21st May 2026, 6:45 PM
(This post was last modified: 24th May 2026, 12:47 AM by Sunlight1232. Edited 8 times in total.
Edit Reason: typos/grammar/adding more content
)
I've been playing some 3D platformers and thinking about their game design while playing. The next Survivor round is coming up and will probably distract me for a day, so I want to get my thoughts on paper before I lose my thoughts. So here is a random assortment of game design ideas.
(Part of the reason I've been thinking about their game design is because I'm considering making my own 3D platformer. Depends on if I have the time and skill to pull it off I guess.)
Maybe some of you will find game design talk interesting, IDK.
3D Platformers I'm Thinking About (Ordered Most to Least):
Level Design
In all of these games, all the levels are distinct. Each level gets to have its own name and own designated entryway. This is not like where some games have one continuous flowing world. They are all separate and distinct.
In Ape Escape, you have multiple areas per level. Each area is decently huge, but the levels usually have easy to remember paths, being either mostly linear or being a single branch off into multiple directions. (Crumbling Castle is an exception since the level is a giant maze to find the boss battle.) In Ape Escape you have a Money Radar which tells you if you have cleared one specific zone of Monkies. (Monkies are the primary collectable of Ape Escape.) Because of this, the zone system works extremely well despite being huge.
Psychonauts 1 and 2 are similar to Ape Escape. Both games have multiple huge areas per level. In Psychonauts 1, each area in a level has a different collectable total menu, so you always know if you have cleared that specific area or not. In Psychonauts 2 they uhh... Forgot to include that. When Psychonauts 2 released there was no area specific collectable tracker, but later they got bullied into adding a patch to tell you if you've 100%'d an area of a level or not. This is not perfect, since it won't tell you if you've only 99%'d an area, but it's alright.
This is contrasted with Banjo Kazooie. In that game you still have multiple areas per level, but each area in that game is reasonably small. Some key levels would be Mad Monster Mansion, where you have can break windows to enter small 1x1 rooms. Or Rusty Bucket Bay where you can enter small warehouses, control rooms, or kitchens to retrieve various collectables or hit switches. In that game, the sub-areas are so small that you will generally know if you've cleared that sub-area fully or not.
This is really fun since you get to have a lot of diversity with throw-away areas you only get to see once. It also requires you to remember where everything is. If there are 6 different small areas that all look similar in a level, you will have to remember which 1 of those 6 had that puzzle you needed to come back to, or had that last Jinjo you needed to find later on.
Super Mario 64 has huge multiple areas sometimes, but before entering the level they will give you a hint as to where the star is located, letting you know which area you need to navigate to so you don't have to navigate aimlessly.
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Aesthetically, it is somewhat established that levels can kind of just flow in a relatively random order. You can go from grassland level to sky island level to ocean level freely. The only unspoken rule is that they should increase in difficulty.
Perhaps if there are other unspoken rules, it would be that the first world is usually aesthetically very aesthetically tame. A grasslands or grassy hill seems to be a safe bet for a first world. Banjo Kazooie, Ape Escape, Mario 64, Spyro all fit this bill IIRC. Hat in Time and Ape Escape 3 both begin with a beachside resort city, both modeled off of Santorini, but this might be a coincidence. Fair weather I guess is the theme of first levels. After the first level, there is no typical discernable pattern to me.
In Mario 64, the aesthetic has always been whimsical nonsense. Not only does Mario 64 not try to be realistic, it doesn't really have any rules at all. Are whomps people? Are bob-omps people? Are the worlds you visiting actual parts of the world or just fantasies? Do the NPCs actually live here? It's not really clear, and doesn't matter. I kind of admire that. It is just a game being a game.
Most of the other games here have a pretty good balance between trying to maintain a semi-consistent lore while also having dumb videogame logic. Banjo Kazooie does explain that these are all parts of the evil witch's lair, but you still have to suspend disbelief a lot to explain why an evil would have access to a giant mechanical shark or an entire desert valley.
Hat in Time is aesthetically the most inconsistent. Originally the game was likely intended to have a lot of story, but that seemed to have been abandoned. Because of this, the worlds in the game feel all half-baked. The game feels like it is alluding to all the NPCs having real lives with real problems, but there seems like there's context missing. Is Mafia Town a real place? Is it part of Earth? If it's not a real place, why does Mustache Girl have a homeless cave shelter here? Why are some of the birds in Dead Bird Studios robots? Why is Subcon Forest the way it is? Does it represent the human subconscious? If so, what do the other worlds represent? The game feels like a jumble of different tones/themes. The later levels feel more and more like whimsical nonsense, which would be good, if not for the earlier levels feel like half written plotlines.
Psychonauts is the most story-driven game here and it has the best explanations for all of its levels. It is still cartoony videogamey nonsense, but the worlds feel detailed enough that it could easily be adapted into a novel series if it wanted to be. It feels like there is a larger universe here, which Psychonauts 2 and Rhombus of Ruin have done a good job at expanding.
Hub World Design
The hub world is a level in itself in almost all of these games. Thought it doesn't have to be.
In Ape Escape, the hub area is just a simple room or series of room. You can still move around and test out your abilities, but otherwise the hub world is fairly barren. No puzzles, collectables, challenges, or ways to die. I don't mind this at all. It is very relaxing.
I personally do like it when the hub world is a place of relaxation. Something to contrast with the chaos of levels.
In Banjo Kazooie, the hub world is fairly complex compared to something like Super Mario 64. It is difficult to get lost in Peach's Castle unless you are very new. In Banjo Kazooie, it is extremely easy to get lost in Gruntilda's Lair. Not only is it a giant maze, but there are numerous switches that alter the hub world. Most of these switches are hidden in each level, meaning that in order to progress in one part of the hub world you may have to explore multiple levels and the hub world in order to find the switch. (This is one of those games that probably was intended to be played with a guide sometimes.)
What annoys me the most about Banjo Kazooie's hub world is that it almost feels like it was made for binge-sessions. There's no way a player is going to be able to remember which switches they've already triggered, especially since half the switches that influence the hub world are located in other levels. There is no journal in this game nor are there notes or NPCs that remind you of what you've done. To compare to Super Mario 64 again, in that game there are very few ways to influence Peach's Castle, so you won't forget anything.
Psychonauts 2 is another game where the hub world overwhelms me. It is huge, has a million collectables. More importantly, Psychonauts 2 has a decently complex story and decently complex mechanics. It is the only game on this list that has a proper combat system instead of just basic attacks. So the fact that Psychonauts 2 has a complex hub world bothers me.
Psychonauts 1, by contrast, had an amazing hub world. In Psychonauts 1 is a story game. In that game there are over a dozen characters in the hub world. Wandering back and forth aimless will unlock cutscenes with these characters. All of these cutscenes are optional and can be skipped, or even never be discovered. A casual player who is exploring a lot will get to see entire stories and character arcs unfold. More hardcore gameplay-oriented players will just skip past all of this, which is what they would want too. It's perfect for a story-driven game. The hub world lets players relax if they want to, or skip straight to the next gameplay segment if they want to.
Psychonauts 1 also does have collectables in the hub world, but they are somewhat few and far between. Nothing overwhelming. Areas of the hub world are relatively small and self contained. It is also a very realistic settings, being set in an American campground, so you can use your own human intuition to navigate around.
Protagonist Controls
Super Mario 64 is probably the most straightforward game here. And it is very strong because of that. It has been a while since I played it, but IIRC, the only unlockable abilities are the hats. Other than that, Mario has his full kit from the get-go. It is satisfying having your full potential from the start.
