Devious DIY design Nintendo

If at first you don’t succeed, try again. And again. And again. It took YouTuber Val JP 32,873 attempts to get to the end of a minute-long level he had designed for Super Mario Maker, a 2015 Nintendo game that lets you craft your own levels and upload them for others to play.

Val JP is known for making extremely difficult levels, stuffed with spike traps, fire pits and floating enemies that thwart anyone with less than pixel-perfect reflexes. This time he might have gone too far, however. Before you can upload a home-made level, you must prove that it is playable – and that means completing it at least once yourself.

In total, Val JP spent nearly 61 hours trying to get Mario to the finish line. He live-streamed his attempts on YouTube over many days. You can hear him egging himself on and yelling in frustration. When he finally makes it, he is near tears. “We did it! We did it!” he shouts to his viewers, who are going wild in the livestream’s chat window. It’s one of the most uplifting things I’ve watched in some time.


On the surface, Super Mario Maker looks like typical family-friendly Nintendo fare. But it has quickly become a hub for a community of players trying to outdo each other with punishingly difficult levels. Since Val JP uploaded his level, it has been attempted nearly a million times. Only 45 other players have managed to finish it.

Hard games are more popular than ever. In the last few years, games like Devil Daggers, Clustertruck, Super Hexagon and the acclaimed Souls series – Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls 1-3 and spin-off Bloodborne – have been celebrated for their difficulty. Such games are built on the idea that dying over and over again, and getting stuck on the same section for hours, is a key part of play. For many, overcoming an enormous challenge that once seemed impossible is one of the most euphoric experiences games can provide.

Difficulty gives value to a game, says Jon Marshall at Sorath, a studio based in Melbourne, Australia. In Sorath’s Devil Daggers you have to survive for as long as you can against wave after wave of demonic creatures. I’ve put several hours into the game and my best time is 54 seconds. But then the world record is only a little more than 16 minutes.

Real sense of achievement

“People like hard games because they do not placate them with explicit rewards for trivial actions,” says Marshall. For the experience to be meaningful, the challenge cannot be illusory.

In part, the wave of difficult games can be seen as a backlash against games designed to trick players into feeling a false sense of achievement. In Candy Crush Saga, for example, your progression is largely choreographed by the game rather than determined by any real skill.

For Petter Henriksson at Landfall, a studio based in Stockholm, Sweden, that sense of slowly getting better at something is crucial. It’s a similar pleasure to playing a musical instrument, he says. “When I’m learning a set of guitar riffs I know what I need to do and eventually it just works. It’s muscle memory. You learn things without actually knowing you’re learning them. Suddenly, you’re just better.”

Landfall made Clustertruck, a game in which you have to run and jump across the tops of swerving trucks as they crash into each other. It’s as hard as it sounds. “When you play a really difficult game, you know exactly what it is you’re supposed to do,” Henriksson says. “The only thing is doing it.”

That single-minded focus may be why a community of players say the extreme challenge of the Souls games has helped them deal with depression. These fantasy-themed games pit you against formidable monsters that nearly always kill you when you first meet them. When you die, you retrace your steps and try again. On each attempt, you learn a new parry or spot a different way to attack until you master what was once unachievable.

Think through the darkness

“You have to feel and think your way through the darkness,” says Paul, a Dark Souls player who experiences depression. “If something isn’t working, you have to try something different or you just give up. That can help a depressed person because it’s just pretty damn uplifting knowing that your skill and your intellect ultimately carried you through.”

The game can also be a dry run for real life. Sometimes when he is troubled by a situation, Paul recalls the despair he felt at difficult points in the game – before managing to get past them. “To persevere through those things is just insanely rewarding,” he says. “I wouldn’t trade my Dark Souls war stories for anything.”

In Dark Souls, you can also call on other players to help you in times of need. They appear in your game and fight by your side. Some players have said this experience encouraged them to seek help with their depression.

But other players can also just provide a thrilling spectacle. Sorath built video replays into Devil Daggers as a learning tool, letting you see where you went wrong. You can also watch replays from others, to learn from the best. “Replays are a stage for hero worship,” says Marshall. “They let us marvel at what’s humanly possible.”

After releasing the game, Sorath found that some players could survive much longer than the developers thought possible. They have updated the game twice to make high-level play harder. “It’s easy to underestimate the skill of the dedicated minority,” says Marshall. “Watching their feats still give us awe and dread.”