What is "shmovement"? Is it just a feeling? Can it be a design philosophy? Let's talk about it. Site: jiikae.com Twitter: / jiikae Bandcamp: jiikae.bandcamp...
I have no idea why granularity as a concept is getting so popular in game design circles rn but i think it's a wonderful thing. I do love me some granularity
People are exploring making their own games as a community project, especially as AAA titpes get more and more disappointing. And, in the end, helping aspiring devs make better games is to basically everyone's benefit.
Learning the shmovement is the rite of passage for newbies in Warframe. Slides, rolls, double jumps, bullet jumps, wall jumps, aim glide and melee ground slams can all be chained together in different ways to zoom across the map and rain death on hordes of enemies. Warframe, Splatoon and Titanfall have all unfortunately made other shooters feel sluggish to me lol.
Definitely. Gears is very “strict” with its cover system. Although I have heard of more advanced players exploiting the cover system with wall bouncing in older games I think. Which did allow some degree of shmovement.
Sweet video. The splatoon example made me think of the grappling hook in titanfall 2, a game brimming with shmovement. The grappling hook in that game can be used almost anywhere to get insane speed or change your direction mid-air, but it also can be used as an attack to rocket yourself into a player or grapple into their mech. Great set of examples!
Titanfall 2 has incredible shmovement. When I played it earlier this month I was really impressed with how much emphasis the campaign put on platforming and navigating the environment I also actually have a theory that a lot of Splatoon 3’s mechanics were inspired by Titanfall since Titanfall 2 did gain a sizable Japanese following. Splatoon 3 added a grappling hook as well as a mech-like special lol.
Shmovement, imo, is basically getting the characters limitations in-game and the player's limitations with whatever they're using to control said character to feel as 1:1 as possible, if that makes sense. It's just as much, if not more, about what you CAN'T do, and how the game incentivizes you to struggle and experiment within those confines like you said.
A good example is the Squid Roll mechanic added in Splatoon 3. It wouldn't mean as much as a mechanic if you didn't have to worry about gaining momentum through swimming and timing it right. Figuring out how to do as many as possible in a row or how to do one while completely maintaining your forward momentum is pushing yourself just as much as you're pushing your Squid, or Octo Kid.
@@AceThunder21 PERFECT example. The squid roll mechanic in 3 is VERY granular and execution-sensitive. Momentum, angle you flick the analog stick and timing of the flick all matter. It seems like such a simple mechanic on the surface but has so many different layers when it comes to having you “pilot” your character
This video was really great man, I also love how you talked about jump influence in games with bayonetta and how they just makes a lot of situations in action games very flexible for the player.
bayonetta movement is so fucking fun, mostly bc the momentum is so good and its a shame that 2 and 3 both neuter the movement (even tho 3 at least throws a shitton of random variety)
One game with massive shmovement has got to be tf2, specifically rocket jumping. The amount of restrictions on air movement and momentum leads to a massive skill ceiling, and there is a need to get good either to market garden or just get times on jump academy
This is lecture-level talk, excellent work!! When it comes to schmovement, a big part of it to me is responsiveness. being able to traverse your environment on the fly is key. your point about the air movement in bayonetta, and the way you zip around in monhun rise (we've come a long way it wasnt always like that omfg lol), is excellent schmovement. If it feels good to, and makes you feel cool for, pulling it off when it's not necessarily a given? schmovement~!! great talk, bonus points for the direct example in neon white. certified schmovement lol
Me interviewing a high-level player in order to academically determine whether or not their game has got the sauce: “Could you please describe to me your game’s… shmovability?”
Love this vid! Also I wanna mention Warframe as having schmovement that I love, since I haven't seen anyone else mention it. It's not deeply critical to doing well in the game at all, but imo it still feels really good to absolutely blitz through maps between objectives. Honestly it's even fun as like a passive stim when I'm just waiting in a squad to launch into a mission. Also Pseudoregalia is a lovely schmovement game-- short, but super super fun
I think this video basically encapsulates the problem with 3D Sonic gameplay. Like marios movement is incredibly granular with control, pushes you to be creative due to the placement of stsrs and other challenges. Even Sonic frontiers, so much movement is holding forward and pressing boost. A good platformer always has schmovement. Just look st a Hat in time, There are so many tricks to go fast. The biggest issue with Sonic is the brand itself. They advertise going fast when going fast should be the reward for good play. They advertise you a carrot and then give it to you. They barely make you work for it. All good game design involves a carrot and a stick. But the stick should be the best part.
Couldn't agree more myself. Spindash is also a problem and has been since it was introduced as physics matter less after sth2 although 3 and Knuckles remedied this by changing the level design and Unleashed has a different kind of schmovement that just worked.
unleashed and the frontiers updates have a solution for this, and that is that you have to be able to control sonic when you are going at those speeds. you can quite literally fly through these environments, but you can also fly off the environments very easily and lose progress. the carrot is still going fast, but the stick has been changed from earning your speed to being able to control it.
This is a great video. I think the Spider-Man 2 movie tie in game from 2004 had pretty good "schmoovement". After maxing out your speed upgrades, swinging was very fast and you had to pay attention to your surroundings to do it properly. Smacking into the side of a building would halt you in your tracks and being too low to the ground could do the same. Wall running was an option, but I think it was limited in duration by a stamina bar in contrast to the current Insomniac games where you can wall-run infinitely. I'll throw Just Cause 2 and 3 in the ring as well. Combining the wingsuit with grappling the ground lets you essentially fly around stages, getting good momentum. You can also attach rocket boosters to anything you can stand on to gain altitude or propel you forward. I had a lot of fun moving around that world and causing carnage.
Didn’t know this was the case for the Spider-Man 2 movie game that DEFINITELY sounds like shmovement. The key aspect there being all of the limitations that are placed on Spider-Man. Really good examples here.
@@jiikae Yeah, I remember some fans of that game lamenting the recent Insomniac releases not reaching the same heights in terms of the web swinging since they have more guardrails in place (i.e., easier wall running, no fall damage, etc). To be fair to Insomniac, though, the later Activitision games had already moved to a more "streamlined" swinging system. I think only the Spidey 3 movie tie in and Web of Shadows used the Spidey 2 movie tie-in system or something similar to it, at least.
An on brand example of schmovement I think for myself can be how Trickster in DMC 3 can allow you to run up and along walls for a quick second both in and out of combat for a neat dodge and arena movement or how in DMC4 you can chain dodges together by guarding at the end and then continuing the cycle. A bit unrelated to schmovement I think but when you were showcasing XCX's loose platforming, it reminded me a lot of how in Immersive Sims like Deus Ex, you can utilize moveable objects to bypass more restrictive skill check doors if there's room above them. As well as how in first person games like Skyrim/Fallout where you can hug a wall to ride the incline more so than you should be able to. And then with the Sonic example, I always famously think about the Dreamcast games since spin dash jumping was really addicting seeing the ability to gain both height and/or distance. I really enjoyed this video a lot honestly, your examples were super clear and this feels pretty much like listening to a professor. Also I didn't know that schmovement originated from Melee so that was another interesting bit of info.
