Recently, I discovered a really astonishing, old JRPG gem. It’s a game called Suikoden. It has been released on the Playstation 1 and it’s currently available on PSN as a PSone classic. On a side note: I really enjoy the PSone classic series. Especially the PSP/PS3 cross-play is convenient. But back to Suikoden:

It’s a very formulaic JRPG. It doesn’t even look that great. The character sprites are average. The tiles often look drab and washed-out. I found the setting especially unappealing. It’s a combination of uninspired western LOTR fantasy and dry, obscure asian mythology. It lacks the style and flamboyance of a Square Enix production.

But there is more here that meets the eye. The first few quests are formulaic but it soon becomes apparent that the story is constructed in a very well thought-out way. It’s just laced with graceful set-ups and pay-offs that keep the ball rolling. The missions always make sense within the overall story. The characters are stereotypical but their intentions are clear and consistent.

Unremarkable but solid. The regular battle screen is standard JRPG fare.

And then it gets really crazy. The plot revolves around the son of a general being accidentally accused of treason and turning into a the leader of a rebel army. And the game actually TOTALLY pulls this off. So eventually, you move into your own rebel hideout. You start recruiting dudes for your army. Almost every NPC in the game is a character you can recruit. There is a total of 108 (!!!!) individual characters. Think Final Fantasy where every NPC you talk to is a character you can collect in a Pokémon-esque fashion. And then add a touch of Harvest Moon for the way your rebel base grows as characters come in.

Actually, I always found myself thinking about how close this game feels to something like Mass Effect. And yet it’s light-years ahead of Bioware in some regard. Here are some observations.

• Depicting War – The story is very much centered around war. So is Mass Effect. Many games are. The unique thing about Suikoden is that it actually takes the time to develop mechanics do properly address this topic. Most games have a central game mechanic that focuses on small-scale combat. In RPGs usually a small team of heroes fights small groups of enemies. But those systems always seem to break down when they need to represent a different scale of combat. So in Mass Effect 3 when you are fighting the Reapers it becomes very difficult to rationalize why you still control just 3 guys even though the story vamps up the scale to depict a huge galactic war. You were supposed to be a person, who pulls the strings. But suddenly you turn into an insignificant gear in a huge engine that seems to be running just fine without you. The opposite happens when the game wants to depict duels. It becomes very difficult to design boss fight that work with the combat mechanics The mechanics weren’t made with boss fights in mind.

  

  Suikoden has a separate battle mechanic to show major battles.

  Suikoden has 3 different combat mechanics for different scales. There is a standard JRPG menu battle system for questing and various missions. There is a simple but effective grand battle system to depict major confrontation between armies. There is also a simple duel system for some boss fights. The latter two are basically dressed-up variations on Rock-paper-scissors. But they do a great job of communicating the idea.

• Clustering – With 108 characters, one would assume it’s easy to lose track of them all. After all, there is this legend that humans can only remember 7 items at once. And sure, there are some forgettable characters among them. But it’s not as chaotic as the sheer number would suggest. I was actually surprised how meaningful and memorable the characters were. I think one reason for this is that the game used multiple layers of clustering. Characters are not just random items you collect. Certain characters belong together. So for example, some characters have relationships and ties with each others. There are lovers, friends and families. You act out those relationships in the story. Some characters only join you if you bring another character they know with you.

  Another way of clustering is the Unity command. Some characters can join with each other during combat for especially devastating attacks. These attacks become very important when choosing which characters to bring with you. Which characters work together is often influenced by their relationships. Friends tend to be able to use Unity together but now always. It’s something you discover and act out yourself.

  Finally, the characters are actually visually clustered in the grand battles. In this system, the characters represent different orders. Characters that represent similar orders are clustered in triplets.

  

  During major battles, characters represent commands. Related characters are thematically clustered.

  So for example, a certain bow attack is represented by different 3 elf characters, who use bows. It’s not only a great way communicate the relationship between individuals and a massive battle. Just as the above examples, it also additionally helps grouping the various characters into clusters and helps keeping track of them.

  I always felt the best storytelling in Mass Effect, especially the 3rd one, were the little moments where characters interacted with each other – conversations you accidentally pick up in a hallway or in an elevator. But perhaps with the exception of Mass Effect 3, the crew still felt more like a loose collection of individuals. All the relationships were often aimed at Shepard, not at each other. There rarely was anything going on independently of the player. Suikoden demonstrates quite well how you can maintain an incredibly large and vivid cast if you just establish some simple relationships between them.

• Dog Fort – Personally, the game didn’t really start for me until I moved into the fortress. Initially, it’s a dungeon you need to clear from monsters. The various team members you recruit soon move in, set up their own rooms and establish facilities. Eventually, new areas are opened as the fortress grows. It’s incredibly satisfying. It taps into this childish joy of building a fort out of pillows or a tree house. It’s also a great tool to visualize the growth of your army. A modest cave dwelling soon turns into a mighty fortress.

