Xtreme Skate Report & Pitch

Academic Report &
Pitch Document

Advanced Game Mechanics

Billy Kane

Research

Idea Generation

For this project, I want to make a fun, rewarding and challenging prototype that will push my
skills with the Unreal Engine. I aim to create a game that expands upon a genre’s staple
pillars, rather than aim for a simplistic, easily recognisable and replicable mechanics. The
genre I chose to work with is one I am quite familiar with, Platforming. The core pillar of
Platformers is jumping. Players will use jumping as their key solution to challenges, usually
involving manoeuvres past and through obstacles that aim to hinder them on their approach
to an end goal. Over time, Platforming games expanded upon and beyond simple jumping
challenges and A-to-B exploration, aiming to provide extra challenge and difficulty.
Platforming titles often expanded upon the genres core pillar with the following: combat
mechanics [1][2], more advanced movement like climbing [3], dashing [4] and momentum [5],
more advanced and open exploration [6][7] and/or 3D environments [8].

For my project, I wanted to focus more on the games that expand upon the core mechanic of
jumping to add difficulty, as opposed to adding concepts from other genres like combat and
exploration. As an example, Super Meat Boy [9] essentially gives players two-dimensional
movement, a jump and a simple wall climb. However, it stands out from earlier and
comparably simple Platforming titles like Super Mario Bros [10] by introducing momentum and
challenges based on reaction time opposed to the simple manoeuvring challenges of Mario.
Players are forced to take confident and well-thought leaps with only milliseconds to act.
This turns the games simple control scheme and mechanics into an intense and difficult
gaming experience.

With this in mind I researched a number of difficult platformers and came across a few I felt
had interesting ways of increasing difficulty. OlliOlli [11] is a 2D platformer built around
skateboarding, where players aim to achieve a high score by chaining tricks and grinds in
combos. The game enhances its difficulty by requiring a button press close to landing after a
jump, causing a fail state should the player not time their landing correctly.

Cuphead [2] bombards a player with missiles, enemies and multi-phase bosses with very little
breathing room. However, the addition of power-ups and a parry mechanic that allows
players to hit projectiles gives players with a little more skill and awareness of a specific level
the ability to gain the upper hand. This improved mastery for those who learn the level
patterns is key to the games hook, allowing players to gain dominance over the game as
they learn more about a specific challenge. Players will slowly improve and feel more
confident as the game progresses; however, each challenge requires its own individual
mastery meaning the game can consistently provide the player with a challenge no matter
their mastery of the mechanics. This means players with moderate to master level skills
often start each level with the same perceived difficulty, helpful for a game that can be
played cooperatively with another player with their own level of mastery.

The Sonic [5] franchise has a very low skill floor compared to the previous games mentioned,
however the game encourages players to achieve higher speeds and velocity to reach new
areas. By doing this, Sonic encourages players to make the game harder for themselves for
the sake of exploration and the improved game feel of going fast. This is in opposition to
many difficult platformers that force players to improve to progress. Instead, a player is
incentivised to push their skills for superior enjoyment, more content and higher scores.

[1] Konami (1986) CastleVania. Japan. [7] Team Cherry (2017) Hollow Knight. Australia.
[2] Studio MDHR (2017) Cuphead. Canada. [8] Nintendo EAD (1996) Mario 64. Japan.
[3] Extremely OK Games (2016) Celeste. Canada. [9] Team Meat (2010) Super Meat Boy. USA.
[4] Capcom (1993) Megaman X. Japan. [10] Nintendo R&D4 (1983) Super Mario Bros. Japan.
[5] Sonic Team, Sega (1991) Sonic the Hedgehog. Japan. [11] Roll7 (2014) OlliOlli. England.
[6] Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems (1993) Super Metroid. Japan.

Final Idea

To conclude, I will be creating complex Skateboarding mechanics similar to OlliOlli and
mixing them with elements of other platforming games. Players will be able to use high
speeds and velocity to improve the flow and feel of the game, increase their score and
access different routes. The addition of parry points that allow players to gain extra velocity,
score and jump height with good timing will make a nice addition to the mechanic system
that ties in well with the way Cuphead’s level knowledge improves a player’s mastery.
Additionally, a fully 3D environment in a 2.5D style as opposed to OlliOlli’s strict 2D should
make for a unique visual shift for my game.

Academic Research

The Psychology of Difficulty in Video Games

For this project, as I was challenging myself to make a more complex mechanic system, I
decided to research the psychology of difficulty to understand exactly what aspects of
difficulty in video games people resonate with. By doing this I hoped to avoid making a game
inaccessible from entry by understanding the concepts of unfairness, learning and the will to
continue playing and improve. Additionally, I will know what aspects of difficulty keep players
hooked and impassioned to succeed.

