Excerpt
Small, blue, articulate, and handy with a shovel, Shovel Knight the character became more than a mascot for Yacht Club. From his look to how he moved, he embodied the team's design philosophy. Ian Flood took a special interest in the character's mobility. Growing up on a steady diet of platformers, he had studied how their characters controlled as he ran and jumped. Mega Man, he observed, could be controlled in midair. That handling enabled Capcom to craft environments such as deep shafts lined with spikes that players could steer Mega Man through as he fell. Such a scenario was incompatible with Castlevania's Simon Belmont. Once players commit to a jump, there's no way to change his direction, a factor that players must consider when leaping over platforms in areas infested with flying monsters. Since you cannot pull back after committing to a jump, the only way to avoid enemies weaving through the air is to time jumps so that Simon aligns with the enemy in midair, at which time you can snap your whip to strike them down and clear a path.
Unlike Mega Man and Simon, Mario could gain acceleration when moving. Holding the B button causes players to break into a sprint, and jump further while sprinting. However, Mario doesn't stop moving the instant players let up on the button. He needs a second or two to slow down, just like a real person. Similarly, if Mario's running to the right, holding the left arrow causes him to skid before coming to rest. Mega Man and Simon Belmont go still as soon as players stop pressing arrows. Super Mario Bros. 2 introduced a difference in the mobility of its four playable characters. Luigi jumps the highest but slides on all terrain as if walking on ice.
Platformers were enjoying a resurgence, with many featuring controls tailored to the game's own needs. Team Meat's Super Meat Boy centers on tight controls, perfect timing, and memorization. While some levels demand that players keep moving, many feature obstacles broken up by empty platforms where players can catch their breath and take stock of the next stretch of terrain and traps. Cloudberry Kingdom by Pwnee Studios emphasizes parkour, a style of movement where athletes clear obstacles courses by moving from one obstacle to the next with little to no break in motion. Cloudberry lacks acceleration, permitting players to stop on a dime and twist around in the air. Most of the time, the best (and often only) way to get through a Cloudberry stage is to never stop moving, to react to obstacles rather than stop and ponder a way through.
Shovel Knight dumps a few mobility styles into a blender. The resulting smoothie offers a pastiche of tastes and textures: fluidity and midair flexibility blended with precise handling that invites players to throw themselves headlong into some situations and approach others with caution. "We wanted the character to be a little on the slow side," Flood said. "The game is in widescreen, and there were a limited number of tiles we could have. We didn't want the character to move around the screen [loosely] because it would look like we were expecting you to move like that."
Yacht Club did away with Mario's run button, but not with acceleration. Move in any direction and players notice that Shovel Knight starts slow but hits his stride in a second flat. Jumps work similarly to Mega Man's. "If you jump, you're immediately at full speed," Flood said.
Doing away with variables such as jumping while sprinting allowed Yacht Club to give Shovel Knight precise motion. The character jumps exactly four tiles whether players start from a standstill or while moving. Try to jump a hole five tiles wide, and Shovel Knight's foot will graze the edge of the closest block but ultimately fall short. There's no margin for error, so players can experiment to learn the character's limits. "It shouldn't look like his feet are just about to make it but they don't," Flood explained. "It should be enough that you're like, 'He clearly didn't make it and he can't jump that far.'"
Yacht Club decided early on that Shovel Knight's shovel drop would let him pogo off enemies. Pogo jumps and objects such as wind currents introduce variables into his mobility. Shovel Knight's core jump height of four tiles never changes, but variables temporarily add to or subtract from it. "What about when he jumps off an enemy that's one tile off the ground?" Flood posited. "Well, he should get two extra tiles. Now he can go six tiles, but not seven."
Being able to observe and learn the limits of Shovel Knight's mobility proved useful for players. NES classics gained fame in part for how their designers communicated lessons through object and enemy placement. The first level of Super Mario Bros. places a goomba in Mario's path. Above the goomba is a ledge made up of bricks and golden power-up blocks. If players stand still, the goomba collides with them, costing them a life. On their next attempt, players might experiment by pressing the jump button, and notice that Mario's sprite pops up just above the ledge, signaling that they can jump over or onto blocks of that height. Exact measurements are never communicated because players don't need to be told those specifics. Where many modern games inundate players with text, cutscenes, and sidekicks that come across as talking instruction manuals, the most celebrated NES titles became revered for design that lets players learn by doing, a practice Yacht Club took to heart.
In fact, knowing their character's limits such as maximum jump height was as useful for Yacht Club's designers as for their players. "Now level design knows, 'I need to build this wall this high,'" Flood continued. "'If I need to keep the player from going back into an area, it needs to be this high and the ground needs to be this low.'"