Chaining dodges in DMC with guarding definitely sounds like the EXECUTIONAL aspect of shmovement. That execution element is huge when it comes to letting the player feel like THEY’RE the reason their character did something and not a pre-determined dance that the developer choreographed for you
In 3D action games there's often a lack of shmoovement recently because movesets have been really stripped down or when they aren't they often do what developers call "suck to target" which is attacks having such massive tracking that as long as you're "generally" close to an enemy you automatically zip to them (games like Arkham series or the new God of War games use it a lot). Suck to target means oftentimes you don't really need to experiment with movement options or even really care about your move's hitboxes because the game takes care of that for you. The best hack and slash games tend to use attack tracking very minimally. In fact, one of the problems that suck to target is intended to "fix" is something that games like DMC and Bayonetta already have built-in answers to by making lock-on a shoulder button that only is active while the button is held (so you can lock on and off really easily, which is a major part of why DMC's combat is even able to be so good) rather than the modern trend of lock-on being the "R3 to turn on lock-on" style. Not doing suck to target means that not only do you need to pay more attention to your spacing and movement and a developer will probably also be building in more attacks that pull double duty as movement options. But also in DMC it's often that attacks that are used as movement options that are good for beginners are not as good for high level players. Every beginner has the phase where they spam Stinger because it auto-tracks enemies and gets them knocked down so they , but a higher level player uses Stinger significantly less since they have a better grasp of spacing and movement, and prefer to keep enemies close so they can be hit with a combo. Stinger gives players that aspect of "modern action game design" while also working with DMC's core gameplay philosophy. While the contextual movement options like wall runs and enemy surfing are cool and I really would have liked to see them in DMC5, they actually are not quite as important for the series' movement as the rest of the moveset. And of course the JC, and the brilliant decision to have it reset both your aerial options and fall speed.
@@Zetact_ Okay but DMCV not having intertia is still the biggest hit the series took. Inertia is singlehandedly more revolutionary than jump canceling ever was and made even watching a 4 speedrun exciting and allowed a much higher skill ceiling and allowed players to have more expression in how they fought demons with the game rewarding mastery of it. Also Reversals were in 5's demo but got removed. DMCV mainstreaming and simplifying mechanics has led to people going back to older titles and leaving 5 from time to time or everyone plays with the cheat table that brought back some kind of inertia and 3's reversals and some other old mechanics. As for the recent trend it sucks but FF7 Rebirth has a mix of stuff like suck to target but also has ways to break the suck to target allowing you to get creative with movement there in the air and ground and has some of the best action based combat you could ever see.
@@dave9515 Eh, inertia and reversals are frankly pretty pointless and most of the people bemoaning their removal really overstate their significance. I get why people want them back but the way they talk about them comes across as entitled and whiny. They're unintended aspects of the programming that barely impact more beyond having slightly more movement in a few specific moves in MADs. They're a feature that only really is something that most people think is, "I guess not bad to have" but most people even who use inertia put in their hours into DMC4 without even knowing that the mechanics exist. It goes to follow that even if they were in the game they wouldn't really be that vital to the movement of the game, and you can really tell because in most people's clips you'd probably need to be told if they're even using an inertia mod. DMC5 being far more focused on JC also is possibly why Itsuno made a deliberate decision against inertia likely as a way of tightening up the controls. If you have to choose between something that feels better overall for most players or a goofy guard flying glitch. The other games still exist anyway - the games being different is kinda the point, if they were all supposed to be the same thing then Dante would have the same moveset in each game.
Castlevania Harmony of Despair has some of the most insane schmovement of any game I've played. It mostly comes from a glitch that happens when you land on the corner of a platform, referred to as the acceleration glitch. Mastering corner boosting is relatively simple, it just takes the right angle depending on the platform. The real fun starts when you learn to elevator glitch. It makes speedrunning the last two DLC stages much faster. And that's not going into character specific techs, like iFraming uppercuts with Jonathan, Julius, and Richter. Or dual back dash cancelling with Soma, Alucard, and Shanoa. That said, it gets taxing on your hands. It's why one of the games I want to make, makes those schmovement options a little bit more accessible but still reward player skill and expression.
Great video!! You broke down the aspects of shmovement really well. Another example I'd give of a game that nails granularity is Rain World. It's a 2D game which gives you a total of 5 keys to move around with: WASD and Space. At first glance that might sound like the most boring movement ever, but where it starts to shine is in the way it lets you combine those inputs to execute something completely different. Take the only move that the game teaches you: Lunging. By crouching with S and holding Space, you can perform a long jump. But it doesn't end there. After a lunge, you can hold down S again while hitting the ground to start rolling, boosting your speed for a while before losing momentum. But it doesn't end there either. If you jump right before the roll ends, you perform ANOTHER lunge, letting you practically roll forever if you have the timing down. And those are just a few of the many, MANY chains of shmoves you can perform. Being able to condense shmovement into just a handful of keys like that is an art in my eyes, and a huge part of making a game's movement feel smooth and fluid!
This is genuinely incredible analysis, videos like this should have more views. As a game dev this type of thing is way more useful and interesting than 90% of what I see on this website. I subscribed like 30 seconds in.
Mirror's Edge and Mirror's Edge: Catalyst are some of my favorite games. They're pretty much pure parkour games and IMO get it almost as close to perfect as possible.
I love this topic and focusing on this niche subject in video games. Have you seen this game called "Pseudoregalia" I recently discovered what it is and oh my god the Shmoovement in this game is AMAZING!
also i think the point on Melee vs. Ultimate is missing a detail about the easy-to-grab ledges. Recovery abilities are much better at traversal and snapping to ledge specifically from below. You also do still have options to weigh when an opponent tries to assault you off-stage, but it is significantly less deep than Melee overall yaya. I think it's an unfortunate side-effect of the "fuzzy-ing" of game mechanics. Lots of things made to be more lenient on players but at the same time it fuzzies the gameplay experience as well, if that makes sense
Oh I 100% agree with this actually. I tried my best to add an asterisks to that example when I said there are valid design reasons for both (actually makes edge guarding more dynamic for both players) but I was trying to not linger too long on each example 😂 You are DEFINITELY correct though and thank you for watching too!
give dustforce a look the same feeling of being super heavy you described in mh, but in a sidescrolling precision platformer it's a hard game by all accounts but well worth mastering
Spider-Man 2 PS5 ppl have barely scratched the surface of shmoovement in that game the game also allows for that shmoovement to be presented cinematically, as the movement is so free-form, perfect for improvisation, and responsive to the environment, you can do a million cool camera tricks that just make the shmoovment even shmoovier
It's funny that Sonic has come up in the video and the comments in a negative light, because this actually highlights why some of the best stages in Sonic Adventure 2 work so well. Stages like City Escape and Metal Harbour stand out for how faster you can burn through them if you know the stage layout. There are so many places where anticipating the stage layout and knowing the best ways to react can shave minutes off your run.
First time I ever heard of the term. I worked in the game industry for a decade (production) and have been gaming since the 70s. This is a great game design concept with limited visibility. Off the top of my head, peak shmovement examples that set new industry game design trends: PUBG, Fortnite, recent Call of Duty, Breath of the Wild. Go watch video on how the next Call of Duty's movement system works.
To me schmoovement usually involves some sort of momentum and method of building speed. Coming from a background of familiarity with strafejumping+rocketjumping in Quake/defrag, bhopping in Counter Strike, sliding down hills in Tribes, even COD 4 (promod) movement and bounces, when tools to develop/maintain speed are removed I feel restricted. That was actually my main gripe with Neon White, which I enjoyed a lot but I felt like it missed in terms of the way the movement felt because there was only one speed to go and not much to do movement wise except hold w and jump.
