How Do Games Design Around No Damage?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 เม.ย. 2024
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Invincibility shows up in tons of games, but it can be TOO powerful. Many game designs are built on balancing risk and reward, and invincibility mechanics can easily wreck that balance. Get it right, though, and it can be a power fantasy, a run-saver, a tension builder, or even a great story theme. Let’s talk about how to make invincibility mechanics fun on the 100th episode of Design Doc!
Featuring:
Metroid Dread
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Pac-Man, original flavor and Championship Edition DX
Balatro
Kid Icarus
Sonic 1
Most of the Soulslikes
Super Smash Bros Ultimate
Final Fantasy XIV
Lost Odyssey
Kirby’s Epic Yarn
Pizza Tower
Wario Land 2 and 3
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Can you do something about creative mode in games?
What about the first impression in video games I think it’s super interesting to look at
I get that things need to be spoiled to a degree in a video on game design, but did you really have to drop that spoiler on Metroid Dread? There are way older Metroid games that do the exact same thing and which you could have taken as an example. I'm iffed.
Design Docs, sponsored by open-source military docs!
@@Waddlez3121open source military documents, no I'm going to leak classified military documents
Dodges having I-frames is so normalized that often, when a game's dodge mechanic lacks invincibility, it's used as a mark against that game.
Maybe cuz the dash loses its purpose abit depending on startup, length, the game it's in, etc. Like if u take away souls like I frames it has to be faster and further to have any actual use
I'm fine with dashes/dodges not having i-frames, just make sure it's quick enough to actually avoid stuff.
fish can roll
I think dodge i-frames are a terrible game design mechanic when devs can't be bothered to make attacks that can be dodged for real with a clear hitbox, instead basically relying on you to time the i-frame right with a huge hitbox you can't actually dodge without i-frames.
@@meneldal u don't think the back and forth that soulslike have when ur trying not to waste stamina and trying to stick to the boss by dodging through their attacks
One fun example of a novel way to use Invincibility was in Superman Returns. Since you play as Superman, the devs decided that you wouldn't have a health bar, so at worst an enemy might knock you around. Instead, they treated the City as having a health bar, which the bad guys would damage by killing civilians or damaging buildings or cars and whatnot.
They also decided that your sanity was going to be the health bar when they programmed half the game to force you to fly through those stupid rings under a strict time limit and terrible controls.
@@666blazikenWhich could hypothetically could have been executed better if doing so served a story purpose. For example, what if the rings were a game play stand-in for bombs placed around the city or check points in a race against a flying villain. If used in that context (and having better flight controls) I bet the game would be praised a tiny bit
They also do this in Megaton Rainfall, and in that one you can do the damage yourself... 👀
@@666blaziken Youre not talking about the same game dude
While not technically a video game example, one form of invincibility that I've always been grateful for is how most pinball tables will let you shoot again if you lose a ball immediately. The game wants your quarters, but understands that taking them too quickly would lead a lot of people to walk away in frustration.
To be fair, pinball video games also exist and follow similar principles, although they're not eating people's quarters unless they're also arcade games.
part of the reason I think invincibility works in Mario and Kirby is that they have limited timers. This encourages you to run through the level to see if there's something up ahead that you want invincibility for, like a miniboss or a row of piranha plants. It effectively turns the challenge from "can I dodge" to "how far can I go", which is cool. I think the Metroid Dread finale is similar. You don't have to fight, but you still need to rush to the end to beat the timer
World 7-7 in _Super Mario Bros 3_ is a good example of that taken to an extreme. The whole idea of the stage is to grab stars to extend your invincibility so you can run across its many munchers; if you run out of star power, you'll take damage and likely lose a life. You can opt to complete 7-8 instead or use a P-wing to complete 7-7 if you can't get to every star in time, though, so that challenge is ultimately opt-in.
Wait, since when does Kirby has a limited timer?
@@sinisternorimaki The Invincibility Candy is temporary on pick up
@@happymagician1699 Okey, I understood they were talking abou the time limit *on the levels*
My bad
i really like beatsaber's setting for this, i always play with the no fail modifier, because i dont enjoy grinding the same song 3 times in a row and it stopping halfway through because of a mistake, as a trade off, you get a lower score for it, but the cool thing is, is that that downside ONLY gets applied if you DO actually lose all your health and keep playing, so if youre going to win anyways, the modifier wont affect you! its a win win situation
Didn't know about that, smart design choice!
That's actually such a good balance
And it's an option rather than just being how the game works, so players who do want the extra pressure can have it their way too! Truly peak game design
Really good for practicing tricky parts
Honestly I don't like rhythm games where you fail in the middle and not at the end. Like, you need the practice the later part anyway
Enemies can also be invincible, but there needs to be a catch. Mario does this a lot by having fuzzies move predictably if at all, having certain enemies only immune to certain attacks, or having enemies only sometimes be invincible.
Another reason for an enemy to be invincible is if its meant to stay alive, too. The Rippers (the little flying turtle shell dudes) from the early Metroid games where invulnerable to pretty much everything Samus has, which makes sense as their real purpose is to serve as temporary platforms once you get the Ice upgrades. By the time you have the ability to kill them, you don't really need them anymore.
My mind goes to horror games and stalker enemies.