In the paper on Managing Difficulty In Games, Palban (2021) [12] aims to break down the
basics of video game difficulty and establish how it effects players. A key point raised in this
piece is how the current difficulty settings for games have both pros and cons when it comes
to their impact on user experience. The difficulty systems discussed are Static Game
Difficulty (SGD) and Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA). SGD is the standard difficulty
options often ranging from Easy to Hard, whereas DDA is a more complex difficulty system
that adapts to the player. He states that “Difficulty types … have their own benefits,
downfalls and effects on player experience to varying degrees”

This perhaps explains the success in more recent years of games that seemingly have no
traditional difficulty systems. Games like Dark Souls instead force the player to play the
difficulty the designers deemed necessary without wavering, garnering critical and market
success for its brutality. Erik Kain writing for Forbes (2016) [13] wrote on the success of the
franchises 3rd instalment “that the success of Dark Souls III is not in spite of its difficulty, but
precisely because the experience has remained uncompromising.” In a different approach to
no SGD or DDA, games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild utilise their huge, open and
multifaceted design to allow players to essentially assign their own difficulty based on the
paths they take. Dan Scalise writing for What's In A Game (2017) [14] discusses the various
ways Breath of the Wild’s difficulty keeps a player engaged by “allowing the player to choose
between multiple orthogonal goals routinely … structuring goals to be achieved using
multiple solutions … having natural game mechanics that adjust difficulty”

Of course, these two have their own issues but it seems more traditional difficulty settings,
SGD in particular, are becoming redundant. Designers are finding more flexible difficulty
systems to suit precisely what they want difficulty to bring to the experience they create. This
is aided by the fact games as a whole are larger and more open than ever, with each game
presenting such different experiences and difficulties within a single experience that a rigid
difficulty system seems impossible to uphold.

[12] Palban, V. (2021). Managing Difficulty in Games. [online] ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub.
[13] Kain, E. (2016). The Record-Breaking Success Of “Dark Souls 3” Proves It Doesn’t Need To Change. [online] Forbes.
[14] Scalise, D. (2017). How Zelda Breath of the Wild keeps the player in flow [online] What’s in a Game?.

Palban [12] expands upon the somewhat redundant nature of standard difficulty settings by
stating the difficulty level and systems should be decided upon a game-by-game basis to
best suit the individual experience and player base. “It is crucial for game developers to
define what purpose difficulty serves in their game … factoring in the game’s player base
and the skill and experience of its players”. He posits that the key to difficulty as well as its
purpose is “for their players to achieve and maintain a flow state”. The flow state being the
idea that a person can enter a state of intense immersion and attention during activities that
have the ability to motivate the individual, commonly associated with Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory [15].

Palban posits that the primary way to achieve flow through difficulty rather than turn players
away is to allow them to develop “their feelings of competency with the game systems,
enhancing their ability to overcome further challenges thus maintaining the flow state for
longer”. The balance in difficulty for most game systems is built around understanding how
difficult your game can be at its peak, and how to provide the tools and progression to allow
as many players as possible to reach and confidently compete with the games hardest
challenges.

A study on the Objective and Subjective Difficulty in Video Games, Constant et al. (2017) [16]
helps us understand why video games in particular provide such a satisfying feeling when
overcoming the challenges they present. Objective difficulty can be measured in quantifiable
success and failure data, while subjective difficulty is how difficult a player perceives the task
to be regardless of the data. In video games, the study states that “players were always
overconfident, except at low levels of difficulty”. Adding further that “players know that games
are designed to be eventually mastered” and that they “allow players to improve, developing
a sense of progression and mastery”.

The idea that a game is made to be beaten could help explain the sense of flow players can
reach when finding tasks of higher difficulty in a game. The players are driven by an
overconfidence in themselves to overcome what they know to be a perfectly possible task.
As long as the player is given the right tools and guidance as the game progresses, they feel
in control even when the difficulty rises to a peak.

My conclusion from this research is that difficulty is far from a perfected concept in games.
Player overconfidence and misinterpretation of their ability level can cause issues with
understanding what is easy or hard to each individual. My prototype is very likely to be
complex and difficult to pick up for new players, especially as I don’t have the time and
resources to make a larger slice of a game showing progression over a multitude of levels.
This lack of progression could make it hard to initiate a flow state, however through
approaching testers and asking them what they need communicated to them to feel
confident with the mechanics could help temporarily alleviate this for the prototype through
extensive tutorials and other guidance in game. This project provides me with the ability to
experiment with how players may approach a complex game.

[12] Palban, V. (2021). Managing Difficulty in Games. [online] ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub.
[15] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.
[16] Constant, T., Levieux, G., Buendia, A. and Natkin, S. (2017). Objective to Subjective Difficulty Evaluation in Video
Games. Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2017, pp.107–127.