Mario has a lot of subtleties of course. He can triple jump, he can turn around and backflip, and he can slide around. Experienced players love it since it gives them a lot of freedom of expression. It is somewhat confusing for new players, since subtleties are not directly explained in-game or explained in any depth. They might not even understand why Mario sometimes jumps differently.
Banjo Kazooie is a game with a fairly limited, but intuitive and subtle moveset. You do have to unlock a lot of it. Each level has various sites where you can learn a new move. The game does tell you, upon entering a level, exactly how many abilities are hidden in the level, which is much appreciated game design. The game would probably be more fun to me if you had everything unlocked from the beginning through, except for maybe the boots, which are equivalent to Mario's various caps in Mario 64.
Still, Banjo Kazooie is extremely fair because, the majority of the time, each world can be completed with your current moveset. There are very few 'metroidvania' moments in this game where backtracking after gaining a new ability is required.
Mario 64 and BK can be contrasted with games that have a much more varied ability system, like Ape Escape and Psychonauts 1 and 2. In those games, you have a hotbar with various abilities bound to them. The player can change which abilities are bound to which spot or button. This is similar to how it works in the N64 Zelda games if you have played those. In Zelda you have 3 bound abilities or items, but in Ape Escape and Psychonauts you have 4 bound abilities.
The Hotbar Ability System is more transparent. In Banjo Kazooie a player might forget they have an ability because they haven't used it in a while. In Ape Escape or Psychonauts, you will never forget because you will be reminded of what you can do everytime you open the ability menu. So even though it might seem more complicated juggling multiple abilities, it many ways it is actually more simple. Each the basic attack in Ape Escape is bound to a specific item or ability, meaning you will never forget how to attack in that game.
A Hat in Time is a balance between both of these systems, between simple and complex. In that game, you can change your hat. Your hat determines your ability. You can only wear 1 hat a time, so you only have 1 ability at a time. Instead of juggling between 4 abilities or so, you only have to worry about 1 at a time. Very simple and convenient.
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The Double-Jump tangent is one I think about a lot.
Double jumping is a very popular mechanic across 2D and 3D platformers, but a lot of the great ones don't have them. There are multiple reasons for that.
A really subtle reason is called Jump Input Buffering. Input Buffering is a mechanic that allows players to input slightly too quickly.
Consider the following:
A player wants to jump immediately after touching the ground.
They fall. They press the jump button. They jump immediately after falling. Success.
Now consider:
A player wants to jump immediately after touching the ground.
They fall. They press the jump button 0.1 seconds too early... Therefore nothing happens. Failure.
We can help the player cheat slightly. We can code the game so that if the player presses the jump button 1 second too early, they will still jump after landing. That's what Jump Input Buffering is, helping make sure the player succeeds even though they technically should have failed. It makes games feel good, although not all 3D platformers have it. Just ones that care absurdly about gamefeel.
Now consider if we have double jumping:
A player wants to jump immediately after touching the ground.
They fall. They press the jump button 0.1 seconds too early...
Should the player Double Jump? Or should the player land, then jump?
How do we, as the coder, want to resolve this?
This is the problem with double jumping in games. If we have both Double Jumping and Jump Input Buffering, we run into a paradox where it's not clear what the jump button should do at times. What a lot of good 3D platformers do is they separate the double jump to a different button. Jumping might be the A Button, but Double Jumping might be the B Button. That way, we don't have this problem with Jump Input Buffering. So anytime you play a 3D Platformer where the double jump isn't the same button as the jump button, remember that this is a potential reason why.
This might be why in most 3D Mario games that include a double jump that use the same button as the first jump. Like Fludd's Double Jump in Sunshine, or the Hat Double Jumps in Odyssey. (Note: I haven't played Odyssey so I might be misrepresenting that game.) Of course it's not perfect, since do still occasionally have double jumping in Mario games like with the Tanuki Suit or Luigi's "Scuttle" Jump in Mario 64 DS.
Other reasons that double jumps aren't always added are, of course, more boring. Double jumps can be used to negate fall damage when the level designers want you to take fall damage. Double jumps also make the game easier, when 3D platformers are already generally fairly easy as a genre.
In Ape Escape and Banjo Kazooie, your double jump cannot be used to break your fall. (In Banjo Kazooie it can partially, but not entirely.) In Ape Escape you can only double jump while on the upwards portion of your jump, not during the downwards falling portion, which feels really weird if you aren't used to it. In Banjo Kazooie, your double-jump-glide-thingy can be used normally, but after falling a set distance Banjo loses composure and cannot double jump. That's how they both include fall damage while giving the player a double jump.
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Swimming is an interesting consideration for 3D Platformers. 3D Platformers spend a really long time making sure land-based platforming feels good, so should they even bother with underwater mechanics?
In Psychonauts 1 and 2 you cannot swim. The fun part is that this is actually core to the story, the protagonist believes that their family line was cursed to drown so he panics anytime he sees water. Cool justification.
In A Hat in Time you also cannot swim. Honestly I don't even remember any water in this game, so I never noticed. I haven't mentioned this game anywhere else in this post, but also the Spongebob Platformers, Battle for Bikini Bottom and Spongebob: The Movie Game, I also recall having no swimming at all.
In Spyro 1 you cannot swim. They did add it in future games. Swimming in Spyro is extremely fast, making it feel noticeably different than other 3D Platformers.
Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64 both have swimming and they're all decently comparable. Swimming is somewhat slow and tedious. You have an oxygen meter, meaning you are at risk of drowning. Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64 both have very memorable swimming sections. Because swimming is slow you can use it to suspensefully reveal a new area, making the discovery feel special. So aesthetically they use swimming very well.
Still, I don't feel like swimming in either of those games are fun. Even in Ape Escape, which also comparably has a relatively slow swimming system, I don't feel like I enjoy swimming. So it might be worth it to ignore swimming mechanics altogether in newer 3D Platformers. Either that or completely overhaul how it works.
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Combat is something rarely discussed with 3D Platformers. They do not require combat at all, and when combat is added it is typically extremely basic. Almost all of these games have what I would refer to as basic combat.
Spyro is one of the most interesting cases. Spyro has 2 attacks, Charge and Fire. Some enemies can only be hurt by one or the other, causing the player to alternate their abilities and always keep track what they're fighting. Charging also doubles as the run-forwards button, so you may have to think very quickly considering you are running towards the enemy. It is a pretty good system considering how simple it is.
Psychonauts 1 has a very basic system, but Psychonauts 2 has a proper combat system, with lock-on, dodgerolling, and varied attacks. All enemies can be hurt by all abilities, but many enemies have specific weaknesses, like fire or grapples, causing you to switch out your abilities. It works extremely well, but I almost wonder if that's a bad thing. Because the combat is so great, they have their own dedicated segments. You have to stop platforming in order to do combat. This is different from all the other games here, where there is a nice flow between platforming and combat. I suppose it is worth thinking about if some gameplay loops being good can detract from other good gameplay loops.
In A Hat in Time the combat system is all lock-on. This makes the game extremely easy. In Mario 64, to smash a goomba you have to land on it precisely. In A Hat in Time, you just press the left-click button and you land on it regardless of how bad your aim is. I'm not a fan of lock-on mechanics in general since they are so braindead, but in A Hat in Time the combat might as well be nonexistent most of the time.
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Taking Damage is also a factor when it comes to Combat.
Let's look at Psychonauts 2 since it is the most complicated.