Reminds me of the waterwraith in pikmin 2. Hes meant to bassically put a time limit on the usually timeless caves in submerged castle. Hes completely invincible untill the final floor and will chase you down the halls of the cave if you take to long, but that makes finally defeating him on the final floor that much more satisfying
At what point is an invincible enemy just a stage hazard though? Where's the functional line between a fuzzy and a fire bar, other than their movement patterns?
@@lucasriddle3431 i mean, dont all enemies fall under stage hazards by technicality? Invincible or otherwise
Undertale has quite a clever use of Invincibility frames. You have them for most of the games, so when you fight sans and he straight up removes your invincibility frames, that's a massive stun moment that forces you to play a lot better all the sudden.
The game also toys with expectations about enemy strength. His attack is only 1... but ignores iFrames. He's still doing only one damage, it's just that it's one damage per frame.
Sans also inflicts karma damage, so his attacks are even more dangerous than his low attack stat suggests.
This may be a minor example, but I particularly enjoyed playing as a droideka in the LEGO Star Wars games. Why? Because its force field deflects blaster shots from every angle, making it impervious to most enemies. However, the force field is only active while the droideka isn't moving very fast, so I had to restrain myself from rushing into battle, but in return I got to mow down enemies without fear of return fire.
The droideka translates itself so well to games with that mechanic. It means you can either be hyper mobile, or invulnerable and deadly. Not both. It makes for a fun choice mechanic. That and it is limited in how many hits the shield can take.
One of my favorite examples is in DOOM 2016/Eternal. Once you get a demon to low enough health, you can perform a Glory Kill where you watch Doom Guy finish the thing off in first person. The animation lasts for about a second. It makes you feel awesome, and the enemy drops health which encourages players to be more aggressive. That's been discussed extensively, but something that I haven't seen discussed quite as much is that *other demons cannot hurt you while you're in the middle of a Glory Kill.* With how intense and fast-paced these games are, that single second of respite means the world.
Many beat 'em ups will have the player be invulnerable while doing grab attacks, this is more or less the same. Without the invulnerability grabs would in many cases be almost useless when the enemy count goes up in the games' latter parts.
nice stepswitcher pfp
The spike behavior in Sonic 1 is definitely intentional.
It's a specific death used exclusively by spikes. It even has its own unique sound effect
Well, no, that sound effect just occurs when you touch spikes at all. It's more noticeable when you touch them with a shield.
It's a bug. Plain and simple.
@@HogeezHoagies You could claim that's an overlooked detail, that it's something they implemented early on but forgot to remove before the final release.
There's no undesired side-effect, it's a proper death event.
It's unfair but it definitely isn't a bug.
I think It's like what happened in SMB3.
In the original Japanese release, if Mario had a special power up, he would revert back to his small form whenever he took any damage.
In the later international releases he instead went back to the big "super" state after the first hit and only then he would revert back to the small form.
The same difference exists between Super Mario World on the SNES and Super Mario Advance 2 on the GBA.
So, not a bug. just a somewhat unfair mechanic that's been revamped.
@@piratesephiroth It's literally a bug. It happens because Spikes are the only damage source in the game that doesn't check for invincibility frames. It's the reason why every modern rerelease of Sonic 1 patched it out. It wasn't intentional.
@@HogeezHoagies "Spikes are the only damage source in the game that doesn't check for invincibility frames".
All right. You didn't explain what made you think that's a bug though.
The code works as intended.
Plus there are spikes on the first stage of the game.
It went through all the beta testing just fine, so it was obviously reported by the testers and ignored by the developers.
Old School RuneScape has an interesting form of invincibility known as protection prayers. These are active abilities that provide complete immunity to melee, ranged, and magical attacks respectively, with the catch being that you can only have one ability active at a time, meaning that you can prevent damage from one source while still being vulnerable to the other two.
This means that higher level combat challenges can be designed by the developer to throw two or even all three types of attack styles at the player, and the difficulty comes in with knowing when to switch from one protection prayer to another in order to negate all damage, and if the player fails they’ll have to use food or potions in order to heal themselves, which is a resource that’s limited by how many inventory spaces you have. Additionally, protection prayers have their own resource that’s drained by using them known as prayer points, and in order to restore your prayer points (in combat, at least), you have to use a prayer potion. So it becomes a balance of knowing how much healing resources and prayer resources to take with you into an encounter, and then hoping that you time your abilities correctly and don’t run out of one or the other too early.
But then there is an advanced strategy known as prayer flicking, which was completely discovered by the players and became an unintentional game mechanic. I’ll keep this simple: RuneScape’s game engine runs on an internal clock, with units known as ‘ticks’ that happen every 0.6 seconds of real time. Any action like attacking an enemy, turning on an ability, or using a consumable, can only happen at the start of a game tick. Protection prayers are toggled on and apply their immunity effect on the tick after the player clicks on them, _but_ they don’t begin to drain the player’s prayer points until the tick _after_ they’re turned on.
What this means is that if you turn on your melee protection ability for one tick and then immediately turn it off on the next tick, all melee damage during that period will be block _and_ you will drain no prayer points. You can even chain different protection prayers together in order to give yourself immunity to multiple attack styles every other game tick with no prayer drain, which is very powerful against enemies that have multiple attack patterns, such as Jad, the final boss of a wave-based gauntlet challenge called the Fight Caves, which requires you to kill your way through 63 waves of increasingly harder enemies with no breaks.
