Editor’s note In this article, we will analyze in detail the design concepts of the two “progenitors” of the Galaxy Castlevania games, “Mitrode” and “Castlevania”, from the perspective of the developers. At the same time, you are also welcome to leave a message, share one of your favorite Castlevania game, and explain why, I will be in January 26, before the extraction of 5 people to send Goose Factory gifts around.
I like to explore the world alone. Getting lost and then finding your way again is a unique pleasure. How lucky I am and you are to have such a holy nest full of secrets in front of our eyes.
I’m a PM from NExT Studios’ overseas research department. In my daily work, I need to align the creative goals of the game with the developers, so I’m exposed to many aspects of game design in the process. The main content of this article comes from the sharing within the department some time ago, mainly in the use of their own stolen game design knowledge to analyze and understand the niche category of Galaxy Castlevania.
I am a post-80’s gamer, and I have participated in the development of several games since I joined the workforce in 2010, and coincidentally, they are all in the form of 2D horizontal scrolling. During the whole process of growing up, 2D horizontal, horizontal action and platform jumping games also occupied an important part of my gaming experience, whether for personal interest or work-related needs, I came into contact with a large number of horizontal action games.
But the term ‘Galaxy Castlevania’ has not been in my field of vision for a long time. Because I was a player who missed the SFC/PS1/PS2 era, it was 2017 when I reacquainted myself with the term, when I came across Dead Cells, a game known as ‘Galaxy Castlevania’.
I had long passed through Ozzy and the Dark Forest before that, but had no idea that it actually fell under the long-established category of ‘Galaxy Castlevania’.
Later, as I came across more and more Galactic Castlevania-type games, especially recently I played two 3A works with the Galactic Castlevania formula, “Control” and “Jedi Fallen Order”, I deliberately went backwards to pass the two representative works of the series. After appreciating the subtlety of it, I would like to introduce this genre in detail to everyone through this article.
The video above is from “Oj and the Dark Forest”, it appeared in the middle of the game, this bridge can be said to be the most memorable moment in the entire game. I believe that the students who have passed through the “Origins and Dark Forest” should not forget such an escape bridge, in the “Origins and Firefly Will” the production team also used a similar escape bridge many times in the boss battle and important plot points to create the emotional climax.
Some students may not know why the topic of ‘Galaxy Castlevania’ is related to this clip above, and I couldn’t connect it to Galaxy Castlevania when I played it at the time. And I believe that after reading this article, you will know why ‘Origins and the Dark Forest’ is a Galactic Castlevania type of game and what the Galactic Castlevania game really means in terms of indispensable elements.
This is the framework of this article, so let’s start exploring the long history of the ‘Galactic Castlevania’ genre.
To understand ‘Galaxy Castlevania’, we have to start with the name.
It is actually a compound word, consisting of the first half of – ‘Galaxy’ and the second half of – ‘Castlevania’ together. Its English ‘MetroidVania’ is also synthesized from ‘Metroid’ and ‘Vania’.
The front and back halves of the word represent two long-established game series
– Metroid Galactic Warrior
– CastleVania Castlevania
So let’s start with the two representative titles of this name
Metroid is called Metroid, but it has another translation – Galaxy Warrior.
It is a Nintendo IP, and it is a unique Nintendo IP, first of all, it is one of the very few Nintendo first-party IPs with a continuous story line, and its theme is not as light-hearted and acceptable to almost all ages as other Nintendo IPs.
The theme of the Galaxy Warrior can be summarized as some of the following points.
– Interstellar exploration Science fiction background
– Extraterrestrial creatures
– Female protagonists
Since there have been a very large number of Galactic Warriors titles, two important offshoots are
– The horizontal scrolling series
– First Person Prime series (I don’t know much about it due to its age and console platform)
In this article, we will focus on the horizontal scrolling series, especially the most classic of them all – Super Galaxy Warriors, released in 1994 on the SFC.
The timeline you see here is the timeline of the mainline branch of the Galaxy Warriors series of crossover scrollers, which was recently released on the NS platform as the latest in the series, “Galaxy Warriors Survival Fear”, developed by Mercury Steam Studios. This work in a month to get more than 800,000 sales results, is already the fastest-selling works in this category, in terms of sales “Galaxy Warrior” series in any system IP can be considered very niche, each work of sales statistics are probably between 1 – 2 million, and Zelda, Mario is not in a class. But this is such a niche series, still has its loyal audience, as for the reason we have to start from the real founder of the series to speak.
Today we are going to talk about the work that is recognized as the founder of the ‘Galaxy Castlevania’ genre – ‘Super Metroid’.
This is the cover of Super Metroid, which, as I mentioned before, is full of alien creatures. The red monster on the right also appears as a boss in the game, and has a familiar name – Ridley.
Both from the image and the name of the boss, we can see that the theme of this work is deeply influenced by the famous science fiction director Ridley Scott; and the real face under the red armor on the left is the blonde beauty Samus, who is still affectionately known as ‘Sister Sa’ (the heroic Sa) in the fan community. ).
Samus as the protagonist of the setting is actually in the first series began to use, and in the game there are similar to pass after you can see the armor off Samus appear on the screen, of course, GameOver when the armor will also be broken.
So having said all this, we still have not introduced Metroid what the name is.
