Hey, it’s Mark with Game Maker’s Toolkit.
You know the drill by now!
Every year, I use my last video on this channel
to celebrate a game that did something different.
A game that was innovative,
inventive, or just plain smart.
In previous instalments I’ve looked
at masterful murder mysteries,
micro RPGs, and slithering snake-based adventures.
But this year, for 2023, I… need
to wind the clock back a bit.
So, back in 2015 I made a video
about the new Tomb Raider games.
Well, they’re not new now
- but they were new then.
Anyway - the video was all about how
dull the climbing is in those games.
Lara Croft’s heroic scramble
up a cliff face is represented
by… pretty much just holding up on
the analogue stick for, like, 5 minutes.
And since that video’s release…
well, things haven’t changed much.
Alloy hikes up the mountains of Horizon with
little need for the player's involvement.
And Atreus’s epic climb up the
wall of Asgard might have been
terrifying for him - but it was no problem for me.
However, in 2023 we finally got a game
that dared to do things differently.
A game that makes climbing…
interesting and engrossing.
And so, without further ado, I want to tell you
that this year’s most innovative game is… Jusant.
Jusant, from developer DON’T NOD,
is a wistful, zen-like odyssey up
a mahoosive mountain - and the only way
to the top is to start climbing.
This video does not contain
any spoilers for Jusant, by the way,
so feel free to watch
before you go play the game.
Okay, so like I said in the intro, one of my
biggest bugbears with Lara’s climbing is that the
action on screen feels completely disconnected
to the stuff you’re doing on the controller.
But Jusant tries something different.
Lemme break down how climbing works.
When we’re on a wall, we can use the left
analogue stick to hunt for nearby handholds.
Moving the stick essentially shifts a
cursor around in two dimensions - and
if that cursor overlaps with a valid
handhold, the character will reach out.
This system allows us to freely pick whichever
handhold we want - even picking between one that
is close and one that is far away, simply by
moving the stick further away from the centre.
And yes, I did spend an entire
day remaking the game in Unity…
for the benefit of this 10 second demonstration.
That, that probably wasn’t worth it, to be honest.
But here we are.
Anyway - if the character is reaching towards
a handhold, we can grab it by using the
corresponding trigger - left trigger for the
left hand, right trigger for the right hand.
That trigger must now remain held down,
while we hunt for the next handhold.
So - this system ends up creating a
deep connection between what you’re
doing on the controller - and what
the protagonist is doing on screen.
You push the analogue stick
out to hunt for handholds,
just like how the character reaches out their arm.
The rhythmic switching from the left to right
triggers mimics the hand-over-hand
movement of real-life rock climbing.
And having to hold down a trigger at
all times means you’re gripping the
controller… in the same way the
character is gripping the wall.
You let go, they let go.
And DON’T NOD did want to go even further - an
early prototype had you controlling both the
arms and the legs, using all four buttons
on the top of the pad for hands and feet.
But that proved overly complicated.
The developer also wanted to involve the
controller when jumping to far-off handholds:
the idea was that you had to tilt
the stick opposite from the jump to
coil up and build momentum before
releasing the stick to spring up.
But this proved difficult to teach and execute.
So in the end, the devs settled on holding the
jump button to, essentially, charge up the jump.
Now, look, it’s obviously not
essential for a game to have you
mimic the character’s actions on the controller.
But this sort of kinaesthetic design,
as it’s called, has proven to be a
wildly successful trick for making game
mechanics more immersive and engaging.
Whether that’s holding the button down
for longer to make Mario jump higher.
Or pulling back on the analogue stick
to reel in a ghost in Luigi’s Mansion.
That little up-down flick of the stick
to do a manual in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
Or the infamous arcade stick inputs needed to pull
off a fireball or an uppercut in Street Fighter.
And of course, we have seen
this applied to climbing before.
The developers at DON’T NOD were notably
inspired by the way you clench the controller
in Shadow of the Colossus, in order to
stay hanging on to each massive monster.
