'Blending theory and practical analysis, this book shows how principles of game and level design are applied in some of your favorite 2D action-adventure games.'
The following excerpt is from World Design for 2D Action-Adventures by Christopher Totten and Adrian Sandoval. The book was published on December 30, 2024 by CRC Press, a division of Taylor & Francis, a sister company of Game Developer and Informa Tech. Use our discount code GDTF20 at checkout on Routledge.com to receive a 20% discount on your purchase. Offer is valid through February 29, 2025.
This introductory chapter begins our exploration of level design for 2D action-adventures by defining the genre and giving a brief overview of its history. This includes offering brief overviews of games that significantly impacted the genre and its design aesthetics. This introduction will also explain the structure and approach of the book so that readers can find the most effective way to integrate it into their learning of level design within the 2D action-adventure genre. This explanation will cover how the book integrates chapters on design concepts (D chapters) with practical chapters (P chapters) that include information on how to use the GB Studio game engine to build sample game projects.
For both game players and designers, few genres fire the imagination like the action-adventure. This may seem like a generic statement: lots of games involve doing things (action) and having adventures, but the genre known as “action-adventure” has, over time, come to embody design pillars that both excite on their own and inform other game styles. Games like those in The Legend of Zelda series and the more non-linear Castlevania games delight with large explorable environments and expansive sets of tools and abilities for players to find. Likewise, the work of independent creators continually refine the genre or add experimental new ideas to it, such as Team Cherry’s seminal game Hollow Knight (2017) or Greg Lobanov’s Chicory: A Colorful Tale (2021) and its coloring book-based mechanics.
For designers, action-adventures can feel intimidating: it includes 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional games, top-down and side-scrolling viewpoints, open worlds, procedurally generated levels, bespoke human-authored gameplay sequences, and lots of other things. There are also debates over whether these games should or should not have specific features, like “RPG elements” where players gain experience points to increase their characters’ stats and capabilities. At the same time, the elements that are more consistently identifiable, such as exploration, non-linear progression – where players can tackle challenges in an order they wish – thematically-rich quests, and narratively-rich settings, are consistently valuable. In a world where game design trends and technologies are constantly in flux, this genre holds steadfast, like a magic sword in its forest resting place for a hero to wield it once again.
Action-adventures are also consistently appealing to audiences, allowing a rewarding balance of gameplay mechanics and narrative detail and appear on many top-selling lists. For 2D entries in the genre, they can be friendly to small teams or teams with few resources to develop. If scoped properly, action-adventure games hold the potential for a lot of content to be packed into a concise set of systems and environments. The very best level design in this genre can feel like whole miniature worlds with histories beyond the events of the games that take place in them: actual places rather than just spaces for games to happen. The flexible and evolving nature of the genre allows it to take on a variety of elements, evidenced by the multiple subgenres that exist under its umbrella, like survival horror, soulslikes, and the venerable Metroidvania (if this is your first time hearing these terms, we will explain them all throughout the book.) Mastering the design of this genre requires a lot of practice, knowledge, and skill: the worlds that make up games in the genre can include tangled webs of plotlines, characters, quests, and activities.
Organizing the progression of players through these games can be a challenge for even experienced designers, which is why we wanted to write this book. We are designers with collective decades of experience in game development, including on award-winning 2D top-down and side-scrolling action-adventure games. We have chosen to focus this book on 2-dimensional (2D)-style action-adventures both to keep the book concise (introducing a Z-axis adds all sorts of other spatial considerations) and to emphasize core level design aspects that carry into both 2D and 3D action-adventure games. As designers (and game players), we have found that 3D action-adventures like TUNIC (2022), Dark Souls (2011), and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) share many elements in their designs and structures with 2D games in the genre. Likewise, as educators, we believe that practicing in 2D forms a strong basis for building 3D action-adventures[1] such that readers can take many of the design concepts in this book into their potential 3D work.
So, dear reader, let us embark on our own adventure to discover the design secrets of the action-adventure genre; specifically, how to create interactive environments (levels) for this challenging but gratifying game style. In this introductory chapter, we will begin by more clearly defining the genre and its variations, then exploring its history to make sense of these variations. We will then identify some level design considerations specific to the genre and how they will form the content of the book. Lastly, we will discuss the structure and approach of this book, including how the book will handle its blend of design theory and practical information.
Game genres are on one hand useful tools for quickly describing games and a historically fraught topic. Critics argue that they inadequately describe what players do in specific games, limit the creativity of game makers[2] or are so in-flux as to be nearly useless as a critical tool as game trends evolve[3]. This can be doubly true for genres like action or action-adventure, which seem to encompass so many different styles of gameplay and sub-genres. For this reason, we need to break down some common attributes to frame the rest of the book’s explorations of level design for the genre.
Rollings and Adams describe the action-adventure genre as having both “physical” navigation and combat skills as those found in the action genre – which itself encompasses combat or traversal-based subgenres like the platformer – while also having detailed storylines, characters, inventory systems, dialogue, and other features of adventure games[4]. Other elements that game development writers highlight include puzzles[5], how the narrative aspects of the games are triggered by the player’s movement through the environment, and mastery of in-game skills, rather than through narrative or dialog choices[6]. Typical examples include games in the Legend of Zelda, God of War, or Tomb Raider series.
Complicating these definitions, but perhaps creating the flexibility that allow designers to make lots of diverse works within the genre, are the many sub-genres under the “action-adventure” umbrella. The example series above each have varying degrees of action, narrative, and puzzle solving: Zelda games have action, but are known more for their intricate puzzles, while God of War games place more emphasis on combat mechanics and encounters. Sub-genres can also be defined by subject matter: many “survival horror” games – horror-themed games where players must use limited resources to fight monsters – are also action-adventures based on their gameplay design, as in the Resident Evil series. The games may likewise be highly linear, where the gameplay progression and narrative follow a highly set path, as in the God of War games, or allow for more open-ended exploration, as in the Grand Theft Auto series or Hollow Knight.
With all of this nuance, we begin to see how difficult it is to put so many games under an umbrella like “action-adventure.” While it is outside the scope of this book to offer a complete history of the genre, a quick history of action-adventures may help us make sense of the genre such that we can effectively level design within it. As a combination of the action and adventure genres, the history of action-adventures goes back to the foundations of commercial video games themselves.