Ever play Titanfall 2? I know some oldschool Titanfall speedrunners played Hi Fi Rush, the movement in TF|2 is the best movement I've ever seen in an FPS game (possibly every game, but I mainly play shooters so I can only guess)
This is a solid classification system! I definitely think granularity and execution are crucial. In many games, I'm the type of player who tricks my way on top of places I'm not 'supposed' to be, and then...very slowly lines up a jump to other forbidden/out-of-bounds areas. I wouldn't consider this schmoovement because it's not _smooth._ It's staccato. It's _creative,_ I'll take credit for that, but that's only part of the equation. In other games, I can do those kinds of tricky jumps _without hesitating on each platform or losing momentum. That's_ schmoovement.
Does Skyrim's mountain-hopping count as Schmovement? There's no dedicated climbing mechanic like there is in Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, but you can force yourself to jump up steep ramps if you have enough willpower and angling.
Great video! And of course Neon White referenced is that good ish too. Another game I gotta mention is Mirror's Edge. First person schmovement! The sequel has that too in some aspects but they gate most of the abilities behind open world progression and the unlock system...
First of all, thanks for telling me this about the sequel. Now I can make sure to prioritize the 1st one if I ever try the game out lol And yes Neon White could’ve been the whole video actually. It embodies shmovement in every aspect!
The game I know the best with the best shmovement is Rocket League. The entire game is centred around “how well can you move?” It also has such a high ceiling - just play for a couple hours then watch high level play (it’s crazy how good pros and freestylers are)
If the details revealed are not sufficiently interesting, or are not necessary for game progress, then granularity in games can seem tedious. Not much different than authoring an Engineering Design Plan for a new network....you don't need to depict how to attach a connector, you only need to depict where the cable connects to a device (i.e. port 25 of switch 1). This translates into gameplay as things like jumping tutorials. Or better yet, like the beginning of using the wii. Nauseating. Each player must endure the same long winded tutorials, no way to skip.
This video was awesome, I'm so glad to see someone give their take on this with some clear examples. I think Schmovement is such a great way to empower the player in ways that can make the overall game feel and experience so much more memorable. One of my favorite feelings of schmoovement definitely has to come from Kingdom Hearts 2 and its growth abilities. Growth abilities are built in systems that grow over time as you level up forms and give you access to doublejumps, dashes, flight, and etc. Beyond that, even doing certain moves have their own level of smart movement, especially when in Sora's drive forms. Unfortunately, there arent as many playforming scenarios in KHII as there are in KHI, but the satisfying movement is always there.
I figured shmoovement is just "smooth/stylish" movement. not to discredit your point, creativity against game mechanics plays like 90% of the part there, just semantics against words I guess.
This is a really good video. Concise, good examples, and a pretty strong definition of schmoovement as both a philosophy and as an outcome of subordinate mechanics. I'd be interested in what games have schmovement designed deliberately versus what games have had schmovement discovered by players that developers didn't set out to include.
it would be really cool if you're gonna be the first one recognized by people who coined "shmovement", and thanks for new detail that you've shared to us fellow gamers. I learned something from you I appreciated.
bomb rush cyberfunk, the big catch and pseudoregalia are certainly my favorite shmovement ones. Super Metroid also has a 'layer' o shmovement when it comes to sequence breaking as well
Part of it also probably has to do with the skill ceiling required to play through the game casually versus how smooth the movement can be at a high skill level. In Pizza Tower you can clear the game with minimal use of the dash button but when you're aiming for P Ranks that thing is going to be held for entire stages and the smooth movement that you engage with is dictated heavily by the level design so it's not exactly expressive for a player (most P Rank runs will look very similar) but that's part of the strength of the level design in how it funnels you to the shmoovement because mastering it is the intended method of getting the highest rank. The Pizza Time mechanic tells you outright that your skill floor to clear the game is less than half as fast as high level play. I think I'd be remiss to say that it isn't a "shmoovement" just because the game is designed around advanced movement techniques.
Feel like this was just a low key way to humble brag about being #1 in the world in that Neon White level 🤣 Great video. Shmovement is now a cemented part of my vocabulary.
I've been slightly obsessed an older game called Gunz recently due to the schmoovement, the skill ceiling is out of this world and the movement is impossible to track unless you have played it. Gunz was meant from the start to be acrobatic, but with cancels/glitches the amount of movement options you have is almost limitless.
So the real dichotomy is Movement and the amount of granularity built into a given game, plus how tightly the developers hold the reigns regarding how the player is allowed to interact with their world. Schmovement then, is entirely an emergent property of play, and thus is how the player themselves moves through the world with their given tools. Or more poetically, how much of a mini-game the player makes out of Movement in a game~ This is cool, thank you for the essay!
You just gave a term to the main types of games I play. I find it very boring (with some exepctions) when the character I control is very basic and giver zero player freedom
rain world is the most shmovement game i know, no powerups, no invisible walls, a whole bunch of jank and glitches and procedural animation makes sure there's a hundred solutions to every jump
Sonic Frontiers post patch I think could qualify for schmovment now. The boost games are very rigid and while the best games from them do a great job of accommodating that from its level design I think Frontiers with the patch that allows you to reduce the air deceleration and also the spin dash introduces some of it into the Boost gameplay This makes it so Sonic has a ton of air control and can blast off with some speed which you get with the boost and spin dash but the spin dash allows for insane air time which you can use to go across gaps or even manipulate the launch to give Sonic an extreme amount of verticality. The new Cyberspace stages in the DLC actually has some level design about launching Sonic off ramps to give him air time to go across gaps and people have shown some interesting runs on not just the Cyberspace stages but also the new Towers from the expansion. While I understand it comes from people messing around with Sonic’s physics and controls I think the end result is fascinating and even more interestingly it seems Shadow Gens while not featuring the same OP Spin Dash seems to also feature some of the same momentum based ramps you can use to achieve routes and shortcuts so it seems Sonic Team intends to play around more with the newfound momentum they were experimenting with in Frontiers’ updates
Frontiers in general is one of those games I really want to play around with when I get some down time, the games approach to level design is definitely interesting to me. The idea of modifying Sonic's movement style is also VERY fascinating to me. Didn't know the Shadow levels in Sonic x Shadow were making those kinds of changes either....hmmm...
I hope this has the same impact as the "juicy" game design talk. Also warframe has some niiiice shmovement with its meelee attacks, bullet jump, wall jump, aim glide, rolling, sliding and any abilities a warframe might have
cool vid! one thing i havent seen in these comments is the concept of flow, or the way different individual actions chain together. if a game has really cool movement but you can only do it in short bursts without keeping things going, i would say it has good movement, but not that it has schmovement. the best games are the ones that give you a feeling similar to fighting game combos when you're moving through an area just right :)
in my opinion schmovement is everything you said + keeping momentum, its moving creatively to make obstacles a complete joke and not getting abruptly stopped or slowed down by anything staying at that specific characters top speed or at least quite close to it
It's a shame cause there definitely is a lot of 'shmoovment' in rise, but a lot of that potential was lost when they gave monsters these invisible hit boxes above some of their moves and more vectoring/homing moves to 'balance' the extra vertical options or to incentivize all the counter moves. a better option would have been to just give new attacks that were designed to hit hunters in the air so you didn't feel like you were robbed of a logical action
My favorite Schmoovement game is Armored Core: For Answer. It makes AC6 feel like you're a snail on opiates. If you wanna try it, I'd be happy to help you set it up on emulator. The PvP works!
Armored Core For Answer is actually one of my favorite games of all time. Played a lot of PvP on 360 when I was teen. One of my favorite game franchises!