By performing this action consistently throughout a fight, you can reach a point where you have theoretically infinite prayer points and take zero damage all together. You can remove the need for consumable resources all together and fight any amount of enemies for as long as humanly possible. It adds a high skill ceiling to what is often perceived as a very basic and shallow combat system that doesn’t appear all that difficult to understand or play. A new player can come in an click on an enemy and just wait for the enemy to die, and even mid-to-high level play is just about recognizing when an enemy is about to use a different attack pattern and responding accordingly. But prayer flicking is an intense activity that requires your full attention, and as someone who’s done a fair bit of it myself, getting the perfect rhythm down so that you never lose even a single prayer point requires a lot of practice.
Most challenges in the game are not designed around the use of prayer flicking, which I think is a good thing. It keeps high level combat encounters more accessible to everyone, and leaves the skill of prayer flicking as simply a bonus “reward” for good players that saves time and resources. But occasionally they do have some very, very hard fights that are basically unbeatable without saving prayer points, including The Inferno, which is a much harder version of that Fight Caves challenge I mentioned earlier. Not only do you have to time your prayer flicks well, but at the end you’re additionally requires you to stand behind a constantly moving barrier on the final wave to avoid a one-shot kill from the ending boss, Zuk.
For a game that’s basically a glorified idle clicker at times, it can be surprising how much of a learning curve was introduced by a simple on/off toggle for an immunity ability. (There’s also bosses that require positioning and movement to avoid their attacks, but that’s a different subject.)
Its also interesting to note that runescape has typeless damage, so no matter what you pray you take damage, and that protection prayers on PvP(and in a couple bosses) aren't full immunity, but reduce the damage by a huge percentage.
i had no idea runescape this kind of depth! thats awesome
I have no interest in RuneScape but really enjoyed reading your thoughts about this. Thank you.
A game tick of 0.6 seconds is super long, so toggling something for a single tick seems like something the game devs should have considered! Seems really interesting though. A rhythm challenge layered on other challenges can be really difficult, in a fun way.
@@nomukun1138Well like I said, prayer flicking was never an intended game mechanic by the developers of RuneScape. It was just a natural byproduct of the way that the prayer system was implemented that the playerbase was able to figure out and use on their own.
The whole tick system was a mystery for at least the first few years of the game’s lifetime, only being understood by anyone other than the creator(s) around 2006.
There are other tricks that can be performed as a result of the game running on interval time like this, as well. Players figured out how to train skills faster through tick manipulation, which essentially boils down to the act of perform an action (chopping a tree, fishing in a fishing spot, etc.), then forcibly cancelling the action with another activity like being engaged in combat with a rat, then restarting the initial action again. The result was getting resources far quicker than simply clicking on the object and waiting for the character to do it on their own, because for whatever reason your chance of obtaining a set of logs or a fish is much higher on the first game tick of chopping / fishing than subsequent ticks.
All of this is to say that yes, RuneScape can be a sweaty game if you want it to be. Some will commit to these strategies for potentials hours of time, which can be very draining but also very rewarding in the process. This is literally “Grinding: The Video Game” we’re talking about here, after all.
He made it to a hundred! Thank you for all the wonderful game design insights you've given us. Here's to a hundred more!
100 videos? The video count isn't on mobile for some reason
The description
In the Kingdom Hearts game franchise, there are some secret bosses that are impossible to defeat without taking advantage of the i-frames from certain dodges and moves. And in Undertale, your heart has i-frames when hit, except when facing off against sans, who punishes you, dealing 1 damage per frame, in the form of slowly ticking down "karmic" damage. Taking away something you may have relied on as a punishment for, well, you know.
I think the ubercharge from tf2 is a good example. The medic has to work for it, and there is still counter play for it.
The Metroid Suit sequence at the end of Dread is especially satisfying on Dread Mode, where you switch from instantly dying upon touching any enemy to any enemy instantly dying upon touching you. Probably one of the most gratifying experiences I've had playing a game.
On the topic of I-Frames, I think Undertale utilizes them nicely. As you progress through the game, enemies and bosses will give you less I-Frames if you get hit. Having the Cloudy Glasses and/or Torn Notebook gives you more invincibility frames, in exchange for having less attack and defense than you would if you kept the Old Tutu and Ballet Shoes equipped.
At the end of a genocide run, Sans has NO I-Frames. Not even when you have the Cloudy Glasses or Torn Notebook.
They do make your pink hp scroll wayy slower
Still one of the best equipment against him tho, alongside the burnt pan and apron
Not mentioned when talking about invincibility in a Mario or Sonic game is that because part of the power includes the ability to instantly KO most enemies by touching them without necessarily having to jump on them if there's an area of a world that uses jumping on enemies skillfully in order to navigate to a hard-to-reach section then having that power-up active makes crossing those enemies in that intended way impossible unless the power-up retains the post-destruction bounce physics on collision. This is a conscious decision that engine programmers (especially those who work with platformers) have to be aware of when considering entity interactions in the engine and can potentially vary from game to game.
