I grew up playing Castlevania titles like “Symphony of the Night” and “Circle of the Moon” and was a little disappointed when the recent “Lords of Shadow” played more like God of War than the old Metroidvania style titles I had so much fun with. It was still a pretty good game, just not good in the way I wanted it to be good. So when “Lords of Shadow 2” came out I was pretty sure it was going to be fun… but was it going to be Castlevania style fun?

The answer is: “Almost”. In fact, for a brief moment it felt exactly like a 3D Metroidvania should.

Was that because of all the vampires? No.

How about the gothic architecture? No.

The appearance of some classic enemies? No.

A cool upgrade system? No.

The moment that really screamed “Castlevania” to me was when I found a magic teleporter room that promised to make backtracking easier.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Scott, that’s a really dumb reason to call something a Castlevania game. Teleporter rooms are a tiny little detail and not really that big a part of the series.”

And you’d be right! That’s exactly what I thought to myself at first. Why was my brain so hung up on teleporter rooms?

So I spent some time thinking about it and came to this conclusion: The core spirit of my favorite Castlevania games has always been exploration. They dump you in Dracula’s castle and then expect you to figure out how to reach your goal. Teleporter rooms make exploration easier, so to me they have come to symbolize exploration itself. When I ran across one in Lords of Shadow 2 it was exciting because it seemed to promise that I was going to be going on a classic castle exploration romp.

But, alas, despite that moment of excitement Lords of Shadow 2 never did quite feel like Symphony of the Night. It was still a lot of fun in its own ghoulish way and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a game that let’s them play as Dracula… but it wasn’t quite the same. And after a little more thought I decided that was because it allowed backtracking, but never required it.

And as the title of this post said, exploration means backtracking. Without backtracking you might be on an adventure, but you aren’t really exploring. Let me explain:

Adventuring is about moving from point A to B by overcoming challenges that get in your way.

Exploration is about starting at point A but having no idea where point B even is.

Adventuring is about unlocking a new upgrade that you need in order to beat the next stage.

Exploration is about unlocking a new upgrade that you need in order to open a door that you found two hours ago and may not even remember exists.

Adventuring is about constantly moving onward to new and exciting areas.

Exploration is about finding out how the new areas are linked to the old.

And that was how Lords of Shadow almost captured the spirit of Symphony of the Night. It had an upgrade system that let you access new areas the more powerful you became. It had hidden bonuses that could only be found by revisiting early areas with later upgrades. But it never quite mastered the art of exploration because the main game itself didn’t expect you to do much exploring. It led you by the nose from one encounter to the next, always pointing out where you should go and what powers you should use. Which is great in an action adventure game, but defeats the purpose of an exploration game.

Anyways… I guess my two points are this:

1) Lords of Shadow 2 was a well done vampire themed action adventure game that I enjoyed quite a bit even though it wasn’t as exploration focused as I had hoped from a Castlevania game.

2) If you want to build an exploration game focus on backtracking. Show the player a locked door or unreachable ledge and then wait two hours before giving him the key or power he needs to go there. Leave it up to the player to figure out where to go next and to remember where his new items and powers might be useful. Reward the player with handy shortcuts linking areas together. Symphony of the Night is a great example of how to to do this in 2D. Dark Souls and Metroid Prime are good examples of doing it in 3D.

In honor of Halloween I took a break from writing about chatbots and bought a copy of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. It tells the story of a man with severe memory problems (hey, that’s half the title) who, pre-memory loss, invented an automatic pig slaughtering machine (hey, that’s the other half of the title). This poor man then has to explore his own creepy, blood-stained factory while being haunted by his own memories and the piercing squeals of some horrible monster.

And let me tell you, it is a wonderful and terrifying… whatever it is. If you’re a fan of slow paced psychological horror with a touch of cosmic dread thrown in I highly recommend it. It starts out as a simple tale about a butcher looking for his memories but the scope and the horror of the story just keeps growing and becoming more epic until… well, I’m not going to spoil anything here.

Don’t want to go down that hall. Don’t want to go down that hall. Don’t want to go down that hall!

But as much as I enjoyed A Machine For Pigs I’m not sure exactly what to label it. “Video game” seems like the obvious choice since it’s full of video game stuff like fully explorable 3D environments, first person camera angels and a physics engine that lets you throw things about with wild abandon. I mean, how can something with an interactive pool table not be considered a game?

On the other hand “game” suggests rules and challenges and most of A Machine For Pigs was just linear exploration of a big curving path. Explore a creepy room (so creepy!), read a few journal fragments (so cryptic!), jiggle all the locks and then leave through the only door that opens. Walk down a hallway and do it all again in the next room. Maybe once an hour you’ll be asked to spend a few seconds avoiding a monster or sliding an item into a nearby slot but for the most part you’re having an experience more than you’re playing a game. A wonderful, epic, terrifying and yet morbidly beautiful experience that uses game technology to create a story that couldn’t be told in film or writing, but still not exactly a terribly gamey experience. It would probably be more accurate to call the thing “Interactive Art”.

Now I’m not saying that A Machine For Pigs doesn’t deserve to be called a video game. Like I said earlier, it has an interactive physics engine: They can call it a game if they want. But from a marketing perspective I think they might have had more success if they had invented a new term.

See, based on what I’ve heard from the online gaming community almost everybody that “played” A Machine For Pigs really really liked the horror story and atmosphere. But a huge number of players were also really disappointed at the way it dropped almost all of the game elements found in the original Amnesia.

So the problem wasn’t that the product was bad. The problem was that it wasn’t what people expected from something labeled a “horror game” and an “Amnesia sequel”. For them A Machine For Pigs was like buying a carton of chocolate ice cream and finding out it’s actually filled with mint. Nothing wrong with mint, but it might have been better to admit that’s what it was right on the lid.

Now to be honest I’m not sure how this problem could have been avoided. Looking back at their marketing materials they actually claimed to be “exploring the outer reaches of what games can be” which is a pretty honest way to admit that A Machine For Pigs probably wasn’t going to be a traditional survival horror experience. They even specifically advertised that the product was driven by story and exploration more than anything else.

But they also used the word “game” and that is a powerful word with inescapable connotations. It easily overpowered all the disclaimers and promises of a story and drove people to expect certain types and amounts of game play. It’s the unspoken contract between gamer and developer. And while I don’t mind too much when developers break the contract to develop new types of stories I can understand why it leaves some people feelingly subtly annoyed, even betrayed.

But what can you do? Interactive art has always been sort of a niche product: Too gamey for people in the mood for a film or book while not being gamey enough for someone in a genuine gaming mood. You’ve got to find those weird people who are in an in-between mood. So no matter what the developers labeled their game/experience/interactive story they probably would have attracted some of the wrong customers and scared away some of the right customers. That’s just the sad reality of marketing for any semi-unique product that falls into the gap between the words we’re used to using.

But if you are a gamer who doesn’t always have to be gaming or a movie fan who occasionally thirst for a little more immersion… why not pick up A Machine For Pigs?

Happy Halloween.