Coins everywhere ?

Sooner or later, platformers designers will introduce some collectible Coins/tings/star bits into their game.

Their role of increasing our score move or less belongs to the past how, but a game that has no collectibles feels a bit odd. I know because I just played \”Gris\” which has none, and having sequences where you slide down and jump at will but have no incentive to do so because there is no \”coin\” to find was unusual. In fact, it made the game feel -artistic- instead of playful. 

Collectibles may play roles other than making the experience more fun, though.  They can guide the player, if you  make sure that you never put some in places that cannot be reached.  That\’s quite an obvious one. They can invite the player to try something  more difficult than they\’ d normally do, and they can let the player know whether they have already visited some locations.

 

The question Neutronized raised is whether we should allow the game to feature some collectibles that are  impossible to skip.

I see a few occasion where this Could occur, like having a long line of them on a platform and no way to stand between them, \”or having them drawing a wall\”. If you end up designing something like that, I invite you to think  again: what does these extra collectible bring to your player? You removed them the freedom of  whether they pick something or not. It\’s like forcing a kid to eat some chocolate whether they want it or not. Why would you do that? 

I see two occasions where you might want to do it, though. First is when you move your player through some section where you want them not to move. Collectibles on the unavoidable path can then destress the player, making them know that they are on an intended, \”good\” path. Second is when you use collectible to hint player about the location of some off-screen platform.

Final thought: if you claim that \”there should not be un-avoidable coins in a platformer\”, then you also state that a game where the player is forced to purchase a key item is not a platformer (including infamous Pac-in-Time and Santa Jr).

My immediate thought of a game that might not follow that line and I still love is Rayman on PSX. But that\’s one of my favourite game. And you definitely cannot complete the game without picking any \’tings\’ here because some are actually triggers in disguise to unlock \’doors\’.

Looking at the screenshot again make me wonder: was Rayman capable of jumping straight from the current location to the rightmost platform ? if not, placing a nearly-unavoidable ting on the middle platform may serve the purpose of hinting that the one-jump path is a bad path by explicitly marking the other as \’good\’ path.

Of course, playing \’coin is lava\’ is only interesting when there are cheap-to-grab coins. If all coins cost you an extra jump and none is on the \’easy\’ path, then you actually make the game simpler by not getting any coin. But then, yes. If you go for \”let\’s have kid players get cheap coins in this section\” rather than \”let\’s tease expert player to grab coins while playing\”, the expert players might enjoy if you use that negative space with no coins as a way to try something different.