  

  Your ugly rock soon turns into… ugly rock with a castle within.

  I was reminded that Mass Effect never really had anything like this. Some areas of the Normandy unlock gradually in Mass Effect 2. And there are some upgrades you can install on a list somewhere. But it’s never something you feel and experience. It’s never something that surprises you. It never keeps you guessing how far it will go. The Normandy doesn’t grow into something different.

• Squad – I had some flashbacks to strategy games like X-Com or Jagged Alliance when choosing squad members. You only have 5 slots. Some missions require you to take some members with you. So you constantly need to try out new combinations. It’s also pretty fun to do it anyway. The fact that there are so many characters is liberating. It’s clear that you won’t be able to try every one of them so it’s ok to just go with personal preferences. There is a front-row/back-row mechanic to help you trimming down the list of possible candidates. The above mentioned Unity command rewards experiments. Because of the grand battle mechanic, you don’t feel too bad about never using certain characters. There are other opportunities to make each one of the 108 team members feel useful. In contrast, I was reminded of how Mass Effect 1 rewarded you for playing the entire game with just 2 characters and having the rest just rot on the ship and do nothing.

• Leveling – Finally, there is a great game design detail I really appreciated. Leveling is tweaked in a very specific yet extreme way. It seems like characters level up incredibly fast when fighting much stronger monsters. But once they reach a certain level, the leveling plateaus. So when you bring in a new team member to the squad, they are able to catch up with the rest almost instantly. It takes just 2 or 3 battles, it’s THAT extreme. On the flip side, grinding levels doesn’t really work due to the plateau effect. So level bosses are really crisply balanced. I had multiple boss fights throughout the game where I literally won with my last character in my final round. I’d love to learn about the mathematics behind the system. It seems to be really well designed. Again, I remember the awkward solution in Mass Effect where characters would level up even if they were waiting on your ship.

In general, Suikoden is really an incredibly solid game with lots of bold, well designed solutions. I can thoroughly recommend it. I’m actually thinking of playing the second part was well. I heard that it’s even better. It’s not on PSone Classics. And apparently they didn’t print too many copies back in the days becase the prices on eBay are… discouraging. Yikes!

With my job contract wrapped up, I finally have some free time to catch up with some personal projects. One of them being working my way trough the pile of books and games that accumulated over the last two years or so. Just recently, I finished House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

Bricks may or may not have been shat.

House of Leaves is a book a lot of people are talking about. At least they were talking about it 3 years ago or so. I heard first about it when I began working on TRAUMA. I remember is specifically from one of the old Blogs of the Round Table posts. I started reading it when I finished my thesis project. I liked it a lot. But reading it required some effort so after a while, it turned into one of those books that would collect dust on my bedside table. And it’s not that I tried it. I had the book with me when I was in France in 2010. Never got to even open it. So naturally, I was quite relieved to be finally able to go back to it.

In case you are not familiar with it, it’s a very experimental book. It’s basically a horror mystery novel, not unlike Stephen King. It’s about a House, where supernatural things happen. The experimental part is its multi-layered narrative and its crazy layout.

The multi-layered narrative goes as follows. The story of the house is represented as a re-telling of a pseudo-documentary found-footage movie about the house. Specifically, it’s a book pretending to do an analysis and interpretation of the fictitious movie. It ends up re-telling the story of the movie, but also adds commentary. But that analysis is actually something a drug addict and small time criminal finds. Specifically, he finds notes of somebody, who tried to write the book. He becomes obsessed with gathering all the notes and compiling them into a finished book. But he also starts writing down comments and his own diaries and stories in-between. The two stories – the film book and the drug addict’s diary mix with each other. On top of that, there are notes from the editor of the whole thing. The multiple narrators start commenting on each other and it becomes a crazy ride.

And yes, the layout is crazy too. The different narrators each have their own font so you can tell who wrote what. At some point, the standard book layout breaks down and the text starts running all over the place. This often reflects what is happening in the story. In one instance, the protagonist needs to climb up a vertical shaft. For these pages, the text is set in a narrow column and needs to be read from bottom to top. Other times, the protagonist loses orientation. On those pages, you need to turn the book around because the text is written sideways or upside-down. But that’s just the most obvious instances. Some pages are almost blank. Others contain graphical elements.

Surprisingly manageable but still unsettling.