In that game there are "Soft Attack" and "Hard Attacks" from. Soft Attacks don't stun you, while Hard Attacks do stun you. Soft Attacks are reserved from small enemies, while bigger and tougher enemies can either have a mixture of Hard and Soft Attacks, or use exclusively Hard Attacks. Aesthetically, both attacks are easy to distinguish. An explosion? It's a Hard Attack. A punch? It's a Soft Attack? A punch with a big wind-up? A Hard Attack. It's pretty intuitive if you know this feature exists.
The Stun associated with Hard Attacks can have a movement associated with them. Some stuns will stun you in place, while other stuns will push you or throw you a distance. Getting slashed causes you to be stunned in place so the enemy can land more slashes. Getting punched hard can push you away while stunned. Getting smashed from above with a hammer will both push you away and launch you into the air while stunned. So each Hard Attack has a Movement or Momentum variable associated with it.
Funnily enough, there is a mechanic where, if you are thrown upwards and backwards, you land on your back. When you land on your back, you stay there until you press A to jump back up to your feet. No idea why this is even a mechanic, it happens very rarely and is resolved so fast that you never notice it. If this were removed from the game I doubt a single person would notice.
Most or all obstacles appear to be Hard Damage Sources. (They stun you/Knock you around.) This makes platforming more interesting since getting hit can knock you off a platform. If obstacles were soft damage sources then you could easily tank as much damage as you want to during platforming provided you still have at least 1 HP left.
In most simple 3D Platformers, typically all Damage Sources are Hard Damage Sources or Hard Attacks. This appears to be true for the N64 games Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, as well as the PS1 games Ape Escape and Spyro. Also true for A Hat in Time, a more modern game. This makes intuitive sense, stuns feel way more impactful and pushing the player around makes platforming more interesting.
Returning to Psychonauts 2's Stuns, getting hit mid-air is different than getting hit on the ground. The difference is that the stun while grounded lasts for a set duration, while a stun mid-air lasts the entire duration of the fall. While being stunned mid-air you have no ability to control your movement. I'm not sure the name for this, but some games might call this state the "Air Tumbling" state. A simpler name might just be "Aerial Stun" or "Aerial Hitstun" state.
Temporary Invulnerability is typically given to a player while they are stunned in many games. Admittedly, Psychonauts 2 is a bit too fast paced and chaotic for me to dissect if you are given I-Frames (Invulnerability Frames) when stunned or not. (I assume that you are probably given Damage Invulnerability, but not Invulnerability from being pushed by other Hard Attacks.)
In Banjo Kazooie though, it seems that pretty much all damage sources are hard damage sources that launch you backwards into the air. While in this state you do appear to have Invulnerability... But this invulnerability does wear off seemingly immediately after the landing though, so you can still feel like you're being combo'd or juggled by enemies due to a lack of a recovery period. Stuns feel very impactful or frustrating depending on your POV.
Mid-Air Stuns in Banjo Kazooie are extremely memorable, because many sections of the game place you over bottomless pits, or long falls. A single hitstun can launch you to your death, or taking a massive amount of damage from the fall, or just setting you back a far distance in the level. In Conker's Bad Fur Day this feels extremely intentional. That game leans very heavily into the looney tunes aspect, and getting hitstunned off a roof, only to take more damage after falling, feels like comedy gold sometimes.
Camera Controls
Camera controls are huge for a 3D Platformer. How good the camera is often how good the movement feels since they are so intertwined.
The N64 games on this list all use Digital Cameras (Meaning it moves only in big chunks. Usually associated with older games and with D-PADs, although not all D-PAD cameras are digital.). The same goes for Ape Escape.
This sucks. Digital Cameras can only move in giant increments. Meaning you can have your camera look North, or North-East... But what if you want your camera to look in-between North and North-East? Well you can't. So sad.
Fortunately, I feel like those games accounted for having a wonky camera... Usually. Take Rusty Bucket Bay's Engine Room from Banjo Kazooie for example. In that level, all you have to do is walk in a straight line quickly before the engines start up and you fall off, since the engines start and stop periodically. This should be easy, but because the camera can never be perfectly aligned, it is one of the most challenging parts of the game. To walk a straight line reliably in a modern game, you would first align the camera to be straight and then hold forwards on your Movement Along Stick. But if the camera cannot be moved to the correct position, you have to awkwardly move the stick diagonally and pray you have the right angle. So basically, a bad camera prevents you from walking in a straight line sometimes.
Oddly enough, the Ape Escape series never updated their camera system. Their final main game, Ape Escape 3 for the PS2, released 1 year before the PS3, still continued to use the same Digital Camera system from the first game. Probably not the best move. Sadly the Ape Escape series is dead now. RIP. (Maybe whatever company owns the IP will bring it back since you see the series referenced everywhere.)
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Psychonauts 1 and 2 on the other hand use Analog Cameras (Meaning they rely on either a Mouse or Analog Stick) since they are both PC games. Technically, Psychonauts 1 released on the original Xbox, but it was later re-released on Steam. Therefore, it wasn't designed with Keyboard+Mouse in mind, but it still works fine since it is a decently casual difficulty game.
Both games can he played with either:
This is interesting because, of course, aiming a camera is easier with a Mouse than with an Camera Analog Stick. WASD movement, on the other hand, is worse than with an Movement Analog Stick.
So because of the game was designed for multiple controls, I do wonder if the level designers intentionally design the game with a little bit of slack. I haven't consciously noticed anything, but it is possible. In some games that demand a higher level of precision, like Elden Ring, I have noticed that using WASD is awful, since you can only dodge in 8 directions, and sometimes you do need 16 directions instead to dodge certain attacks. It is possible that Psychonauts 2, which also has an emphasize on combat, also benefits from a Gamepad than Keyboard+Mouse. I guess there is no real way to prevent that.
Any aiming section, like lets saying shooting a bullet to hit a target, probably takes a slightly longer period of time to aim your shot with a Gamepad than with a Mouse. Psychonauts 2 doesn't push the difficulty up, but if they did they might have to account for things like that.
Completion: Beating and 100%ing
Collectathon games were meant to be optionally 100%'d. You should be able to beat it while playing somewhat casually, but also be able to 100% if you lock in.
In terms of just beating the game, I like it when there is a decently big gap between beating a game and 100%ing it. I'm not a fan of when beating a game requires 99% of the game, because then 100%ing it doesn't feel as special.
In Banjo Kazooie, according to the wiki, you need 94 out of 100 Jiggies to beat the game. So 94% of the primary goal you need to complete... That's kind of insane. It's also not a very big gap between completion VS 100%ing. Like if you're already 94% of the way there, who wouldn't do the last 6%? (Technically I'm ignoring Note Count, but this is simpler to just look at Jiggies.)
Compare this to Ape Escape. I don't know exactly the minimum required to beat the game, but it's roughly 50%. Only 50% of the primary collectables need to be collected to beat the game. It should be no surprise that when I was a child, I beat Ape Escape but did not beat Banjo Kazooie.
Super Mario 64, according to my random google searches, requires 70 of 120 stars. This is ~58%. I'm pretty sure I completed Super Mario 64 as a kid.
58% is arguably too easy, too low of a threshold to beat the game. 94% is arguably too high. I don't know what the perfect number would be. Perhaps 75% is good.
I admit that I would rather have it be too easy than too hard. I'd prefer to see all of the content of the game, all the level variety and whatnot. The final levels of Banjo Kazooie are so cool, but most players will never get to see them.
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100%ing a game is a difficult task. Sometimes it is rewarding. It feels most rewarding when you aren't just following an external guide, since that ruins the sense of discovery and exploration.
