The elegance of movement in Silksong

Spoilers:

Silksong has arenas with 3 mobs that throw discs plus you. Idk about you, but I can't track 7 things moving at once. This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky. I like Silksong, but the only way some the bosses were made challenging was because of constant adds. Hollow Knight rarely had this.

When I was in college, I bought Demon's Souls and also started the most difficult semester I'd had yet with 3 classes deeply into my CS major. I was terrified of what lay ahead of academically, so I procrastinated by playing Demon's Souls.

Yes, Demon's Souls was hard, but eventually I somehow I started passing dungeons and beating bosses. The rush that I got from that gave me what I needed mentally to persevere through my classes: by the end of the semester I had A+s in 2 and an A in the other. I don't think I've had a better semester since. Beating big demons in video games made me feel like I could beat my own big demons in real life.

Lots of others feel the same way about Souls-like games; there are many video essays on Youtube that cover how Souls-likes got them through depression and other things.

Lots of people say this but they can unfortunately never articulate why that works in Elden Ring. Making a game that is insanely difficult will not be enough to give you that feeling of accomplishment. If that's all it took there's be thousands of games that gave you that feeling. And yet there aren't. So whatever makes Edlin Ring so special, it's appearently really hard to describe in a way that separates it from lesser games.

I played Hollow Knight. I don’t recall if I defeated a single boss. I must have done a couple but several of the first you were meant to defeat remained unchallenged.

There are non boss fights that get more elaborate as you go, and let you pick up some new skills and abilities.

Another one like this that shouldn’t have been was Orie and the blind forest. If you play it on story mode, which I did because it was great eye candy and I just wanted to see it all, there a spot in the middle of act 2 where you have to land several double wall jumps in rapid succession with nearby spikes. Someone at that studio needs to be beaten about the shoulder with a clue bat about wtf “story mode” means. I never got to see the story and was too mad to watch someone else play it on youtube.

I’m fairly sure that my problem with both was the same. Only partly fat fingers and part was that certain movements don’t work identically on all controllers. Some things are counterintuitively easier on a D pad than a thumb joystick. It’s just not as crisp to go from one input to another 90 or 180° opposite. If your game mechanics are built on that, then some ports will be much harder to play.

You should either not port them, or adjust the timing grace period up on that hardware.

I also played Elden Ring recently. I wish I could share your dopamine rush because I never had one during the playthrough. Certain bosses caused so much frustration that the net sense of achievement for the game was negative for a decent margin. I've also played Dark Souls and Sekiro and I found them better on this aspect. After beating them after an extended period of struggling, my thought was not "I finally got it" but rather "I hope there aren't more bs like this".

Shameless plug and possibly spoilers: I wrote about this in my blog https://asukawang.com/blog/bitter-masterpiece.

My first play through of Elden Ring was a pseudo challenge run - capped at 125RL (pvp meta) and dual UGS style. No ash of war usage. No guides for bosses.

Malenia took me over a month, and probably over 500 deaths and I had to relax the ash of war usage (still limited by my very low FP)

The entire end game was brutal as this was before the buff for UGS animation speeds and most boss openings were shorter than anything than a crouch poke but I loved every minute of it. Just like learning to play something new on an instrument just cos you can't nail it in one try, one week or even one month doesn't mean you won't eventually get it.

One meta lesson I like about Souls is it provides a safe environment to learn what performing under pressure is like. The music and feints are absolutely diabolical for playing with your emotions and heightening your stress. I always play better on mute (but that's no fun)

> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun [...]

I haven't played Silksong yet and I know difficulty is rather subjective, but is it really that difficult compared to the realm of punishing platformers like NES Ninja Gaiden, Cuphead, Spelunky 2, the dark world portions of Super Meat Boy, etc?

I played the first Hollow Knight and didn't find it particularly hard. (not easy, but definitely not Dark Souls level punishing).

I wish I could go back and experience soulslikes for the first time! They really are a treat if you experience them as you describe (not everyone feels that way, but I certainly do).

You're in luck because that subgenre has exploded in popularity and there are a lot of good ones out there if you want to keep playing them these days. Elden Ring is one of the best though for sure.