And Ubisoft’s Grow Home inspired the use of left
and right triggers for the left and right hands.
What makes Jusant special, then, is doing all
of this stuff simultaneously - and doing it
with a human character, rather than a goofy
red robot that can bend in unrealistic ways.
Sidenote: It’s very much worth noting that
complex wrangling of a controller can
prove problematic for players with
certain types of motor impairments.
I mean, heck, I had to play Jusant in
like 20 minute sessions because holding
the triggers down for so long played
havoc with my repetitive strain injury.
So - hats off to DON’T NOD for also offering a
number of accessibility settings
that can provide easier input.
Now - the simple control scheme
is not my only problem with the
Uncharted-era of climbing systems.
You can’t make a game better just
by adding in more buttons - or else
every game would have you walk
around like you’re playing QWOP.
No - the real problem is that
climbing requires next-to-no thought,
no problem solving, no decision making -
none of the stuff that makes games great.
And that’s completely at odds with real climbing!
Like, did you know that in rock climbing, a
route up a wall is actually called a “problem”.
And that’s because climbing
isn’t just about strength and
stamina - but it’s about planning how
you’ll move from handhold to handhold.
How you’ll shift your body, and
how you’ll use different holds,
positions, and grips to get to the top.
That’s pretty tough to capture in a
video game - but Jusant gets close,
with the use of two tools:
the rope, and the piton.
So whenever you start a climb, the character will
automatically attach their rope to a
carabiner that’s embedded in the wall.
This means that if you fall, you’ll get
snagged by the rope and can climb back up.
But then you’ve got the pitons.
These can be wedged into the wall
to create, essentially, checkpoints.
Now when you fall, you’ll be
caught by your most recent piton.
You only have three to spare, though,
so you’ll need to use them judiciously.
This puts you in charge of when and where to save
- giving you more decisions to make as you climb.
However: the rope is not just a
clever twist on the save system.
You see, the rope is not infinitely long -
it is, in fact, exactly 40 metres in length,
and so you’ll need to ensure that you have enough
slack to make it to the top of the current climb.
That might mean you have to take a shorter
route - or work back on yourself to pull
out a nuisance piton that’s pulling
the rope in the wrong direction.
And the rope is also a proper physics object that
can get caught and tangled on different objects.
So at times, the rope is your saviour, but
at other times it’s your biggest obstacle.
Though - DON’T NOD does make a couple concessions.
For one, there’s a little
cheat in the player’s favour:
when you are close to a ledge, the rope
will magically grow an extra five metres,
to avoid those annoying moments where the rope
is just a little bit too short to make it.
And also there are these relay points which allow
you to reset your entire rope to that point.
These are a nifty addition - relays
give you a specific point to aim for,
so you’re not always simply going up.
And without the relay, there would be a
strict upper limit on how long a climb
could be without giving the player
some flat ground to reset their rope.
With the relay, though, DON’T NOD could add a few
epic climbs where you’re on the
wall for significantly longer.
It’s such a relief to get to the top
and finally let go of those triggers.
But there’s even more to the rope
- because there’s also the way
that it greatly expands the available play space.
With climbing and jumping alone, you
can only really explore the area that’s
immediately around you - there always has to
be a viable handhold within jumping distance.
But the rope lets you go much, much further.
You can place a piton in the wall, abseil
down, and then swing along the wall - this
gives you a massive arc to explore, letting you
grab onto ledges far away from any handhold.
And later, the game takes
this into the third dimension.
You might have to climb a wall,
then dangle down beneath it,
and swing beyond the wall to another
climbing surface further back.
And elsewhere in the game,
DON’T NOD adds in additional challenges
- through changes in the environment.
Like - you can hit a button to make these plants
sprout buds that you can use as handholds. Useful.
But if they’re in direct sunlight, then
the buds will slowly wilt and then die.
This forces you to move fast,
and use your pitons for safety.