The Super Mario series is extremely fair when it comes to Stars. The level always begins with clues as to where the star is and how to obtain it, via the star's title, and also the camera preview showing the star. (It is not fair at all when it comes to Blue Coins in Super Mario Sunshine, which can be found absolutely anywhere, with no indication at all. Although collecting them was probably intended for hardcore players anyways, so maybe that gets a pass.)
Banjo Kazooie is a lot less fair when it comes to Jiggies. A lot of Jiggies can be found by exploring naturally, but other ones require specific interactions to be discovered. This is similar to the N64 Zelda game logic, where sometimes you have to use insane logic to get the next key or item. For example, in Freezeezy Peaks, the snow world in Banjo Kazooie, you have to kill all the snowmen to get a Jiggy. If you are naturally a pacifistic player you are never going to discover that Jiggy since there is no hint that it even exists. So Banjo Kazooie requires an external guide to complete since it is "unfair" at times. (Not too often though, just a 1 Jiggy or so in each world requires a guide to figure out.)
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But what about the non-primary collectables? Is collecting them fair?
In Super Mario 64, the Red Coins are usually not in insanely impossible to find places. It is fair. So are Coins for getting 100 Coins too. The Banjo Kazooie equivalent to red coins are Jinjos, which are harder to find, but still somewhat fair. Same goes for Notes, equivalent to Mario's Coins.
In Spyro you have gems, which are spread all over in Spyro's massive levels. Fortunately, both Spyro and Ape Escape do something really, really smart. They have a radar. This radar allows you to find the last few collectables in each level. In Spyro, your dragonfly will point in the direction of a collectable you haven't found yet, giving you a vague hint as to where it is. This is also basically the same for Ape Escape, where your Monkey Radar tells you the vague direction the monkey is in, but also showing you a video preview of the area the Monkey is in. (Sadly Ape Escape only does this with Monkey Collectables, with Specter Coins there is no radar, RIP.)
Psychonauts 1 fails at being fair with non-primary collectables. Most of them are easy to find, but some of them could take weeks to find without a guide.
Psychonauts 2 has a similar problem, but has an interesting solution. Psychonauts 2 cannot use the radar mechanic from Spyro and Ape Escape... Why not? Because Psychonauts 2 uses a lot of subtle Non-Euclidean Geometry. (If you don't know what that is, basically it means the game has a million invisible portals everywhere. Look it up.) Because it uses Non-Euclidean Geometry, both distances and directions would get messed up, so radars won't work.
What Psychonauts 2 does have is a Freecam with X-Ray. After completing the game, they let the player check in a small area around them if there are any collectables hiding behind walls. This is called the "Otto-Spot" because it uses the Otto-Shot camera invented by Otto. It is worse than a Radar, but it's still alright. Effectively it is almost like a Mini-Radar and they can disable the camera in areas that use too much Non-Euclidean Geometry. Another game that does this is Banjo Kazooie: Mumbomania where they have a Pirate Transformation called "Growly" with a Telescope that does the same thing... Both of these kind of remind me of the Lends of Truth of Zelda in a way, except instead of seeing invisible platforms you see collectables you've missed.
Nonessential Collectables
I think it is worth writing a section about nonessential collectables. This is probably spurred on by me most recently playing Banjo Kazooie, which has many pointless collectables.
In that game, some of your abilities use ammo or resources. You have eggs to shoot, feathers to fly, and golden feathers which I will explain in a future paragraph. Throughout the entire level you can find these collectables. This is a fairly unique game design decision. Like, if you run out of ammo to shoot, you have to return to a specific part of the level where you last saw ammo, obtain them, and then return to where you were supposed to be. This would be kind of a cool feature, if not for the fact that you never run out of these resources in any practical terms. You always have too many eggs. You can run out of feathers very rarely when you are massively overusing flying.
The fact that a level designer had to put them in specific parts of the level, instead of just being a common random drop from enemies or crates, which is what most games would do, is super interesting. It would make finding any old resource into a scavenger hunt. But of course, this idea mostly doesn't work because the game gives you too many resources and too little incentive to use these resources, so I would not know how this feels in practice.
Golden feathers are the coolest of the 3 resources. They are decently hard to find throughout the levels. Golden feathers work like Stars do in the 2D Mario games, they make you invulnerable, and able to kill anything in your path, even typically unkillable enemies. Because of this, there's no time when you wouldn't want to use them. They are always in high demand and low supply. Also, when you kill enemies in Banjo Kazooie, they stay dead. This means that there is a massive incentive to collect golden feathers, kill the unkillable enemies, use up your feathers, collect more golden feathers, and repeat the process until the entire level is devoid of enemies. It's perfect.
I have not played Yooka Laylee or Yooka Replayee, the spiritual successors to Banjo Kazooie, but I have seen/heard that they mostly abandoned this ammo system and replaced it with an energy system. That does make sense to me at a high level. I do not know enough to say more.
Psychonauts 1 also had an ammo system, except ammo was collected via random drops from enemies and from destroyable objects/crates. Much like Banjo Kazooie, you typically have more than enough ammo, so there is not a whole lot of incentive to collect.
In Psychonauts 2 they removed the ammo system and instead opted for a cooldown system. You can fire your gun as much as you want to, you just have to wait for the cooldown. This works perfectly fine and it a perfectly logical decision. Removing the ammo system from Banjo Kazooie was a tough choice since the ammo system had potential, whereas the Psychonauts ammo system was ultimately pointless, especially since there were already moves like Invisibility that took no ammo and could give a huge combat advantage anyways.
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In Psychonauts 1 and 2 you have a currency. You can use this currency to buy what are effectively health potions. You also sometimes need to use the money to buy essential gear.
In Psychonauts 1 there were Cobwebs that blocked later levels, forcing you to buy the Cobweb Duster to progress. This one item costed an insane amount and forced you to stop progressing the game to farm currency. Farming currency in Psychonauts 1 is somewhat fun because there was a metal detector minigame tied to it. If this mandatory currency section was not in Psychonauts 1, I would have said that currency was ultimately pointless.
Psychonauts 2 had many small optional upgrades that could be bought with currency. Even though it is nice that this existed, I do not feel like it made a meaningful impact on the game, and if they were all removed I would not notice.
Both games have some minor cosmetics you can buy with currency. I'm not much of a cosmetics person, especially in a singleplayer game that isn't a roguelike or another genre that is infinitely repayable.
A Hat in Time also has pointless cosmetics that can be bought with its currency. It fits more in this game than it does in Psychonauts 2, since A Hat in Time does have infinite replay value due to its level editor, but it still feels ultimately pointless to me.
Ape Escape 3 is the game that tried to use currency the most. It still somewhat failed simply due to lack of content. The Ape Escape franchise was clearly pushing to be a popular and recognizable franchise, leaning into cute anime girls and cool monkies. You can spend currency on unlocking the game's OST, on funny quotes, on hints, on lotto tickets for more money, on cosmetics, and on minigames (one of them being a Metal Gear Solid parody.) They clearly wanted to make this a giant gacha system, but didn't have the company resources to pull it off. It should be noted that were are other things that they could have spent the currency on. Like, for example, the game had an entire zodiac horoscope system, which could read your IRL fortune regarding finance or dating, but for some reason they made that free to use.
Currency is just a hard thing to manage in a game that has a limited amount of content.
Disclaimer
I should just say that even though some of these games I'm criticizing, I do love all the games here. If I didn't like the games I wouldn't be criticizing them to begin with. Hopefully I didn't insult your favorite game.
