



There has been much talk of games becoming too easy as gaming has become more mainstream. Some complain about regenerating health and some complain about excessive handholding and tutorials. However, the idea of simplifying a game should not be considered a bad thing. Not everyone prefers hyper complex games like Dwarf Fortress or EVE Online, and forced complexity can often be something that breaks a game instead of making it.

Pictured: A game way too smart for me.

There’s value in making games more accessible but accessibility is not the same as dumbing down. It is possible to make a game more approachable without stripping away mechanics but it is not an easy process. Two games that exemplify the efforts of game developers to simplify a genre are Steven Universe: Attack the Light and Paper Mario: Sticker Star. To give a bit of background on both, Sticker Star is the fourth game in the paper Mario series and the third RPG entry. Attack the Light is based on the Steven Universe franchise and was developed by Grumpyface studios. Both games fall into the small sub-genre of RPGs people have taken to calling Turn Based Action RPGs. Pioneered by games like Super Mario RPG and Valkyrie Profile, the Turn Based Action RPGs add execution complexity to the classic turn based formula, meaning that a player can directly influence factors like damage done and damage taken with correctly timed button presses. Both games share this basic groundwork but diverge when it comes to the implementation of certain key elements.

Sticker Star’s Combat Screen.

Leveling up is one of the oldest and most enduring mechanics in gaming. It is so useful in motivating players that it has been integrated into a myriad of titles outside of the RPG genre. That feeling of being so close to the next level or rank that we keep going is an incredibly powerful tool for game developers and is the crux of most RPG systems. Sticker Star bucks this trend and in doing so turns its battle system from a key feature into a frustrating hindrance. In Sticker Star enemies do not give out experience, instead they give out coins that can be used to acquire stickers, which allow Mario to perform actions in combat. In addition, increasing Mario’s maximum health total is based around finding items scattered throughout the stages. This was clearly to make the player’s progression tied to their ability to purchase stickers but the game provides so many coins that the player will quickly have no reason to ever engage an enemy. As the game progresses enemy encounters simply become tiresome, as most battles can be quickly ended with a single sticker. Eventually the game begins to feel like a Mario platformer that makes the player wait a minute or two each time they jump on a Goomba’s head. It almost seems like it was Nintendo’s attempt answer complaints surrounding random battles, but in the least effective way possible. Without the incentive of experience Sticker Star’s battles feel like inconveniences instead of opportunities. Compare this to a game with its own slew of problems, but one that handles random battles very well, Bravely Default. Due to its very grindy nature and tendency for backtracking, Bravely Default has an option to reduce or increase the amount of random encounters within its menu. It’s a simple way to give the player control of the difficulty of the game without reducing the importance of the battles themselves. This idea of player controlled difficulty is actually something that Attack the Light handles very well in its leveling system.

Bravely Default’s Encounter Slider

Attack the Light deals with experience and levels similarly to the original Super Mario RPG. Each character levels up individually, and upon each level up the player is given 3 options, each providing either a static statistical boost or a benefit to one of the character’s abilities. Occasionally one of these options is a buff to an existing ability, but with a specific caveat, the extra benefit will make the ability harder to perform. In this way the player has control over the complexity of combat, if they want to they can simply take the statistical boosts and never acquire the more difficult commands but more experienced players can increase the difficulty for a greater effect. By giving the player agency over the games complexity, it keeps it simple but doesn’t sacrifice mechanical depth.

This idea of underlying complexity in a simple system is why Attack the Light is able to keep gameplay fresh while Sticker Star’s becomes an annoyance. The combat system of Attack the Light adopts the classic turn based style but builds on it in interesting ways. Instead of each character simply getting a turn each combat round the player is given a certain number of “star points” and each character’s actions cost a certain amount of these points. It’s a very simple to understand system that avoids some classic RPG frustrations. For example, healing or support characters in RPGs can sometimes have nothing to do if the party is fully healed, forcing the player to simply defend or use their usually pitiful attack command. With a system where all turns derive from a common limited resource, players can simply allocate turns as the situation requires. Entire turns can be spent healing or buffing characters and characters that aren’t useful in certain battles don’t have to be used. Players are given a choice in how battles play out but the choices are never overwhelming.

Attack the Light’s Combat Screen.



Conversely, Sticker Star attempts to simplify the formula by reducing choice and creating a more linear experience. In the original Paper Mario titles, Mario was accompanied by a slew of buddies, who each had their own unique abilities and personalities. Unfortunately, due to Shigeru Miyamoto’s explicit intervention the idea of new characters that could aid Mario was scrapped. In lieu of this Sticker Star has the character Kersti, who acts as a kind of Navi like help character, who doesn’t participate in battles. To make up for the lack of additional characters Sticker Star added a slot machine system that allows the player to gain extra actions by spending coins and lining up certain slots. Unfortunately, this system is severely lacking not only because it doesn’t actually diversify the types of actions the player can take, but it also must be done consistently and often multiple times a battle. While Mario is able to queue different stickers to attack in different orders it often only really determines whether Mario will jump or use his hammer. The addition of buddy characters would have allowed for a greater variation not only in combat, but also in enemy design. This is by no means stating that the addition of party members alone makes a game better. The difference is not in the amount of party members, but in the ability for the player to feel like the order of their choices matter, otherwise the game ends up feeling like being forced to mash tackle through battles like the first 5-10 levels of most Pokémon games. By giving players more flexibility in how combat resolves Attack the Light lets the complexity rest in the hands of the player, instead of restricting the player to a maximum of 3 moves with limited options like Sticker Star. This is the crux the problems with Sticker Star, by stripping away mechanics it leaves the player with very few options, by trying to make the game simpler it just becomes a linear mess.

Attack the Light may not have to live up to successful predecessors the way Sticker Star does, but even looking at both games irrespective of their pasts, Attack the Light succeeds where Sticker Star fails. In its attempt to go in a new direction Sticker Star simplified its combat system to such an extent that it became a chore. On the other hand, Attack the Light is able to deliver a more consistently entertaining experience by building upon the formula established by previous games in the genre. By couching new ideas within a classic framework it creates a game that is easy to learn and hard to master. Ultimately, Sticker Star and Attack the Light are cut from the same cloth and each try to do something new with the turn based RPG style, but where Attack the Light is able to deliver an accessible experience with surprising gameplay depth, Sticker Star instead waters down a tried and true formula in its attempt, and ultimately its failure, to be more accessible.

Images courtesy of:

-Ars Technica

- ZackScottGames

- BeatnikGunso

- Jason Schreier