Hiding Secrets in Platform Games
Anyone interested in the design of so-called platform games would do well to study the "required reading":
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Super Mario Brothers 1 though 3 (NES)
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Super Mario World (SNES)
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Donkey Kong Country 1 through 3 (SNES)
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Mario64 (N64)
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Banjo-Kazooie (N64)
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Donkey Kong Country 64 (N64)
Nintendo and Rare deserve quite a round of applause here. Interesting that Shigeru Miyamoto basically invented the genre with Super Mario Brothers and re-invented it Mario64. These two titles were far and away the most innovative of the bunch, but I'm going to have to give the award of "best design" to Donkey Kong Country 2. Before I explain why, let's consider the progression of these games over time.
In the early days, platform games were about trying not to die. Dying occurred frequently and the main goal of the game was to get through all the levels. As time went on, we see less and less emphasis on the dexterity of passing levels and more and more emphasis on finding secrets. Perhaps the most extreme examples are WarioLand 2 and 3 for GameBoy where Wario cannot die. The entire emphasis on those games is puzzle-solving and secret-finding.
WarioLand aside, the notion of finding secrets in platform games led to the "dual goal" platform games of today. A casual or younger player's goal might be to simply get to the end of a game (which may or may not require completing every level). A more demanding gamer's goal, though, is to uncover every secret the game has to offer. In Mario64, this means finding all 120 stars (only about 60 are needed to "win" the game.) In Donkey Kong Country 2, this means finding all 40 DK coins as well as finding all 102% of the bonus rooms. These dual goals allow a single game to appeal to a wide range of players.
If platform games are becoming more and more about finding secrets, we should define what a "secret" actually is. To a really old-school player, a secret might be a near-impossible-to-find item that's virtually randomly placed. That's not the type of secrets I'm talking about. In fact, a "secret" in the sense of modern platform games is a hidden something-or-other that is actually meant to be found.
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| This is the first DK coin in DKC2, placed only slightly above the normal top of the screen and obviously marked with bananas. The rest won't be so easy to find! |
Think of these secrets the same way a mystery author thinks about his plots. A mystery is not a zero-sum game of writer versus reader. The writer actually wants the reader to figure out the answer, just not too early. The answer has to be hidden enough that there's a sense of accomplishment in finding it, but there have to be enough clues to make finding the answer possible. The answer, just like a secret in a platform game, isn't randomly created. It's carefully designed and hidden, and carefully pointed out by clues.
Donkey Kong Country 2 This SNES game is truly the jewel of the genre and in my opinion one of the best designed games on any platform to date. The game is fairly easy to "win" simply by completing all of its levels. Dying is somewhat frequent, but the difficulty is pretty low and free lives are plentiful. Even very young players will be able to get through the difficult parts through repetition.
The real game, though, is to uncover all the secrets. Each of the 40 levels has one to three bonus rooms and a single "DK coin."
I believe the DK coin is the greatest innovation in all of platform games. It's a ridiculously large, shiny, spinning coin that somehow manages to be hidden on every level. There's something magical about finding that single, well-hidden secret on every level that just isn't the same as finding 5 Jingos (Banjo-Kazooie), 100 coins (Mario64), or any of the ten zillion tedious things on your shopping list in DK64.
Donkey Kong Country 2 has a well-designed hierarchy of secrets. Each level has one super secret (the DK coin), one to three other secrets you "have to" find (the bonus rooms), and other, less important secret items (banana coins and free guy balloons). At any time, the player can check how many total DK coins he has and the percentage of bonus rooms he's uncovered. He can also easily check if he's found the DK coin on any given level, and if he's found all the bonus rooms on a given level. All the while, the character Cranky Kong taunts the player by telling him how he has no hope of finding all the DK coins and bonus rooms. This gives the player a clear idea of his mission: to prove Cranky wrong.
Having a clear system to keep track of which secrets have been found is critical in this type of game. Knowing that there are 40 DK coins hidden out there somewhere in a huge world and that you've found 23 of them so far, simply isn't fun. It's daunting. Knowing that somewhere in this one particular level that isn't even all that big, there's a tauntingly large, spinning, golden coin to be found is a fun challenge.
Unwritten Rules of DKC2
Part of the magic of DKC2 is the way all these secrets are hidden. The highest compliment I can give the game is to say that I felt every DK coin was placed by a single intelligence---by one person. As the game progressed, I came to know how he thought and what he'd be likely to do. In essence, the game was felt not like an action game of me versus the computer, but a strategy game of me versus the designer.
