Tag Archives: achievements

[Game: Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll, 2016]
Center the Gungeon:

Achievements as a Desirable Compromise Solution for Completing Games like Enter the Gungeon

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Introduction:

In this article, I will explain a potentially unintuitive belief that I hold about a specific style of games: that the best possible experience of playing roguelikes and derivatives of roguelikes is usually attained by pursuing 100% achievement completion as the primary end goal of the game. My test case for this purpose will be Dodge Roll’s highly polished and mechanically satisfying top-down shooter Enter the Gungeon.

Like so many of its peers in the increasingly-loosely-defined genre it at least partially shares with notables like Rogue, Spelunky, and FTL—Gungeon is a game that is played by repeatedly attempting to win difficult randomization-heavy play sessions averaging less than an hour each, where dying means a total end to that playthrough; to continue playing, a newly-randomized session must begin from the very start.

And why do I think that pursuing achievements (or trophies, or badges, or whatever you want to call them) offers the best way of engaging with Enter the Gungeon and other games in this style? Simply, because doing so offers a balanced, varied, thorough, satisfying compromise between two inferior extremes.

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[Game: Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll, 2016]
Center the Gungeon:

Achievements as a Desirable Compromise Solution for Completing Games like Enter the Gungeon

 was last modified: February 27th, 2023 by Daniel Podgorski

[Game: Spelunky 2, Mossmouth, 2020]
Motivations to Spelunk:

On Spelunky 2, and Three Corruptible Virtues of Implementing Achievements for Games

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Introduction:

This essay begins with a confession, one that feels on-par with admitting that one collects rocks or baseball cards or a similarly useless class of artifacts: I like achievements. In games that I am already enjoying, I actively make an effort to get achievements provided it does not impede that preexisting enjoyment. In fact, far from being impediments, I have often found that certain types of achievements lead to goals and playstyles that enhance the experience of a game. And if nothing else, purposefully attaining 100% achievement completion for a game can be a method of paying tribute to a game of exceptional quality—or of feeling that one has reached a satisfactory conclusion in otherwise endless affairs like roguelikes, arcade-style games, or even normal linear games that one can not seem to cease replaying.

In this article, I shall be covering the three clearest ways that achievements can be used for potential gains in terms of player experience and engagement. My main example in making this argument shall be Spelunky 2, as I believe that it and its predecessor represent nearly perfect implementations of achievements across all three categories to be covered.

The garden of achievements, however, is not filled exclusively with roses. There are a great many weeds and poisonous herbs to be found growing there. Achievements are often an afterthought, tacked onto a game by weary developers at the end of long projects, and—even when implemented with intention—may nevertheless include tedious, unappealing, or even exploitative goals. Thus, in each section of this article, after presenting the possible virtues of each prominent achievement type (with reference to Spelunky 2), I will also cover the vices and corruptions to which each type is vulnerable (with accompanying examples from other titles).

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[Game: Spelunky 2, Mossmouth, 2020]
Motivations to Spelunk:

On Spelunky 2, and Three Corruptible Virtues of Implementing Achievements for Games

 was last modified: February 10th, 2021 by Daniel Podgorski