This made me rethink the fighting game im making, I had a bug that actually turned out to feel really good but i took it out, i might go put it back in for some shmovement.
now I'm not saying you're hating HiFi Rush, but I do wanna step in to defend it a little - the entire game runs on the beat which is what limits the movement so heavily, so the lack of schmovement is really a negative for the game like I won't say it doesn't feel clunky at times, but it is clearly intentional and it would probably be far more frustrating if your jump didn't line up to the rhymth of the platforms you're trying to move across or if your grapple sent you both off course and off beat. You can also grapple directly towards enemies to keep your multiplier going in combat which would be heavily nerfed if you could shoot any random wall. I'd compare it less to splatoon, which has to be big and open as an arena shooter, and more to the song levels of rayman legends, since they're trying to achieve the same 'guitar hero combat' vibe. Rayman is also has very specific locations you can grapple/grab across, but you're also having to do so with very strict timing and moving through maps where if you go out of bounds you absolutely break the momentum of the game. The comparison is fair and useful, just don't take it as read that a game without shmovement is worse.
Yep. Never said it was a bad thing. I tried to make sure it didn’t come off like I was saying that. Its just a really useful game to explain what I mean thats all. Shmovement doesn’t have to be in every game to be enjoyable.
You used a Splatoon character on a ride rail in the thumbnail. While it gets the concept of shmovement across with it's cool visuals, what do you think about it's shmovement potential in game? I personally think it kinda limits movement in many of the levels it's used in and hinders shmovement. In some levels tho, like ark polaris from Splatoon 2 (and some side order levels) it is definitely more shmovement-y, since it is an additional way to move, instead of the only way to move.
I like this question! The key point I made at the beginning of the video is that shmovement is a spectrum, meaning a game can have shmovement in some areas and just regular movement in others. The shmovement part of Splatoon mainly happens in squid form in Splatoon 3 specifically, the Squid Roll rewards higher executional input and opens up A LOT of options when you get better with it. Like literally faster speed if you time it repeatedly, more angle specific maneuvering and wall kicking up vertical surfaces Mind you. I would not say Splatoon 1 & 2 are high on the shmovement spectrum, sub strafing is as high as it goes in those games. I am only talking about Splatoon 3 because of how much the Squid Roll mechanic adds
Schmoovement feels like a practice being lost to time with a lot of modern games and its a shame. At least indies are rising up and AA games are so good nowadays. Also i see you are a fan of Xenoblade X. 👀
great vid, you went into the intricacies I imagined would be glossed over by other people. now I'm gonna have the word granularity stuck in my head lmao. also nice game examples used here, I would have picked them as well. as a side thing I would highly recommend a free game that just released on steam called the big catch tacklebox, it's some of the most fun I've had moving around in a game tbh
Granularity is a great concept to talk about, but I don't think the Bayonetta example was particularly good: that's just air-control. Different games have different levels of air-control: street fighter has none, hollow knight has a TON (letting you change direction instantly), metroid has limited control (you can change direction, but you have to slow down and overcome your momentum first). Melee is a much better example of granularity, IMO. Every movement option puts you in a specific State (ie Standing, Crouching, Dashing, Running, Jumping, Airborne, Shielding, etc), each state has different options, and you have to transition between multiple states on the fly to get the best schmovement. Take the Dashing State: when you flick the control stick horizontally from the Standing, Walking or Crouching State, it sends you into a dash. During dash state, you can dash-attack, dash-grab, or side-B, you can shield (which puts you in the Shield State), or you can jump (which puts you in the Jumping State, which will itself quickly put you in the Airborne State). You can also dashback in the opposite direction (doing this multiple times is called "Dash Dancing"), pivot (a precise dashback where you immediately release the stick to neutral, which puts you back into the Standing State), foxtrot (where you chain a dash into another dash in the same direction), or moonwalk (which is the first thing people think of with melee schmovement). Or you can hold the stick forward for about a quarter-second and you'll transition to the Run State, which cuts off most of your movement options like dashback (trying to change direction while running will send you into a slow Run-Skid animation), but also allows you to transition to the Crouch State, out of which you can do practically anything. So if you wanted to close a short distance to your opponent and F-smash them, you'd dash forward -> pivot backwards -> F-smash (you could also wavedash forward-> F-smash, which would be slower but easier to execute). To close a longer distance, you might dash -> foxtrot -> pivot -> F-smash, or dash -> run -> crouch -> F-smash. The point is, the game isn't just letting you hold forward -> F-smash; it's forcing you to maneuver your way through all these different states to get to your desired outcome. THAT'S granularity.
Your examples are just deeper. And are great! But granularity doesn’t always have to be deep actually. Air control is also granularity. Granularity is literally just any action that can be modulated in smaller increments. Walking in a 3D dimensional space in recent Pokemon games is more granular than the movement in Pokemon Red Blue where you couldn’t move diagonally. Granularity is just a spectrum. You can almost pick any example and it would work because 99% of games have granularity in some form or fashion. I just wanted to use a simple example so it’d be easy to understand.
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Shmoovement = movement w sauce. Thats why it starts with an S.
Sauce movement lol
I agree tho!
😮😮😮 Stealing this!!!!
@@jiikae 🤝🏾
shause
Thanks, Jim! Very cool!
I have no idea why granularity as a concept is getting so popular in game design circles rn but i think it's a wonderful thing. I do love me some granularity
People are exploring making their own games as a community project, especially as AAA titpes get more and more disappointing. And, in the end, helping aspiring devs make better games is to basically everyone's benefit.
Learning the shmovement is the rite of passage for newbies in Warframe. Slides, rolls, double jumps, bullet jumps, wall jumps, aim glide and melee ground slams can all be chained together in different ways to zoom across the map and rain death on hordes of enemies. Warframe, Splatoon and Titanfall have all unfortunately made other shooters feel sluggish to me lol.
Another example would be Vanquish movements vs Gears’ rigidness
Definitely. Gears is very “strict” with its cover system. Although I have heard of more advanced players exploiting the cover system with wall bouncing in older games I think. Which did allow some degree of shmovement.
@@jiikaeif you put the time in Gears can DEFINITELY have shmovement.
Sweet video. The splatoon example made me think of the grappling hook in titanfall 2, a game brimming with shmovement. The grappling hook in that game can be used almost anywhere to get insane speed or change your direction mid-air, but it also can be used as an attack to rocket yourself into a player or grapple into their mech. Great set of examples!
Titanfall 2 has incredible shmovement. When I played it earlier this month I was really impressed with how much emphasis the campaign put on platforming and navigating the environment
I also actually have a theory that a lot of Splatoon 3’s mechanics were inspired by Titanfall since Titanfall 2 did gain a sizable Japanese following. Splatoon 3 added a grappling hook as well as a mech-like special lol.
Shmovement, imo, is basically getting the characters limitations in-game and the player's limitations with whatever they're using to control said character to feel as 1:1 as possible, if that makes sense. It's just as much, if not more, about what you CAN'T do, and how the game incentivizes you to struggle and experiment within those confines like you said.
Ahhhh I like this. Player/character synchronicity + player/character limitations. Good response!
A good example is the Squid Roll mechanic added in Splatoon 3. It wouldn't mean as much as a mechanic if you didn't have to worry about gaining momentum through swimming and timing it right. Figuring out how to do as many as possible in a row or how to do one while completely maintaining your forward momentum is pushing yourself just as much as you're pushing your Squid, or Octo Kid.
