Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Types of platforms
The main objectives of most platform games are pretty much the same—a player
needs to successfully reach the finish point and travel to the next one. But a scenery's
setup can differ partly because of technical issues that primarily include calculating
the capabilities of old devices. The simplest scenery setup is known as the
single-
screen setup
. As the name implies, a game level fits one screen only and its position
is fixed. Thus, the main objective can be reinterpreted as "reach the upper part of the
screen and move to the next level." The following is a screenshot of
Rayman Jungle
Run
from
Ubisoft
:
Most of the early games that pioneered the genre used this concept because it did
not require a large number of resources. Few examples are
Space Panic
(1980)
by
Universal
,
Rise Out from Dungeons
(1983) by
ASCII
, and
Donkey Kong
(1981)
by
Nintendo
. Although by present-day standards these games were not perfect
and advanced, they introduced and tested some cornerstone elements as plat-
forms—ladders to climb vertically, the ability to jump (this feature appeared in the ori-
ginal
Donkey Kong
), and many others.
The disadvantages of the single-screen setup are evident: levels' dimensions are
fixed; to construct a complex platform structure, you need to reduce the size of the
elements dramatically; and characters should be tiny and indistinguishable, mak-
ing the graphic expressiveness pretty low. Moreover, such games are not perceived
as truly dynamic because the level composition is static and small moving parts
are not convincing enough. This is good for puzzling but only satisfactory for faster
types of gameplay, which is why the setup is not quite popular nowadays. Never-
theless, it is not forgotten that there are many modern games (generally, indie ones)
based on this concept. Among them, in my opinion, the real masterpiece is
Shaun
the Sheep—Home Sheep Home 2
by
Chillingo Ltd
(
http://www.chillingo.com/games/
home-sheep-home-2/)
,
which features beautiful artwork and funny gameplay.