For an example of this behavior in action, if you have Super Mario Maker 2 on the Switch, put various enemies on a track and try to have Mario cross a chasm by jumping on the enemy, then try to do the same but with Mario being invincible before the jump. The most important example to use for demonstrating this behavior and easiest to visualize is the caterpillar enemy Wiggler since Wiggler doesn't immediately get KO'ed by a jump. Without the star power-up, Mario will bounce off the Wiggler, but with the power-up Mario will KO the Wiggler and fall into the chasm. Some really high-quality troll levels released in 2023 have used this setup to great comedic effect.
New Super Mario Bros 2 has a Star Coin you can only get without the White Tanuki suit.
With the Mario star music being so good who wouldn’t want to be invincible forever in those games
Congratulations on episode 100, thank you for all the analytical videos for both gaming enthusiasts and game devs.
All hail the king of bad UI, long may Gungnir reign.
The party members' crafts in the Trails series are pretty neat storytelling devices in that you can see a passage of time based off how crafts are used. Some crafts offer invulnerability, but in the case of some characters the scope of what those crafts do evolve over time. Jusis for example start out with craft called Noble Roar that raises the speed and attack of the party, but this evolved into crafts that offer him immunity. Later on, that craft covers other party members as his trust in them grows. The evolution of that craft coincides with his growth as a character in such a neat way.
Tio develops an S-craft that allows the whole part to reflect attacks. Later on, that becomes her brave order as she gets better acquainted with the combat orbments, ie her increased involvement with one of the research foundations in that world
There are numerous examples of party members who have S-crafts that later become normal crafts as the series goes on, but your video on invincibility reminded me of this story telling device
"I hold in my hand a chalice of heaven, may it's holiest of light act as our shield!"
Most heard voice line in all of trails in the Sky SC and The 3rd probably XD
Who remembers the invulnerability glitch from (unpatched) Super Mario Maker 1?
If you took some damage, then went through a door as Super Mario _just_ as your i-frames wore off, you'd emerge on the other side with those i-frames in effect _permanently._ A side effect was that it also disabled collision/collection of powerups...
Before it got patched out, I made a level based around this theme specifically: In the opening room were two doors, one only accessible through spikes. Both led to the same destination, but I positioned the latter door in just the right place to make triggering the invulnerability glitch fairly easy. Your progression through the level subsequently diverged depending on whether you glitched or not, because without the glitch you would grab a Cape Feather, fly up, get Yoshi and proceed onwards, but the glitch locked you out of switching powerups.
This included custom boss rooms for both routes through the level, with the "glitch route boss" built specifically around the presumption that Mario was invulnerable to normal damage: you had to defeat Bowser (one of few enemies featuring _recoil_ collision, which ignores i-frames) in a room with _very_ precarious footing -- despite your invulnerability, one false step will drop you straight into the lava below.
I LOVE SUPER CAT TALES' INVINCIBILITY MECHANIC!!!!
The way the game works is it's a platformer with "infinite" health. You can be hit by anything once, but it puts you in a dazed state with stars above you. You can act as normal in this state, however, if you get hit while dazed, you WILL die and have to restart the level. This works well by being hit by enemies, but if you're hit by fire, it's almost always a game over cause you usually get knocked back into the fire, immediately taking your second hit. I think it's good game balancing, to make certain obstacles deadlier than just ordinary enemies, but still following the rules established
There's ALSO an option for invincibility for when you die- sometimes, when you're far into a level, or have died multiple times on the level, a popup will come up asking you if you want to be revived, at the price of watching an ad. But it's very different- once you're revived where you died, you become invincible to all objects for a short amount of time, usually being enough to let you get past the area you've been struggling with. And, it also plays a silly little song that won't ever play otherwise ^-^
Oh yeah! I love that game!
Ah the old version of Living Dead. That and a focus on blocking magical damage made Dark Knight the least liked tank for a long time.
As someone who's been playing a whole lotta fighting games as of recent, invincibility completely changes up nearly everything you do.
Take Capcom VS SNK 2 for instance. That game had a bug where if you roll (LP + LK) and immediately perform a special move with precise timing, that move gained around 27 frames of invulnerability. This is called a Roll Cancel.
Why is this a big deal?
Some characters are designed to have poor (or even no) invulnerable moves. Take for instance, M. Bison. In Super Turbo, he was balanced by the fact that his only invulnerable move on startup was his super. And you're not always going to have it, so if someone lands a knockdown on you, the only thing you can do is block most of the time. Because of this, he's often considered mid tier (or upper mid) by most players.
But in CvS2, all special moves can gain invulnerability. So Bison no longer has to worry about this disadvantage, as all of his moves can just be RCd for the price of 0% meter. This, along with his damage on his Paint The Fence combo, makes him a top 5 character.
On top of that, some moves were ABSURD with invulnerability. Things like RC Electricity with Blanka, RC Deadly Flower with Iori, or even something as basic as RC Hadoken, allowed for easy punishes off of anything in your range.
If you want to test how big this invulnerability really is, try RCing a taunt against a big move like a fireball. (LP + LK, then Start)
Taunts can now be an anti-fireball tool, and you will never escape that fact.