(Part of the reason I've been thinking about their game design is because I'm considering making my own 3D platformer. Depends on if I have the time and skill to pull it off I guess.)
Maybe some of you will find game design talk interesting, IDK.
3D Platformers I'm Thinking About (Ordered Most to Least):
- Psychonauts 1 & 2
- Banjo Kazooie 1 (A little bit of 2 and Conker)
- Ape Escape 1 & 3 (A little bit of 2)
- Super Mario 64 & DS (A decent amount of other 3D Marios)
- Hat in Time
- Spyros (All PS1 Spyros kind of blur together in my head)
- Probably Others I won't mention
Level Design
In all of these games, all the levels are distinct. Each level gets to have its own name and own designated entryway. This is not like where some games have one continuous flowing world. They are all separate and distinct.
In Ape Escape, you have multiple areas per level. Each area is decently huge, but the levels usually have easy to remember paths, being either mostly linear or being a single branch off into multiple directions. (Crumbling Castle is an exception since the level is a giant maze to find the boss battle.) In Ape Escape you have a Money Radar which tells you if you have cleared one specific zone of Monkies. (Monkies are the primary collectable of Ape Escape.) Because of this, the zone system works extremely well despite being huge.
Psychonauts 1 and 2 are similar to Ape Escape. Both games have multiple huge areas per level. In Psychonauts 1, each area in a level has a different collectable total menu, so you always know if you have cleared that specific area or not. In Psychonauts 2 they uhh... Forgot to include that. When Psychonauts 2 released there was no area specific collectable tracker, but later they got bullied into adding a patch to tell you if you've 100%'d an area of a level or not. This is not perfect, since it won't tell you if you've only 99%'d an area, but it's alright.
This is contrasted with Banjo Kazooie. In that game you still have multiple areas per level, but each area in that game is reasonably small. Some key levels would be Mad Monster Mansion, where you have can break windows to enter small 1x1 rooms. Or Rusty Bucket Bay where you can enter small warehouses, control rooms, or kitchens to retrieve various collectables or hit switches. In that game, the sub-areas are so small that you will generally know if you've cleared that sub-area fully or not.
This is really fun since you get to have a lot of diversity with throw-away areas you only get to see once. It also requires you to remember where everything is. If there are 6 different small areas that all look similar in a level, you will have to remember which 1 of those 6 had that puzzle you needed to come back to, or had that last Jinjo you needed to find later on.
Super Mario 64 has huge multiple areas sometimes, but before entering the level they will give you a hint as to where the star is located, letting you know which area you need to navigate to so you don't have to navigate aimlessly.
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Aesthetically, it is somewhat established that levels can kind of just flow in a relatively random order. You can go from grassland level to sky island level to ocean level freely. The only unspoken rule is that they should increase in difficulty.
Perhaps if there are other unspoken rules, it would be that the first world is usually aesthetically very aesthetically tame. A grasslands or grassy hill seems to be a safe bet for a first world. Banjo Kazooie, Ape Escape, Mario 64, Spyro all fit this bill IIRC. Hat in Time and Ape Escape 3 both begin with a beachside resort city, both modeled off of Santorini, but this might be a coincidence. Fair weather I guess is the theme of first levels. After the first level, there is no typical discernable pattern to me.
In Mario 64, the aesthetic has always been whimsical nonsense. Not only does Mario 64 not try to be realistic, it doesn't really have any rules at all. Are whomps people? Are bob-omps people? Are the worlds you visiting actual parts of the world or just fantasies? Do the NPCs actually live here? It's not really clear, and doesn't matter. I kind of admire that. It is just a game being a game.
Most of the other games here have a pretty good balance between trying to maintain a semi-consistent lore while also having dumb videogame logic. Banjo Kazooie does explain that these are all parts of the evil witch's lair, but you still have to suspend disbelief a lot to explain why an evil would have access to a giant mechanical shark or an entire desert valley.
Hat in Time is aesthetically the most inconsistent. Originally the game was likely intended to have a lot of story, but that seemed to have been abandoned. Because of this, the worlds in the game feel all half-baked. The game feels like it is alluding to all the NPCs having real lives with real problems, but there seems like there's context missing. Is Mafia Town a real place? Is it part of Earth? If it's not a real place, why does Mustache Girl have a homeless cave shelter here? Why are some of the birds in Dead Bird Studios robots? Why is Subcon Forest the way it is? Does it represent the human subconscious? If so, what do the other worlds represent? The game feels like a jumble of different tones/themes. The later levels feel more and more like whimsical nonsense, which would be good, if not for the earlier levels feel like half written plotlines.
Psychonauts is the most story-driven game here and it has the best explanations for all of its levels. It is still cartoony videogamey nonsense, but the worlds feel detailed enough that it could easily be adapted into a novel series if it wanted to be. It feels like there is a larger universe here, which Psychonauts 2 and Rhombus of Ruin have done a good job at expanding.
Hub World Design
The hub world is a level in itself in almost all of these games. Thought it doesn't have to be.
In Ape Escape, the hub area is just a simple room or series of room. You can still move around and test out your abilities, but otherwise the hub world is fairly barren. No puzzles, collectables, challenges, or ways to die. I don't mind this at all. It is very relaxing.
I personally do like it when the hub world is a place of relaxation. Something to contrast with the chaos of levels.
In Banjo Kazooie, the hub world is fairly complex compared to something like Super Mario 64. It is difficult to get lost in Peach's Castle unless you are very new. In Banjo Kazooie, it is extremely easy to get lost in Gruntilda's Lair. Not only is it a giant maze, but there are numerous switches that alter the hub world. Most of these switches are hidden in each level, meaning that in order to progress in one part of the hub world you may have to explore multiple levels and the hub world in order to find the switch. (This is one of those games that probably was intended to be played with a guide sometimes.)
What annoys me the most about Banjo Kazooie's hub world is that it almost feels like it was made for binge-sessions. There's no way a player is going to be able to remember which switches they've already triggered, especially since half the switches that influence the hub world are located in other levels. There is no journal in this game nor are there notes or NPCs that remind you of what you've done. To compare to Super Mario 64 again, in that game there are very few ways to influence Peach's Castle, so you won't forget anything.
Psychonauts 2 is another game where the hub world overwhelms me. It is huge, has a million collectables. More importantly, Psychonauts 2 has a decently complex story and decently complex mechanics. It is the only game on this list that has a proper combat system instead of just basic attacks. So the fact that Psychonauts 2 has a complex hub world bothers me.
Psychonauts 1, by contrast, had an amazing hub world. In Psychonauts 1 is a story game. In that game there are over a dozen characters in the hub world. Wandering back and forth aimless will unlock cutscenes with these characters. All of these cutscenes are optional and can be skipped, or even never be discovered. A casual player who is exploring a lot will get to see entire stories and character arcs unfold. More hardcore gameplay-oriented players will just skip past all of this, which is what they would want too. It's perfect for a story-driven game. The hub world lets players relax if they want to, or skip straight to the next gameplay segment if they want to.
Psychonauts 1 also does have collectables in the hub world, but they are somewhat few and far between. Nothing overwhelming. Areas of the hub world are relatively small and self contained. It is also a very realistic settings, being set in an American campground, so you can use your own human intuition to navigate around.
Protagonist Controls
Super Mario 64 is probably the most straightforward game here. And it is very strong because of that. It has been a while since I played it, but IIRC, the only unlockable abilities are the hats. Other than that, Mario has his full kit from the get-go. It is satisfying having your full potential from the start.