I hesitate to call Doom and Apex movement fluid. Well, it is fluid in the sense that it feels like you're on cart with exquisitely greased bearings and futuristic servos. FPS movement is inherently unnatural because no organism moves like that. That's not to say they don't control well, but they don't control naturally. Third person games can actually flow naturally, because you can animate things like turning around, changing direction, momentum, etc.

FPS characters have invisible crab legs.

Surprisingly overlapping set with games I’ve played and enjoyed a lot! Dead Cells was another that has a lot in common.

I'm a huge fan of pixel perfect platformers. Chalk Cuphead and Super Meat Boy up on the list of games with a very natural connection between player coordination and game mechanics.

That's why I struggled with Ori and the Will of the Wisps. They subtly broke the movement and some hitboxes, and I could never get the proper hang of it.

Blind Forest though? Chef's kiss

Titanfall 2 had excellent movement! The only games I’ve played that surpass it are the tribes games, which just have a whole new level of fluid movement for 3d games.

How is this different than a game like Sega Genesis Contra Hard Corps? (Asking with genine curiousity).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzJyBQKDaeQ

In that game, it's basically ~30 boss fights in a row (don't know the exact number). There are 4 paths through the game A->(B or C)->D->(E or F). So if you take path B you fight different bosses than path C. Same for E and F. One of those last paths has 2 endings with one more boss fight on one path.

You have limited lives so making it to the end of the game requires effectively memorizing the boss patterns. So, your description fits.

> You go into a boss fight and die, and then you die again, and then again. Each time you get a bit further, and do a few more hits. And slowly, finally, painfully, you come out on top victorious

But I'm guessing Contra Hard Corps does not stick up to Eldin Ring. So what's Edlin Ring's special sauce?

Don't so easily dismiss the opinions of others. For certain individuals it is indeed the hardest game they've ever played. I've cleared Steelsoul 100% in the OG Hollow Knight and would argue that Silksong is definitely the more difficult of the two.

Ok, this is as close as I'm ever gonna get to having a real reason to post this on HN, so here goes:

"Git Gud" by Viva La Dirt League: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blSXTZ3Nihs

Played all the soulsborne and 100%-ed HK. Except the last pantheon, I couldn't ever beat ascended moth

A big part of that is “I will save you X” is a non-starter. That is not making the business more money. If you have something that will actually make the business more money then they will go “Great if I pay you twice as much will it make me 2X?” and if the answer is yes, that will be a sale every time.

I might be overstating it, but here's what I see at my company. "Sell" is very different in all of these situations.

- Sell to the champion. - Sell to the rest of the org. - Sell to procurement. - Sell to the implementation project team. - Sell to the users and get adoption up.

Then constantly demonstrate that you're providing value in whatever terms that department / org thinks is valuable that year.

Easy!

yes, and I think one big reason enterprise might not buy your product even if it is guaranteed to make/save $X is $ is often NOT most important thing to the people make buying decision, specially when it is not your own money to save or gain

Can confirm. At one point in my career (after reflection on the situation) I realized I had been made a champion by a subsidiary of IBM for one of their products. I found myself in some really bizarre meetings with our execs and their executive sales people that left me feeling like a puppet that was made to tell our CEO that we needed this. They really took us apart, It was all very slimy.

> going from "Ugh, sales people are all snakeoil salesmen" to "I can't believe what they do is even possible, much less regularly done" over about 20 years.

I mean, it still sounds like snake oil salesmen. It's just that that's what it takes these days to even get noticed (let alone make a pitch). rubbing hands trumps a quality product 99% of the time.

I too had trouble with this boss but eventually made it. The fact it summons little friends is the problem, so hard to dodge 2+ the boss!

Yes, movement in SSBM is so satisfying. Nothing else comes close for me. All other games just feel boring in comparison. A classic example for those who haven't seen it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JpOaQxrsaqI

This article from 2005 has the toy idea. It has stuck with me.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/how-to-prototyp...

It's promotional material, but I enjoyed what the Get To Work devs put together to show how they built the game up from kind of the same approach (all on youtube)

Sounds like Tynan Sylvester’s game design book (Tynan Sylvester created Rimworld)