Early action games
Many early video games would fall squarely into the action genre, where the focus is on “physical” challenges requiring the player’s skill, timing, and hand-eye coordination for success[7]. More accurately, most of these challenges involve objects (game sprites, balls, bullets, etc.) colliding with one another and producing a discernible outcome such as one of the objects exploding, bouncing off the other, or rewarding points. Early electronic games like Tennis for Two (1958), Spacewar! (1962), and many of the games for the Magnavox Odyssey game console (1972) included players moving around a screen (or in the case of Tennis for Two, oscilloscope) and engaging in some competitive action: shooting lasers at opposing spaceships, hitting a bouncing tennis ball, chasing other players, and so on. Such games formed the basis of early popular arcade games, which these ideas were iterated on in games like Pong (1972), Combat (1977), Space Invaders (1978), and others.
Early adventure games
In 1976, programmer Will Crowther created Colossal Cave Adventure for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. Crowther, who had previously enjoyed spelunking with his ex-wife and notable cave explorer Patricia Crowther (later Wilcox), wanted to create a game based on his experiences in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave as a means of connecting with his two daughters. He added elements of the popular tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (1974), such as magic, dragons, and treasure that players could find. This game spawned a number of similar “text adventure” games such as Zork (1977) and later graphical adventures like Mystery House (1980.) These games utilized text parsers, or computer programs that could respond to and interpret typed inputs, to deliver feedback to players on their chosen actions. Utilizing no collision-based gameplay, only narrative and text, players could reach fail states by choosing the incorrect story path, but interactions were controlled entirely by the player’s typed commands rather than exertions of skill.
The action-adventure is born
In 1978, Atari programmer Warren Robinett was creating an engine with which he could create a graphical adaptation of Colossal Cave Adventure for the Atari VCS (later called the 2600.) During the development of his game, Robinett was tasked with creating a Superman game from Atari’s owners at Warner Communications, but passed on it, leaving the job to another programmer, John Dunn. Robinett gave Dunn some of his Adventure code to help in the development of the Superman game, which included the ability to move around multiple screens and carry items[8]. Dunn’s finished Superman (1979) Atari VCS game would see the caped superhero fly around the city of Metropolis after the villainous Lex Luthor and his henchmen blew up a bridge, trying to fix the damage and put the criminals in prison. Robinett’s fantasy-themed game, Adventure, would eventually release in 1980 and have players use various keys, weapons, and tools to progress through a 30-screen world and retrieve a magical chalice, all while dodging three dragons – Yorgle, Grundle, and Rhindle[9]. These two games, both spawning from Robinett’s code kernel, balanced the action that had dominated games until that point with the story-driven mindset of Dungeons & Dragons and Colossal Cave Adventure such that the action-adventure was born.
These games were not only influential from a design standpoint, but also from a technical one: both were among the first games to see worlds that stretch across multiple screens and have players interacting with limited inventory systems. They also established the “top down” viewpoint as a major element of action-adventures: both games utilized a perspective that allowed players to move in eight directions on screen, but which showed characters from a front or side view to keep them recognizable. This formula would prove influential not only within Atari, as seen through later releases such as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982) and the Swordquest series (1982-2022), but among other studios throughout the worldwide industry. Even at this early stage, the elements of the action-adventure proved to be malleable enough to fit into different game modalities beyond computers and home consoles. Exidy’s 1981 arcade game Venture would take the exploratory concepts of Adventure and adapt them into an arcade format, with players moving between a zoomed-out overworld view and into zoomed-in “trap rooms”, where they could fight monsters for treasure[10].
Parallel developments
Venture’s shifting perspectives mirrored spatial archetypes that were hinted at in the likes of Adventure, and which was a core of the at-the-time ongoing evolution of the computer role-playing game (CRPG), overworlds and dungeons. These archetypes are a hallmark in traditional heroic epics, where heroes descended into caves, dungeons, and even the underground lands of the dead on literarily thematic quests[11]. This device has origins in The Epic of Gilgamesh (where Gilgamesh sends his friend Enkidu to retrieve objects from the Underworld), and The Odyssey (where Odysseus likewise visits the Underworld), and appears in later works such as Beowulf (where Beowulf pursues various monsters to their lairs), The Inferno (where Dante and Virgil explore the nine levels of Hell[12]), up through the works of Tolkien and into modern fantasy literature. These narratives, including those of Tolkien, had “plenty” of influence on Gary Gygax[13] in his designs for Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). D&D, in turn, influenced the creators of early CRPG games, many of whom wrote their games as a way to have the computer do all of the math one does during roleplaying campaigns.
Befitting the action-adventure genre’s origins as a melting pot of other game types, the ongoing development of CRPG’s (a full history of which is outside the scope of this book[14]), and other nascent game styles of this era further impacted the action-adventure. Also emerging at this time was the platformer game, a genre generally viewed in a side-scrolling manner, where the gameplay is viewed from the side of the characters as though looking into a dollhouse. In platformer games, players navigate a character between various floating ledges (platforms) via climbing or jumping. Early examples of this genre include Space Panic (1980), in which players climbed ladders to avoid aliens, and Donkey Kong (1981), where players guided a certain moustachioed character – first called Jumpman and later, Mario – up girders via jumping and climbing.
Elements of both platformers and CRPGs would be quickly integrated into the action-adventure genre. David Crane’s Pitfall (1982) featured a side-scrolling quest for treasure across 256 screens arranged in a line, but included caves that would both tease players with treasure – the side view gave a “cut-through” perspective where the caves were visible – and provide shortcuts[15]. In the “bedroom coder” and homebrew-fueled British microcomputer market, designers such as Matthew Smith would imbue their platformers with themes of treasure hunting and open-ended exploration. Smith’s game Jet Set Willy sets platforming action in a continuous mansion featuring 60 rooms which players can freely explore[16]. Mikro-Gen’s 1984 game Pyjamarama and its sequels Everyone’s a Wally (1985) and Three Weeks in Paradise (1986) would expand this formula with more detailed environments, collectible keys and items, and multiple playable characters[17]. These gameplay ideas were soon blended with adventure settings inspired by the popular Indiana Jones films, leading to a greater focus on contiguous environments such as temples and caves. Montezuma’s Revenge (1984) sees players searching for treasure by descending in a large pyramid, requiring backtracking and the collection of color-coded keys to progress, imbuing the platformer genre with the inventory management of the RPG. Crane’s Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns (1984) similarly tasks players with searching an intricate maze-like 256-room cavern that enticed exploration via hidden treasures.