In Battle City/ Tank Force, a game over happens when you either lose your lives or your base gets destroyed. The thing is that there are separate invincibility powerups for both the base and the tanks that rarely appear together, meaning that game over is almost always a possibility. Get the tank invulnerability and you'll can get right into enemy's line of sight. Get the base invulnerability and you can get into far-away positions to more easily destroy the enemy tanks, or to grab additional items with less risk.
One thing that IS frustrating when a player can give themselves invincibility for a few seconds, is when bosses are designed to force that invincibility.
Oh, you were at full health, and the boss hit you with his big scary wind up attack? Tough, that attack deals instant death to whoever it hits! Should've used your invincibility ability! What's that? It's on cooldown because you used it just a few seconds ago to get through another attack because you were super low on health and needed to heel? Sucks to suck, I guess.
Invincibility can be good in a clutch moment, but when designing your games please don't make it your only answer to an attack.
one exception in my opinion is traitor lord from hollow knight, because it has one move which requires you to shade dash or use the desolate dive to avoid damage, as both give you s. however, not only does the attack have a long enough windup for the shade cloak to have recharged if you used it earlier, and is dodgeable with the desolate dive, which has almost no cooldown at the cost of using soul; the games mana standin, but it's also one of the traitor lords only attacks that doesn't deal double damage, as opposed to being an instakill.
Loved hearing you talk about Lost Odyssey, I always thought it was a hidden gem with some of Nobuo Uematsu's best soundtrack work. It's such a shame it hasn't been ported to any other platforms and is stuck on the 360.
I like how Quake’s invincibility works. You cant take any damage for the duration, but your armour still gets depleted when you’re hit. It gives you the opportunity to use explosive weapons up close (and for rocket jumps) without as much risk, but if you play too recklessly, you’ll run out of armour when the effect wears off and be less protected until you find more.
Talking about the lack of invincibility frames brought me back to playing Legend of Spyro, in which you have no idea how many times I got comboed to death by enemies with no way to be able to do anything about it! It is so infuriating when that happens!
Speaking of i-frames, I’m interested in seeing how they’re going to feel in Silksong. Hornet appears to have intentionally short i-frames as a result of how agile she is during fights, to the point that in the demo showcase of the fight with Lace, I noticed that Lace has a riposte attack that strikes Hornet for one mask of damage, then stunlocks her in place long enough for the i-frames to wear off before performing a finishing strike that deals a second mask of damage.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ability like that in a game before, where a boss can force you to take multiple hits. Usually there’s at least a small window of opportunity where you can roll out in time or heal or something else, but I don’t think that’s applicable here; if you get caught by her riposte, you will take two masks of damage.
I’m sure that kind of thing will show up frequently, and is going to make Silksong’s combat encounters even more tense than Hollow Knight’s.
I assume part of the reason for that is the original Hollow Knight's biggest balance issue by far is the fact that with the right charm setup, you can just facetank everything and spam the attack button, ignoring everything a boss does unless it's one of the small handful of bosses that does 2 masks of damage. It kind of defeats the purpose of bosses having unique attack patterns, so it makes a lot of sense that they would want to correct it in the sequel.
In addition to Hornet's better mobility, her healing ability in the form of Binding is also much faster to use than the Knight's Focus, so bosses being more damaging helps offset that by increasing tension.
Bosses having combos is a good way to do multi-bosses too, as it shows them working together. My favourite example is the Three Mage Sisters in Kirby Star Allies; each sister is mostly just using attacks from their solo boss fights, but a lot of them now string together, raising the stakes of getting hit in addition to just having more hitboxes flying around the arena.
While its a minor example, I feel like XCOM 2 had an interesting take on it. In a game about careful positioning and taking chances, any ability that negates risk is powerful. Such as the Stasis ability that Psi Op soldiers can get. This ability renders a target completely unable to act for 1 turn, but also renders them immune to all damage as well. Its initially only usable on enemies as a way to lock down a threat briefly, but it can be upgraded to also target allies. This allows for tactics that would normally be downright suicidal, like running a soldier out in the open in the middle of the enemies to get a flank shot off. Well after doing that you can just pop a Stasis on them and suddenly nothing can touch them and they will be able to get to proper cover on the next turn.
Its an interesting dynamic of on demand invincibility that also stuns the target. It can range from practically winning the mission by itself to being actively detrimental depending entirely on when and how you use it.
Invincibility is always a blast especially in a game where everything can get you. Really feels earned
Same as getting a big combo where you keep juggling your foe
8:52 Funny you should say that. Undertale did that intentionally for its most iconic boss fight.
The lack of invincibility frames is half of the reason why Sans is so hard. Each of his attacks only does one damage, but it's one damage per frame, meaning he can chip you to death, from full health, in less than 2 seconds.
Congrats on episode 100!
I remember watching episodes 1 way back when. Man, time flies
9:53, Re: Sonic 1 Spike Bug
The behaviour in Sonic 1 is almost definitely unintentional.
Upon first contact, the spikes object checks the player's control mode bit for "4." which is the mode used when the player is in damage recoil.
The problem is that because the spikes are also a solid platform, the player colliding with solid ground sets this bit back to '2' before the spikes' code is run again.
The code for the player object while in damage recoil also has logic for not inflicting additional damage, but this doesn't work because the player is no longer in this state by the time they transition from damaged to standing (for a single frame) to damaged again.
