Design Review - Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

For this week's post, I thought I'd do a small design review on one of my favourite 3D platform games - Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on the Playstation and Nintendo Wii. The reason why this is one of my favourite platform games is because of the simplicity in its design. It offers simple mechanics for the player yet is able to deliver challenging environmental puzzles, enemies and bosses.

Now, this design review (and future ones) is mainly about me analysing certain features or mechanics of a game. As such, I'm not going to go through every single detail about the game. Just things I find worth noting for or some things for you to think about or be aware of. Anyway, let's get started.

First, let's talk about movement for the hero in Klonoa. Despite the game being rendered in 3D, the player can only move the hero in a two-dimensional fashion, left and right. Now, you may think that this defeats the purpose of the game being rendered in 3D but what's fascinating is that the path which the hero walks on can curve up and down as well as towards and away from the camera. This allows the designers to:

1. Design clever and interesting puzzles and levels
2. Simplify the movement for the player
3. Have more control in designing the each level

 
You may be thinking "well, if left and right moves the player... what does the up and down buttons do?" Well I'll tell you. Pressing the up or down button causes the hero to look at the background or foreground, respectively. This allows the player to interact with objects outside their path and allows the designers to use perspective for some of their puzzles.

Now let's move on to the hero himself. Aside movement, the hero has only 2 actions - attack and jump. As you may guess, this means that the player only has to deal with 2 other buttons. The jump button is obvious but let me explain to you about the attack button. In the game, when you press the attack button, the hero will fire a "Wind Bullet" out of a large ring he carries (in whichever direction he is currently facing). This allows the player to interact with cetain objects like switches. But if the "Wind Bullet" s an enemy, the enemy will inflate and the hero will lift them above his head like a balloon (if the hero gets damaged, they lose the inflated enemy). Now this is where it gets interesting.

When the hero is carrying an inflated enemy, the jump and attack buttons receive new functionality. Pressing the attack button again will launch the inflated enemy towards which ever direction the hero is currently facing. Launching an enemy allows the player to interact with objects from a farther distance as well as destroy other enemies or inflict damage to a boss. Once an enemy has been launched, the player must find another one to inflate. As for the jump button, pressing it twice while carrying an inflated enemy will cause the hero to perform a double jump while launching the enemy downwards (giving the same effect as if you were launching it normally).

This is by far my favourite mechanic. The fact that you need enemies in order to perform advanced actions as well as interacting with certain objects means that enemies play a much more significant role in the game rather than objects that you merely avoid. Enemies can serve as pieces to a puzzle and/or as puzzles themselves (i.e. trying to obtain an enemy could be a puzzle in itself). This also allows the designers to create a wide variety of interesting enemies. Below are a few examples (I can't find a list of their names, so I'll have to make them up):

1. Bombers - Begins to countdown to an explosion when approached (can be used as delaying an action like hitting a switch)
2. Rollers - Body is inside a round shell that allows it to roll back and forth (must wait for it to stop and pop its head out)
3. Fire Magician - Surrounded by a circle of flame which spreads outwards every so often (hero must jump over flames in order to get the enemy)

  
Alright, that should be enough on this topic. I hope you enjoyed this design review. I highly recommend getting a copy of Klonoa and playing it. It was re-released on the Nintendo Wii so it shouldn't be too difficult to find this game. See you all next week!