Hello you lovely mario person, my name is Ceave and welcome back.
Super Mario Bros. U is a game which is often overlooked.
Not only was it the fourth entry in the Super Mario Bros. series in six years, it also launched
only three months after New Super Mario Bros. 2 on the 3DS and it launched on the Wii U
which had really bad sales.
And that's a real pity, because Super Mario Bros. U is an excellent game, filled with
creativity and awesome design.
Today we are going to deconstruct the way the game handles difficulty.
How is this platformer able to have such a smooth transition in difficulty, where every
stage always feels like a challenge but beatable.
What is the magic trick behind the fact that our game is able to provide a good challenge
to inexperienced players as well as to platforming veterans?
And is there something to learn for designing mario maker courses?
Well, you're ready?
Let's find out.
In order to deconstruct the way super mario bros.
U handles difficulty we are going to analyze two courses.
One from the first half of the game and one of the second half of the game.
The harder stage is Bouncy Cloud Boomerangs and in world seven.
This level is built around bouncy platforms and dodging terrifying boomerangs shot by
boomerang-bros.
The easier stage is Spinning Star Sky and is in the third world.
The main gimmick of this level are these star-shaped platforms which rotate fast when mario stands
on top of them.
So the level starts by giving our plumber a safe-playground to play around with the
new star-platforms.
Falling off of this platform has no consequences.
There is a mushroom hidden in the question-block at the top and the worst thing that can happen
to mario here is to platform so sloppy that the mushroom falls into this little hole and
is gone.
This represents one of the four main ways mario game designers are able to punish a
player if he fails a challenge.
They can either directly kill him, or force him to take a hit and to retry the challenge.
They can force him to retry the challenge without any consequences, or they can allow
him to skip the challenge as a whole but he does not get a reward.
Here the mushroom represents the reward and failing the challenge has no other consequences
for mario but to potentially lose the mushroom.
This is the first stage in the game where the rotating star-platforms appear.
The game gives mario here a small area where he can safely study the physics of these platforms
before confronting him with real challenges.
The next area does something similar.
Here the coins guide mario to go on top of the star, and the goombas on the bottom make
the way on top easier than the one below the star.
So mario gets another chance to play with this new obstacle without major consequences.
If he fails here he might hit a goomba but it's rather unlikely as he probably falls
on top of them.
Then things get really dangerous for the first time.
Now mario has not only to make his way on top of one of these stars, but two and there
is a bottomless pit, making every mistake deadly.
Good players get the additional option to jump on top of this koopa in order to reach
a valuable starcoin.
After this first challenge the stage becomes easier again.
Here mario only needs to jump over one star, and there are some secrets hidden here which
add optional challenges for better players, but we'll talk about this in a moment.
Next we have four of these stars for mario to survive.
But this time he has small muncher platforms below him which allow him to change otherwise
lethal mistakes into simple damage.
This challenge is definitely the toughest so far, and the reward is this checkpoint.
And now something interesting happens.
Instead of constantly increasing the difficulty of the challenges they become easier here
once again.
Only three stars and no bottomless pit.
Getting over this part is easier than the part before the checkpoint, but collecting
the mushroom here is a tough additional challenge which can be easily failed.
It's really clever to make the level easier again directly after the checkpoint as the
part after the checkpoint is the part which players will most likely play the most.
The toughest challenges in a mario level are logically towards the end of the stage, and
these are obviously the challenges players will fail the most.
So putting an easy but not meaningless challenge here makes sense.
And having a bonus mushroom which is a little bit harder to reach makes sense as well.
Reaching this mushroom makes beating the stage a lot easier, and in consequence the more
often you have to replay this part the more likely you are to find a way to get the mushroom.
This means that every time you fail at a later challenge you become more likely to catch
this mushroom which makes the challenge you failed before easier.
A lot of stages in super mario bros U do something like this and it's really clever because
it keeps the level of frustration low.
The next part becomes harder but is once again easier than the part before the first checkpoint
and introduces a new variation of the challenge by introducing noteblocks.
Then it becomes even easier, just two stars, and no bottomless pit before we have the main
challenge of the stage.
Everything up to this point is basically a preparation for the player to master this
challenge.
Five stars at once!
The star physics are actually really hard to control and it's definitely no easy task
to make your way over all the rotating platforms.
Especially if you consider that we are still in the first third of the game.