@@AceThunder21 PERFECT example. The squid roll mechanic in 3 is VERY granular and execution-sensitive. Momentum, angle you flick the analog stick and timing of the flick all matter. It seems like such a simple mechanic on the surface but has so many different layers when it comes to having you “pilot” your character
Actually amazing explanation 👏
This video was really great man, I also love how you talked about jump influence in games with bayonetta and how they just makes a lot of situations in action games very flexible for the player.
bayonetta movement is so fucking fun, mostly bc the momentum is so good and its a shame that 2 and 3 both neuter the movement (even tho 3 at least throws a shitton of random variety)
One game with massive shmovement has got to be tf2, specifically rocket jumping. The amount of restrictions on air movement and momentum leads to a massive skill ceiling, and there is a need to get good either to market garden or just get times on jump academy
I just finished Titanfall 2 earlier this month and it 100% has A LOT of shmovement. Looking forward to getting into the multiplayer eventually!
@@jiikae I actually meant team fortress 2 but titan fall 2 also has its fair share of shmovement, mostly when playing as a pilot
Oh! The OG of the TF2 abbreviation lol! I remember playing that on The Orange Box on 360 back in the day. Also a good example.
I was thinking more like Quake... Quake had schmovement, TF2 made it much more rigid
@@colbyboucher6391air control in tf2 is significantly better than in quake due to airstrafing
This is lecture-level talk, excellent work!!
When it comes to schmovement, a big part of it to me is responsiveness. being able to traverse your environment on the fly is key. your point about the air movement in bayonetta, and the way you zip around in monhun rise (we've come a long way it wasnt always like that omfg lol), is excellent schmovement. If it feels good to, and makes you feel cool for, pulling it off when it's not necessarily a given? schmovement~!!
great talk, bonus points for the direct example in neon white. certified schmovement lol
THANK YOU. And agreed, feeling responsive will definitely be a side effect of good shmovement in most cases I feel!
Me interviewing a high-level player in order to academically determine whether or not their game has got the sauce: “Could you please describe to me your game’s… shmovability?”
I see that xenoblade x poster…
Gotta represent…
Love this vid! Also I wanna mention Warframe as having schmovement that I love, since I haven't seen anyone else mention it. It's not deeply critical to doing well in the game at all, but imo it still feels really good to absolutely blitz through maps between objectives. Honestly it's even fun as like a passive stim when I'm just waiting in a squad to launch into a mission. Also Pseudoregalia is a lovely schmovement game-- short, but super super fun
Thank you for this vocabulary. It describes something I've struggled to identify for a long time.
I’m glad! That is actually one of the goals for this channel! So many aspects of games that we “feel” but are hard to put into words
I think this video basically encapsulates the problem with 3D Sonic gameplay.
Like marios movement is incredibly granular with control, pushes you to be creative due to the placement of stsrs and other challenges. Even Sonic frontiers, so much movement is holding forward and pressing boost.
A good platformer always has schmovement. Just look st a Hat in time, There are so many tricks to go fast.
The biggest issue with Sonic is the brand itself. They advertise going fast when going fast should be the reward for good play. They advertise you a carrot and then give it to you. They barely make you work for it. All good game design involves a carrot and a stick. But the stick should be the best part.
Couldn't agree more myself. Spindash is also a problem and has been since it was introduced as physics matter less after sth2 although 3 and Knuckles remedied this by changing the level design and Unleashed has a different kind of schmovement that just worked.
unleashed and the frontiers updates have a solution for this, and that is that you have to be able to control sonic when you are going at those speeds. you can quite literally fly through these environments, but you can also fly off the environments very easily and lose progress. the carrot is still going fast, but the stick has been changed from earning your speed to being able to control it.
This is a great video. I think the Spider-Man 2 movie tie in game from 2004 had pretty good "schmoovement". After maxing out your speed upgrades, swinging was very fast and you had to pay attention to your surroundings to do it properly. Smacking into the side of a building would halt you in your tracks and being too low to the ground could do the same. Wall running was an option, but I think it was limited in duration by a stamina bar in contrast to the current Insomniac games where you can wall-run infinitely.
I'll throw Just Cause 2 and 3 in the ring as well. Combining the wingsuit with grappling the ground lets you essentially fly around stages, getting good momentum. You can also attach rocket boosters to anything you can stand on to gain altitude or propel you forward. I had a lot of fun moving around that world and causing carnage.
Didn’t know this was the case for the Spider-Man 2 movie game that DEFINITELY sounds like shmovement. The key aspect there being all of the limitations that are placed on Spider-Man. Really good examples here.
@@jiikae Yeah, I remember some fans of that game lamenting the recent Insomniac releases not reaching the same heights in terms of the web swinging since they have more guardrails in place (i.e., easier wall running, no fall damage, etc). To be fair to Insomniac, though, the later Activitision games had already moved to a more "streamlined" swinging system. I think only the Spidey 3 movie tie in and Web of Shadows used the Spidey 2 movie tie-in system or something similar to it, at least.
Okay yes, very good, but now please consider the following: Is THIS TH-cam upload… a video, or a shmovie? 🤔
An on brand example of schmovement I think for myself can be how Trickster in DMC 3 can allow you to run up and along walls for a quick second both in and out of combat for a neat dodge and arena movement or how in DMC4 you can chain dodges together by guarding at the end and then continuing the cycle.
A bit unrelated to schmovement I think but when you were showcasing XCX's loose platforming, it reminded me a lot of how in Immersive Sims like Deus Ex, you can utilize moveable objects to bypass more restrictive skill check doors if there's room above them. As well as how in first person games like Skyrim/Fallout where you can hug a wall to ride the incline more so than you should be able to.
And then with the Sonic example, I always famously think about the Dreamcast games since spin dash jumping was really addicting seeing the ability to gain both height and/or distance.
I really enjoyed this video a lot honestly, your examples were super clear and this feels pretty much like listening to a professor. Also I didn't know that schmovement originated from Melee so that was another interesting bit of info.
Chaining dodges in DMC with guarding definitely sounds like the EXECUTIONAL aspect of shmovement. That execution element is huge when it comes to letting the player feel like THEY’RE the reason their character did something and not a pre-determined dance that the developer choreographed for you
In 3D action games there's often a lack of shmoovement recently because movesets have been really stripped down or when they aren't they often do what developers call "suck to target" which is attacks having such massive tracking that as long as you're "generally" close to an enemy you automatically zip to them (games like Arkham series or the new God of War games use it a lot). Suck to target means oftentimes you don't really need to experiment with movement options or even really care about your move's hitboxes because the game takes care of that for you.
The best hack and slash games tend to use attack tracking very minimally. In fact, one of the problems that suck to target is intended to "fix" is something that games like DMC and Bayonetta already have built-in answers to by making lock-on a shoulder button that only is active while the button is held (so you can lock on and off really easily, which is a major part of why DMC's combat is even able to be so good) rather than the modern trend of lock-on being the "R3 to turn on lock-on" style. Not doing suck to target means that not only do you need to pay more attention to your spacing and movement and a developer will probably also be building in more attacks that pull double duty as movement options.
But also in DMC it's often that attacks that are used as movement options that are good for beginners are not as good for high level players. Every beginner has the phase where they spam Stinger because it auto-tracks enemies and gets them knocked down so they , but a higher level player uses Stinger significantly less since they have a better grasp of spacing and movement, and prefer to keep enemies close so they can be hit with a combo. Stinger gives players that aspect of "modern action game design" while also working with DMC's core gameplay philosophy.
While the contextual movement options like wall runs and enemy surfing are cool and I really would have liked to see them in DMC5, they actually are not quite as important for the series' movement as the rest of the moveset. And of course the JC, and the brilliant decision to have it reset both your aerial options and fall speed.