The genre crystalizes
Distinct elements would emerge from these early efforts: flexibility between using the top-down or side-scrolling perspectives, the inclusion of “action” via combat or jumping, non-linear design where players could explore within their limitations, large worlds that have persistent elements such as unlockable doors or collectible treasures, distinct items – like color-coded keys – required to progress, using the perspective to show the player treasures that they did not know how to reach yet, etc. The Indiana Jones-inspired settings of caves, temples, pyramids, etc. were further buttressed by the dungeon-delving fantasy settings of CRPGs like Wizardry (1981) or Ultima (1981). In Japan, Wizardry and Ultima were quite popular, and inspired a number of games that included action, but featured many more RPG elements than the typical action-adventure. These action RPGs included games like Nihon Falcom’s Dragon Slayer (1984), which saw players powering a character with items with the ultimate goal of defeating a dragon, and T&E Soft’s Hydlide (1984), which emphasized top-down combat among its questing systems[18]. Also looming over this genre is Namco’s “role playing game for the arcades” (Parish 2019), The Tower of Druaga (1984), in which an armor-clad knight explores the maze-like floors of a tower. Druaga’s popularity and influence grew from the arcane manner in which players had to find hidden upgrades in the game – finding specific and inconspicuous spots in maps that would reveal items. The game forced players to compare their notes from playing the game with one another, building a strong communal element as play communities worked together to solve Druaga’s riddles.
Many of these systems and influences could be found in the first true masterpiece of the genre, Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda (1986). Structurally, Zelda features an expansive top-down overworld full of interesting characters, items, secrets, upgrades to the hero Link, and hints to the location of eight hidden dungeons. Link must descend into these dungeons (technically completable in any order) to retrieve the eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom, which was broken by Princess Zelda to hide it from the evil Ganon. After retrieving the Triforce pieces, Link must enter a ninth dungeon to defeat Ganon and rescue Zelda herself. The game included a more varied and dynamic overworld/underworld layout than games that came before, as well as more diverse possibilities for combat and item-based progression. Link can attack with not only a sword, but also bows, bombs, boomerangs, and magic. He also does not only progress with keys, but must use ladders, rafts, and other items, giving the world a puzzle-like quality. Upgrades and items could be found in arcanely hidden caves, which required players to search every nook and cranny with their various tools. This game also features a variety of distinct boss monsters in each of the dungeons which must be defeated in unique ways, which would be a hallmark of action-adventures moving forward, and in-game maps to help players navigate dungeons. Later games in the series would push many of the original’s elements further, adding more non-player characters and narrative. Likewise, the focus of the series would shift from purely open exploration and combat, to more intricate puzzle-solving in sequels like A Link to the Past (1991) and Link’s Awakening (1993.) Later Zelda-inspired games (“Zelda-likes”) would fall somewhere on a spectrum of being exploration and combat-based as in Hyper Light Drifter (2016), or more puzzle-based, as in Ittle Dew 2 (2016.) Games like Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear (1987) would also iterate on Zelda’s gameplay by refining the item-based progression and putting a greater focus on narrative.
The Nintendo Entertainment System (abbreviated as the “NES” and called the Famicom in Japan) would become a haven for the action-adventure genre and the place where many of its early seminal works would be found. In addition to Zelda, Nintendo would release Metroid in 1986, which feels like a synthesis of Mario’s platform jumping with Zelda’s exploration and progression. The game’s heroine, Samus Aran, must upgrade her combat and traversal capabilities both to withstand the alien creatures in a deep underground maze, and to progress to new areas in the maze. Samus’s upgrades notably become part of Samus’s movement and physical appearance rather than items added to an inventory. These upgrades include items like missiles, bombs to open new passages, boots that let Samus jump higher, and notably a “morph ball”, which lets Samus roll into a tiny ball. Beyond these required items, players could also search for optional energy tanks and missile upgrades that increase Samus’ strength and resilience. Metroid’s cavern went beyond the singularly-themed world designs of previous games, and instead featured varied biomes, or areas with differently themed environmental artwork, to aid player navigation. This included caverns, ruins, lava, and laboratory-themed areas. Metroid would also popularize the idea of speedrunning action-adventure games, or trying to play them as fast as possible, thanks to alternate endings that would occur if players beat the game more efficiently. This practice would grow in other games in the genre, and indeed become pervasive in game playing more widely.
Other notable games for the evolution of the action-adventure were Konami’s Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, both released in 1987. Castlevania II is a sequel to the original NES Castlevania (1986) and follow-up to Vampire Killer (1986) for the MSX computer. Where the original Castlevania was a straightforward action-platformer, Simon’s Quest creates a wholly open non-linear action experience set in an explorable world that even features a day/night cycle[19]. Players must navigate a side-scrolling overworld to retrieve artifacts from five mansions, which will break a curse placed on Simon by Count Dracula after the events of the original Castlevania game. Reaching these mansions requires item collection and solving [some famously obtuse] puzzles in the game’s expansive world map, as well as upgrading Simon’s abilities with items bought in towns, as in an RPG. In the similar but more influential Zelda II, Link must venture through the land of Hyrule as in its predecessor but now in a blend of top-down overworld exploration and side-scrolling combat and dungeon exploring modalities[20]. As in Castlevania II, the game shifts between an open overworld and self-contained side-scrolling dungeons, which in Zelda II must be explored via locks, keys, and item acquisition. Link can also be upgraded via items found in towns and dungeons, with many of these items also required for progression. While controversial among fans of both series, these entries would prove influential on the action-adventure formula: they provide a mid-point between the overworld/underworld style of exploration found in Zelda-style top-down games and the side-scrolling openness of what would later be identified as Metroidvania-style gameplay.