If you look at the earliest known prototype, the spikes behaved identically except they could hurt Sonic even if had the invulnerability power up
They patched that bug alone and kept everything the same. At that point the spikes were already solid objects as well.
My guess is that Yuji Naka was very aware of the broken code but realized it didn't affect gameplay negatively or crash the game. No one complained during the tests so he just left it like that (as it's usually the case in software development).
So even if it's the result of broken code under the hood, it's a feature that was tested and approved and consequently, not a bug (or it's a bug wearing a suit).
WarioLand 3 is extremely clever in its level and puzzle designs. Due to its age and only being available on the GBC a lot of viewers probably haven't played it, but I can fully recommend trying it out. I'd count it as one of the best games of early 2000s.
Congrats on the 100 episode milestone!
Thank you for all the Helpful Reminders your vids give both working AND aspiring game designers out there.
"Thank you for your eyeballs" is my new favorite TH-cam sign off.
100 episodes of my favorite video game analysis :) congrats making it all this way!
"Wario can't die in Wario Land 2 and 3."
Rudy: "Allow me to introduce myself."
Thank you for helping me see the beauty of the minute details that run the show of my favourite pass time
Congrats on the 100 episode 🎉🎉🎉🎉. I've been a fan for two years or so and always get a smile when I see an upload. Thanks for your work!
One thing I can think of that wasn't mentioned here is a combination of invincibility as time pressure and a way to hide secrets.
Mario 3 has one level (7-7) that's a huge field of Munchers that you have to continuously run across with a Starman and keep hitting the next Starman block in time to keep the invincibility going.
Spyro 2 and 3 (of the original Insomniac trilogy and Reignited Trilogy) have invincibility powerup gates that let you walk on lava (in Spyro 2's case) or swim in acid (in Spyro 3's case), letting you find hidden gems and eggs. In both cases you need to navigate through the secret areas quickly before the timer runs out and the hazard becomes dangerous again.
Congrats on 100 videos! Glad to have been here for most of it.
Okay. "Rollson: The Tumbler" is pretty good.
Congrats on 100 episodes, you've made a lot of great stuff! Here's to 100 more amazing game design videos!
This topic also reminds me of a game I want to make at some point. You are an immortal giant monster fighting an infinite army. It's pure god mode fun, though I'll probably add in a combo system so the skill ceiling isn't at ground level.
2:35
i am, surprisingly happy hearing you say that with crosscode onscreen
5:00
personally i'd say the best part is actually AFTER this where after you reach your ship, (in cutscene) you are stopped from USING the ship because if you do, you will absorb the ship's energy. Aka, you will kill your own ship because of your power if you arent careful. (then some guy provides a deus ex machina for ya and helps you control your absorption skill, but i digress...)
9:25
and like in undertale, where there some items that give you extra invincibility, and theres one boss that (without the invincibility items) will simply hit you EVERY frame you are going to take dmg with no cooldown
Congratulations on 100 episodes
Holy, congrats on 100 Design Doc Videos
This may not be super related to the video but I've always enjoyed that, in Specter Of Torment, you still have a "healthbar", but its labeled as "will". Since Specter Knight is already dead, what you lose by getting hit is your willpower to continue onward
I really like the Power Fantasy on invincibility, much more in how Sonic Frontiers manage the Titan Bosses. While in base form, Sonic gets obliterated and knows he can't do anything at the moment, his only chance is to escape, but when the time comes, you collect all the Chaos Emeralds, he turns into Supor Sonic and the first message you see "Super Sonic can't take any damage", all the boss fights are just a rush of adrenaline where you just use the Titans that you had to escape earlier into punching bags. Of course, there is still the risk of losing a ring every second so if you take more time than required, say goodbye. But still i really like these boss fights because makes you feel completely Undefeatable
Lol yeah the music is a super important part of that feeling. Everything together makes the contrast between regular and Super Sonic an intense power rush.
i always liked it the few times it was in Mario RPG. Fun way to level up
Congrats on 100 episodes!
one of my favorite "invincibility" perks is the Deep Rock Galactic's "Iron Will"
No player with more than 10 Hours in the game plays without it, as it can make or break a game
Used only as an Emergency button, it gives you 10 seconds of total invincibility, but if you don't get at least a little health while using it, you will die for real.
Most players will only use it when All 4 players are down, and the squad will usually communicate when or when not to use it.
Congrats on your 100th episode!
Congrats on the milestone!
100 episodes, let's go! I always enjoy your videos and your subject matter in game designs. You are doing the work of the gods, good sir. Keep it up! 👍
Congrats on one hundred episodes!
You should make a video on survival horror puzzles like the puzzles in Resident Evil or the puzzles in Silent Hill.
Congrats on 100 vids! They're actually all good ones too 😊
As you were introducing the concept of “invincibility as a victory lap” my mind immediately went to Metroid Dread. Perfect!
Another great vid, and congrats on episode 100! No small feat!
Congrats on 100 episodes. ❤⭐
5:16 If you receive damage that is higher than your max HP, you can still be KOd and no longer be invincible. You still have to rely on Peerless status for that.
I always liked Zhonya's Hourglass in League of Legends.
To even have access to invincibility, you have to spend your resources and an item slot on something that ultimately gives you a lower damage ceiling than other options.