@@Zetact_ Okay but DMCV not having intertia is still the biggest hit the series took. Inertia is singlehandedly more revolutionary than jump canceling ever was and made even watching a 4 speedrun exciting and allowed a much higher skill ceiling and allowed players to have more expression in how they fought demons with the game rewarding mastery of it. Also Reversals were in 5's demo but got removed. DMCV mainstreaming and simplifying mechanics has led to people going back to older titles and leaving 5 from time to time or everyone plays with the cheat table that brought back some kind of inertia and 3's reversals and some other old mechanics. As for the recent trend it sucks but FF7 Rebirth has a mix of stuff like suck to target but also has ways to break the suck to target allowing you to get creative with movement there in the air and ground and has some of the best action based combat you could ever see.
@@dave9515 Eh, inertia and reversals are frankly pretty pointless and most of the people bemoaning their removal really overstate their significance. I get why people want them back but the way they talk about them comes across as entitled and whiny.
They're unintended aspects of the programming that barely impact more beyond having slightly more movement in a few specific moves in MADs. They're a feature that only really is something that most people think is, "I guess not bad to have" but most people even who use inertia put in their hours into DMC4 without even knowing that the mechanics exist. It goes to follow that even if they were in the game they wouldn't really be that vital to the movement of the game, and you can really tell because in most people's clips you'd probably need to be told if they're even using an inertia mod.
DMC5 being far more focused on JC also is possibly why Itsuno made a deliberate decision against inertia likely as a way of tightening up the controls. If you have to choose between something that feels better overall for most players or a goofy guard flying glitch.
The other games still exist anyway - the games being different is kinda the point, if they were all supposed to be the same thing then Dante would have the same moveset in each game.
Castlevania Harmony of Despair has some of the most insane schmovement of any game I've played. It mostly comes from a glitch that happens when you land on the corner of a platform, referred to as the acceleration glitch. Mastering corner boosting is relatively simple, it just takes the right angle depending on the platform. The real fun starts when you learn to elevator glitch. It makes speedrunning the last two DLC stages much faster. And that's not going into character specific techs, like iFraming uppercuts with Jonathan, Julius, and Richter. Or dual back dash cancelling with Soma, Alucard, and Shanoa. That said, it gets taxing on your hands. It's why one of the games I want to make, makes those schmovement options a little bit more accessible but still reward player skill and expression.
Great video. Hope you do more planned/edited videos like this! Very cool perspective.
Thank you! And that’s definitely the plan!!
Great video!! You broke down the aspects of shmovement really well.
Another example I'd give of a game that nails granularity is Rain World. It's a 2D game which gives you a total of 5 keys to move around with: WASD and Space.
At first glance that might sound like the most boring movement ever, but where it starts to shine is in the way it lets you combine those inputs to execute something completely different.
Take the only move that the game teaches you: Lunging.
By crouching with S and holding Space, you can perform a long jump. But it doesn't end there.
After a lunge, you can hold down S again while hitting the ground to start rolling, boosting your speed for a while before losing momentum.
But it doesn't end there either.
If you jump right before the roll ends, you perform ANOTHER lunge, letting you practically roll forever if you have the timing down.
And those are just a few of the many, MANY chains of shmoves you can perform.
Being able to condense shmovement into just a handful of keys like that is an art in my eyes, and a huge part of making a game's movement feel smooth and fluid!
This is genuinely incredible analysis, videos like this should have more views. As a game dev this type of thing is way more useful and interesting than 90% of what I see on this website. I subscribed like 30 seconds in.
Mirror's Edge and Mirror's Edge: Catalyst are some of my favorite games. They're pretty much pure parkour games and IMO get it almost as close to perfect as possible.
Yes mirrors edge was so ahead of its time. Its a crime it had to be made by EA so we will never see this again. Ghostrunner is pretty cool too.
Honestly, I just wish there were a lot more videos like this in general. The specificity here is amazing.
never watched a video from you before but love this breakdown. excited to watch more from u!
mounts in WoW = movement
mounts in GW2 = Shmovement
that's why WoW tried to copy them with their dragonflight expansion
I love this topic and focusing on this niche subject in video games. Have you seen this game called "Pseudoregalia" I recently discovered what it is and oh my god the Shmoovement in this game is AMAZING!
Love this kind of academic-ish language and conceptual constructions in games. Great video
Rocket league is entirely schmovement, there be wizards in that game
Very well made video i was suprised to see you didn't have hundreds thousands of subs you are massively underrated
I appreciate that!
Amazing video, love all the comparisons you made aswell
what a fantastic video, congrats. i knew from the start this was going to be good, you very clearly know what you're talking about
also i think the point on Melee vs. Ultimate is missing a detail about the easy-to-grab ledges. Recovery abilities are much better at traversal and snapping to ledge specifically from below. You also do still have options to weigh when an opponent tries to assault you off-stage, but it is significantly less deep than Melee overall yaya. I think it's an unfortunate side-effect of the "fuzzy-ing" of game mechanics. Lots of things made to be more lenient on players but at the same time it fuzzies the gameplay experience as well, if that makes sense
yes omfg this video is so good!!! just got to the part about granularity. you totally get it dude
Oh I 100% agree with this actually. I tried my best to add an asterisks to that example when I said there are valid design reasons for both (actually makes edge guarding more dynamic for both players) but I was trying to not linger too long on each example 😂
You are DEFINITELY correct though and thank you for watching too!
Really like what you said about the two different grappling hooks!
You explained this incredibly well, insta sub
Thank you so much!
give dustforce a look
the same feeling of being super heavy you described in mh, but in a sidescrolling precision platformer
it's a hard game by all accounts but well worth mastering
Dustforce! Played the demo and loved it back on the Xbox 360. Thanks for reminding me it exists :)
Spider-Man 2 PS5
ppl have barely scratched the surface of shmoovement in that game
the game also allows for that shmoovement to be presented cinematically, as the movement is so free-form, perfect for improvisation, and responsive to the environment, you can do a million cool camera tricks that just make the shmoovment even shmoovier
It's funny that Sonic has come up in the video and the comments in a negative light, because this actually highlights why some of the best stages in Sonic Adventure 2 work so well. Stages like City Escape and Metal Harbour stand out for how faster you can burn through them if you know the stage layout. There are so many places where anticipating the stage layout and knowing the best ways to react can shave minutes off your run.
First time I ever heard of the term. I worked in the game industry for a decade (production) and have been gaming since the 70s. This is a great game design concept with limited visibility. Off the top of my head, peak shmovement examples that set new industry game design trends: PUBG, Fortnite, recent Call of Duty, Breath of the Wild. Go watch video on how the next Call of Duty's movement system works.
To me schmoovement usually involves some sort of momentum and method of building speed. Coming from a background of familiarity with strafejumping+rocketjumping in Quake/defrag, bhopping in Counter Strike, sliding down hills in Tribes, even COD 4 (promod) movement and bounces, when tools to develop/maintain speed are removed I feel restricted. That was actually my main gripe with Neon White, which I enjoyed a lot but I felt like it missed in terms of the way the movement felt because there was only one speed to go and not much to do movement wise except hold w and jump.
Ever play Titanfall 2? I know some oldschool Titanfall speedrunners played Hi Fi Rush, the movement in TF|2 is the best movement I've ever seen in an FPS game (possibly every game, but I mainly play shooters so I can only guess)
This is a solid classification system!
