With all the recent re-shuffling and re-designs of parts of the progression- and power up systems in Virtue's Heaven, I once again thought about that maybe the game itself will need some additional complexity, to make sure that players actually make use of their entire tool set, instead of just using those that they're the most comfortable with?
But then I remembered what the central driving force behind most of these systems were, when I started building the game's character controller and it wasn't because I wanted to build a hardcore-platforming game, I wanted to give players as much space to express themselves as possible.
Way back in early 2017 (I think?), I saw this Speedrun of Hagane, and I was just fascinated by the amount of movement options that game seemed to have, while not really forcing the player to use all of them. Instead (again just from looking at the speedrun), it looked more like the game gave players a box of tools and then said "you figure out what you want this all to look like!" and I just found the idea of a platformer build around that idea incredibly interesting.
I started working on the Character controller that I use in Virtue's Heaven (and also used in GB Rober, but in a much more simplified form) in late 2017 and so much of what I added was driven by me playing around and then realizing "hey, wouldn't it be cool, if you could do X as well?". This approach lead to an incredibly broad set of tools for a potential player, but (and that's the downside), I also ended up with something where I had no idea what kind of game it could support.
A more conservative approach probably would've been to think about distinct challenges first (e.g. vertical shafts that you need to traverse) and then come up with a proper tool (e.g. a walljump) to overcome it. You probably end up with a much clearer vision of what your game is going to look like this way, since each tool the player has at their disposal is directly tied to a specific level design element. However, it also leads to a very narrow room for players to use these tools for expression. After all, if you already have a walljump in your game, that enables you to traverse vertical sections, why then also add an upwards dash move? Adding the latter would only make sense, if you would also add another kind of element (e.g. spikes on walls) where the walljump wouldn't work as well. So by requiring a specific level design element for your tool to make sense, you're not really opening up the possibility space for players to express themselves, you're actually narrowing it down.
The other element of this approach, that just doesn't sit right with me is how this narrowing is actually achieved, which is usually via punishing the player when they misuse their abilities. Now there are also other ways to do this, but usually the easiest way to make sure that players learn when and where to use their tools, is to slap them across the face when they make a misjudgment and to let them pass, once they make the correct decision.
Again, depending on the game, this is okay, but it's certainly not a good approach, if your goal is to give players space to express themselves.
None of this was very clear to me back in 2018, or even a year ago, but trying to make a game out of this big ball of moves, without putting big boundaries around them, really helped me with understanding the push and pull between these two elements. And I think a reason why I kept running into problems with my past attempts at turning this movement system into an actual videogame, is because I kept using this "build levels around specific movement requirements" idea, while also being very reluctant to limit any of these abilities. The only time, it kind of worked, was with GB Rober, but it was because I stripped so much out of this system, that this more restrictive approach worked again. Coming back to Virtue's Heaven, I very quickly ran into the same issues I had with all of my previous attempts. That was, until I just stopped trying to build the game's levels around the question of "can you find the correct path through this?" and more around the question of "which path will you take?".
Ideally, I hope Virtue's Heaven will be a game of moment to moment improvisation, instead of precise and rigid memorization and decision making. The Game's movement system certainly supports it, the question now is if I'm able to build the structures that encourages players to make use of it.
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