Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Platforming Comes Again!

Platformers were once the most basic template of all gameplay. Most people in my generation were introduced to video games through platformers. The Mario versus Sonic feud continues to this day, and has even found its way into some ill-fated copyright shattering games that tried to monetize the conflict. But the flower fell off the platforming tree during the late nineties and it’s been taking its time coming back. Even some of the more contemporary big-box platformers aren’t really that great at representing what makes the genre special. The tight, simple controls that made Mario and Sonic such perfect games for introducing game play concepts and refining skills are completely absent from fun, visually stunning games like Mario Galaxy.

And even before the most recent era of well-made non-platforming game experiences based on platforming concepts arrived there was a slough of wretched three dimensional platformers or platformalike games with sloppy controls and iffy physics. Titles running the gamut from Sonic 3D to Landstalker all tried to make platformers sexier and destroyed what made them great in the process. As a result the genre fell upon dark times. Nowadays most gamers can recall a time when platformers were a novelty genre, reserved for retro kitchy games and ho-hum stylistic throwbacks.

But lately anyone who’s anyone who plays indie games has noticed a resurgence of great platformers. We’ve entered renaissance of platforming, where the concept of the platformer is not only being explored anew but is also being explored in some very interesting ways. Indie games left and right want to make you ask what a platformer is, what a puzzler is, what an action game is and where the divisions between the genres begin, end and have meaning.

Perhaps no game better illustrates this than Trine. Trine is ostensibly a platformer, but it has elements of adventure, puzzle and roleplaying games to it as well. The gameplay, beyond the basic running, jumping and avoiding danger elements normally associated with platformers, turns on the conceit of switching between three different characters with unique abilities that allow them to solve puzzles and fight enemies in unique ways. One character controls environmental objects and guides them around, doing damage and building solutions to puzzles from existing objects. Another hits enemies hard and destroys barriers with an array of physical powers, mostly existing for the sake of fighting particularly dangerous enemies. The last character is quick, agile, and has a grappling hook: a tremendous advantage in a platforming game.

The end result is a game that is as much about timing jumps and anticipating problems as it is about manipulating your environment and selecting the correct solution to each puzzle. The genre of the platformer is not only expanded: it is essentially contextualized within Trine. By placing emphasis on platforming elements in a game crowded with other bits and pieces without allowing those bits and pieces to overpower one another, Trine has moved the entire platforming genre forward.

Braid is a much more prominent example of a platformer expanding the genre. Braid took the platforming game format and added time manipulation to the mix, a seemingly simple change that manifests itself in all sorts of interesting ways. By making time function in new ways and forcing players to accommodate these shifts in the function of time in order to solve brain busting puzzles, Braid turns the entire genre on its ear. Platforming is no longer a test of reflexes, memorization or foresight. Instead it becomes a cruel, exacting puzzle within the confines of Braid’s.

And Braid goes one further. It adds a story to the mix, making it the first platformer with an actual story that I’ve ever encountered. Most platformers turn on very basic premises, extended explorations of weak plotlines that then grow into fully fledged experiences defined by the journey more than anything else. But Braid has a story about love, inevitability and pain at its heart. It’s buried, optional and subtle (full disclosure, I haven’t finished Braid at time of writing, but I’m tremendously impressed by it so far) but it functions beautifully, a piece of short fiction laying out the existential journey of a selfish, self-centered character who encourages and obviates sympathy at the same time. It’s wonderful to see a game tell a story like this at all, but to see such a tale told through the art of platforming is tremendously heartening for storytelling in video games at large. In Braid the oldest, least story intensive genre has been re-invented as a means of telling a wonderful tale of existential angst.

There are other games that have contributed tremendously to the resurrection of the platforming genre. Games like Limbo continue the tradition of making beautifully artistic, wonderfully designed games. And games like El Shaddai and Bayonetta represent new takes on platforming, wonderful new takes on the subject that make not only platforming but gaming as a whole richer for their efforts. The platforming renaissance that indie games have wrought upon us extends past the indie environment that spawned it, to the broader world of video games at large. It is no longer inconceivable for a retail title to contain platforming elements or to focus its gameplay primarily on platforming. And the big box three-dimensional platformers, for example the Mario Galaxies, have gotten much, much better at correcting the mistakes of their predecessors. Sure, the genre of three-dimensional platformers as a whole still has some serious problems, problems that remain unaddressed by many of the developers who keep returning to the genre. But they’re getting better, and some of the issues, such as controls, camera manipulation and level design and layout, are being dealt with by a handful of people.

The platformer will likely never again rule the gaming world. But the recent renaissance of the genre expresses more than just the resilience of our love of jumping. It also illustrates the durability of games as an art form, games as cultural objects capable of sustaining themselves. It shows that other genres, such as RTSes or adventure games, are unlikely to spontaneously lose their cache with players. While tough times will no doubt beset every genre so long as people still hold them dear and do their best to make something interesting that holds true to the values and themes of a given genre, it will never die.