I really like Psychonauts 2. I mean, I’m kind of… bad at it?
(Raz screaming, and screaming, and screaming)
But the game is actively trying to help me! One of the things I like about it is that
it has a built-in cure for my dumb bitch disease.
Raz: I wish I had a Psy-Pop right now.
- Lines like this from the player character, or from NPCs, are called player nudges and they’re
a super important part of the pantheon of game hints. You know, all the subtle or not-so-subtle
ways that games tell you what the hell you’re supposed to be doing.
Atrus: Try moving the slider.
- Hints are tricky because in a best-case scenario,
games trust you to solve problems by yourself. I feel like a dang god when I’m trying to solve a
puzzle and something just clicks. But sometimes you just need help. So, there’s
a gradual escalation of ways that developers nudge you on how to play from behind the curtain.
The most subtle method is something I’ve seen called subliminal learning or an antepiece,
but really it’s just good game design. This is when a game foreshadows a difficult
challenge by giving you a much lower-stakes version of it first. There’s a quintessential
example in the beginning of Super Mario Bros. Before you jump over your very first combined
staircase + bottomless chasm to hell, the game has you practice it with a near-identical
but non-fatal obstacle. It’s an opportunity to build up muscle memory before you have
to do the thing for real. The game doesn’t signpost that this is your PRACTICE ZONE,
it’s just THERE, disguised as an ordinary hurdle in your path.
This happens in Dark Souls too. But not Dark Souls 2. You have a chance to practice your
swordplay in this narrow corridor full of absolutely garbage enemies — oh, and if you turn around,
you can see the actual first challenge trudging by through the bars. He’s much bigger.
Oh no.
But if your low intelligence score causes
you to miss perception checks like this, games needs to be less subtle about signaling
where to go and what the hell you're doin' there. Some games have a built-in hint system. Actual,
fourth-wall breaking text that puts you out of your misery.
A chill, no-interaction variation of this is tips on loading screens. Mass Effect 2 will
give you random tips when you’re loading, which a clever player might observe is often
just after you’ve died. Unfortunately, when I see a loading screen I lose the ability
to read.
Other games make you pay for your ineptitude. I mean, in Super Mario Odyssey you can slip
Toad 50 coins for a hint on where the next moon is hidden. Similarly in Okami you can buy
hints from a fortune teller. This is a way of keeping the hints in-world, and making
sure that they’re walled off for players who don’t want them.
One method I find really interesting is the escalating hint system, which has been around for
a long time. In the ancient FMV game The 7th Guest you can keep going back to this library
book to get increasingly explicit clues for whatever obtuse puzzle you’re stuck on.
A similar system appears in There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, a really wild fourth-wall
breaking puzzler that actively tries to convince you to stop playing it.
Game: I can’t close the program myself! You have to quit!
- The game is usually fighting you — but it breaks that meta with its hints. Like with
The 7th Guest, you can ask for up to three hints with increasing levels of duh.
I liked being able to access these hints but sometimes I found them sort of frustrating.
In There Is No Game, by the time I looked at the hints, the first and second ones would
be things I had figured out already — and then the third one would just give me the answer, rather
than helping me figure it out myself.
I needed the hints, but because each puzzle has a static set of hints, one of the challenges
for a game designer is gauging how their player is most likely to be stuck.
Back in the day, this could be solved over the phone!
Jenny: Nintendo Gameplay, this is Jenny, how may I help you?
- You could call the Nintendo Power Line and pay actual money to tell a human person what
part of A Link to the Past you were stuck on.
Operator: Out of all the questions, that's the only one I really can't help you with, because that's the end of the game.”
Kid on phone: Yeah, I know I saw the Triforce!
- I actually kind of love this, it has all the helpfulness of Reddit, but without the...
Reddit.
Now, what if you’re too ashamed to ask for help, and the game is watching you fail over
and over again? This is where nudges come in. Ideally.
Nudges are voice lines that are diegetic to the game, unlike hints that you have to seek
out for yourself.
Game: This device doesn't seem to be on.
- There’s a part very early in Psychonauts 2 where there’s this big tooth being flown
around, it’s a long story, and I got it in my head that this must be a platforming puzzle
and I just needed to jump on it at the right time. I tried this. Over and over and over again.
And then Raz said:
Raz: Oh man. I really feel like blasting those tooth fairies.
- So that was nice! But sometimes player nudges can be hilariously inept in their execution.
Phil: GET UP ON THE HYDRA’S BACK.
- Nudges usually try not to break the fourth wall, but they come really dang close. Like,
I talk to myself, but I’m not out there in my kitchen muttering,
"Flour. I keep that above the stove. Don’t I?”
And at their worst, nudges can be condescending. I love Ace Attorney, but I got super peeved
with The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles because the characters were always telling me what
to do and never letting me figure things out for myself. The nudges were an unavoidable
part of the regular dialogue that you had the mash A to get through.
Psychonauts 2 doesn’t totally avoid this problem either. There’s one boss battle
that drove me nuts. Yeah, we’re about to talk about the cooking boss battle.
(cartoon honk!)
In this arena battle, you are trying to cook a meal for these goat puppets … out of ingredients
that they have puked at you. But the ingredients are covered in purple vomit, making it impossible
for me to distinguish the right ones to toss into the tube.
The way this rolled out for me is that I would grab a disgusting food blob and realize, "oh
no, that’s not a strawberry!" And then my extremely helpful, player nudging NPC buddy
would say:
“Seems like the sous-chef has picked up the WRONG INGREDIENT.”
“Put that down! You’ll spoil the dish!”
“We don’t need one of those right now!”
“Why are you playing with that? I don’t want that!”
“Why is he picking up the WRONG ingredient, I wonder?”
And I would DIE INSIDE.
All of the food blobs looked the same to me when they were covered
in vomit, and if I picked up the wrong one I had to clumsily spin around and whiff it
out into space because GOD FORBID I accidentally throw it at the judges and hear —
“You need to SERVE the judges, Chef, not attack them!”
The whole time, I had understood the assignment, but the game wasn’t helping me figure out
how to tell these vomit blobs apart. Which is something I would’ve loved to learn from a
player nudge.
In the best moments of Psychonauts 2, I know how to play, because the developers have invisibly
told me what to do. But when I fail to understand that, is it my fault? Is it the game? Or is it a
combination of both?
What I do know is that I was, like, ten hours into The Great Ace Attorney before the game
let me risk misunderstanding it. And that felt terrible. I’d much rather fuck around
and find out, and Psychonauts 2’s vocal nudges give me the chance, even though sometimes
it feels like they’re covering up a design flaw.
TELL ME WHICH OF THESE IS A STRAWBERRY. HONESTLY.
TELL ME!!!
Most of the nudges have helped me to be better at Psychonauts 2 when I was the problem holding
me back. And frankly, I need the help.
(some groovy house music increASING IN VOLUME)
(but like, not a lot, because we're in a low-key piano section)
(THE BEAT iS BACK BABY)