The active effect makes you invincible and untargetable for a couple seconds, allowing you to dodge enemy attacks and make them waste their cool downs.
It has a decent cool down so it can't be spammed, and since you can't move while using it, choosing the wrong moment makes you even more vulnerable.
Happy 100 episodes!!!
Congratulations for reaching 100 episodes! Game design is important. 👍
Congrats man!
Congrats on the 100th episode!
I love the invincibility at the end of JSAB (Just shapes and beats)
Thanks for all the videos! I’d really love to see a video from you on parry systems someday.
I feel like one example of earning a fun invincibility sequence can be found in a certain level in the Spirit World level pack for Quake 1. It combines the Pentagram of Protection with the Thunderbolt in a watery area, and tells you to go nuts.
A case I find pretty interesting is the Azure Striker Gunvolt series.
A big appeal of those Mega Man inspired games is the scoring system, which encourages you to replay stages to achieve higher ranks. Defeating multiple enemies at once, chaining them together without touching the ground, and not taking damage will keep a combo going and net you those higher scores.
The Prevasion ability available in those games allows you to practically I-frame through any attack thrown at you, though it will cost a bit of your resources and worsen your score like a normal hit if that’s what you’re aiming for. But it also doubles as a tool to allow more casual players to get by easier if they so choose, enabling them to enjoy the flashy gameplay, fun characters, and interesting stories. I think that’s pretty cool.
_You may as well give up_
_I’m…_
_INVINCIBLE_
I don't have experience with FFXIV but I did play a Paladin in World of Warcraft and they had a lot of different invincible abilities. Their Divine Shield let you be invincible for 8 seconds, although it reduced your attack speed so you couldn't do full damage. You didn't always want to use it as a tank because it would also make you lose aggro and you'd have to be ready to taunt enemies so they would stay on you. It was mainly used by the dps and healers. Paladins could also give physical immunity to an ally for 8 seconds, balanced by only blocking a certain type of damage but was useful if a big physical enemy was attacking a spellcaster with no armor. Lastly, they had Divine Intervention, which sacrificed your own life to make another target immune until they canceled it. It had limited utility in battle and was often used to recover faster after a wipe. These abilities were balanced by long cooldowns as well as a debuff that prevented the target from being shielded again for a period of time.
God Eater 2 Rage Burst introduces the Blood Rage mechanic about halfway through the game when you've more or less gotten the hang of it. When you activate Blood Rage you're given several options of conditions to choose from, and meeting the condition you chose lets you activate Blood Rage, which makes you deal more damage and become completely untouchable for a certain duration. The catch is that how powerful the damage buff is and how long the state lasts depends on how difficult the condition you chose is to meet. This makes it a risk-reward mechanic where you're rewarded for skillful play but you can also choose to opt out by picking an easy condition like doing X damage with no time limit.
My fav type of invincibility is in Divinity Original Sin 2, where getting your character to 100% resistance not only makes you immune to that element, but it also heals you when you step in that element or are coated in it.
100 episodes!? Congrats to the best channel on YT! Thank you for the great content 🙏
Congratz on episode 100 and thanks for all the fun education for the past few years ^^
Immunities are interesting as they provide a puzzle to work around.
the invencibility can also make a new type of gameplay that is actualy riskier. In sonic and mario 2d classical games the invencibility makes player run to get as far as possible while on invencibility and then this get riskier of falling in a abyss or when the efects end to get hurt since you are in full speed
16:30 I can personally very this. It was my first videogame.
Wow, congrats to your 100th video! I really enjoy your analysis(ses?)!
I've played quite a few games where i-frames would not have fit the core design-- games that are built around player movement and at least theoretically give your the ability to avoid almost any attack that could come your way might be lowering that skill ceiling if the player isn't punished every time they get hit. And first-person games make i-frames unreliable because you can't see your own animations to get a feel for when the invincibility starts and ends.
Now I'd call Doom 2016/Eternal a kind of exception that proves the rule, 'cause the invincibility during glory kills only kicks in when you're locked into an animation that stops you from moving to avoid enemy fire, and it's linked to an animation that gives you a very clear message on where it starts and ends. But it's also fair to say if the glory kill mechanic wasn't in the game i-frames wouldn't be needed at any point, and probably would be outright detrimental if it was difficult to tell when a hit would or wouldn't do damage to you.
I remember one time I was playing smash with my friends, I was Link and one of my friends was playing Ness. Ness ended up getting his Final Smash ready and fired the PK star storm at me since I still had two lives while everyone else had one. I did everything I could to avoid it, jumping as high into the air as I could get. When I started to fall back towards the blast all i could do was accept my fate, but for whatever reason the I-frames you get when coming out of the jump animation lasted way longer than they should have and let me fall straight through the star storm and fall back onto the stage with no damage! The Final Smash ended, and we all just sat there in stunned silence until i said, "How am I not dead?" At that point the Ness player paused the game and walked away in a moment of rage quit. Honestly one of my best moments of I-frame abuse of all time!
I think two different instances of things similar to invincibility in games I've played kinda are interesting.