In order to create this feeling, the game established and religiously followed a few unwritten rules. First, bananas (the common items littered everywhere on every level) are always helpful. If they spell out a letter or an arrow, it's always a genuine clue, never a trick. If a single banana is placed in some precarious, seemingly impossible to reach spot, it's always pointing to a secret. If a banana is over a pit, it always signifies that jumping in the pit will not kill you. In effect, the bananas themselves are a character---an entity---trying to help you at all times.
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| In this underwater level, bananas forming a letter A are telling the player to use Enguard's spear swimming move to break the wall marked by the suspicious single banana. |
Another interesting unwritten rule is that of running at full speed through dangerous levels. Anytime there's a series of obstacles that require timing to navigate (swinging vines surrounded by deadly bees, spinning cannon-like barrels over pits), the you can always progress safely by running at full speed and taking every jump instantly. Just put your fears aside and have faith that jumping from vine to vine at full speed will somehow work out, and that you'll never touch a deadly bee. What's the point of this? As I'll discuss later, most of the gameplay of this game is the act of looking for secrets. Running through levels at full speed isn't going to help you find any so there's really no "cheating" involved. It's just a convenient way to get to a particular part of a level if that's where you think the secret is. Again, the game is trying to help you, and stays true to its promise, never tricking you and never losing your trust.
Finally, the most ethereal consistency comes in the methods of hiding secrets. The game uses a number of devices which the observant player will learn. The oldest trick in the book is that a big secret is often hidden just barely beyond a small one. It might look like the screen would scroll up a bit if you jumped to that cliff...and it does, revealing a not-so-valuable banana coin. You found the "secret" so time to move on, right? Well the all-valuable DK coin might be just a little bit higher if you noticed the smaller cliff above the one you're standing on.
The game also constantly tests the players assumption and first instincts. After 10 levels of starting on the left side of the screen and scrolling right to progress, it trains the player to assume all levels are this way, then sneaks in a level where the DK coin is mere inches to the left. Most players will never even realize going left was an option. And where is it "legal" to hide a DK coin? I'm sorry to ruin this secret, but I just can't resist. 39 of the DK coins are hidden somewhere inside a level. Exactly 1 DK coin is hidden in a bonus room inside a level. A secret within a secret. The game has trained the player to assume that no secrets will be in a bonus room, so what better place to hide something?
More subtly, the layout of levels often subconsciously suggests a certain path. Jumping from this ledge to that vine and so on just looks right. It feels like the right way to go. And as soon as you believe it's the right way to go, the game has got you. And that is the beauty of Donkey Kong Country 2: it's a constant psychological battle against your own assumptions. Every step of the way, the game is trying to fool you. The bananas are on your side, the but the rest of the level is not. Like a good mystery, there's always a clue---there's always some indication---of where a secret is. There's a way to find every secret without having to constantly kill yourself by jumping into random pits (the bane of Donkey Kong Country 1).
Suspense and Secrets In my article on suspense, I talked about how making something scary happen 5% of the time makes the player very careful and on-edge the other 95% of the time, even when there's nothing to be afraid of. The player doesn't know there's nothing to be afraid of since every little step might be that 5%. Donkey Kong Country 2 creates that exact same feeling. The game is so clever and so cunning that every careless step you take just might be the one that bypasses the secret. This means that even though it's a platform game, running to the end of each level is the last thing the player wants to do. It takes only 1-3 minutes to run through any level of the game, but since the real challenge is to find secrets, not pass levels, there's much more gameplay. A player might spend 10 minutes on a 1 minute level...or even longer.
I'll close by leaving you with the thought of how little of the game's art and programming assets were devoted to these secrets. The graphics for the DK coin, the bonus rooms, and the system of keeping track of which secrets have been found are all miniscule compared to the design of 40 levels filled with animating enemies. Look how far some solid design carried this game. By designing levels around secrets---not sticking secrets into levels---this 5% of development effort made the difference between a C- game and an A+ game.
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:47 pm
[…] Being quite obviously a very important part of any game, I decided to do a bit of research on the subject of level design. I found quite a few sites talking about what makes a level good and all of that, but Sirlin.net inparticular had lots of good articles, specifically its artical on secrets in platform games. In the early days, platform games were about trying not to die. Dying occurred frequently and the main goal of the game was to get through all the levels. As time went on, we see less and less emphasis on the dexterity of passing levels and more and more emphasis on finding secrets. […]
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:55 am
Very well written and true article. These games helped further the idea of creative level design, secrets hidden simply, and are still (in my opinion) the best games out there. DKC2 holds a special place in my heart, as it made up a large portion of my introduction to gaming, and I was at the time too uncoordinated to beat it. After forgetting about it I beat it recently, not even getting the tokens, and it felt like a weight lifted. So what if I had beaten any other game? I had just beaten a game that I had never come close to beating. Go me!
