![]() Either skill set will match up with either genre of gameplay. That is, they wanted to make it so levels in the same genre could feel different. Thus, Super Mario World isolates two different skill sets: timing and speed. Starting with Super Mario World, the designers deliberately targeted different skill sets when making levels. If you were designing platformers in 1986, you’d be done preparing already. Of course, games have advanced a lot since then, so you also have to take into account the next big development that Mario games introduced: skill set isolation. That’s a decision you can make before you even start your level! Accordingly, one of the first steps a designer takes when making a level is to decide on the level’s genre focus. Every level in a Mario game is going to focus either on platformer content or action content. Mario games are made up of the action and platformer genres. The good news is that the theory of composite games actually makes it easier to figure out what to put into your Mario levels, if you understand the theory correctly. Okay, that was a lot of theory, but I’m going to illustrate composite design and what it means in Mario Maker. So How Does This Translate to Level Design? ![]() This back-and-forth motion produces a type of ongoing player focus that I call composite flow. A true composite game will bounce back and forth between its two composited genres to keep the gameplay feeling fresh. That’s not all a composite game does, though. The Super Mario Bros games are composites of the action and platformer genres. It illustrates the composite design principle perfectly: the player can solve action game problems (defeating enemies) by using platformer mechanics (jumping). The first real composite game, Super Mario Bros, is a composite of the action and platformer genres. A composite game combines two existing genres, allowing the player to use the mechanics of one genre to solve the problems of another genre. Qualitative evolutions didn’t take on their modern form until Shigeru Miyamoto invented the composite game. These are all quantitative expansions, which I spoke about in the previous two articles. These games grew more difficult when enemies got faster, became more numerous, or fired more often. In the arcade era, video games like Space Invaders, Pac-Man or Galaga derived all of their gameplay from just a couple of variables. I've written about this extensively, but only the first two eras are relevant to our understanding of Mario-style game design. The history of video game design breaks down into three eras: the arcade era, the composite era, and the set piece era. In order to fully understand skill themes, we first need to dive briefly into the history of video game design. The level code is F7E5 0000 0125 6EF3 if you want to try it yourself. The Super Mario World Method: Understanding Skill Themes
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