Mario has a lot of subtleties of course. He can triple jump, he can turn around and backflip, and he can slide around. Experienced players love it since it gives them a lot of freedom of expression. It is somewhat confusing for new players, since subtleties are not directly explained in-game or explained in any depth. They might not even understand why Mario sometimes jumps differently.
Banjo Kazooie is a game with a fairly limited, but intuitive and subtle moveset. You do have to unlock a lot of it. Each level has various sites where you can learn a new move. The game does tell you, upon entering a level, exactly how many abilities are hidden in the level, which is much appreciated game design. The game would probably be more fun to me if you had everything unlocked from the beginning through, except for maybe the boots, which are equivalent to Mario's various caps in Mario 64.
Still, Banjo Kazooie is extremely fair because, the majority of the time, each world can be completed with your current moveset. There are very few 'metroidvania' moments in this game where backtracking after gaining a new ability is required.
Mario 64 and BK can be contrasted with games that have a much more varied ability system, like Ape Escape and Psychonauts 1 and 2. In those games, you have a hotbar with various abilities bound to them. The player can change which abilities are bound to which spot or button. This is similar to how it works in the N64 Zelda games if you have played those. In Zelda you have 3 bound abilities or items, but in Ape Escape and Psychonauts you have 4 bound abilities.
The Hotbar Ability System is more transparent. In Banjo Kazooie a player might forget they have an ability because they haven't used it in a while. In Ape Escape or Psychonauts, you will never forget because you will be reminded of what you can do everytime you open the ability menu. So even though it might seem more complicated juggling multiple abilities, it many ways it is actually more simple. Each the basic attack in Ape Escape is bound to a specific item or ability, meaning you will never forget how to attack in that game.
A Hat in Time is a balance between both of these systems, between simple and complex. In that game, you can change your hat. Your hat determines your ability. You can only wear 1 hat a time, so you only have 1 ability at a time. Instead of juggling between 4 abilities or so, you only have to worry about 1 at a time. Very simple and convenient.
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The Double-Jump tangent is one I think about a lot.
Double jumping is a very popular mechanic across 2D and 3D platformers, but a lot of the great ones don't have them. There are multiple reasons for that.
A really subtle reason is called Jump Input Buffering. Input Buffering is a mechanic that allows players to input slightly too quickly.
Consider the following:
A player wants to jump immediately after touching the ground.
They fall. They press the jump button. They jump immediately after falling. Success.
Now consider:
A player wants to jump immediately after touching the ground.
They fall. They press the jump button 0.1 seconds too early... Therefore nothing happens. Failure.
We can help the player cheat slightly. We can code the game so that if the player presses the jump button 1 second too early, they will still jump after landing. That's what Jump Input Buffering is, helping make sure the player succeeds even though they technically should have failed. It makes games feel good, although not all 3D platformers have it. Just ones that care absurdly about gamefeel.
Now consider if we have double jumping:
A player wants to jump immediately after touching the ground.
They fall. They press the jump button 0.1 seconds too early...
Should the player Double Jump? Or should the player land, then jump?
How do we, as the coder, want to resolve this?
This is the problem with double jumping in games. If we have both Double Jumping and Jump Input Buffering, we run into a paradox where it's not clear what the jump button should do at times. What a lot of good 3D platformers do is they separate the double jump to a different button. Jumping might be the A Button, but Double Jumping might be the B Button. That way, we don't have this problem with Jump Input Buffering. So anytime you play a 3D Platformer where the double jump isn't the same button as the jump button, remember that this is a potential reason why.
This might be why in most 3D Mario games that include a double jump that use the same button as the first jump. Like Fludd's Double Jump in Sunshine, or the Hat Double Jumps in Odyssey. (Note: I haven't played Odyssey so I might be misrepresenting that game.) Of course it's not perfect, since do still occasionally have double jumping in Mario games like with the Tanuki Suit or Luigi's "Scuttle" Jump in Mario 64 DS.
Other reasons that double jumps aren't always added are, of course, more boring. Double jumps can be used to negate fall damage when the level designers want you to take fall damage. Double jumps also make the game easier, when 3D platformers are already generally fairly easy as a genre.
In Ape Escape and Banjo Kazooie, your double jump cannot be used to break your fall. (In Banjo Kazooie it can partially, but not entirely.) In Ape Escape you can only double jump while on the upwards portion of your jump, not during the downwards falling portion, which feels really weird if you aren't used to it. In Banjo Kazooie, your double-jump-glide-thingy can be used normally, but after falling a set distance Banjo loses composure and cannot double jump. That's how they both include fall damage while giving the player a double jump.
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Swimming is an interesting consideration for 3D Platformers. 3D Platformers spend a really long time making sure land-based platforming feels good, so should they even bother with underwater mechanics?
In Psychonauts 1 and 2 you cannot swim. The fun part is that this is actually core to the story, the protagonist believes that their family line was cursed to drown so he panics anytime he sees water. Cool justification.
In A Hat in Time you also cannot swim. Honestly I don't even remember any water in this game, so I never noticed. I haven't mentioned this game anywhere else in this post, but also the Spongebob Platformers, Battle for Bikini Bottom and Spongebob: The Movie Game, I also recall having no swimming at all.
In Spyro 1 you cannot swim. They did add it in future games. Swimming in Spyro is extremely fast, making it feel noticeably different than other 3D Platformers.
Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64 both have swimming and they're all decently comparable. Swimming is somewhat slow and tedious. You have an oxygen meter, meaning you are at risk of drowning. Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64 both have very memorable swimming sections. Because swimming is slow you can use it to suspensefully reveal a new area, making the discovery feel special. So aesthetically they use swimming very well.
Still, I don't feel like swimming in either of those games are fun. Even in Ape Escape, which also comparably has a relatively slow swimming system, I don't feel like I enjoy swimming. So it might be worth it to ignore swimming mechanics altogether in newer 3D Platformers. Either that or completely overhaul how it works.
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Combat is something rarely discussed with 3D Platformers. They do not require combat at all, and when combat is added it is typically extremely basic. Almost all of these games have what I would refer to as basic combat.
Spyro is one of the most interesting cases. Spyro has 2 attacks, Charge and Fire. Some enemies can only be hurt by one or the other, causing the player to alternate their abilities and always keep track what they're fighting. Charging also doubles as the run-forwards button, so you may have to think very quickly considering you are running towards the enemy. It is a pretty good system considering how simple it is.
Psychonauts 1 has a very basic system, but Psychonauts 2 has a proper combat system, with lock-on, dodgerolling, and varied attacks. All enemies can be hurt by all abilities, but many enemies have specific weaknesses, like fire or grapples, causing you to switch out your abilities. It works extremely well, but I almost wonder if that's a bad thing. Because the combat is so great, they have their own dedicated segments. You have to stop platforming in order to do combat. This is different from all the other games here, where there is a nice flow between platforming and combat. I suppose it is worth thinking about if some gameplay loops being good can detract from other good gameplay loops.
In A Hat in Time the combat system is all lock-on. This makes the game extremely easy. In Mario 64, to smash a goomba you have to land on it precisely. In A Hat in Time, you just press the left-click button and you land on it regardless of how bad your aim is. I'm not a fan of lock-on mechanics in general since they are so braindead, but in A Hat in Time the combat might as well be nonexistent most of the time.
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Taking Damage is also a factor when it comes to Combat.
Let's look at Psychonauts 2 since it is the most complicated.