Reading it, what immediately jumps at you are the book’s extensive footnotes. The embedded movie book already has a fair share of references to other sources in the form of footnotes. The book is a story and its very own secondary literature at the same time. However, not all of the references are actually real. Some of them are fictitious articles, papers and books. Some of them are real. Following up those references often becomes this ARG-like experience. For even more fun, the drug addict adds his stories and comments in the form of footnotes – sometimes even commenting on the footnotes themselves. He even flat-out exposes some of the references as fake or adds his own red herrings.

I was glad to even find some small game references (Myst!). Indeed, the book could be seen an interesting blend of a novel and a game. Not only do the footnotes represent side-quests to peruse. The book itself also contains codes and cyphers. They don’t need to be solved to understand what is going on. But they add an active, exploratory part to the reading experience.

Also noteworthy is the idea of telling a story in the form of a fictitious critical analysis. It replaces the omniscient narrator with the voice of fictitious film/literary critics. The insight of each character’s thoughts and motivations is not the result of the narrators god-like status but the implied analysis and interpretation of other people. Funny enough, the result ends up feeling very similar to a “regular” story – it just adds flavor.

On the other hand, it’s not just flavor. There are some running themes that hold the different layers and the unusual style together. The most obvious being the theme of a labyrinth. The characters in the movie explore a labyrinth. The various footnotes, codes and embedded stories represent a labyrinth. The layout too often has a labyrinthine feel to it. It may be a crazy, experimental book. But it’s being held together by strong, unifying themes. Yo dawg, I heard u like labyrinths.

Which is also something one could criticize. Sure, the experimental nature is beautifully post-modern. It contains some amazingly smart observations and thoughts. But underneath it all, it’s a very simple, tired old story of a haunted house. The embedded secondary literature simulates the kind of high-brow discourse a real haunted house movie couldn’t even dream to illicit. In the end, you could just as well read a real deep book and it’s secondary literature instead.

But perhaps the trivial story underneath is somehow needed. As already mentioned, the book is certainly challenging. Without a simple, addictive page-turner core to guide you along, many readers would probably tire out and get stuck. In the end, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s just fun to discover. It’s chock full of ideas. It reminds you that books and other media can be different. For a game designer, certainly a recommended read.

One last thing: many of the references are actually different sources about expeditions and exploration. There was a spooky moment of finding quotes from the Shackleton expedition I just finished reading about. Did I mention that Danielewski also has a Polish background? And that there are a lot of German quotes in the book? *Cue X-Files Music* But anyhow, I was glad being able to steal some for the references for my own research. Thanks, Z!

This time on the Monster Hunter Podcast: Lowering Expectations. With Nick being on the podcast less frequently from now on, we form the Human Centipede together with Monomyth in exchange for stories from Monster Hunter Frontier.

Note: Sorry for the current delays. Shepard seems to be a bit maxed out with his new job. I will take over beginning with Episode 67. Hang in there.

Get the mp3 of the episode here.
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Enjoy!

So I’m doing some research into Roguelikes for reasons that shall remain secret for now. I have been looking at some examples to get a general taste for the myriad of flavors there are. One could say that I did a Wine Tasting with Rogulikes. Here are my notes.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Unaccessible depths.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is apparently a branch of a pretty old Roguelike. It’s quite apparent. The game is incredibly deep with lots of commands and abilities at your disposal. Apparently, the interesting thing about the “Stone Soup” branch is it’s focus on interface and on the graphic Tileset. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work for me which is actually something I encounter very often in Roguelikes. Some of it is simply for technical reasons. I use a Mac notebook keyboard with a German layout. In Germany, the keys Z and Y are switched. Most of the punctuation signs are in different places on the keyboard. Some keys just don’t exist, such as the keypad. Mac keyboards don’t even have the NUM Lock functionality. Using the Keyboard only gets me so far. Stone Soup has a lot of GUI workarounds but they don’t really work that smoothly. Every now and then, it’s still required to press a key. Using a mouse and and that many different keys doesn’t really work. Especially since some of the key commands need to be UPPERCASE. WTF?! The final straw is that the game frequently gives hard modal prompts. So if you accidentally walk in to an already discovered trap, you MUST answer yes or no to proceed.

I lost patience even during the tutorial. But then I still had to figure out how to even close the game! I gave it a second try at some point. I just started an actual game. It worked much better. But soon the levels started to feel huge and tedious. I was done after the 3rd floor or so

Things I liked: Resource management! Killing dudes and cutting their corpses down for emergency rations. Then getting food poisoning. Then trying to cure food poisoning with random potions. Good deal of inventory tinkering with curses and scrolls.

Things I didn’t like: Clunky interface. Lots of unnecessary hurdles break the fluidity of interaction. Help functions too cumbersome to use. Huge, sprawling levels with somewhat uninspired patterns (parallel corridors – yuck!). Repetitive combat – until you suddenly die.

DoomRL

The old days that never existed.