Very good article =)
December 9th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
I never knew why I liked that game so much. Now I know. Thanks.
December 10th, 2006 at 5:54 am
So maybe this is why I didn’t enjoy the game so much. Back in the SNES day I played DKC2 and just passed through levels, finding secrets didn’t seem like of a fun thing to do.
I will try to play it again. Having it on the VC would be nice.
February 24th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
http://powerlevels.mgsale.com/
March 11th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Yes i know exactly what you mean, rareware were my childhood heroes. I remember it never being enough to simply pass their games but i had this nagging urge to also “clock” each one. Where as many other games i’d feel content just to pass it with no real desire to exploit everything in it.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
I played this game religiously (and completed it completely) when I received it for christmas the year it came out. Now that I’m older and more serious about games, I recently went back to play it again to find out why I loved it so much. This article is precisely (down to the feelings about playing against the designer) my thoughts\opinions about this game. Thank you.
March 29th, 2007 at 4:09 am
I would certainly agree with Donkey Kong County 2. It’s all one game of psychology, not to beat the final boss. Realising the real mission in the game itself is testament to level of psychology in it.
April 12th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Are you there?…
I would love to hear more about this ……
April 28th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Wow. That was an amazing article.
I love the secrets and suspense section, since not all genres can achieve that. I absolutely loved Halo 1, and how there were numerous easter eggs to find, hidden so intricately. My favorite easter egg of all time is the Seige of Madrigal song that you can find by standing in a very obscure spot that would normally be completely out of reach (and out of sight) at the end of a level.
May 29th, 2007 at 5:28 am
I remember that elusive DK Coin hidden inside a bonus room. “Kannon’s Klaim” World 2, level 2, first bonus of the level on the far right. Oh yeah, I do remember it, mainly because of the pain it caused me. I was a little kid, with no Internet access and no strategy guide, just a SNES with Donkey Kong Country 2. I played it with my cousins, taking turns on each level. Our goal was to finish the game and get on with it. But something caught my attention: The bonus rooms and the DK Coins. First of all, the game rewarded me for finding and clearing at least 15 bonuses, the chance to play harder levels at the Lost World. That gave me the initial push to find every secret in the game, to play those harder levels. However, I noticed something odd. In those Lost World levels, the bonus rewards were not bonus coins but DK Coins. This meant that the DK Coins were of far more importance than the bonus coins. If the bonus coins allowed me to play secret levels, surely the DK Coins must offer me something better.
That’s when I started to hunt all the DK Coins. Sure, Cranky taunting me into being number 1 helped, but I wanted to find all the DK Coins mostly out of curiosity. What will the game offer me after I find every single DK Coin? By that time my cousins stopped playing since we’ve alredy “finished” the game, but I kept at it, I wanted to know what those DK Coins guarded with so much effort. As time went by, all the DK Coins started to appear, from pits to secret rooms, every location was being revealed. Suddenly, I had 39 DK Coins!! “At last!! The ultimate secret guarded within this game will be revealed to me!!” I said to myself.
So I checked what level was missing a DK Coin… Kannon’s Klaim. It was one of those levels that I made a temporary retreat, but didn’t managed to find the DK Coin even after coming back dozens of times!! So I searched and searched and searched… I even asked Cranky Kong and he said the same thing “To the right! It’s to the far right!” But to the far right was only a bonus stage!! Surely the DK Coin couldn’t be inside the bonus stage, that would be impossible since the game taught me that there were no DK Coins inside bonus stages. After months of searching with no results, I made a huge mistake… I gave up. Angered and frustrated, I forgot about the game and moved on thinking it was impossible.
A long time later, I was at Toys-R-Us helping my parents with “Santa”. While walking through the videogame section I spotted something: The Donkey Kong Country 2 Strategy Guide!! It was a sign, I had to buy it, I had to find that DK Coin no matter what!! I payed $13.95 just to know where the DK Coin was located (Guide was sealed in plastic so I had no choice). After I bought it, I rushed and looked at the Kannon’s Klaim level to see the DK Coin location. And there it was… inside a bonus room… to the far right just like Cranky said.
You see, all I had to do was keep going to the right, even inside the bonus room and the DK Coin was there. I shouldn’t have stopped after finding the bonus room, thinking that was the secret Cranky was refering to, I should’ve kept going instead. And yet, because the game fooled me into thinking that there were no DK Coins inside bonus rooms, I gave up. After finding it, I felt like I just made a huge accomplishment! I finally got that sneaky coin and I finally took 1st place in Cranky’s Rankings (Take that Mario!!). Sure, I had to use a guide just for that coin, but I applaud Rare for being so clever with that one.
