Iteration. Inspiration. Polish. I choose these words to
describe this game’s history as part of a series. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is the fourth entry in a
series of games inspired by Cave Story.
It’s a great 2D combat platformer that has you fighting enemies with a leaf. A
leaf!? I know it sounds asinine, but the main character Kaho fights incredibly
well with just a leaf. She’s also got a bow and arrow, but it feels so much
more badass to strike your foes down with the edge of a red maple leaf. How
does a seemingly fragile object deliver such impact? It may have something to
do with the sprite animation or the sound effects, but whatever it is it works
fantastically! For this week’s October analysis, I want to look at Momodora 4 (same game, just shorter to
type).
Playing Momodora 4
I immediately felt a sense of nostalgia. I don’t think it was the pixel
graphics alone that did this. It was the wonderful feeling of playing something
crafted perfectly. How did this game come to be? Through iterative design. The
developer built a few games before this one and refined the mechanics with each
entry. Over time the games improved until they hit this high point. Could they
go any further? Or would it be a reskin of the same old thing? In this case,
the series likely will not need another entry. You should not have to make a
sequel or a prequel when the previous game does a good job. If you’re making
another entry, make it different and unique. More importantly, improve on what
worked for the game and get rid of what held it back.
As I mentioned earlier, Momodora
4 plays like Cave Story, at least
in most aspects. There’s no experience bar to power up your weapons, but the
artstyle definitely looks like Cave Story
and the combat mechanics are very similar. It’s as if the developer played Cave Story, then had some ideas on how
to make it better. This is an example of inspiration at work. Anytime you play
a game or watch a film or even read a book, you can generate ideas from those
works and formulate something out of all of them.
This is a well-polished game. Notice the animations: not
only are they fluid and smooth, but they also convey personality. Whenever the
character Kaho stands still for an extended amount of time, she does an idle
animation that shows her yawning. She seems bored that nothing is happening.
Another example is when she jumps, tiny leaves fall beneath where she was
positioned. It’s the little things that help sell a game on how enjoyable it
is. Even the music is memorable. It conveys the perfect mood for every
situation. When you enter Karst, it’s very silent and empty to match the
loneliness of the abandoned city. However, playing music at the wrong time can
ruin a mood. Always know if a soundtrack is needed for a specific scene and
what mood it should convey to the player.
A lot of work went into making this possible. It wasn’t
done all at once, not everything fell into place, and it likely wasn’t fully
formed when first concepted. Lots of ideas start out small and insignificant. But
holding those ideas and looking back on them later can spark a new way to
utilize them. Maybe you’ve got a game idea in your head, but you can’t make a
game out of it yet. That idea could become a short story to start off with if
it’s narratively focused. Perhaps it would make for a decent board game. Play
with your ideas and see where they get you. You might stumble upon something
you could never have imagined before. That’s how I see Momodora 4, something unexpected and almost impossible to conjure.
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