Pitch

Introduction

Xtreme Skate is a side-scrolling skateboarding platformer that challenges players to master
its mechanics to achieve high scores and euphoric speed and flow.

Pillars

The game pillars of Xtreme Skate aim to provide a unique experience and rewarding
challenge that encourages players to adapt, progress and replay.

• Skating
o Simulate skating in a 2D environment to make it feel different to “on foot”
platformers

• Scoring
o Encourage players to explore and replay levels to increase their score.

• Adrenaline
o Fuel a player’s flow state using adrenaline produced by reflex-based difficulty,
fast-paced gameplay and accompanying visuals and sound.

• Mastery
o Allow players who master the mechanics to feel dominance over the game,
giving them a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Gameplay & Mechanics

The gameplay of Xtreme Skate centres around skating, scoring points and completing
levels.

Player Mechanics
Players can replicate a number of actions that mirror aspects of real-world skateboarding.
The five mechanics a player can utilise in the game are as follows:

• Pushing
o Players can push the skateboard to start moving and pick up speed on
ground a little faster.
o Pushing is a mechanic that helps players at the start of a level to pick up the
speed needed to overcome obstacles ahead.
o Pushing can also help players in a pinch who have lost speed and need to try
and regain it.

• Jump
o Many skateboarding tricks involve jumping be it an Ollie or a Kickflip.
o Jumping allows players to jump over obstacles or onto grind rails.

• Landing
o Landing back on a skateboard is much harder than landing on your feet and
to simulate this, landing is made into a mechanic.
o Players must time their landing inputs well to keep their accumulating score.
o Badly timed landings can cause players to crash or “bail” to put it in skating
terms.

• Grinding
o Grinding along elevated rails is an iconic trick used in skating and as such it is
a key mechanic of Xtreme Skate.
o Grinding allows players to smoothly traverse certain parts of levels while also
increasing the player’s speed and score.

• Manual
o The Manual is another iconic skateboarding trick where players will balance
on the back wheels of the skateboard as it moves.
o Manuals allow players to continue accumulating score between grinding and
jumping.
o This mechanic is for higher skilled players who can use this to drastically
improve their score and speed.

Should players time landing badly or hit an obstacle, they will bail and be forced to retry the
level.

Controls
The control scheme aims to simulate the tricky nature of skating as well as mirror aspects of
its real-life counterpart. For example, players hold down the S Key, Left Analog Stick or Left
D-Pad to crouch and release to Jump. This emulates the sensation of crouching and
releasing to perform jumping skateboard tricks. All mechanics that involve a “trick” that would
require effort to perform requires a well-timed button press and/or holding an input.

Scoring
Players will score points whilst they are in the air or performing tricks like grinding or
manuals. Players will accumulate score as they go but must perform a successful landing to
“confirm” the score, losing their current accumulated score on failure. Most mechanics
involve timings that give the players boosts or reductions to score based on their timing.

- Sloppy
o Timing too early will cause a Sloppy landing, grind or manual resulting in them
losing their current accumulating score.

- OK
o OK grinds and manuals will continue the players accumulated score, and OK
landings add the accumulated score to their score total and reset.

- Perfect
o Perfect grinds and manuals will add additional score multipliers to the player’s
current accumulating score. Perfect landings will not only confirm the score and
add it to the total but double it!

Chaining jumps, grinds and manuals with perfect timing will increase the score multiplier
allowing players to accumulate massive scores at the expense of losing it all on a sloppy
landing or trick later. The risk/reward mechanic of accumulating scores allows players to
balance chaining scores and landing to confirm based on the confidence they feel each tun.
But players who master the game can keep a score chain going for an entire level.

Levels
Levels in Xtreme Skate provide players with a playground to experiment with the best ways
to score high and gain speed. Levels start off simply as players build up speed and
confidence before increasing difficulty and adding alternate routes.

Levels will contain the following:

- Grind Rails
o As mentioned previously, grind rails allow players to score. However, they also
allow for more open and diverse level designs as they lead players up and down
increasing level verticality.

- Parry Points
o Parry points are glowing spots that players can land on to give them an extra
boost akin to a double jump. Like grind rails these aid scoring (by increasing
multipliers) and allow for more vertical level design.

- Obstacles
o Obstacles like stairs and trash bins cause players to bail upon contact. They
make traversal more difficult for a player and help levels push players to use their
abilities to do more than score points.

Success & Failure
Players succeed by reaching and landing successfully at the level end. Despite there being a
multitude of ways for a player to bail, levels are short and can be replayed instantly with a
single button press. This fast-paced fail and repeat loop pairs well with the adrenaline
pumping gameplay and helps make repeated failure feel less frustrating.

