Having thoroughly enjoyed Silverfish on my iPhone I was quick to pick up dEXTRIS when I saw it on the app store.
This game proved a superb example of great player feedback, as Lee Perry puts it “the classic loop between hitting a button and the game responding in a way that simply feels great.”
If you haven’t played it, check out this video to see what I mean.
When you hold down on the left side of the device, your boxes move left, but it’s so much more than that. The camera also moves slightly left, while the background plane moves slightly to the right. The particle trail behind your “characters” are also slightly delayed so you can see the movement. There’s a sound effect that plays while you’re moving, and a different sound once you are all the way on the left and scraping against the wall. You also get the cool particles shooting off like a welding torch.
And all of this happens within half of a second!
My favourite endless runner has probably been Jetpack Joyride. But the feedback there isn’t nearly as rewarding as it is in dEXTRIS. When you release the controls in Jetpack Joyride, Berry will slowly fall to the ground, but the player just watches it happen. You’re no longer in control. In dEXTRIS, you’re fully engaged in the game with both hands on the device at all times. It really achieves that union between man and machine, like driving a car.
It’s interesting that sometimes the more interesting or realistic mechanics (such as acceleration during movement) don’t always make a better game. I was reading earlier on the Game Design Forum how the movement mechanics for Super Mario World were actually simplified compared to Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 3.
“The Super Mario World team saw that they could accomplish more in their game by simplifying their basic mechanics and building up their advanced mechanics. The changes in Mario’s momentum and jump arc means that most of the deaths will occur because of a failure to understand things at the level of the challenge or skill theme, not at the mechanical level.”
So, hopefully that will help someone make their game a little more awesome.