At times, Jusant reminds me of the classic
Tomb Raider games, where you have to size
up the space and decide how you’re going to
use your different jumps to get from A to B.
A proper three dimensional puzzle game.
Though… I don’t want to oversell it.
Because, okay… I’ll come back
to that thought in a minute.
The final thing that makes
those old climbing systems
boring is that there’s absolutely no danger.
No stakes. No peril.
In this scene, where Lara Croft is clambering up a
wobbling radio tower, she’s absolutely terrified.
But I’m just… not.
Changing the controls to be more engrossing
might help me connect more with the character.
But I think it has to go further than that.
Earlier this year we looked at the
mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics framework,
which shows how the game’s mechanics
can impact the player’s behaviour,
which can, in turn, impact
the player’s emotional state.
And so game designers can pick game mechanics
that will put players in the right frame of mind.
Whether that’s making the player feel like
a badass, or feel absolutely terrified.
And if you want players to feel scared,
then you probably need some
sort of consequence for failure.
And in these sections, Tomb Raider just… doesn’t.
But, well, neither does Jusant, really.
For one, you simply cannot die in Jusant.
There are invisible walls to stop
you from walking off a cliff.
And because you’re automatically attached to the
rope at the start of every climb, then letting
go of the handholds will just send you back
down - or back to the last piton you placed.
And even then… it’s extremely
rare to ever fall off in Jusant.
The most likely reason would
be to run out of stamina.
You see, completing a valid action will
deplete some stamina - a tiny amount
when grabbing a handhold, or a lot when jumping.
Now DON’T NOD went through
many iterations of this system,
including having independent
stamina gauges for each arm.
A chunk system where if you
deplete an entire chunk,
it wouldn’t regenerate until you touch the ground.
A system where you could only regenerate
stamina while hanging from the rope.
And a system where if you run out of stamina,
you’d have to manually descend all the
way back to the ground and start again.
Ultimately, playtesting showed
that none of these were a good fit.
Some felt overly punitive, others
disrupted the climbing flow,
and others were difficult to
communicate to the player.
In the end, DON’T NOD went with something
far more simple: your stamina drops,
but it can be replenished, at any
time, by clicking in the left stick.
However, big actions like jumps
will permanently reduce the size
of the stamina bar until you’re on flat ground.
So the more you jump, the more
often you’ll need to rest.
This means that the only way you
can ever really run out of stamina
is to completely ignore these obvious
prompts to stop and rest for a second.
And so stamina management just ends up being…
like, a little nuisance thing to nurse.
Never something you’re really worrying about -
like you might in, say, Shadow of the Colossus.
And this means Jusant almost never makes
you feel like you’re in any real danger.
But here’s the thing… that’s not
what DON’T NOD was going for.
The developer tells me that the intention for
this game was to make a peaceful experience
without pressure. A chill, atmospheric
adventure - inspired, primarily, by Journey.
And so the developers deliberately removed
aspects that would cause friction and frustration.
That’s why I don’t want to oversell
the game’s problem-solving gameplay:
there’s some smart ideas in here, but nothing
that’s going to cause you significant trouble.
And that’s because it would
disrupt DON’T NOD’s intended flow.
And developer intention… is something I’ve perhaps
struggled to consider in my previous videos.
Like, let’s go back to the climbing
in Tomb Raider and Uncharted.
Were the developers ever actually intending
this stuff to mimic real-life rock climbing?
Probably not.
As I explored in this video on mixing genres,
the climbing sections are just supposed to be
something simple to do as a bit of downtime
between the more involving combat sections.
And so, at times, I have criticised games
because they haven’t incorporated some mechanic,
system, or idea… even though the games were
never trying to do that in the first place.
I wanted Spider-Man to have a complex web-swinging
system that took skill and effort to master.
But Insomniac just wanted every
player to feel like Spidey from
the moment they picked up the controller.