I definitely think granularity and execution are crucial. In many games, I'm the type of player who tricks my way on top of places I'm not 'supposed' to be, and then...very slowly lines up a jump to other forbidden/out-of-bounds areas. I wouldn't consider this schmoovement because it's not _smooth._ It's staccato. It's _creative,_ I'll take credit for that, but that's only part of the equation.
In other games, I can do those kinds of tricky jumps _without hesitating on each platform or losing momentum. That's_ schmoovement.
Does Skyrim's mountain-hopping count as Schmovement? There's no dedicated climbing mechanic like there is in Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, but you can force yourself to jump up steep ramps if you have enough willpower and angling.
Great video! And of course Neon White referenced is that good ish too.
Another game I gotta mention is Mirror's Edge. First person schmovement! The sequel has that too in some aspects but they gate most of the abilities behind open world progression and the unlock system...
First of all, thanks for telling me this about the sequel. Now I can make sure to prioritize the 1st one if I ever try the game out lol
And yes Neon White could’ve been the whole video actually. It embodies shmovement in every aspect!
@@jiikaeYup. The first game is kinda short but it's also great to mess around in the first level if you just wanna mess around with the mechanics.
The game I know the best with the best shmovement is Rocket League.
The entire game is centred around “how well can you move?”
It also has such a high ceiling - just play for a couple hours then watch high level play (it’s crazy how good pros and freestylers are)
If the details revealed are not sufficiently interesting, or are not necessary for game progress, then granularity in games can seem tedious. Not much different than authoring an Engineering Design Plan for a new network....you don't need to depict how to attach a connector, you only need to depict where the cable connects to a device (i.e. port 25 of switch 1). This translates into gameplay as things like jumping tutorials. Or better yet, like the beginning of using the wii. Nauseating. Each player must endure the same long winded tutorials, no way to skip.
This video was awesome, I'm so glad to see someone give their take on this with some clear examples. I think Schmovement is such a great way to empower the player in ways that can make the overall game feel and experience so much more memorable.
One of my favorite feelings of schmoovement definitely has to come from Kingdom Hearts 2 and its growth abilities. Growth abilities are built in systems that grow over time as you level up forms and give you access to doublejumps, dashes, flight, and etc. Beyond that, even doing certain moves have their own level of smart movement, especially when in Sora's drive forms.
Unfortunately, there arent as many playforming scenarios in KHII as there are in KHI, but the satisfying movement is always there.
I figured shmoovement is just "smooth/stylish" movement. not to discredit your point, creativity against game mechanics plays like 90% of the part there, just semantics against words I guess.
A perfect example of too much freedom is Yooka-Laylee when you unlock the fly ability.
XCX poster is based
This is a really good video. Concise, good examples, and a pretty strong definition of schmoovement as both a philosophy and as an outcome of subordinate mechanics.
I'd be interested in what games have schmovement designed deliberately versus what games have had schmovement discovered by players that developers didn't set out to include.
it would be really cool if you're gonna be the first one recognized by people who coined "shmovement", and thanks for new detail that you've shared to us fellow gamers. I learned something from you I appreciated.
bomb rush cyberfunk, the big catch and pseudoregalia are certainly my favorite shmovement ones. Super Metroid also has a 'layer' o shmovement when it comes to sequence breaking as well
Part of it also probably has to do with the skill ceiling required to play through the game casually versus how smooth the movement can be at a high skill level.
In Pizza Tower you can clear the game with minimal use of the dash button but when you're aiming for P Ranks that thing is going to be held for entire stages and the smooth movement that you engage with is dictated heavily by the level design so it's not exactly expressive for a player (most P Rank runs will look very similar) but that's part of the strength of the level design in how it funnels you to the shmoovement because mastering it is the intended method of getting the highest rank. The Pizza Time mechanic tells you outright that your skill floor to clear the game is less than half as fast as high level play. I think I'd be remiss to say that it isn't a "shmoovement" just because the game is designed around advanced movement techniques.
Feel like this was just a low key way to humble brag about being #1 in the world in that Neon White level 🤣
Great video. Shmovement is now a cemented part of my vocabulary.
I've been slightly obsessed an older game called Gunz recently due to the schmoovement, the skill ceiling is out of this world and the movement is impossible to track unless you have played it. Gunz was meant from the start to be acrobatic, but with cancels/glitches the amount of movement options you have is almost limitless.
So the real dichotomy is Movement and the amount of granularity built into a given game, plus how tightly the developers hold the reigns regarding how the player is allowed to interact with their world. Schmovement then, is entirely an emergent property of play, and thus is how the player themselves moves through the world with their given tools. Or more poetically, how much of a mini-game the player makes out of Movement in a game~ This is cool, thank you for the essay!
You just gave a term to the main types of games I play. I find it very boring (with some exepctions) when the character I control is very basic and giver zero player freedom
rain world is the most shmovement game i know, no powerups, no invisible walls, a whole bunch of jank and glitches and procedural animation makes sure there's a hundred solutions to every jump
Sonic Frontiers post patch I think could qualify for schmovment now.
The boost games are very rigid and while the best games from them do a great job of accommodating that from its level design I think Frontiers with the patch that allows you to reduce the air deceleration and also the spin dash introduces some of it into the Boost gameplay
This makes it so Sonic has a ton of air control and can blast off with some speed which you get with the boost and spin dash but the spin dash allows for insane air time which you can use to go across gaps or even manipulate the launch to give Sonic an extreme amount of verticality.
The new Cyberspace stages in the DLC actually has some level design about launching Sonic off ramps to give him air time to go across gaps and people have shown some interesting runs on not just the Cyberspace stages but also the new Towers from the expansion.
While I understand it comes from people messing around with Sonic’s physics and controls I think the end result is fascinating and even more interestingly it seems Shadow Gens while not featuring the same OP Spin Dash seems to also feature some of the same momentum based ramps you can use to achieve routes and shortcuts so it seems Sonic Team intends to play around more with the newfound momentum they were experimenting with in Frontiers’ updates
Frontiers in general is one of those games I really want to play around with when I get some down time, the games approach to level design is definitely interesting to me. The idea of modifying Sonic's movement style is also VERY fascinating to me.
Didn't know the Shadow levels in Sonic x Shadow were making those kinds of changes either....hmmm...
I hope this has the same impact as the "juicy" game design talk.
Also warframe has some niiiice shmovement with its meelee attacks, bullet jump, wall jump, aim glide, rolling, sliding and any abilities a warframe might have
cool vid! one thing i havent seen in these comments is the concept of flow, or the way different individual actions chain together. if a game has really cool movement but you can only do it in short bursts without keeping things going, i would say it has good movement, but not that it has schmovement. the best games are the ones that give you a feeling similar to fighting game combos when you're moving through an area just right :)
in my opinion schmovement is everything you said + keeping momentum, its moving creatively to make obstacles a complete joke and not getting abruptly stopped or slowed down by anything staying at that specific characters top speed or at least quite close to it
Is this kind of like how I just have a plain microphone but you have a Schmicrophone?
Similar to neon white, ultrakill has wonderful schmoovement. Feels so good
It's a shame cause there definitely is a lot of 'shmoovment' in rise, but a lot of that potential was lost when they gave monsters these invisible hit boxes above some of their moves and more vectoring/homing moves to 'balance' the extra vertical options or to incentivize all the counter moves.
a better option would have been to just give new attacks that were designed to hit hunters in the air so you didn't feel like you were robbed of a logical action
Great sounding audio btw. Makes this very listenable
Low key destiny 2 has some insane schmovement. Just uh... Dont look up if any of the movement techs are intended.