In that game there are "Soft Attack" and "Hard Attacks" from. Soft Attacks don't stun you, while Hard Attacks do stun you. Soft Attacks are reserved from small enemies, while bigger and tougher enemies can either have a mixture of Hard and Soft Attacks, or use exclusively Hard Attacks. Aesthetically, both attacks are easy to distinguish. An explosion? It's a Hard Attack. A punch? It's a Soft Attack? A punch with a big wind-up? A Hard Attack. It's pretty intuitive if you know this feature exists.
The Stun associated with Hard Attacks can have a movement associated with them. Some stuns will stun you in place, while other stuns will push you or throw you a distance. Getting slashed causes you to be stunned in place so the enemy can land more slashes. Getting punched hard can push you away while stunned. Getting smashed from above with a hammer will both push you away and launch you into the air while stunned. So each Hard Attack has a Movement or Momentum variable associated with it.
Funnily enough, there is a mechanic where, if you are thrown upwards and backwards, you land on your back. When you land on your back, you stay there until you press A to jump back up to your feet. No idea why this is even a mechanic, it happens very rarely and is resolved so fast that you never notice it. If this were removed from the game I doubt a single person would notice.
Most or all obstacles appear to be Hard Damage Sources. (They stun you/Knock you around.) This makes platforming more interesting since getting hit can knock you off a platform. If obstacles were soft damage sources then you could easily tank as much damage as you want to during platforming provided you still have at least 1 HP left.
In most simple 3D Platformers, typically all Damage Sources are Hard Damage Sources or Hard Attacks. This appears to be true for the N64 games Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, as well as the PS1 games Ape Escape and Spyro. Also true for A Hat in Time, a more modern game. This makes intuitive sense, stuns feel way more impactful and pushing the player around makes platforming more interesting.
Returning to Psychonauts 2's Stuns, getting hit mid-air is different than getting hit on the ground. The difference is that the stun while grounded lasts for a set duration, while a stun mid-air lasts the entire duration of the fall. While being stunned mid-air you have no ability to control your movement. I'm not sure the name for this, but some games might call this state the "Air Tumbling" state. A simpler name might just be "Aerial Stun" or "Aerial Hitstun" state.
Temporary Invulnerability is typically given to a player while they are stunned in many games. Admittedly, Psychonauts 2 is a bit too fast paced and chaotic for me to dissect if you are given I-Frames (Invulnerability Frames) when stunned or not. (I assume that you are probably given Damage Invulnerability, but not Invulnerability from being pushed by other Hard Attacks.)
In Banjo Kazooie though, it seems that pretty much all damage sources are hard damage sources that launch you backwards into the air. While in this state you do appear to have Invulnerability... But this invulnerability does wear off seemingly immediately after the landing though, so you can still feel like you're being combo'd or juggled by enemies due to a lack of a recovery period. Stuns feel very impactful or frustrating depending on your POV.
Mid-Air Stuns in Banjo Kazooie are extremely memorable, because many sections of the game place you over bottomless pits, or long falls. A single hitstun can launch you to your death, or taking a massive amount of damage from the fall, or just setting you back a far distance in the level. In Conker's Bad Fur Day this feels extremely intentional. That game leans very heavily into the looney tunes aspect, and getting hitstunned off a roof, only to take more damage after falling, feels like comedy gold sometimes.
Camera Controls
Camera controls are huge for a 3D Platformer. How good the camera is often how good the movement feels since they are so intertwined.
The N64 games on this list all use Digital Cameras (Meaning it moves only in big chunks. Usually associated with older games and with D-PADs, although not all D-PAD cameras are digital.). The same goes for Ape Escape.
This sucks. Digital Cameras can only move in giant increments. Meaning you can have your camera look North, or North-East... But what if you want your camera to look in-between North and North-East? Well you can't. So sad.
Fortunately, I feel like those games accounted for having a wonky camera... Usually. Take Rusty Bucket Bay's Engine Room from Banjo Kazooie for example. In that level, all you have to do is walk in a straight line quickly before the engines start up and you fall off, since the engines start and stop periodically. This should be easy, but because the camera can never be perfectly aligned, it is one of the most challenging parts of the game. To walk a straight line reliably in a modern game, you would first align the camera to be straight and then hold forwards on your Movement Along Stick. But if the camera cannot be moved to the correct position, you have to awkwardly move the stick diagonally and pray you have the right angle. So basically, a bad camera prevents you from walking in a straight line sometimes.
Oddly enough, the Ape Escape series never updated their camera system. Their final main game, Ape Escape 3 for the PS2, released 1 year before the PS3, still continued to use the same Digital Camera system from the first game. Probably not the best move. Sadly the Ape Escape series is dead now. RIP. (Maybe whatever company owns the IP will bring it back since you see the series referenced everywhere.)
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Psychonauts 1 and 2 on the other hand use Analog Cameras (Meaning they rely on either a Mouse or Analog Stick) since they are both PC games. Technically, Psychonauts 1 released on the original Xbox, but it was later re-released on Steam. Therefore, it wasn't designed with Keyboard+Mouse in mind, but it still works fine since it is a decently casual difficulty game.
Both games can he played with either:
- Keyboard+Mouse
- Xbox Gamepad/Controller (Or Equivalent)
This is interesting because, of course, aiming a camera is easier with a Mouse than with an Camera Analog Stick. WASD movement, on the other hand, is worse than with an Movement Analog Stick.
So because of the game was designed for multiple controls, I do wonder if the level designers intentionally design the game with a little bit of slack. I haven't consciously noticed anything, but it is possible. In some games that demand a higher level of precision, like Elden Ring, I have noticed that using WASD is awful, since you can only dodge in 8 directions, and sometimes you do need 16 directions instead to dodge certain attacks. It is possible that Psychonauts 2, which also has an emphasize on combat, also benefits from a Gamepad than Keyboard+Mouse. I guess there is no real way to prevent that.
Any aiming section, like lets saying shooting a bullet to hit a target, probably takes a slightly longer period of time to aim your shot with a Gamepad than with a Mouse. Psychonauts 2 doesn't push the difficulty up, but if they did they might have to account for things like that.
Completion: Beating and 100%ing
Collectathon games were meant to be optionally 100%'d. You should be able to beat it while playing somewhat casually, but also be able to 100% if you lock in.
In terms of just beating the game, I like it when there is a decently big gap between beating a game and 100%ing it. I'm not a fan of when beating a game requires 99% of the game, because then 100%ing it doesn't feel as special.
In Banjo Kazooie, according to the wiki, you need 94 out of 100 Jiggies to beat the game. So 94% of the primary goal you need to complete... That's kind of insane. It's also not a very big gap between completion VS 100%ing. Like if you're already 94% of the way there, who wouldn't do the last 6%? (Technically I'm ignoring Note Count, but this is simpler to just look at Jiggies.)
Compare this to Ape Escape. I don't know exactly the minimum required to beat the game, but it's roughly 50%. Only 50% of the primary collectables need to be collected to beat the game. It should be no surprise that when I was a child, I beat Ape Escape but did not beat Banjo Kazooie.
Super Mario 64, according to my random google searches, requires 70 of 120 stars. This is ~58%. I'm pretty sure I completed Super Mario 64 as a kid.
58% is arguably too easy, too low of a threshold to beat the game. 94% is arguably too high. I don't know what the perfect number would be. Perhaps 75% is good.
I admit that I would rather have it be too easy than too hard. I'd prefer to see all of the content of the game, all the level variety and whatnot. The final levels of Banjo Kazooie are so cool, but most players will never get to see them.
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100%ing a game is a difficult task. Sometimes it is rewarding. It feels most rewarding when you aren't just following an external guide, since that ruins the sense of discovery and exploration.