And maybe this is me getting older
and wiser and realising that, hey,
not everything is supposed to revolve around me.
I am not the protagonist of reality.
Maybe this is from talking to more
developers about how games get made.
Maybe this is from becoming a game developer
myself - and having my own developer intentions!
Whatever the case, if there’s one regret I
have about past episodes of GMTK, it’s this.
So instead of saying - hey, I
wish Jusant was more challenging
or more punitive - I’ll instead
take the game on its own merits.
Then I can look at the stuff I like about
the game - the immersive control scheme,
the clever rope physics, the thoughtful
checkpoint system - and stash that in
the ol’ toolkit as a good example to point to.
And for the rest - well, instead of seeing it
as something for Jusant to fix, I can see it
as an opportunity, for another developer, with
different intentions, to tackle in the future.
What I’m saying is - hey, Square Enix,
if you want to give the next Tomb
Raider game a new identity… play Jusant.
It’s on Game Pass! It’s great!
Okay. Hello.
That got a bit weird and
personal towards the end, huh?
But then I brought it back to Jusant
before things got out of hand. Phew.
Thanks so much to DON’T NOD for
speaking to me for this episode.
And for sharing those behind the scenes videos.
It's now time for some
honourable mentions!
Storyteller is a wildly ambitious puzzle game,
where you are given an empty
comic book and a title.
Now you have to fill in the spaces
with characters, objects, and themes,
to make a narrative that fits the prompt.
It plays on visual language and, well, story
telling to make a completely new type of puzzle.
Terra Nil is a city-builder
with a stark ecological message.
Instead of stripping a planet for resources,
the game is actually about undoing the
greedy grubbing of a previous generation.
So you have to carefully plop down buildings
that will replenish and revitalise the
land - and then pack everything
up and bugger off back into space.
Shadows of Doubt is an epic detective simulator.
The game generates a city block, filled
with hundreds of people who have lives,
jobs, relationships, and daily routines.
When one of those citizens is murdered, you’ll
have to work the case in order to find the
killer - using stuff like fingerprints,
CCTV recordings, and employee databases.
All neatly organised on a caseboard,
complete with pins and red string.
Pseudoregalia is a Metroidvania
that looks like a lost N64 game,
and has some of the best 3D platforming in years.
You can mix and match various moves
- like a long jump, a ground pound,
and a wall kick, to navigate
blocky obstacle courses.
And, if you’re good enough, break
the game’s sequence entirely.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom deserves a
nod for its brilliant Ultrahand system.
This thing lets Link fuse things
together in order to make vehicles,
weapons, and problem-solving tools.
It’s elegantly designed, to make
it easy to build whatever you want.
And it means you can play the game
in pretty much any way you desire.
There’s a full video on the
channel about how Nintendo made it.
Viewfinder is a mind-blowing
technical masterpiece.
You can take a photo, and
then place down the Polaroid
to summon the photo’s contents into the world.
That never stops being impressive.
And it’s also just a very good puzzle game with
lots of clever twists on this central mechanic.
And Chants of Sennaar is a game about language.
You must decipher an unknown alphabet in
order to make your way up a massive tower.
You’ll have to use contextual clues and leaps
of logic in order to guess
what each letter symbolises.
And then do it all again, with a fresh
set of glyphs, on the next floor.
Wow - turns out there were loads of
incredibly innovative games this year!
Let me know if I missed any
in the comments down below.
Thanks so much for watching
Game Maker’s Toolkit this year.
In the last twelve months I’ve made videos on
The Sims, Zelda, Banjo Kazooie, Resident Evil 4,
detective games, the MDA framework, 2D
cameras, and Valve’s playtesting approach.
There was another record-breaking game
jam, a new series about short indie games,
and four devlogs for Mind Over Magnet -
which you can now wishlist over on Steam.
I’ll see you in January, for the - can you believe
it - tenth year of doing Game Maker’s Toolkit.
Time flies when you’re having fun.