I love hyper demon (HD). It improved upon the core appeal of devil daggers (DD) while fixing some of its biggest flaws. I believe it's one of the best spiritual sequels ever made (in the ballpark of DOOM, Dark Souls, and Bayonetta).
I saw the following one sentence 1.5 star review on here recently:
"Hey remember when the first game didn't need pages and pages of tutorials"
This review is funny to me because it isolates one of the biggest flaws of DD but touts it as something essential. DD didn't have a tutorials menu. But what is a tutorial? Is it just something the game labels as 'tutorial'? Must a tutorial be separate from the game proper? I don't think so; I argue that DD's first few minutes serves as enemy tutoriaIs in all except name. Among many other changes that improve replayability, HD extracts and largely removes these enemy tutorials. I only played each of the tutorials in HD once. However, because they are inextricably baked into DD, I played each of the enemy tutorials in DD hundreds of times. Am I supposed to believe this is a good thing?
It is common now for people (including the 1.5 star reviewer above) to believe that the 'correct' way to design games is to have seamless, built-in 'tutorials' that show the player how to interact with something rather than telling them. Ideally, these don't bring attention to themselves and are thus not labeled by the game as tutorials. It works great for many games, but DD->HD highlights a way in which a more 'traditional' approach to tutorials can be better for replayability. It's difficult to hide/obscure a tutorial and also make it optional because an unknowing/first-time player won't know not to skip it. This means that hidden tutorials are often mandatory, ensuring that experienced players still have to go through the tutorial even though they won't gain anything from it. DD has an extreme version of this, in my view. Sorath (DD/HD dev) recognized this, removed the tutorials and made them optional. In doing so, they had to reveal the tutorials as what they are which is maybe not ideal but, in my opinion, is completely worth it for the boost to replayability of HD over DD. You only live for a limited amount of time, please don't spend it replaying tutorials.
I saw the following one sentence 1.5 star review on here recently:
"Hey remember when the first game didn't need pages and pages of tutorials"
This review is funny to me because it isolates one of the biggest flaws of DD but touts it as something essential. DD didn't have a tutorials menu. But what is a tutorial? Is it just something the game labels as 'tutorial'? Must a tutorial be separate from the game proper? I don't think so; I argue that DD's first few minutes serves as enemy tutoriaIs in all except name. Among many other changes that improve replayability, HD extracts and largely removes these enemy tutorials. I only played each of the tutorials in HD once. However, because they are inextricably baked into DD, I played each of the enemy tutorials in DD hundreds of times. Am I supposed to believe this is a good thing?
It is common now for people (including the 1.5 star reviewer above) to believe that the 'correct' way to design games is to have seamless, built-in 'tutorials' that show the player how to interact with something rather than telling them. Ideally, these don't bring attention to themselves and are thus not labeled by the game as tutorials. It works great for many games, but DD->HD highlights a way in which a more 'traditional' approach to tutorials can be better for replayability. It's difficult to hide/obscure a tutorial and also make it optional because an unknowing/first-time player won't know not to skip it. This means that hidden tutorials are often mandatory, ensuring that experienced players still have to go through the tutorial even though they won't gain anything from it. DD has an extreme version of this, in my view. Sorath (DD/HD dev) recognized this, removed the tutorials and made them optional. In doing so, they had to reveal the tutorials as what they are which is maybe not ideal but, in my opinion, is completely worth it for the boost to replayability of HD over DD. You only live for a limited amount of time, please don't spend it replaying tutorials.
2 Comments
@Pen music to my ears. Hope you are enjoying it!
Pen
5 months ago