Rise of the Metroidvania
As this is a book about the design of 2D action adventures, it is outside of the scope of this text to delve into later advancements in 3D action-adventure games. It is, however, important to address the previously mentioned and vitally important Metroidvania subgenre. These games are typically 2D side-scrolling platform jumping games where a player character is charged with navigating a large maze-like environment. Movement through the environment is facilitated by the player’s access to items and abilities that give their player character permanent upgrades or new abilities which make more of the maze explorable. These games also sometimes include role-playing-game elements such as expandable stats, armor, and power levels that allow characters to defeat more difficult enemies. At this point in our historical overview, these elements are yet to converge, but we are seeing the foundations appear. The 2D action-adventure genre oscillates frequently between top-down and side-scrolling perspectives (truly, it also touches the semi-3D “isometric” perspective too, but building such games adds additional technical hurdles.) While we have covered both the evolution of top-down and side-scrolling games in the genre, we will soon see the designs of Metroid, Castlevania II, and Zelda II converge into this important subgenre that blends elements of all of these efforts.
The story of Metroidvanias is not only the story of action-adventure or action-RPG games, but also of exploratory platformers, games within the platforming genre where players explore large, continuous levels rather than those limited to a few screens. Metroidvania games also employ tools or character abilities as a means to constrain exploration, as we’ve already seen in other action-adventure games. Enix’s 1985 Sharp X1 game, Brain Breaker is considered by many to be the first Metroidvania game, starring an explorer on an alien planet who must collect lasers and jetpacks to escape. Konami, developers of Simon’s Quest and the company who would eventually develop one of the Metroidvania subgenre’s seminal works, also experimented with this genre early on with The Goonies II (1987)[21] which sees protagonist Mikey exploring the cavernous hideout of the Fratelli family to rescue his friends. What makes this game good enough for inclusion in a history of the subgenre is its iterations of Metroid’s exploration via platforming stages in multiple biomes (ice, underwater, caves, etc.), item-based progression, and its addition of an in-game map to aid navigation[22].
Several games by Nihon Falcom in the late 1980’s further developed the side-scrolling action-adventure game format and include RPG mechanics such as inventories, stat-building, and experience levels in different ways. Games journalist and historian Jeremy Parish specifically cites several games as the center of this activity, including the side-scrollers Legacy of the Wizard (1987), and Faxanadu (1987)[23]. In Legacy of the Wizard, players control a family of adventurers as they explore a labyrinth trying to find the magic sword that will defeat a dragon. Each family member has unique abilities and can wield specific weapons: progression is therefore based on which family member you have at a given time and which items you have equipped. The different regions of the labyrinth are designed to highlight the skills of each of the characters, giving the labyrinth a varied feeling. Additionally, each character's unique items are gained during another character’s section, so it is normal for players to gain an item then backtrack – or revisiting previously explored areas – to where they can swap to a different character that can use it. Faxanadu is noticeably more linear than previous games, but still gates its progression behind the need for items and tools which grant new abilities. It was also a leap forward in usability and refinement of the genre: where other games of this era drop you into their maps with little prompting of where to go, Faxanadu uses short-term goals to direct the player.
Other games would further refine the blend of side-scrolling, item or ability-based progression, narrative, maze-like level design, and uniquely-themed regions that mark the Metroidvania genre. Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap (1989) marks an influential evolution of the Zelda II-style and Metroid styles. Players are Wonder Boy, who has been cursed by a dragon into a lizard form, losing much of his strength. Wonder Boy must travel outward from a central town into differently-themed areas of Monster Land to acquire new forms that will enable him to reach the Salamander Cross, which will lift his curse. This game’s world is structured in a way commonly referred to today as hub-and-spoke, where progression to different regions is facilitated through the player’s progression in a central “hub” area. Each new form (lizard man, fish man, hawk man, etc.) gives Wonder Boy the ability to reach new areas of the central town, which lets him venture out into new areas of the outside world (“the spokes”.) These aspects would be carried further in Wonder Boy’s sequel series, Monster World[24]. Another refinement comes from Konami in their 1993 Game Boy game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue, which is a Metroid-style action game in which the titular Ninja Turtles must navigate a maze-like cavern to defeat the evil Shredder. Radical Rescue has players begin the game with only one of the four turtles, Michaelangelo, and gives them the task of rescuing the other three. Each turtle has a unique ability that helps the player progress farther into the mine and towards the Shredder himself, and using some of their abilities in combination can open new areas. Radical Rescue is an important step in the evolution of the Metroidvania due to its refined game loop (use ability to explore available environment, locate and defeat boss, rescue turtle with key, repeat)[25] and a reappearance of an in-game map a la Goonies II, further codifying this feature.
The games that cemented the form of the Metroidvania are, not surprisingly, entries in the Metroid and Castlevania series of games: Super Metroid (1994) and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997). Super Metroid greatly built on the legacy of the original Metroid, along with the games that came between it and this later series entry. It features a larger and more varied map, expanded abilities, but also quality of life features such as level design that gives players hints at which powers may help them move forward[26]. One noteworthy example is early in the game, when players reach the high-jump boots: players enter the room with this item from a high point and fall into the area where they get the boots themselves. Without the boots, they cannot jump back out, but collecting the boots gives them an easy means of escape. This kind of skill gate design was something present in older games, but was used to great effect here such that it would become a standard in the genre and indeed in much of level design moving forward. Super Metroid also makes great use of environmental storytelling, where environment art is arranged in such a way that it hints at events which happened in the space before the player arrived. Indeed, much of the game’s narrative plays out through in-game actions without dialog: early on, the stakes of the game are spelled out by an enemy appearing on screen to steal a dangerous alien specimen, initiating a boss fight.
Symphony of the Night features many of the same structural elements as Super Metroid such as a continuous and persistent map, ability-based progression, distinct regions, and rich storytelling, but incorporates stats, an inventory, shopping, and other RPG elements. In fact, this is where controversies about the definition of the term “Metroidvania” arise: it has come to colloquially refer to any game with non-linear 2D platforming and item/ability-based progression. Indeed, some authors[27] include 3D games with similar structures like Metroid Prime (2001) and Batman Arkham Asylum (2009) in this genre as well. Others insist that the term should only refer to games in the Castlevania series with Metroid-like elements, or games with both Metroid-style level and progression structures as well as RPG mechanics[28]. As the term has both come to popularly encompass all of these design styles and since this book focuses mainly on level design and world structures, we will be using “Metroidvania” in the more general and expansive way throughout our discussions.
