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Last week, we discovered the fatal flaw of Super Metroid's run button, the one mechanic that's never really explained or shown. The lack of in-game information on it led to the most needlessly frustrating room in the game. What's coming up now, though, is much larger in the scheme of the game than just one single room.
And it starts with a big red room. As soon as you enter, the game's music cuts out, a sure sign this room is something different. The fact that this room is red is actually worth noting, as nothing in the game before has used this color scheme, tileset or background. This room needs to fully stick out for a lot of reasons, and making it look very different from what you were just in is the first step. The only way you have to go in this room is down, and pretty soon some more down.
You'll get to a point where it looks like you're done going down. The map says you're at the bottom and there seems to be nothing but a lot of solid ground beneath you. There are no suspicious markings on the ground anywhere giving away secrets, but last week we saw that the developers are starting to hide them more seriously now. Instead of looking for things that give away secrets, we know have to start looking for suspicious things in the world that we think might have a secret. The first hint is the yellow door that is right here. We can't open yellow doors yet, but it's sealed off all by itself, meaning there must be some way to access it. The obvious answer is the wall to the left, but bombing it only reveals blocks we can't break yet. However, should you think that the unbreakable blocks means there is nothing else you can do here, you'll quickly find there isn't anywhere else you can go. This is probably the first big moment where players will miss where they are supposed to go and try heading somewhere else. Luckily the developers anticipated this, and there is still that one way door from last week not far behind us, so once again, they are keeping the player trapped in the area they are supposed to be in.
Honestly, the solution here is a little obscure, and things like it are the reason games like this have the reputation of being about "hit every single tile until something happens." There is a random, completely unmarked spot on this floor that you can bomb that will break and reveal a path farther down. Really, there is no way to find this out without bombing every single tile in this room until something happens. If you try this as soon as you find this dead end, you won't mind it much, and you may feel a little accomplished for bypassing this obstacle so quickly. But if you had just dismissed this room, as the unbreakable red herring blocks suggested you should, it's a different story. Players could end up spending forever analyzing every possible path, stuck between an impassable gate and a dead end. A player like this could be on the verge of giving up, assuming that they must have made a wrong turn somewhere. Bombing every possible tile would be their last hope, and when they find the path forward, tucked away here with no rhyme or reason, there won't be a big, clever feeling "Aha!" moment, just a quiet inner rage that all the time they just spent was because of this obtuse block.
It does beg the question, however, of why the developers thought something like this needed to be implemented. Why put such a hidden and frustrating barrier in front of the player? One could chalk it up to outdated design philosophies and concepts of difficulty. Perhaps the developers just thought an obtuse puzzle would be a worthy challenge, or maybe it was purposefully put in as an obtuse puzzle to promote the purchase of strategy guides. It is also possible that the developer saw this as a trial by fire that would harden the player. The only way to let the player know that sometimes they may have to bomb blocks that are completely inconspicuous without straight-up telling them is to have them do it. Since they already had the player confined to such a small area, maybe they thought now would be the perfect time to get them to learn that. The player would have to be stuck for a short bit, but without many places to go, it wouldn't be too bad, right? While it's true this was probably the best place to put a thing like this, it still really isn't a very good thing to be putting. Puzzles that rely on trial and error, and secrets that rely on just blowing every individual tile up are really no fun, and I think are something that should be avoided as much as possible. Super Metroid has a lot of puzzles and secrets that have no markings, which some might say is part of the charm, and while the game does a great job of not spoon-feeding you, I think sometimes it leans too heavily towards some impossible to find secrets. It's a matter of preference a lot of the time, meaning you can decide whether or not these things are good, because by now we've spent way too much time in this tiny room.
Opening up this passage leads you to, surprise, more falling down. Except the big difference this time is the fact that there is no jumping up from this fall. In fact, the fall down this chasm lasts for multiple screens, so there is really no getting back up. You end up very very stuck at the bottom, and it is quite intentional.
There's a handy health restoration station available to the left, but you'll be forced to press on to the right. Adding to the feeling of being in a strange new area, you're instantly introduced to a new mechanic, being water. Water physics are generally disliked in most games, and the ones here are super annoying, although there is nothing wrong with them. Water in Super Metroid is a hazard. You don't take damage from it, but it messes with all of your momentum so you move like a snail and can hardly jump. Like many things on Zebes, it's supposed to feel oppressive at first. It's something you'll have to learn to overcome. In these rooms that have it, all you have to do is make the jumps and try to avoid it, but if you fall in, then you have to slog to get back out. It's a clever introduction of water because it doesn't pose any threat to you, but falling in is still a kind of punishment, and it teaches you how water physics work all at the same time.
The same can't be said for the bit of water past the very next platform. Here there are some stakes, and some pretty costly ones at that. You need to jump onto this next platform in the water, but doing so will trigger these bats above the platform and make them dive down. It's a tricky situation that uses mechanics that you're already familiar with, but in a new way. You already knew how these diving bats function, so when you see them here, the challenge is instantly apparent. What's more interesting, however, is the cost of failure. Miss the jump, or get knockback from hitting one of these bats, and you'll be sent into the spikes. Spikes by themselves aren't that bad, but these ones are under water, meaning getting out is a lot harder. Falling into one of the spike pits is a very painful experience, and it teaches you just how dangerous water can be. Just a second ago it was just a minor annoyance, but now you can clearly see how its reduced movement can be a serious threat when coupled with other hazards.
