullets and workers. They have easily distinguishable traits, and need constant, intuitive micro management. It's incredibly difficult to make something so complex yet so simple and intuitive. Doesn't get half the praise it deserves.</p>
+
+<p><strong>PIKMIN AGAIN</strong></p>
+
+<p>You know what? Let's do another: Pikmin 3 has bingo battles. You race to collect junk on your respective bingo cards. You win by getting an entire line. It transposes the simple concept from other place into this multiplayer mode, and it works wonderfully.</p>
+
+<p><strong>GEEZ HOMER I THOUGHT SOMEBODY WITH TWO HEALTH BARS WOULD BE PRETTY HAPPY</strong></p>
+
+<p>God of War uses the idea of a stagger-metre delightfully, though it's most often not necessary. Either you deal damage with weapons, or you stagger with your fists. Lots of Final Fantasy games use staggering as well, from a whole ecosystem of "use Assess to discover a pressure point, then pound it until they stagger " in FF7 remakes, to the chain bonus builder in FF13. There's also the staggering locks in Octopath Traveller, where you have to hit each lock type to induce a stagger state. It's very clever, but in practice makes even the simplest enemy a tedious task. Dissidia Final Fantasy does something like it, but it's too complex to even begin describing.</p>
+
+<p><strong>ALTERNATIVE HEALTH</strong></p>
+
+<p>What if you don't even have health? In Yoshi's Island, health is sorta the baby you drag around. Get hit, and your health-baby will float away. Catch it quick!</p>
+
+<p><strong>RECHARGABLE HEALTH</strong></p>
+
+<p>I don't know who invented it, but Halo popularised it. Before, if you lost health in a westernly developed game, you'd have to scrounge for health kits. Suddenly, you just find cover and wait a bit. Honestly, why hasn't anyone used this in a side-scrolling game, or a vertical shooter?</p>
+
+<p><strong>REVERSE SHOT</strong></p>
+
+<p>In Sin &amp; Punishment 2, you can reverse all missiles by striking them with a melee attack. Good luck pulling it off consistently though! Very simple, satisfying, and dangerous. </p>
+
+<p><strong>CHARGING</strong></p>
+
+<p>Metroid, Zelda, MegaMan. Hold a button. If you hold it for a while, you get a stronger or special attack. Not quite a system yet. Cave Story has more than one stage, so there's a risk of charging and not dealing damage while charging, and possibly wasting your time. Fighting games do the same, though the mechanic feels inherent to the genre, compared to somehow charging energy in Zelda. Another World built upon it, with wildly different mechanics upon charging. Videoball based its shooting system upon Another World, but finally turned it into a system: tap to shoot, charge for continuous push, long charge for smash, which is reversible, and over charge for shield, which is a consolation for wasting your charge. It ought to exist in an actual shooter (and I take it that it was supposed to in Shadows of the Damned).</p>
+
+<p><strong>TOOLS WITH SPELLS</strong></p>
+
+<p>This one is so widely used that no one considers it anymore, but let's just try and separate the system from the games. The original real-time strategy games like Dune 2, had units you moved around, and they could attack. I might be misremembering, but I don't recall them having extra skills that could be used occasionally. Warcraft changed this, by adding a set of so-called spells to various units. No longer were your units just pens and marquee tools that could kill. Each unit suddenly had a repertoire of sub-tools. This system within a system continues today in many similar games like Dota 2, but also shooters, where you select a character to play as, and it is defined by a few select abilities and equipment from the outset.</p>
+
+<p><strong>SHOPPING</strong></p>
+
+<p>Speaking of shooters and how your character is defined, let's round this off, by looking at Counter-Strike, a game that I respect, but thoroughly loathe to play. Each round of this kill-the-other-guys-basketball-without-basketball, has you use the money you received from how well you performed in the previous round. It's a decidedly keyboard-based interface, but it doesn't have to be. It changes how each round plays, encourages friends to invent impromptu rules ("guns only, guys"), and doesn't really belong in the setting (why wouldn't these guys arrive at the situation already equipped?). Very clever, rarely copied. Kinda odd.</p>