Mario is rewarded with a fun little slide into these enemies and faces a last little
challenge before he finally reaches his flagpole.
Okay so there were ten star-platforming sections to overcome in this stage.
If we give each one of it a specific difficulty rating with 0 being the lowest and ten being
the highest and put them into a difficulty graph we get this interesting result:
There are a couple of things which we can visualize this way.
The first thing that this shows is that the difficulty in this mario stage isn't linear
or exponentially growing but jumps wildly around.
For example: the third easiest challenge is back to back with the second hardest challenge
of the stage.
The next thing we can see here is that there is usually a more relaxing area before the
tough challenges.
The difficulty increases steadily in this stage, and relaxing areas at the end are about
the same difficulty as early main challenges.
Another thing we can draw into this graph is the position of the power ups.
These two mushrooms are additional challenges in challenges, and these two mushrooms are
placed at completely safe spots directly after two tougher challenges.
The power ups are really easy to find in this stage and don't require a lot of exploration.
Alright here is where things become interesting.
That was a stage taken out of the first third of the game, now let's head to another level
from the last third of a game and let's find out how it differs from this one.
This stage immediately starts more dangerously.
Mario has to make his way up this staircase while koopas make their way down and then
we are once again introduced to the main gimmick of the stage.
Here it's bouncing clouds which slightly move.
The setting here mirrors the exact same setting from the stage before.
There isn't really any danger here for mario, except for not getting this mushroom which
might help him in the later parts of the stage.
Next we have our first real challenge, jumping over three platforms while goombas bounce
towards our brave plumber.
We then encounter our first boomerang-bros in the game.
There are two safe spots where mario can't get hit by these horrific boomerangs.
I actually had troubles finding out if killing this boomerang-bros is tougher than dodging
the goombas on the platform before as I have tons of hours in this game and both things
felt pretty easy to me.
So I gave this level to my wonderful girlfriend, who has definitely spent more time watching
me playing mario games than playing mario herself.
And I realised that dodging the boomerangs is definitely the harder challenge than jumping
on top of the goombas.
Like definetly definetly.
(A lot of lives were lost that day.)
Then the stage becomes a little bit easier once again and we have a small area with some
jumping koopas and an optional secret followed by a tougher part: jumping over four clouds
while goombas come towards you from two directions and then we hit the checkpoint once again.
Here this stage mirrors the stage from before again.
It becomes easier, but there is an optional challenge to collect a power-up and a starcoin.
The next challenge is easier again than the one before the checkpoint.
Two koopas, two clouds and a safe area, which allows to almost entirely skip the challenge.
Aaaand then the stage becomes really hard.
First mario has to make his way through this chaotic part where piranha-plants try to eat
him, then he immediately faces another boomerang-bros, but this time he has to get past him by using
a bouncing cloud instead of pipes and there are no safe spots.
Directly after this boomerang-bros waits another one, and if our plumber hasn't killed the
one before he now faces deadly boomerangs from two directions, with no safe-spots and
a cloud which bounces up and down.
That was the main challenge towards the whole stage built up, and once again there is an
easier echo of the stage directly at the end.
Okay so if put the challenges of this stage into a graphic once again we get this result.
Just as quick little side note these graphics are meant to roughly represent the difficulty
of the single challenges in the stages and not super accurate.
Some players might find some parts of a stage harder than others and so on, but they help
to roughly visualize how the difficulty in a stage evolves.
This stage jumps even more in difficulty than the one before, the hardest part is again
at the end and the challenge before the final one is super easy.
There isn't much more going on here currently but we will come back to this graphic in a
moment and add some interesting stuff to it, but first let's talk about why the second
stage we discussed is actually the harder one?
At first glance this is actually pretty hard to say.
The star-platforms are definitely the gimmick that is harder to navigate than the bouncing
clouds.
Both levels have the same amount of power-ups.
Two before the checkpoint and two after the checkpoint.
There are actually more places where a mistake means falling into a bottomless pit in the
star-stage than in the cloud stage.
Even the difference in the amount of enemies in the stages is not too huge, with 10 koopas
in the star stage and 6 in the cloud one, 15 goombas in the star one and 11 in the cloud
one.
But only one piranha vs. 13 in the star to the cloud stage and of course the four hammer
bros.
But stage 7-3 is definitely the tougher one than 3-1, so why is that so?