In the next room we see this concept escalated even further. There are now three narrow platforms to jump between, although spikes are only between two of them. It seems more lenient than the last area, especially without any bats to contend with. However, there is the strange grabby-looking creature in the middle of the spike pit. True to his grabby-looking nature, when you jump near him he'll extend, trying to grab you. Should he succeed, the thing will pull you right into the spike pit. Dealing with the damage hitboxes of both the worm's body and the spikes in such a tight area can put Samus in some kind of knock-back purgatory where she'll get battered back and forth, taking damage and unable to escape. It is possible to escape, and sometimes it can happen quite easily, but it entirely depends on the luck you get with knockback and invincibility frames while you're in the pit. Although a little cheap of a trick, this pit certainly shows how dangerous a water and spike combo can be.
After making it past that hazard, there is an interesting gap in the ceiling some players might spot. It's just within your jump height, and heading up there will reveal a tiny alcove above the room's ceiling. The camera won't let you see all of it, but you'll be able to recognize an upgrade room above you. This may give players some false hope, thinking they can somehow access it from here, but a quick bombing of everything will reveal nothing. This little alcove is instead a teaser, one that gives players a slight hope before taking it away, and a bit of foreshadowing too. With nothing to do up here though, all you can do is press on, hoping for some kind of new upgrade soon.
Very soon there's something really peculiar. There is this random glass tube connecting two rooms, a structure we've never seen before. You could think it's just a neat little setpiece, but by now I think we both know Super Metroid isn't a game that places things for no reason. Try as you might though, there's nothing you can do to get any reaction out of this tube. To further add to the mystery, if you check out the map in this room, you'll see that you're in an entirely new area, called "Maridia". Yet if you move a couple more rooms to the right, you'll return back to Brinstar. Why does this new area contain only three rooms, and what does it mean? Well, it doesn't mean anything right now, but it will be very important much later on. That makes it a a good case study on all the various tricks the developers use to make a room seem important.
First of all, the room never does anything to explicitly give away that there is something hidden here. The map never shows that there is more to this room or that it connects to anywhere else at all, and that's a big deal. It means that when the player finally does crack the case and discovers the big secret, it feels like it was entirely their idea. They had a hunch, and then acted on it, and it turned out to be right, which is one of those moments that really makes them feel like they're uncovering the mysteries of this planet. But of course there are plenty of things that work to make sure the player gets that hunch in the first place, which we're gonna look at now. The first thing is how this room is framed. You can see one platform with flowers above you, although that could just be scenery. But if you look at the very bottom of the screen, you can see just the heads of another batch of flowers growing off something right offscreen. Which means there has to be a platform down there that you can't see, and why would there be a platform there if you can never go there? Besides that, you can also see a hint of a ledge peeking out in the top right corner, further showing that there is more to this room than what can be seen on screen right now. In this room, it's the things that you can't see that give the secret away.
A bit more subtly, if we take a look at teaser we saw a few rooms ago, there is also a nice hint for smart players.
You can see, peeking out at the very top right corner, there is a super missile door leading further to the right. This means the door that leads to this upgrade room must be on the level above you, and to the right. Well, the only room to the right is the ones connected to the tube in Maridia, and if has to be above the tube, that means there has to be a way to get above it, and that there is more in Maridia than we see right now. It's not something most players will pick up on, but it is a clever hint to give because only players that use spatial reasoning skills and think of the world as a real place would figure this out.
The last, and most obvious thing that makes all of this stick out is how different it is. Maridia is considered an entirely separate area on the map, first of all. That should send off a lot of alarm bells from the start, and then the unique sprites, and the entire bridge object are unique which makes them memorable. And the entire anticlimax of the area serves to make it stick out too. If you spent a respectable time in a new area before moving on, then you might not suspect much even with a suspicious room. Here you enter Maridia, and then a few rooms later, are gone. You're left surprised and confused and you're much more likely to remember the area because of how suspicious its length is.
We'll be coming back to Maridia later on, but that's all we can say about it right now, and about all we can say in this episode right now too. One last thing to note about all this is how different this Maridia secret is from the one we discussed at the beginning of the post. This one is full of clever ingenuity; it is completely fair, yet takes careful observation and thinking to notice. The previous one required none of that and took senseless bombing instead. The obtuse puzzle frustrates players, but when they finally solve the long-awaited secret of Maridia, I guarantee you, they'll feel like geniuses.
That's everything for this week, and now here's a list of a few applicable points from everything we came across this time. If you liked what I had to say, or didn't, or have something you'd like to add or point out, feel free to do so in the comment section.
Key Takeaways:
- A developer would be very hard-pressed to find a situation where an obtuse puzzle would actually be beneficial. Players don't want to do tedious trial and error to solve something, and there is no satisfaction in that. Secrets should be well hidden, but there are ways to cleverly hide them without making them impossible.
- Framing is very important in games. The things the camera shows, and doesn't show can point the player to areas of interest or let them know that there are secrets hiding somewhere.
- Another interesting way to get players to notice secrets and explore is to have them think about the world as a real space. If the world is laid out in a way that physically makes sense, players can use spatial reasoning to deduce things about.
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