Fire Emblem is a Strategy RPG series where you have these characters who are basically fighting wars against various evil factions. But the main aspect I am gonna talk about for this is Permadeath, in FE if a unit/character loses all their HP they effectively are dead and you either must continue on without em or reset the map and start over to get em back (losing progress). But on more recent titles there is a mode called Casual, making it so units who "die" come back in the next chapter. Losing a fair bit of the strategy and thought behind your actions if your army doesn't matter outside of your one main Lord. (And a game called FE: Fates, even had a mode called Phoenix Mode. Reviving all your units who die in the very next turn, making it almost mindless).
But the other is a series called Azure Striker Gunvolt, one sorta luck based mechanic to assist newer players or provide one final push is Anthem/Song of the Muse, where if you would die there is chance you will be revived and powered up to have near infinite mobility and zero cost to your main attack (usually it's on a meter which depletes as you hold it). GV1 and GV2 you could still die again but with the extreme buffs it wasn't likely. But in GV3 they changed the mechanic of Anthem/Song of the Muse, it still occured when you went down and powered you up to almost god-like status. This time you were basically invincible, but if you lingered too long in this state without beating the stage or hitting a checkpoint you would actually lose. (It still was generous enough, basically giving you like 2-3 minutes. But put the extreme power on a temporary leash)
I just wanted to rant a little about these situations since it still does show a risk reward of "invincibility" in two different games, one takes more out of the strategy and planning of the titles if enabled. While the other is treated more as a "Second Wind" which can sometimes be a parachute for newer players to push through.
So, on the s segment I remember in a personal favorite game, Atomicrops, in the end game you can pick special rules that gives a buff with a downside. Such as one where you can only heal using large heals and not the common heals, but you gain additional luck and a dodge change on hit (I could have gotten that wrong, it's been a bit since I've done a run with any of these mods) but the one I always loved to run is a very mean one, but one that follows the same idea of the character I play, just don't get hit. The downside is simple, you do not gain s after being hit. Most bullets despawn and you technically get like 3 frames just so you don't instantly die, but any melee attack which are fairly common or bullet barrage can make you take a lot of damage if you're not careful. But with this risk there are so good rewards to go with it. A mechanic that I always love in late game, large risk rewards that you can toggle on and off at will.
Him: “Not using I-frames could lead to the character taking a lot more damage”
Sans undertale, taking notes:
As someone who is getting into game design, it's always fascinating watching your videos! It gives a bit of inspiration to keep going each time for me- Happy that you've made it to 100 episodes!
I missed the intro and rewinded back to start this episode with that catchy jingle. Every episode is like a premier to a good movie for me. always a delight to watch :D
congrats on the 100th episode! This show gets better every episode. Keep up the good work!
btw, does someone know which game that is at 02:40 ?
Penny's Big Breakaway. Thanks!
One form of invincibility I remember is Medic’s Übercharge in TF2. It takes time to build, being 40 seconds of healing teammates at low health to fully complete. After you build it, you can right click while healing a teammate to grant you and the teammate invincibility for 8 seconds. Nothing can get through übercharge. Backstabs from the spy are usually 1 hit kills, but against an übercharged player, they’re nothing. The only weakness Übercharge has is knockback. To quote Lister, “Übercharge is the offensive inverse of the sentry gun. While the sentry gun makes people slow down, the übercharge speeds up the pace of the game.” It’s a reward for the medic staying alive long enough to build it. There are alternative medi-gun unlocks that grant different effects while under übercharge, like one giving a 3x damage multiplier, another increasing the rate of healing to 100 health per second, and the last being the worst thing you can fight against because of how horribly unbalanced it is.
He didn't talk about it, but he does show a clip of ubercharge at 12:31
Donkey Kong 64 features invincibility on both sides of the Koin, if you will. Donkey's Cranky barrel move in that game, Strong Kong, gives him logical I-frames at the expense of crystal coconuts. On the opposite end are purple klaptraps, iirc only oranges and instrument can kill them
My favorate invincibility is def the medics übercharge from tf2 because they somehow made invincibility fun in a multiplayer fps game,they kinda used it like a stalemate breaker becsuse 8 seconds in tf2 is just enough to wipe half of the enemy team but still give the other half enough time to set up again
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Yes!!! Thank you for mentioning Wario Land 2 and 3, my favorite games that the major failure is having to repeat parts of the level over and over again without any other punishments, as it works for tough sections, and quite fitting for Wario, who is designed to be a subversion of Mario games.
Congrats on getting so many episodes, and thank you for your dedication! I have been enjoying your channel for a while, bringing ideas to draw and a good laugh from a joke. Especially the good and bad design mini-series. I hope you enjoy making these as much as more than likely many of us who watch do as well. May you have a good week and have many more fun adventures!
The Paper Mario games and Bug Fables also present an interesting trade-off with their invicibility options
Out of Sight and Bubble Shield give you full invulnerability for a turn, at the cost of your partner, or Leif in Bug Fables' case, losing their next turn
Basically, you don't die in the moment, but the fight might have to last a lil longer as a consequence
Worth noting also that Leif has a "lite" version of Bubble Shield that's cheaper and doesn't burn his next turn, but it only protects one character of your trio
6:45 Finally i found this game again! I have some video of it saved somewhere on an old tablet, but forgot what the game name was and i liked it. Thanks!
That _Warioland III_ section -- tysm. I played that so much as a kid. What a game.
Always loved popping a star back when I played Mario as a kid. Happy 100th episode!