My favorite Schmoovement game is Armored Core: For Answer. It makes AC6 feel like you're a snail on opiates. If you wanna try it, I'd be happy to help you set it up on emulator. The PvP works!
Armored Core For Answer is actually one of my favorite games of all time. Played a lot of PvP on 360 when I was teen. One of my favorite game franchises!
A game with some impressive shmovement is ARMS
of course as dependant on the flighter
This made me rethink the fighting game im making, I had a bug that actually turned out to feel really good but i took it out, i might go put it back in for some shmovement.
Schmoovement, like in Pseudoregalia?
Made a whole commentary video just to show off your own shmovement in Neon White. Nice 🤣
The Ori games 100% have that sauce! The Bash mechanic is pure movement genius!
I had never heard of this term before, but I'm definitely using it now.
great vid, finally something to explain to people why i hate certain movement in games
Penny’s Big Breakaway has some great shmovement.
LUCID most def has SCHMOOOVEMENT
I hear that. I don't know how you left ratchet and clank out the debate haha that's one shmove lumbax
Loved the video! Would have loved to hear a mention of Quake 3 and the other boomer shooters :)
Immediate like for the xenoblade chronicles x poster
I think a game keeps better with this Shmoovement , it gives more freedom
Does this make Neon White the first in the Shmovement Shooter genre
Splatoon is almost BUILT upon shmoovment.
lololol that neon white route took me so long to figure out my girlfriend had to help me with it
now I'm not saying you're hating HiFi Rush, but I do wanna step in to defend it a little - the entire game runs on the beat which is what limits the movement so heavily, so the lack of schmovement is really a negative for the game
like I won't say it doesn't feel clunky at times, but it is clearly intentional and it would probably be far more frustrating if your jump didn't line up to the rhymth of the platforms you're trying to move across or if your grapple sent you both off course and off beat. You can also grapple directly towards enemies to keep your multiplier going in combat which would be heavily nerfed if you could shoot any random wall.
I'd compare it less to splatoon, which has to be big and open as an arena shooter, and more to the song levels of rayman legends, since they're trying to achieve the same 'guitar hero combat' vibe. Rayman is also has very specific locations you can grapple/grab across, but you're also having to do so with very strict timing and moving through maps where if you go out of bounds you absolutely break the momentum of the game.
The comparison is fair and useful, just don't take it as read that a game without shmovement is worse.
Yep. Never said it was a bad thing. I tried to make sure it didn’t come off like I was saying that. Its just a really useful game to explain what I mean thats all. Shmovement doesn’t have to be in every game to be enjoyable.
why bro has a fridge in front of him lol jk man nice vid
You used a Splatoon character on a ride rail in the thumbnail. While it gets the concept of shmovement across with it's cool visuals, what do you think about it's shmovement potential in game? I personally think it kinda limits movement in many of the levels it's used in and hinders shmovement. In some levels tho, like ark polaris from Splatoon 2 (and some side order levels) it is definitely more shmovement-y, since it is an additional way to move, instead of the only way to move.
I like this question!
The key point I made at the beginning of the video is that shmovement is a spectrum, meaning a game can have shmovement in some areas and just regular movement in others. The shmovement part of Splatoon mainly happens in squid form
in Splatoon 3 specifically, the Squid Roll rewards higher executional input and opens up A LOT of options when you get better with it. Like literally faster speed if you time it repeatedly, more angle specific maneuvering and wall kicking up vertical surfaces
Mind you. I would not say Splatoon 1 & 2 are high on the shmovement spectrum, sub strafing is as high as it goes in those games. I am only talking about Splatoon 3 because of how much the Squid Roll mechanic adds
shmovement spelled with the cool S everyone drew in middle school
when it comes to shmovement, rocket league clears most other games
Professor Jiikae with a valuable lecture
SHOUT OUT TO SIMPLE FLIPS FOR TEACHING US HOW TO SHMOVE ON EM
Schmoovement feels like a practice being lost to time with a lot of modern games and its a shame. At least indies are rising up and AA games are so good nowadays. Also i see you are a fan of Xenoblade X. 👀
Agreed!
And yes, it is my favorite game of all time 👀
love your breakdown man! would you say shmovement is related at all to the concept of player expression?
Player expression is DEFINITELY a side effect
great vid, you went into the intricacies I imagined would be glossed over by other people. now I'm gonna have the word granularity stuck in my head lmao. also nice game examples used here, I would have picked them as well. as a side thing I would highly recommend a free game that just released on steam called the big catch tacklebox, it's some of the most fun I've had moving around in a game tbh
I played the demo of Big Catch actually. That lets me know you 100% are on the same wave about shmovement. That game HAS IT
oh no way! glad to hear you enjoyed it as well, I've been obsessed lol.
Granularity is a great concept to talk about, but I don't think the Bayonetta example was particularly good: that's just air-control. Different games have different levels of air-control: street fighter has none, hollow knight has a TON (letting you change direction instantly), metroid has limited control (you can change direction, but you have to slow down and overcome your momentum first).
Melee is a much better example of granularity, IMO. Every movement option puts you in a specific State (ie Standing, Crouching, Dashing, Running, Jumping, Airborne, Shielding, etc), each state has different options, and you have to transition between multiple states on the fly to get the best schmovement.
Take the Dashing State: when you flick the control stick horizontally from the Standing, Walking or Crouching State, it sends you into a dash. During dash state, you can dash-attack, dash-grab, or side-B, you can shield (which puts you in the Shield State), or you can jump (which puts you in the Jumping State, which will itself quickly put you in the Airborne State). You can also dashback in the opposite direction (doing this multiple times is called "Dash Dancing"), pivot (a precise dashback where you immediately release the stick to neutral, which puts you back into the Standing State), foxtrot (where you chain a dash into another dash in the same direction), or moonwalk (which is the first thing people think of with melee schmovement). Or you can hold the stick forward for about a quarter-second and you'll transition to the Run State, which cuts off most of your movement options like dashback (trying to change direction while running will send you into a slow Run-Skid animation), but also allows you to transition to the Crouch State, out of which you can do practically anything.
So if you wanted to close a short distance to your opponent and F-smash them, you'd dash forward -> pivot backwards -> F-smash (you could also wavedash forward-> F-smash, which would be slower but easier to execute). To close a longer distance, you might dash -> foxtrot -> pivot -> F-smash, or dash -> run -> crouch -> F-smash. The point is, the game isn't just letting you hold forward -> F-smash; it's forcing you to maneuver your way through all these different states to get to your desired outcome. THAT'S granularity.
Your examples are just deeper. And are great! But granularity doesn’t always have to be deep actually. Air control is also granularity. Granularity is literally just any action that can be modulated in smaller increments.
Walking in a 3D dimensional space in recent Pokemon games is more granular than the movement in Pokemon Red Blue where you couldn’t move diagonally. Granularity is just a spectrum. You can almost pick any example and it would work because 99% of games have granularity in some form or fashion. I just wanted to use a simple example so it’d be easy to understand.
@@jiikae fair.
You’re a very good speaker brother. I’m tryna get like you my boy
Not a single um, like, uh, DAMN!!
Thank you for answering the question right at the beginning of the video!? 👏
I hate when people take forever to get to the main premise so yeah, glad you appreciate it 😂
Severed Steel is pure shmovement.
Looks cool, has splatoon in the title. Gonna look at it
As a dev, most inspiring video of the day for me, loved every minute! Algo delivered on this one, and hope you do (or have done!) more like it
this is a great video
also that mic is massive lol