DoomRL is what actually started this investigation. Apparently a so-called Coffebreak Roguelike based on the game Doom. Derek Yu recently contributed a graphic tileset to it. Rare instance of a Roguelike actually using sounds. Turned of the music immediately – broke the mood. But the SFX are great. I think many game designers underestimate the role of SFX in the creation of Juicyness/Effectance/Kinaesthetics.

I don’t know about the Coffebreak but this clearly worked for me. There are solid mouse controls and just a few key commands to speed things up. Everything looks and feels much more polished than Stone Soup. But of course, there is much less options than in Stone Soup.

Things I liked: Interface works. SFX help making it feel juicy. Levels have a good size even if they don’t have the best randomizer in the world. Multiple difficulty levels ensure a wide appeal. It’s a game to cuddle up with on the couch.

Things I didn’t like: Runs out of ideas fast. Combat is polished but begins to feel repetitive. Eventually you just clear floor by floor by shooting at things. Not much inventory tinkering. Not much resource management. But perhaps I just haven’t seen enough.

AliensRL

Compatible with the MU-TH-UR 6000 system.

The guy, who made DoomRL made also AliensRL. So it’s actually quite similar. This one doesn’t have the tileset or even mouse control. But it has SFX and still feels good. Proof that DoomRL doesnt work just due to Doom nostalgia. And that mouse control isn’t even necessary for polished controls.

Incursion

Inspiring environments. But otherwise, a rather short excursion for me.

After Stone Soup, I knew I wouldn’t get warm with Incursion. I just started it once to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. It goes deeeeeep. I left even before I even died for the first time.

BUT, there is one cool thing I really LOVED. The individual rooms have a lot of flavor. There is a Textadventure-esque description as you enter each room. And it’s not just arbitrary. It actually reflects the design of the room. If the description says that there are vines hanging from the ceiling, you can actually SEE the vines in their ASCII glory.

Things I liked: The richness of the environment. The above descriptions. The level generator seems to be really solid too! I read that the levels are even spatially consistent (stairs in a level above overlap with the stairs with the level below).

Things I didn’t like: Super cumbersome system. Together with the keyboard issues, it’s utterly unplayable for me.

Brogue

Bringing back the “Art” into “ASCII Art”.

I save the best for the end. Brogue caught me off-guard. It looks like yet another RL but it’s a Goldilocks solution for me.

It uses ASCII art but in a beautifully detailed way. Water surfaces glitter. There is tall grass that blocks off your view. You can trample over it. Some enemies give of puffs of poisonous gas that slowly expands in a room. There are even hints of lighting. The level generation is really nice. Just the first levels already have lakes, chasms, hanging bridges. It makes the world very interesting, completely transcending the ASCII technology.

Another interesting thing is that it’s very streamlined and polished. There is no character generation, not even a name. There are full, working mouse controls along side with simple keyboard commands. Both work well. There are meaningful description of items, but not too much noise. No arbitrary lists of numbers and stats. Just the things you need.

And finally, there are actually few, but meaningful enemies. It’s not just an endless hack and slash through hordes of palette-swapped variations controlled by the same, mindless AI. The enemies actually have character. It’s starts simple with rats and jackals. But soon, you encounter monkeys that steal items from you and then run away, the fore-mentioned exploding gas bags, wizard goblins that keep their distance while summoning magic swords and jelly creatures that multiply when you hit them. Sometimes, you can even rescue creatures that have been imprisoned and they become your buddies and fight along your side.

It’s a really nice game that creates a rich and complex world in a very approachable and streamlined kind of way. Very unlike what you see in most Roguelikes.

Things I liked: Smooth interface. Simple stats, little combat. Varied enemy behavior. Varied and dynamic environment. No SFX but still feels alive due to subtle visual and interactive details. Oh an one more thing: each level fits on a screen without scrolling. Somehow, that feels incredibly reassuring. It grounds the world and limits the size of each level.

Things I didn’t like: It’s a matter of taste but I would prefer a little more resource management and inventory tinkering. SFX would be nice too.

Fatherhood

An combat-free approach worth exploring further.

And finally something completely different. Fatherhood is a Roguelike without combat. You must stop a flood from advancing by moving rocks. At the same time, you need to take care of your 3 children. Haven’t played that much so I can’t comment yet. But from what I saw, the idea was intriguing enough.

Speaking of which: I’m still looking for some other Roguelikes that have dynamic environments. I’m especially looking for ones that focus on interaction with the environment and less on combat. Any suggestions?

Just a very short notice:
I’ve nearly finished my next small game for android phones and tablets.

Anybody care to try it out?
Comment here on this post or send me an email.

I will also announce next version(s) on twitter, so would be great if you follow me:
twitter.com/sirleto

Find some screenshots, trailer and details about the game here:
 ludocrazy.com