Symphony of the Night’s assistant director, Koji Igarashi, describes how the team looked to The Legend of Zelda series for inspiration for its open castle design (ironically, not Metroid)[29]. Like Zelda, Symphony of the Night (SotN) features non-player characters that players may interact with and which initiate narrative sequences. Likewise, there are distinct areas around the fully explorable Dracula’s Castle for shopping and other activities associated with RPG and adventure-style gameplay. SotN also features a number of hidden secrets, big and small, which add flavor to the game’s world. Around the castle are chairs which the player character, Alucard, can sit in and rest (if he sits long enough, he falls asleep) and confession booths where a priest may help or hurt Alucard. Most notably, the game features a hidden mirror image of Dracula’s Castle (the famous “Upside Down Castle”), which is the entire game map flipped on its head so that the dungeons under the castle are at the top of the map. This second castle includes extra challenging bosses, as well as items that allow players to reach the final “good” ending of the game where they fight Dracula. Player-friendly design patterns that would be found in Igarashi’s other Castlevania games, like placing save rooms adjacent to boss encounters, were likewise codified in this game.
Modern 2D action-adventures
Both 2D action-adventures and Metroidvania games would continue to be a part of the commercial game landscape into the early 2000’s, before they fell out of fashion with large game studios in favor of 3D games. The genre would be carried forward by independent game makers – game makers who work in small community settings and without help from large publishers – in games like Cave Story (2004), Anodyne (2013) or Guacamelee! (2013.) These games feature varying amounts of non-linearity, RPG elements, and other aspects of the genre’s foundational games such that they contribute to the notion of action adventures as a malleable genre. In the case of the Metroidvania subgenre, this flexibility manifests in industry writers referring to variations more geared towards the “Metroid-like” side (fewer RPG systems and more of a focus on skill-based progression), and “-Vania” games with more of the RPG systems intact. Still others, like the Shantae series, would adopt a more Monster World-style hub and spoke model. These indie creators would also smooth out some of the genre’s more annoying aspects, such as the need for excessive backtracking, through various mechanisms and clever level design layouts which will be explored throughout the book.
A newer subgenre that has appeared in recent years, and indeed been mashed up with the Metroidvania and other action-adventure styles, is the “soulslike”. These games feature mechanics derived from the games Dark Souls, Bloodborne (2015), and other games by FromSoftware and directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki. These games include high levels of difficulty where player death is incorporated as part of the gameplay, usually by allowing players to retrieve resources from their dead selves if they can reach their last point of death. Death in these games is used as a device for iteration, pushing players to constantly improve their skills, rather than punishment: there are no permanent game-overs or loss of progress as in old arcade or early console games. Indeed, these games also feature frequent checkpoints which players return to upon death, which can be “fast-traveled”, or teleported between. These games are themselves action-adventures, and Metroidvanias with these elements include Blasphemous (2019) and the seminal Hollow Knight. These games are known for their dark fantasy or gothic settings and imagery, as well as deep worldbuilding. Though, increasingly more games use soulslikes’ gameplay and narrative techniques without the “grimdark” aesthetics.
This brings us to the modern state of 2D action-adventures. Through this exploration, we have distilled core gameplay and narrative aspects of 2D action-adventure games and several of their most important sub-genres. In the following section, we will give a brief overview of how these elements impact the level design of top-down and side-scrolling action-adventures such that we can dive further into their design.
Gameplay and level design considerations
In our previous section, we saw how the evolution of the genre was inclusive of both top-down and side-scrolling game styles. In this section, we will identify common level design considerations found in the above historical examples. These considerations will drive the content in the rest of the book, as they are elements we must master to make effective 2D action-adventure worlds. These are complex topics which will be explored in greater detail throughout the book’s design concept chapters and put into practice in the tutorial chapters. As such, this section will provide brief overviews of these design themes and set the stage for how we will approach them moving forward.
Top-down design and side-scrolling design
First of all are top-down style 2D action-adventures. We described how games in the Zelda series and other series inspired by it are viewed as though the player is looking down on the action from above (often with some visual stylization so characters and objects read clearly – figure 0.1) These games are great for creating sprawling, exploratory adventures, but in 2D, special consideration must be taken to create worlds that feel like they have any sort of vertical depth – different floors to environments, etc. – or they risk feeling geometrically flat.
Figure 0.1. Kudzu by Pie for Breakfast Studios uses a visual style often associated with “top-down” adventure games. Characters and objects in this style are usually drawn as though viewed from the front to make them more easily identifiable, rather than actually top down, where the player would only see the circular top of their head and shoulders.
The genre also includes “side-scrolling” games with examples including games in the Metroid, Castlevania, and Shantae series. Due to this, side-scrollers often require special consideration to not make the screen busy with repetitive texture work as players see the “inside” of level geometry. (figure 0.2). In 2D, these games excel at vertically-based gameplay mechanics such as jumping to different platforms, flying enemies and objects, and other vertically-based challenges. On the flip side, games of this genre require more work to create the sort of freely explorable worlds that top-down games excel at. Rather than just being able to walk from room to room, for example, characters in side-scrolling exploratory games must jump, climb, or fall into rooms above and below the one they are currently in, requiring some extra programming effort. Characters may jump up into a new room then fall back down, so a solution with “passthrough” ledges may be needed; or they may need a climb ability to be scripted so they can use ladders. These are all things that must be planned as designers choose their gameplay style.
Figure 0.2. Screenshot from Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends, an action-adventure game viewed from a side-scrolling perspective.
Ability-based progression
A mechanic which began in top-down action adventures, but which became a hallmark of some side-scrolling action-adventures, is ability-based progression. In this model, a player may explore the game world in any way they wish, but their movement through the game environment is at least partially facilitated through the tools or abilities available to their character at a given time, as in Metroidvania games. In these games the player avatar can only partially explore the game map until an item is collected which grants an ability (such as a higher jump), allowing access to more of the map and additional ability expansions (figure 0.3)
Figure 0.3. A diagram of a map from a typical game in the “Metroidvania” subgenre. The game features a large map that can be explored freely within the limitations of their avatar’s abilities. Finding new abilities such that they can explore the full map and reach the end point is often the goal of the game.