Gameplay Loop
The core gameplay loop of Xtreme Skate starts from initiating the scoring by jumping. The
loop will continue as the player accumulates score until they decide to land and receive the
reward for their actions.

Aesthetics, Readability and Polish

The games aesthetics aim to help with readability as well as fuel the players flow state and
match their adrenaline. Colours were chosen to feel vibrant and strong rather than muted
and calming, which matched with the music I have made and sound effects really
accentuates the games pacing.

Important parts of a level like grind rails, parry points and obstacles are highlighted with
bright contrasting colours to the background and environment. Bright oranges and reds
stand out from the blacks, purples and blues of the surrounding areas.

Target Audience

Xtreme Skate caters heavily to Achievers according to Bartle’s taxonomy of player types.
The core hook of the game is to master the mechanics and levels to achieve the best run
and score. The difficulty and mastery aspects of the game make it better suited to older
players aged mid-teens and up. The game will need to focus on less casual players and
more long-time platformer players and players accustomed to failure and progressing their
skillset.

Accessibility

For accessibility considerations, firstly I experimented with colour blindness. Interestingly,
correcting colours in engine to suit colour blind players seemed to be a less visually
appealing solution. Instead, thanks to drastically contrasting colours, the game doesn’t need
colour correction to be perfectly playable and remain visually appealing.
Below are examples of how different colour-blind types will see the game.

(From left to right: normal vision, deuteranope, protanope, tritanope all at a strength of 5/10)

Here is an example of how in-engine colour correction washes out the colours, making the
game less visually appealing and less readable.

(Left is normal vision, right is deuteranope with correction)

Additionally, every act the player makes in game has sound cues that audibly communicate
what is happening to aid readability.

Finally, the game has a slow mode option in the options menu. This allows the games speed
to be slowed to 80%, making the timings easier for people with slower reaction times and
avoids the need for explicit difficulty options.

Feedback and Iteration

Throughout the project I reached out to people to test the game with the aim of uncovering
bugs, tracking difficulty and receiving feedback on how to improve the experience.

With my first playable build, the Excerpt from 1st round of testing.
main issue that raised was an
incredibly steep difficulty step
likely due to the complexity of
the level initially created for the
test. As I had become
accustomed to the mechanics
that I had made, the test level I
created required a much higher
mastery of the controls to
complete. The lack of tutorials
also made it hard for players to
learn as the mechanics are hard
to teach through control maps
and text alone, leading many to
feel the mechanics were
impossible.

The feedback from this session and

subsequent tests led to the creation of

5 tutorials based on the 5 key

mechanics as well as levels for both

beginner and advanced players. This

is the best way I could create a fairer

difficulty curve without making a full

game. With these in place, while still

struggling to get accustomed to the

controls at first, testers could finally Feedback from a tester playing the game after changes were made.
improve and master their skills.

One tester after around 25-30 mins

of consistent playing managed to

achieve a score I am yet to beat and

uncover higher scoring routes
through the levels that I hadn’t even

noticed myself. I see this as a major

success in nailing a difficulty-based

flow state and am glad it resonated

once players became accustomed Highest player score achieved during a lab session in the University.
to the game.

References

[1] Konami (1986) CastleVania. Japan.
[2] Studio MDHR (2017) Cuphead. Canada.
[3] Extremely OK Games (2016) Celeste. Canada.
[4] Capcom (1993) Megaman X. Japan.
[5] Sonic Team, Sega (1991) Sonic the Hedgehog. Japan.
[6] Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems (1993) Super Metroid. Japan.
[7] Team Cherry (2017) Hollow Knight. Australia.
[8] Nintendo EAD (1996) Mario 64. Japan.
[9] Team Meat (2010) Super Meat Boy. USA.
[10] Nintendo R&D4 (1983) Super Mario Bros. Japan.
[11] Roll7 (2014) OlliOlli. England.
[12] Palban, V. (2021). Managing Difficulty in Games. [online]
ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub. Available at:
https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/gamedesigndevelopmenttextbook/chapter/managing
-difficulty-in-games/.
[13] Kain, E. (2016). The Record-Breaking Success Of “Dark Souls 3” Proves It Doesn’t
Need To Change. [online] Forbes. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/04/18/the-record-breaking-success-of-dark-
souls-3-proves-it-doesnt-need-to-change/?sh=580eda101c5d.
[14] Scalise, D. (2017). How Zelda Breath of the Wild keeps the player in flow [online] What’s
in a Game?. Available At:
http://whats-in-a-game.com/how-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-keeps-the-player-in-flow/
[15] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New
York: Harper and Row.
[16] Constant, T., Levieux, G., Buendia, A. and Natkin, S. (2017). Objective to Subjective
Difficulty Evaluation in Video Games. Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2017,
pp.107–127.