Rock Solid

I recently got and played through Mina the Hollower, a game that hearkened back to the Game Boy Color entries of The Legend of Zelda. The game was a lot of fun and very enjoyable, but it also wasn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t the hardest game I’ve played or beaten, but it could be a bit unforgiving and punishing at times. It was hard/punishing in a way that felt “fair”, though…if I hit a wall, the solution was to pay attention to how the fight progressed, adapt to the situation, and then use my learnings to overcome those challenges. And it felt good to overcome those challenges.

After I rolled credits on the game, it got me thinking about games, difficulty, and that interesting tension in the tightrope you walk with game development and balancing. It’s definitely something I’ve considered when I was in the weeds of my past games (and am considering with my current projects). There’s definitely a delicate balance to walk in terms of hard, as everyone has wildly different tolerance for challenges and different perceptions of what makes a game “fun hard” and what makes it “frustrating hard”

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I think Dark Souls, in particular, represented a major paradigm shift in terms of games and how people saw difficulty. Don’t get me wrong, there’d been hard games before and after that one, but Dark Souls represented a very different sort of paradigm. It was a game that was difficult, embraced the fact that it was difficult in a way that few games had before it, and didn’t offer ways to compromise on that difficulty. To this day, the fact that Dark Souls offered no changeable difficulty settings is a point of praise and criticism.

I do think one thing that most game developers miss in terms of Dark Souls and its approach to difficulty was that they nailed the feeling of progression. You were always learning every time you died to something, and the game made abundantly clear that you were going to die at some point. But it’s a game that doesn’t hide its cards; it plays them face-up on the table as you play through the game, and getting further reveals more cards. It can be exasperating and challenging, yes, but it never feels unfair, and every death was a moment to reflect, regroup, and tackle the challenge anew.

It’s satisfying to feel like you’re making progress, and it’s even more satisfying to get past an obstacle. Gaming without friction is nowhere near as satisfying; it’s not inherently a bad thing, mind, but I’ve always been someone who gets more out of meeting goals in a game instead of just vibing, and goals often are overcoming challenging scenarios.

I have discovered that I have a very high tolerance for difficulty. It’s not superhuman; I’ve never been a fan of “Kaizo” style challenges, the ones requiring pixel-perfect execution of a particular puzzle solution, but I do like a bit of a head-turning challenge. I’ll often play on the hardest difficulty I can tolerate, and it’s often a lot of fun to still stretch my limits. I like challenge, and I like being tested in a way that I can meet.

I think where the line between “good” hard and “bad” hard is up to the person playing the game, of course, but it really comes down to if you’re feeling like it’s a challenge you can overcome. If you feel like you can make progress and that you are making progress, you can put up with difficulty, and the pain of the challenge makes the reward of victory even more satisfying.

The balancing act when I’m working on games is definitely a hard one, and I’ve always aimed for “mildly challenging” for me. The issue is that I have a high tolerance for difficulty, and “mildly challenging” turned out to be “cosmic punishment” for some other people who played the game.

I’ve wanted to make games a bit more accessible, since a lot of people I know (and interact with) aren’t nearly as amenable to my idea for difficult, so I’ve made the call to include “easier” settings. I don’t think games should be punishingly hard unless that’s the intent…and that wasn’t the intention here. I wanted to make a game I’d be satisfied with and satisfied by, a game I’d enjoy playing.

To swing in the other direction, I’ve also added in higher difficulties to satisfy those who want something even more imposing. I like to think games should be for as many people as possible, and I’m definitely interested in adding avenues to allow people to experience the games in a way that is more fun for them than frustrating without satisfaction.

I’ve been ideating on other game ideas that aren’t strategy RPGs, and I still think I want to try and tackle the difficulty in that way, to make something everyone can enjoy on their own terms. I do think there’s a lot of value in asking people to meet you where you want to be, instead of just going down to meet them, but it’s transactional in a way.

So if you’re ever making games, think of who it’s for and who you want it to be for.