Ability-based progression requires significant planning and organization on the part of the designer. When making these games, you must carefully plan and keep track of the items within the game, as well as how they facilitate exploration through the game world. Likewise, games with this feature require a lot of clarity in level design so that players can identify what new places they can explore once they receive the items. Overall, these types of games can be among the most challenging to plan for level designers, so many of the lessons in this book involve methods for organizing your design process.
Non-linear design
Another level design consideration comes in creating non-linear opportunities for play, where players are able to wander as they please through your world rather than being on one rigid path. While this may seem to be an inherent part of exploratory games with ability-based progression, designers can easily fall into the trap of creating linear progressions if they are not careful. This is not to say that linearity is necessarily a bad thing – lots of excellent games are linear. Action-adventure games, however, are known for creating lots of opportunities to explore the game world. With this in mind, much of the book will center on creating opportunities for players to meander back and forth between landmarks in your world via primary (story-required) and secondary (optional) quests, puzzle design, and the design of specific challenges. These elements, which will be covered throughout the book, help you add richness, a sense of place, and a sense of narrative purpose to your game world.
Encounter design
While the previous considerations were very “macro” in scale, that is, “big picture” elements that designers consider when creating whole worlds, things like puzzle design or specific challenges are much more “micro” in nature: the size of a screen’s view or a room. In this regard, it is important for designers to practice shifting their perspectives as they design from their larger world structures, and down into specific encounters. In the industry, this is called “encounter design”, and can be things from planning varied ways that a room full of enemies can be dealt with, to designing puzzles. This is an important aspect of action-adventure games, as it is where the “action” comes into play; usually through gameplay mechanics described at the beginning of this chapter that use collisions between various game objects.
We highlight this aspect of using the physics/collision system for several reasons. On one hand, a designer can make a perfectly reasonable adventure-style game without having skill-based challenges or combat. Games from text adventures (Zork!), to point-and-click adventures (The Secret of Monkey Island), to modern indie games like Deadeus (which uses the engine that will be used for exercises in this book, GB Studio) have gameplay primarily focused on moving through environments and talking to characters in branching stories. Adding elements of what is normally described as action mechanics – avoiding collision with hazards, jumping, climbing, fighting, making puzzle elements collide, etc. – adds additional dimensions to your gameplay. It can also add more potential upgrade paths for ability-based progression (jump higher, break down walls, dig, etc.) in addition to story and quest mechanics. As such, designing how encounters with these mechanics in your game spaces is highly important to give action a space in which to occur. This will be another theme of future chapters: using these challenges to add depth to the adventure without feeling unfair or poorly planned.
Persistent environments
Along with individual elements such as puzzle or encounter design comes persistence: the ability for the changes you make to your game world to be meaningful. One example may be a standard lock and key structure – you use one of your limited key items to unlock a door (thereby spending the key) and the door opens. Theoretically, the door should remain open for the rest of the game unless you clearly communicate to the player that the door shuts behind them again. Be default, though, the door would likely not remain open for reasons of programming: if rooms are reloaded every time you enter them, then the door may reload in the “locked” state you set it to load in by default. This is bad for multiple gameplay reasons: players would have to spend keys every time they wander through the room, the game becomes harder in an uninteresting way, and the player feels that their actions do not matter.
To avoid this, designers of action-adventure games build persistence into their game levels: in addition to having doors open, puzzles being solved, enemies being killed, etc., the game records these actions. This way, when players leave the room and come back, pause, or do any action that may require reloading the game environment, progress is recorded. Throughout the book, we will discuss where to plan in persistence and where making scenes reset may be helpful for creating a great experience for players.
Enticing exploration
Making exploration interesting and meaningful is great, but first the player has to want to explore at all. There are concepts in level design that we will explore in future chapters to do just this, such as using the placement of items and obscuring pathways to create a sense of denial. Making players aware of upcoming goals or passageways, but denying them immediate access is a powerful way to encourage further exploration of the world. One example is making an object visible, but only showing a small part of the path to it (figure 0.4).
Figure 0.4. Another screenshot from Kudzu, showing a typical example of a room in which a switch for a door is shown onscreen, but denied to the player by level geometry. To find it, the player must explore more of the level to reveal the path to the switch, which opens the pictured door and streamlines travel through the game world.
This is just one way to make players curious when playing through your game. This sort of enticement is a great tool for action-adventure design, as these games typically have rich economies of items, upgrades, collectibles, and other rewards.
Controlled backtracking
Inevitably, and perhaps most infamously, action-adventure games, particularly games in the metroidvania sub-genre, require players to backtrack as part of their exploration. This means that the player must travel through previously visited areas to reach items that they passed by, or to reach new passageways (often after they have obtained some new ability.) On one hand, carefully designed backtracking is a great way for designers to coax extra play time from a game: even somewhat small maps can provide hours of gameplay via rewarding traversal. On the other, too much or poorly implemented backtracking can cause gameplay to feel repetitive and players to get bored.
Working with many of the level design concepts already listed in this section will create some amount of backtracking in your world designs and, in fact, many of the games listed in the history portion of this chapter had significant backtracking. However, the long history of action-adventures has seen the development of solutions to the problem of excessive backtracking. As we plan our worlds throughout the book, we will keep them in mind so that players can more fully enjoy traveling through the game worlds we create.
Again, these level design considerations are just brief descriptions of much bigger concepts which we will need to chip away at throughout the rest of the book and indeed. They are, in a way, like a list of learning goals: concepts that are among the most important to master when creating your own 2D action-adventure games. In the next section, we will see how the book’s structure will facilitate these further experiences with these concepts.
Book overview
Now that we have explored the history of the genre and distilled core level design concepts from some of its formative games, we can talk about the approach that this book uses to help you on your own action-packed level design adventures.
Who is this book for?
First of all, many readers want to know what level of expertise they should reach before approaching a book like this. Presumably, by picking up or previewing this book, you are interested in 2D action-adventure games and how they are designed. Likewise, you are probably a person who plays and/or are a person who makes or wants to make games. With these more general assumptions aside, here are some groups we think can benefit from this book and how:
Students and game design learners
First of all are new game design learners. This may include students, hobbyists, or even just curious folks that want to try their hand at making a game. For this reason, we have included not only chapters on level design theory for this genre of game, but also practical chapters that guide you through tutorials on an easy-to-learn game engine well-suited to action-adventure games, GB Studio (more on the specifics of this shortly.) We have also elected to use non-jargony, explanatory language in the book: rather than assuming a reader means when we say something like “metroidvania”, we try to provide easy-to-follow definitions and accessible game examples. In this way, we hope that this can provide first-time designers with a pathway towards creating exciting games while maintaining an achievable scope.