Finding that DK Coin along with my DK Coin hunt was one of the best experiences of my childhood, and it taught me a lot. Maybe that’s why I was better at Banjo-Kazooie than my friends, and they owned the game not me. Never over-trust a game. It’s good to play by the rules, but sometimes we have to play our way and not the game’s way. Remember, the enemies are not only the grunts you see walking back and forth, the game itself is also an enemy, and it can be the toughest of all the enemies inside it!
August 8th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
If the bonus coins allowed me to play secret levels, surely the DK Coins must offer me something better.
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:34 am
It just occured to me after many years. WHERE IS SUPER METROID?
Sirlin…. are you some sort of Metroid Racist?
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:22 am
Super Metroid is great, no doubt about it, though I always classified it as a different type of game than the ones mentioned here. Also, the DK coins of DKC2 drive home the point about how to hide things well. I have no complaints about Super Metroid though.
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I suppose I can accept that.
No complaints about the use of DK2 or anything. was just genuinely surprised to not see it on the game list at first. But yeah, I suppose the genre is not quite the same (arguably, but thats not important).
October 10th, 2007 at 4:47 am
As it pertains to this article, I don’t think Super Metroid was that good in the “secrets hiding” department. It felt more like DKC1’s “plummet and hope” style — except instead of falling and killing yourself in lots of different places, you were using the visor scope thing all over the place. Not all secrets were this way, obviously, as a good number could be discovered by clever, non-tool assisted observation, but getting 100% pretty much mandated tedious scoping around.
And that’s probably what the designers intended; I just didn’t like that aspect of it.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I uh… I like Fatal Frame.
Yeah.
Aw hell! There was this one part, towards the upper-echelon of the whole ordeal, where you find yourself (yourself being an insurmountably fragile chiquita with a disastrously low health bar) faced with a small room. That very chamber included an entrance into said room, and another gateway into some unknown place; well, somewhat unknown - the player is informed that they want to be in that room, though at this point, one is not so privy to the details.
In any case, between you and Door #2 (come on down) there is an incredibly hostile phantom, one that is only too eager to beat the ever-loving shit out of your sniveling photographer.
More brilliant still, the camera in your possession at this point seems to be malfunctioning; it just isn’t hurting this enemy! (For those who don’t know, Fatal Frame is played by snapping pictures of ghosts, so as to erase them)
Notably within Fatal Frame, there are very few incredibly vicious enemies, save towards the very end. In fact, in our present circumstances, one has met none quite so disastrous as the immediate challenge. Moreover, there are not really a lot of things to fight total. Less than twenty, I’d say. So anything that approaches you becomes #1 priority, end that opponent; because the game just doesn’t seem to progress until you finalize things with the dude at hand.
In the players mind, there’s only one explanation for an unbeatable monster: ‘I must have forgotten something!”
And so we backtrack - check this room, check that room, search search search. This of course, is the most frustrating & agonizing experience, particularly because one is constantly expecting something else of frightening descent to appear - something you’d forgotten (Another spooky aspect of Fatal Frame is the changing of climates in familiar areas. Rooms once deemed safe may be utterly inhospitable a few scenes later, this is particularly prevalent in the very first scene; I’d explain it, but I’m robbing you of an incredibly cerebral work of art).
The game was made to hate you; made to make you hate yourself. Why? Because in that golden idol room just past Mr. Kick-Your-Ass is an upgrade to your camera, a new lens that lets you kill that next level of baddy.
Fatal Frame is a work of game-design genius
June 28th, 2008 at 5:51 am
[…] David Sirlin’s excellent analysis of Donkey Kong Country 2’s secrets was the first writing that got me thinking this way. Time and time again, working on small games with tight deadlines and short QA cycles, we took advantage of this technique on our cellphone games. […]
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Donkey Kong Country 2 wasn’t easy. Sure the earlier levels could just be run through but there were many real challenges in getting to the end of the level as the game progressed.
Everything else you said is right on though.
October 4th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Not a platformer per se but Ocarina Of Time had the wonderful gold skulltulas, spiders that are lurking in high places and dark corners. You find them by looking around in those places you wouldn’t normally and, this was awesome, by listening to the very subtle noise they make. Normally this cue get’s lost in the noise of the battles so you pay a lot of attention.
Besides the game doesn’t even mentions you that you must collect them, you just starts collecting them way before finding out who are you collecting them for, iff you do find it out.