The Super Mario series is extremely fair when it comes to Stars. The level always begins with clues as to where the star is and how to obtain it, via the star's title, and also the camera preview showing the star. (It is not fair at all when it comes to Blue Coins in Super Mario Sunshine, which can be found absolutely anywhere, with no indication at all. Although collecting them was probably intended for hardcore players anyways, so maybe that gets a pass.)
Banjo Kazooie is a lot less fair when it comes to Jiggies. A lot of Jiggies can be found by exploring naturally, but other ones require specific interactions to be discovered. This is similar to the N64 Zelda game logic, where sometimes you have to use insane logic to get the next key or item. For example, in Freezeezy Peaks, the snow world in Banjo Kazooie, you have to kill all the snowmen to get a Jiggy. If you are naturally a pacifistic player you are never going to discover that Jiggy since there is no hint that it even exists. So Banjo Kazooie requires an external guide to complete since it is "unfair" at times. (Not too often though, just a 1 Jiggy or so in each world requires a guide to figure out.)
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But what about the non-primary collectables? Is collecting them fair?
In Super Mario 64, the Red Coins are usually not in insanely impossible to find places. It is fair. So are Coins for getting 100 Coins too. The Banjo Kazooie equivalent to red coins are Jinjos, which are harder to find, but still somewhat fair. Same goes for Notes, equivalent to Mario's Coins.
In Spyro you have gems, which are spread all over in Spyro's massive levels. Fortunately, both Spyro and Ape Escape do something really, really smart. They have a radar. This radar allows you to find the last few collectables in each level. In Spyro, your dragonfly will point in the direction of a collectable you haven't found yet, giving you a vague hint as to where it is. This is also basically the same for Ape Escape, where your Monkey Radar tells you the vague direction the monkey is in, but also showing you a video preview of the area the Monkey is in. (Sadly Ape Escape only does this with Monkey Collectables, with Specter Coins there is no radar, RIP.)
Psychonauts 1 fails at being fair with non-primary collectables. Most of them are easy to find, but some of them could take weeks to find without a guide.
Psychonauts 2 has a similar problem, but has an interesting solution. Psychonauts 2 cannot use the radar mechanic from Spyro and Ape Escape... Why not? Because Psychonauts 2 uses a lot of subtle Non-Euclidean Geometry. (If you don't know what that is, basically it means the game has a million invisible portals everywhere. Look it up.) Because it uses Non-Euclidean Geometry, both distances and directions would get messed up, so radars won't work.
What Psychonauts 2 does have is a Freecam with X-Ray. After completing the game, they let the player check in a small area around them if there are any collectables hiding behind walls. This is called the "Otto-Spot" because it uses the Otto-Shot camera invented by Otto. It is worse than a Radar, but it's still alright. Effectively it is almost like a Mini-Radar and they can disable the camera in areas that use too much Non-Euclidean Geometry. Another game that does this is Banjo Kazooie: Mumbomania where they have a Pirate Transformation called "Growly" with a Telescope that does the same thing... Both of these kind of remind me of the Lends of Truth of Zelda in a way, except instead of seeing invisible platforms you see collectables you've missed.
Nonessential Collectables
I think it is worth writing a section about nonessential collectables. This is probably spurred on by me most recently playing Banjo Kazooie, which has many pointless collectables.
In that game, some of your abilities use ammo or resources. You have eggs to shoot, feathers to fly, and golden feathers which I will explain in a future paragraph. Throughout the entire level you can find these collectables. This is a fairly unique game design decision. Like, if you run out of ammo to shoot, you have to return to a specific part of the level where you last saw ammo, obtain them, and then return to where you were supposed to be. This would be kind of a cool feature, if not for the fact that you never run out of these resources in any practical terms. You always have too many eggs. You can run out of feathers very rarely when you are massively overusing flying.
The fact that a level designer had to put them in specific parts of the level, instead of just being a common random drop from enemies or crates, which is what most games would do, is super interesting. It would make finding any old resource into a scavenger hunt. But of course, this idea mostly doesn't work because the game gives you too many resources and too little incentive to use these resources, so I would not know how this feels in practice.
Golden feathers are the coolest of the 3 resources. They are decently hard to find throughout the levels. Golden feathers work like Stars do in the 2D Mario games, they make you invulnerable, and able to kill anything in your path, even typically unkillable enemies. Because of this, there's no time when you wouldn't want to use them. They are always in high demand and low supply. Also, when you kill enemies in Banjo Kazooie, they stay dead. This means that there is a massive incentive to collect golden feathers, kill the unkillable enemies, use up your feathers, collect more golden feathers, and repeat the process until the entire level is devoid of enemies. It's perfect.
I have not played Yooka Laylee or Yooka Replayee, the spiritual successors to Banjo Kazooie, but I have seen/heard that they mostly abandoned this ammo system and replaced it with an energy system. That does make sense to me at a high level. I do not know enough to say more.
Psychonauts 1 also had an ammo system, except ammo was collected via random drops from enemies and from destroyable objects/crates. Much like Banjo Kazooie, you typically have more than enough ammo, so there is not a whole lot of incentive to collect.
In Psychonauts 2 they removed the ammo system and instead opted for a cooldown system. You can fire your gun as much as you want to, you just have to wait for the cooldown. This works perfectly fine and it a perfectly logical decision. Removing the ammo system from Banjo Kazooie was a tough choice since the ammo system had potential, whereas the Psychonauts ammo system was ultimately pointless, especially since there were already moves like Invisibility that took no ammo and could give a huge combat advantage anyways.
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In Psychonauts 1 and 2 you have a currency. You can use this currency to buy what are effectively health potions. You also sometimes need to use the money to buy essential gear.
In Psychonauts 1 there were Cobwebs that blocked later levels, forcing you to buy the Cobweb Duster to progress. This one item costed an insane amount and forced you to stop progressing the game to farm currency. Farming currency in Psychonauts 1 is somewhat fun because there was a metal detector minigame tied to it. If this mandatory currency section was not in Psychonauts 1, I would have said that currency was ultimately pointless.
Psychonauts 2 had many small optional upgrades that could be bought with currency. Even though it is nice that this existed, I do not feel like it made a meaningful impact on the game, and if they were all removed I would not notice.
Both games have some minor cosmetics you can buy with currency. I'm not much of a cosmetics person, especially in a singleplayer game that isn't a roguelike or another genre that is infinitely repayable.
A Hat in Time also has pointless cosmetics that can be bought with its currency. It fits more in this game than it does in Psychonauts 2, since A Hat in Time does have infinite replay value due to its level editor, but it still feels ultimately pointless to me.
Ape Escape 3 is the game that tried to use currency the most. It still somewhat failed simply due to lack of content. The Ape Escape franchise was clearly pushing to be a popular and recognizable franchise, leaning into cute anime girls and cool monkies. You can spend currency on unlocking the game's OST, on funny quotes, on hints, on lotto tickets for more money, on cosmetics, and on minigames (one of them being a Metal Gear Solid parody.) They clearly wanted to make this a giant gacha system, but didn't have the company resources to pull it off. It should be noted that were are other things that they could have spent the currency on. Like, for example, the game had an entire zodiac horoscope system, which could read your IRL fortune regarding finance or dating, but for some reason they made that free to use.
Currency is just a hard thing to manage in a game that has a limited amount of content.
Disclaimer
I should just say that even though some of these games I'm criticizing, I do love all the games here. If I didn't like the games I wouldn't be criticizing them to begin with. Hopefully I didn't insult your favorite game.
![[Image: rApGaCt.png]](https://i.imgur.com/rApGaCt.png)