It's mainly because of the context in which mario encounters these enemies.
Enemies which are above mario for example are way harder for him to beat and to escape.
As his main way of beating an enemy is to jump on it's head, and the main way to dodge
one is to jump over it.
Which is both way harder if the enemy is above you.
The enemy placement is basically what 7-3 is all about, it defines the difficulty.
The stage starts with two koopas which are hard to escape.
After the checkpoint these goombas are above mario and fall down, these goombas come from
above and jump in a way that makes it hard to predict where they land, even the way in
which the challenge of dodging the boomerang bros evolves mirrors this.
Meanwhile almost all enemies in 3-1 are in places easily avoided for mario.
3-1 is all about surviving the difficult jumps on these star platforms.
But 7-3 is about avoiding enemies in difficult environments.
The bouncing clouds only support this idea there, but they aren't meant as the main
challenge.
If there was a stage for example where mario had to jump on top of these star-platforms
while boomerang-bros shoot boomerangs at him this stage would probably be ridiculously
hard.
But there is another thing that makes the earlier stage easier.
The power ups.
In the first level there aren't too many enemies as discussed before that are actually
a threat to mario so it's not too hard to get and keep the acorn suit.
As a all challenges here are built around tricky platforming in dangerous heights the
acorn suit helps immensely to beat this stage.
Even the Luigi guide, which pops-up if you died five times in a stage shows you how to
basically skip the entire challenge.
Meanwhile the ice-flower in the cloud stage is helpful as well, but not as helpful and
it's really easy to lose it.
Okay, so let's talk about another aspect of difficulty in new super mario bros U.
One of the toughest problems when designing a game is how to create a game that gives
skilled players the challenges they are looking for, and less skilled players still a satisfying
and beatable experience.
And super mario bros U is really good at addressing this problem because super mario bros U often
allows you to choose your own difficulty instead of giving you a set one..
In this stage for example there are two really tough challenges which grant you a star-coin
if mastered, but trivialize the hole challenge if ignored.
Every player is free to choose whether he wants to go for this challenge, or completely
ignore it.
Let's quickly head back to our two stages because there are a lot of hard challenges
hidden, which are completely optional but allow better players to find an additional
challenge.
Here we have a small bonus room only reachable by performing a tricky walljump, here we have
a really tough jump which leads us to an alternative and much harder challenge which is rewarded
with a star-coin.
Here we have a optional hidden 1-UP puzzle, here we have a green ring challenge.
Mario basically has to collect these green coins five times in a row before the timer
ends.
And that is really challenging and here is a completely optional area where mario is
able to collect coins.
It's the same with 7-3 and basically every mario stage every made.
In the beginning there is the option to jump off from one of the koopas to get an additional
power up.
Here is a walljump challenge while boomerangs are thrown.
Here it's possible to first drop down into a optional challenge which leads to a reward
room later.
Here is a red-coin challenge which is hard to get, where mario has to collect all 8 red-coins
before the timer ends.
Here is a hard to reach hidden pipe which does nothing but is really fun, and then there
is the last star coin which is completely optional as well.
If we add these optional challenges into our difficulty graphs they suddenly look like
this, and every player is able to choose his own difficulty in between these areas.
But there's even more because super mario games in general and U in particular value
exploration and discovering secrets higher than their own challenges.
Right before the hardest part of 7-3 there is a star hidden, and finding this star completely
trivializes the final challenge of the stage.
It's possible to beat this level even if you are not good enough in super mario to
master it's last challenge, all you need to do is to explore the stage.
The same is true for 3-1.
Here mario only needs to enter this wall in order to find a star, and to skip the hardest
challenge of the stage once again.
If we add these challenge-skips to our chart there is suddenly a huge gap in between the
easiest and the hardest playthrough of the stage but both paths feel rewarding for the
player.
Because if the player went through the hardest path, they managed to beat a lot of tough
but satisfying challenges.
But if a player took the easiest path, he found clever hidden secrets which rewarded
him with shortcuts or useful items, and gave him the satisfaction of discovering a secret.
And that's not only really clever game design, but probably one of the main secrets why super
mario games appeal to such a wide audience.
Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this little video, if you enjoyed it don't forget
to leave me a thumbs up and maybe you feel like hitting the difficult to hit subscribe
button today as well.
I hope you have a wonderful day and to see you soon, goodbye.
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