1001 Spikes is one of the oddest games I’ve had a chance to look at on Game-Wisdom. And it’s not because of the story, graphics or controls but the gameplay. What we have is a game that willingly violates one of the basic rules of game design and leaves me confused as to whether or not to reward or criticize it.
Raiding Tombs:
The story of 1001 Spikes is that you are the son of a famous adventurer who after his death has bequeathed you his final treasure map to an ancient ruins. Upon arriving, you discover that the ruins are a massive death trap designed to kill anyone who tries to get to the treasures within. Controls are very precise: You can move, do a regular jump, high jump and throw an infinite supply of knives as weapons.
The format for each level is as followed — Each level has an exit door, a key and an artifact placed somewhere in the level. To clear the level you just need to get the key and reach the door alive but completist can go after the artifact that is usually hidden in a hard to reach spot.
The entire game feels at home in old school game design, right down to the aesthetics
The 1001 from the title represents the number of lives you have to start with and you cannot survive any hits from the traps or enemies hidden throughout the level.
Finding an artifact will give you a 1-up but trust me, 1001 lives may not be enough for this game. The difficulty comes in by the fact that every level is full of death traps that you will have no clue about them until they have been sprung — From statues shooting poison darts, spikes, collapsing floors and so on.
The main point about the gameplay is that you have to repeat each level until you’ve figured out the perfect run needed to get it through alive then repeat it for the next level. There is literally no way that someone could go into 1001 Spikes fresh and get through it without dying due to this type of design. And this takes me back to the beginning of this piece and why 1001 Spikes violates one of the basic rules of game design.
Forcing Failure:
As people began to research and define game design over the last decade, one general consensus was made about forcing the player to fail. This was seen in older titles where developers would set up death traps that would cause the player to die and their only way to know about it was to trigger it and die in the process. Many game developers to this day feel that this is not a good form of game design as forcing someone to fail in order to learn how your game works is a frustrating affair. The player is technically not learning how to play the game through gameplay.
Many death traps won’t activate until the player crosses them, turning the game into a series of memory challenges
Instead the game feels like work as the player needs to put in enough time to figure out all the kinks in the level before they are allowed to proceed.
And that is different from having a mechanic or obstacle and challenging the player to figure it out. In that example the player is actively trying to solve the challenge and grow their knowledge base in the process.
So that by figuring out that obstacle, they can then apply their understanding to later challenges. Great examples of this in action would be from Nintendo and Valve with their games. The levels organically teach the player the mechanics and grow their knowledge base of the mechanics so that when they reach later challenges, they can use what they’ve learned to conquer them.
If you do have to have death traps, then the player should be given some advanced warning to let them know about it. In the Souls series, there are plenty of spots that can kill the player if they are not aware of what’s happening. But these spots are all telegraphed in some way to let perceptive players know that there is danger ahead.
But when you are forcing the player to learn through failure, they are not increasing their knowledge base of the game but just of that specific level. When the player moves to the next level after so many defeats, they haven’t learned anything that can be applied to subsequent levels and the learning process begins again at 0.
And this is where I’m torn about what to rate 1001 Spikes. From a game design perspective, the game is a failure because it breaks that rule. However, it was designed explicitly to break that rule and the developers knew that when they were making the game.
The traps and their presentation varies between levels providing a different challenge for the player
Ultimately I have to agree with game developers on this one as playing through 1001 Spikes felt more like busy work rather than learning a game. And this is the reason why developers avoid learning through failure.
If there were some standardized rules that the player could use to avoid obstacles or advanced tells that alerted them to traps, it would be a different story. And because of that, I don’t think too many people are going to sit through 1001 Spikes to the end.
Brutal Progress:
1001 Spikes is going to be a polarizing game for some. Similar to La Mulana, I know that there are going to be people who enjoy this level of brutal difficulty and may not even find it that hard. And if I wanted to spend the next week or so pouring over every level, figuring out the perfect path, I could beat the game as well.
But that level of repetition doesn’t interest me or the majority of gamers today anymore. If you’re looking for a challenge to overcome 1001 Spikes is a great exercise in trial and error, but how much reward you get out of playing such a game is up to you.