Veteran level designers
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, we want this to be a book suited for working level designers in the industry. Level design is, at the time of this writing, still a young field in terms of building a common language that designers can use to talk about or even evaluate their work. There are some works that do this for level design more broadly, but our goal with this book, and for the series that it is part of, is to dive into a specific genre; in this book’s case 2D action-adventures; and start to build a language for talking about it. Beyond a sort of “indie designer” approach of hammering out levels by oneself, this book includes tips for not only building, but planning exploratory worlds for games such that they can be manageable for teams of designers and artists working together. Likewise, folks in the industry may be used to working in one genre but not have as much experience in others. The exercises in this book teach software that has been adopted by industry vets for creating hobby homebrew or game jam projects in genres they may not be as experienced with.
Game design teachers and scholars
Last is game design teachers and scholars. As educators and academics ourselves, we are always on the hunt for informative new resources for engines or game design theory. Likewise, when we cannot find ones we like, we sometimes make them ourselves! Our hope in this regard is twofold: on one hand, as stated above, we’re hoping to assist in providing a common language for 2D action-adventure games and their various subgenres. In this way, scholars can talk about them in understandable ways throughout their own analytical work and teach their students using a commonly understood language. Likewise, we want to provide a resource for some newer tools, specifically the GB Studio engine, for which there are not currently comprehensive textbook-style resources. While we love using YouTube tutorials and written materials, we have found that they rarely walk a learner through the process of building a whole game or are difficult to discover among the many many resources (of varying quality) out there. In this way, we hope to provide an education-ready resource that can still be of use, via the level design concept chapters, long after the tools for building these sorts of games have evolved.
General approach and book structure
If you have read through the previous section and decided that you should continue reading, we are ready to embark on this epic level design adventure! In this final section, we want to lay out how this book is structured and how to approach it.
First of all, this book has two styles of chapter: Design (D) chapters that explore the level design concepts detailed previously in greater detail. We are specifically avoiding the term “theory” here, as that tends to have bad connotations within the game industry as being non-useful, but one could call these chapters “applied theory” if they so wished. The other style of chapter is the Practical (P) chapters, which are practical tutorials for level building that put the concepts from the D chapters into use. In this way, we want to show how design concepts are expressed through real gameplay examples that you build yourself. We will also be pulling heavily from our own experience as game players and game designers, including citing examples of designs we have done for the indie games Kudzu and Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends. While we will also include lots of examples from other games (many of which were mentioned earlier in this chapter), we will be able to closely discuss why design decisions were made in games that we worked on.
For these exercises, we will use GB Studio, a free and open-source game engine that requires no coding and is well-suited to the action-adventure genre. The “GB” stands for “Game Boy”, Nintendo’s 1989 black-and-white (or black-and-green depending on which model you have) handheld gaming console, which the engine can be used to develop new games for. GB Studio is the work of developer Chris Maltby and a team of volunteers who have built the engine as an interface for another open-source toolset, GBDK, or the Game Boy Development Kit. Every GB Studio game can be released either as a game that can be played within a browser or as a ROM file that can be played on Game Boy, or Game Boy Color emulators.
While individual readers’ interest in developing Game Boy or Game Boy Color may vary, the engine’s focus on development for these consoles provide a useful set of constraints for designers that can result in small-scale but impactful design projects. Building in this engine means building artwork around 16 x 16 pixel sprites, four colors, and simple animations. Likewise, gameplay mechanics must be relatively simple, so learning to design lots of variations of your level and puzzle concepts is a must. This will help designers practice the skills of turning their ideas into full games. In this way, learners can develop what feel like finished games much more quickly, producing 2D adventures just like the classics.
Conclusion
This introductory chapter was about setting the table. We briefly explored the origins and evolutions of 2D action adventures, then distilled common design features from our list of important examples from the genre. We then discussed how the rest of the book will proceed and what individual readers may gain from it. In the next chapter, our first practical chapter, we will set up the GB Studio workflow by downloading the necessary software tools and prepare to set foot into the wider world of action-adventure design.
Aya. 2005. A Brief - But Comprehensive - History of the Action/Adventure Genre. 8 February. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20090129103800/http://justadventure.com/articles/ActionAdventures/AA.shtm.
Barton, Matt. 2008. Dungeons and Desktops. Natick, Massachusetts: AK Peters.
Bunch, Kevin. 2020. Adventure: Atari Archive Episode 33. 29 March. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKq2_060Hk4&list=PLPb8P1_Kn--aDXU7QKIpZh_aCQ0NiBksm&index=2.
—. 2019. Superman: Atari Archive Episode 29. 15 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyM8Qf4Bls4.
Clarke, Rachel I., Jin Ha, and Neils and Clark. 2015. “Why Video GAme Genres Fail: A Classificatory Analysis.” School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship 167.
Donovan, Tristan. 2010. Replay: The History of Video Games. East Sussex: Yellow Ant.
Howard, Jeff. 2008. Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. Boca Raton, FL: AK Peters/CRC Press.
Juul, Jesper. 2014. Genre in Video Games (and Why We don't Talk [more] about it). 22 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2014/12/22/genre-in-video-games-and-why-we-dont-talk-about-it/.
Lockwood, Tom. 2023. GB Studio Central: TMNT III Radical Rescue and Map Design. 11 April. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://gbstudiocentral.com/spotlight/tmnt-3/.
Luban, Pascal. 2002. Designing and Integrating Puzzles in Action-Adventure Games. 6 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/designing-and-integrating-puzzles-in-action-adventure-games#close-modal.
Matulef, Jeffrey. 2014. Eurogamer: Koji Igarashi says Castlevania: SotN was inspired by Zelda, not Metroid. 21 March . Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.eurogamer.net/koji-igarashi-says-castlevania-sotn-was-inspired-by-zelda-not-metroid.
Parish, Jeremy. 2020. Castlevania II / Golvellius retrospective: ’Vania mania | Metroidvania Works #013 . 28 October. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTD0cDHd5Wk&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=14.