Metroid is a kind of alien creature with special power inside the game world of Galaxy Warrior, because it has a special power, so the villainous organization of intergalactic pirates want to take it for themselves, and as a bounty hunter Sister Sa in order to rescue Metroid this creature came to the “Super Metroid” this work in an important location – – Zebes planet. (This article does not involve too much in the case of non-essential game plot, will only be introduced to the premise that we must understand)
At the beginning of the game, Sister Sa drives her ship to the planet Zebes. Initially the game does not limit your actions, like many horizontal scrolling games, we all may be accustomed to walking towards the right to start our game. But when we go to the right, we find that there is no passable road, and then we come to the left side of the ship, and if we continue deeper, we can enter a cave.
In the cave we will find many visual elements with obvious hints, such as small bricks, small gaps, blue doors and peach doors, etc. But through some fumbling, we can only open the blue door with the bullets in our hands.
And these elements are already attracting the player’s attention in the first minute at the very beginning of the game, they are silently telling the player — you don’t have the clues to crack these puzzles now, so please come back when you find them.
Immediately after we came to such a room, we gained the first ability by picking up such an orb — Morphing Ball morphing into a ball.
Pictures
When we were in this small room, we found that by jumping and ordinary walking and can not leave, but must shoot the lower right corner of the brick and then by using the just got the ability to morph into a ball to leave.
Here we can already recall the small gap we saw just before entering this location, as if we could have a way to get through.
As we continue to go deeper, we will find ourselves once again facing the unopenable peach door, and after we break these seemingly breakable bricks we get the second key ability — the ability to fire missiles.
By trying this, we will find that firing 5 missiles will open the previously unopenable peach door.
So far, we have gained 2 abilities, which are
– Move through ability — morph into a ball and pass through small gaps
– Attack ability — fire missiles with consumption to open the peach door
Here we also find the obvious key – lock correspondence, and as the key to these locks are the newly acquired daily abilities of our characters.
A very important element of the Galactic Castlevania genre, which Super Galactic Warrior shows to everyone in its first five minutes, is the
‘Ability Lock’ Utility-Lock
After the player gets the keys to these ability locks, through clever level design, the player can only fold back to these ‘visual hooks’ not far from the game’s starting point to try to solve these puzzles.
So the game shows the player the second feature of Galactic Castlevania: Backtracking
That is, through the player in the process of exploring the world will find that the world is semi-open, it is likely that in the current ability range can not reach the current area of all the space, only when the player obtains the appropriate ability to go back to the previous area to explore to find new clues.
Another very convincing example is when the player meets this door.
Players will find that according to the current jump height is unable to reach the upper right corner of this looks like a face with a big mouth like the entrance, this different from other ordinary door frame visual design can also give players a deep impression, become a ‘hook’ hook players, so that players will want to return here to explore the situation.
Players will then find the ability to ‘high jump’ in another area, at which point the player’s jump height will be able to pass through the strange entrance just now.
You can also pay attention to the small room where you get high jump, it how to get the ability to ‘morph into a ball’ at the beginning of the small room, when you enter the only way to exit by using the new ability just obtained, the original jump height is unable to leave the small box of picking up high jump. Super Silver” is the use of such subtle differences in the height of several grids to create a rich gaming experience.
Picking up the high jump and returning to the unforgettable entrance from the perspective of the world map probably looks like this.
Utility-Lock x Backtrack Exploration
Utility-Lock x Backtracking
Super Galaxy Warrior uses these important elements to show us once again how they can be used in level design to create a cycle of puzzle building – ability searching – puzzle solving.
The first half of the game takes the player through a number of key abilities and unlocks one after another, sending the player in a big circle around the planet Zebes before finally taking the elevator back to the ship they just landed on after acquiring the “Super Bomb”.
This time the player gains abilities such as ‘acceleration boots’ and ‘freeze ray’, and more and more ability locks can be unlocked in the map. The leveling process cleverly leads the player to the starting point of the game – Samus’ ship.
Here the game informs the player in a special way that you have now returned to the beginning, but you have also gained the ability to grow and from now on you can start exploring the planet again – from the macro structure – Backtracking is the most important aspect of ‘Galactic Warriors’. Backtracking is one of the most important elements of ‘Galaxy Warrior’.
It is worth mentioning that when the player reaches a new area, in that area the player will encounter ‘Map Stations’.
At the ground station the player can get information about the general map layout of the area and display it on the mini-map
But the map information obtained from the map station is not the complete map structure of the area, certain rooms and pathways will be deliberately hidden by the designers. This also constitutes the “Super Galaxy Warrior” experience which is indispensable to rely on their own ability to figure out the secret passages, hidden rooms of exploration satisfaction.
After gaining enough power to return to the vicinity of Samus’s ship, the player’s game goal becomes less clear, after step by step through the ability lock -> find the ability -> back to explore -> unlock the ability lock -> go to a new area such a cycle to lure the player back to the starting point, the game at this moment choose to let go and let the player to explore the world as they wish. The game’s designers have given the world a high density of various secret passages, hidden rooms and a variety of optional collectibles.
After a series of exploration process, players will come to this room located in the center of the planet. The tiles under the floor of this room seem to suggest to the player that this place can lead to a deeper place, because the player got the ability to high jump after killing the first mainline boss, so the statue above will be partly grayed out to tell the player to explore the planet Zebes on their own, kill the remaining three bosses on the statue and then return here to the deepest secrets of the world.