—. 2019. Pitfall II retrospective: Get Lost | Metroidvania Works #007 . 6 November . Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ2rP6r-KOU&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=8.
—. 2019. Game Boy Works #115: The Tower of Druaga retrospective. 18 December. Accessed July 14, 2023. https://youtu.be/3pyfx2jcotg.
—. 2015. Metroidvania Works #04: Venture [Exidy, 1981]. 29 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48R-usJ_XKU&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=5.
—. 2016. Metroidvania Works #05: Pitfall [Activision, 1982]. 19 April . Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgzDMPNKUvE&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=6.
—. 2020. Romancia / Ys / Legacy of the Wizard / Faxanadu retrospective: Falcom Works | Metroidvania Works #12. 5 August. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktp1FNt6DGo&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=14.
—. 2020. Zelda II / Rygar / The Goonies II retrospective: NES is more | Metroidvania Works #11. 29 July. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wcefuuDoBU&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=13.
Rollings, Andrew, and Ernest Adams. 2006. Fundamentals of Game Design. Hoboken: Prentice Hall.
Sorlie, Audun. 2011. HG101: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue. 14 February. Accessed May 23, 2023. http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-iii-radical-rescue/.
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[1] Many 3D action-adventure games utilize 2D game making in their prototyping processes. One famous example is how the developers of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a 3D open-world style action adventure, created a top-down 2D game in the style of the original Legend of Zelda as a means of prototyping Breath of the Wild’s core gameplay.
[2] Clarke, Rachel I., Jin Ha, and Neils and Clark. 2015. “Why Video Game Genres Fail: A Classificatory Analysis.” School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship 167.
[3] Juul, Jesper. 2014. Genre in Video Games (and Why We don't Talk [more] about it). 22 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2014/12/22/genre-in-video-games-and-why-we-dont-talk-about-it/.
[4] Rollings, Andrew, and Ernest Adams. 2006. Fundamentals of Game Design. Hoboken: Prentice Hall.
[5] Luban, Pascal. 2002. Designing and Integrating Puzzles in Action-Adventure Games. 6 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/designing-and-integrating-puzzles-in-action-adventure-games#close-modal.
[6] Aya. 2005. A Brief - But Comprehensive - History of the Action/Adventure Genre. 8 February. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20090129103800/http://justadventure.com/articles/ActionAdventures/AA.shtm.
[7] Rollings, Andrew, and Ernest Adams. 2006. Fundamentals of Game Design. Hoboken: Prentice Hall.
[8] Bunch, Kevin. 2019. Superman: Atari Archive Episode 29. 15 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyM8Qf4Bls4.
[9] Bunch, Kevin. 2020. Adventure: Atari Archive Episode 33. 29 March. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKq2_060Hk4&list=PLPb8P1_Kn--aDXU7QKIpZh_aCQ0NiBksm&index=2.
[10] Parish, Jeremy. 2015. Metroidvania Works #04: Venture [Exidy, 1981]. 29 December. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48R-usJ_XKU&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=5.
[11] Howard, Jeff. 2008. Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives. Boca Raton, FL: AK Peters/CRC Press.
[12] Game Designer Scott Rogers contends that this association with the Inferno and the nine levels of Hell, along with the similar concept of descending into “levels” of a dungeon in many RPG games, are where the term “level” comes from when referring to game environments.
[13] TheOneRing.net. 2013. Interview with Gary Gygax, Creator of Dungeons & Dragons. 6 December . Accessed May 23, 2023. http://archives.theonering.net/features/interviews/gary_gygax.html.
[14] Barton, Matt. 2008. Dungeons and Desktops. Natick, Massachusetts: AK Peters.
[15] Parish, Jeremy. 2016. Metroidvania Works #05: Pitfall [Activision, 1982]. 19 April . Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgzDMPNKUvE&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=6.
[16] Donovan, Tristan. 2010. Replay: The History of Video Games. East Sussex: Yellow Ant.
[17] Aya. 2005. A Brief - But Comprehensive - History of the Action/Adventure Genre. 8 February. Accessed May 22, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20090129103800/http://justadventure.com/articles/ActionAdventures/AA.shtm.
[18] Parish, Jeremy. 2019. Pitfall II retrospective: Get Lost | Metroidvania Works #007 . 6 November . Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ2rP6r-KOU&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=8.
[19] Parish, Jeremy. 2020. Castlevania II / Golvellius retrospective: ’Vania mania | Metroidvania Works #013 . 28 October. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTD0cDHd5Wk&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=14.
[20] Parish, Jeremy. 2020. Zelda II / Rygar / The Goonies II retrospective: NES is more | Metroidvania Works #11. 29 July. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wcefuuDoBU&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=13
[21] Parish, Jeremy. 2020. Zelda II / Rygar / The Goonies II retrospective: NES is more | Metroidvania Works #11. 29 July. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wcefuuDoBU&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=13
[22] Goonies II would also include “adventure scenes”, which were first-person-styled and menu-based graphical adventure sequences not unlike early adventure games. Parish notes that this makes the game a link between contemporary action-adventures of the late 80’s and their “primordial” origins in the likes of Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork.
[23] Parish, Jeremy. 2020. Romancia / Ys / Legacy of the Wizard / Faxanadu retrospective: Falcom Works | Metroidvania Works #12. 5 August. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktp1FNt6DGo&list=PLd3vJYdenHKGrWrvCGsIbOOl_h_6tzERM&index=14.
[24] It is further outside the scope of this book to untangle the complicated lineage of the Wonder Boy and Monster World games and these authors, in fact, don’t wish to touch that.
[25] Lockwood, Tom. 2023. GB Studio Central: TMNT III Radical Rescue and Map Design. 11 April. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://gbstudiocentral.com/spotlight/tmnt-3/.
[26] Though this book’s focus is on how the creative aspects of these games’ designs evolved over time as developers continued to learn from previous works, the authors acknowledge the role that increased hardware power and storage space also contributed to these evolutions.
[27] Co-author of this book Chris Totten included.
[28] [Reference to Metroidvania Retronauts where Benj argues this]
[29] Matulef, Jeffrey. 2014. Eurogamer: Koji Igarashi says Castlevania: SotN was inspired by Zelda, not Metroid. 21 March . Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.eurogamer.net/koji-igarashi-says-castlevania-sotn-was-inspired-by-zelda-not-metroid.
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