How To Combine Video Game Genres

My experience working on Untitled Magnet Game directly inspired this episode - I'm back to working on the game, so Developing should return in the near future!

You know it’s a GMTK video when it opens with spelunky

I feel like a major factor in combining genres is that there are different kinds of genres. For example, roguelike, simulator, and mmo describe how a game is designed. Platformer, turn based, or fps describe a input methods. Platformer roguelike works as it describes how a game is designed and how it plays. Meanwhile, saying "roguelike sim" or "turn based fps" don't work as well since you have genres that compete for the design/input genres. Not to say these can't exist, but it would have to be done very carefully to work.

My favorite "blended" genre mashup would be the survival city builder. Starting with games like Banished but polished with games like Frostpunk. It gives the normally pedestrian city building genre some much needed teeth while still preserving, to an extent. the complexity of a city builder.

My favorite combination of genres is eating food while watching GMTK. Sure each genre can be great on its own, but learning these great game design tips while stuffing your face with Lo Mien is the bee’s knees!

I think the method that pushes the industry forward is the "blend" method, I've seen lots of great indie subgenres come out of it sucah as idle games, auto battler, roguelike, survivor, etc. Survivor-type games, like vampire survivor, are actually just top-down shooters with a focus on risk and progression. It's basically felt like a modern Crimsonland, but it gives a new fresh outlook on the genre. Whenever there is a new subgenre to be explored it always leads up to great new game mechanics.

The "blend" method has been blowing my mind over the past few years. It's always astonishing how many creative minds there are out in the gaming industry and this feels like one of the best ways to flex those muscles.

Pyre is absolutely my favorite example of genre-blending. It combined the storytelling aspects of visual novels with the high-octane gameplay of a sports game. It's a shame that so many people haven't gotten to experience it!

I actually want to go back to the very start, where Mark points out that genres are post hoc categorization--but then, we spend the rest of the video talking about them as though the genres themselves are... basically, a standard that game developers have to measure up to, to such a degree that you then have to justify combining different genres (to the public, or to a publisher) even if they are obviously compatible. An easy example of this is Portal, or rather, Narbacular Drop, the indie game that paved the way for Portal. First-person puzzle games existed before that, but people couldn't think of anything particular great to do with a first-person camera except shoot people or provide immersion in a role-playing or adventure game. Narbacular Drop, and Portal after it, provided a fascinating window into using the first person camera as a constraint in a puzzle game, and then breaking that constraint in the most mind-bending ways, and there are several modern 3D puzzle games that doubtless would not have been finished or funded without that kind of proof that a novel set of mechanics was worth considering a "genre". Many genres nowadays--especially Roguelikes and Rogue-lites--are nearly arbitrary collections of mechanics, and it's worth considering that we will discover new combinations and therefore new "genres" as we go along. That said, what genres do for us is provide lessons that we should apply to future work. If you are doing something that is vaguely like a first-person shooter, there are lots and lots of examples of that being done well, and of it being done poorly, and genres as a method of categorizing games make it easy to review what does and doesn't work when dealing with your mechanics of choice. While some would cynically call it "copying" when people start throwing new, popular mechanics into their own new game--such as the proliferation of roguelites or people copying Doom (2016)'s glory kill mechanics--the truth is that game developers are staring at design challenges, some they can't even put into words, and searching through modern understanding of gaming for any hint as to how they can overcome those challenges to create something new, worthy... and marketable. So when a developer sees that a mechanic, a genre, a business plan, or anything else has advantages, they try it out, only to learn first-hand some of the drawbacks that the new methods come with. And because we categorize games by other games like them, in the future we then come back and look over all the descendants of an original idea to see what should be done, and what should be avoided. The trick, after living surrounded by these categories, is then to go on and create a new game that isn't necessarily DEFINED by the categories, even if it will (of course) be DESCRIBED by them. To take all the lessons learned through all of gaming, and create art that uses all those lessons without being a dry, emotionless, proof-of-concept that does little but show that you DID learn how to make a game that fits within a genre... or perhaps that that shows you didn't.

One of my favourite genre mixes is Teardown. While the game does later introduce different level types, the main formula level is as follows: here are some items to steal from the map, the moment you take the first one, the 60-second clock starts ticking; take the required items and return to your escape vehicle. Until you take that first item, however, you have all the time in the world to plan out your route, modify the environment to make the navigation through the level easier, etc. This makes for a great mix of more puzzle-y, tactical gameplay in the beginning, as you think which order to take the items in, and action, as you go from building to building. What's particularly great about it is that planning skill can make up to an extent for a lack of platforming/driving skill, and vice versa. This vastly reduces the frustration if you fail the level by broadening your possibilities of increasing your chances of success; a player that can't "git" any more "gud" at a particular section of your route, perhaps you can think it through and make it easier, and a player that cannot think in that moment of any optimizations can practice the route until they get better, or until they do think of something. Truly a lovely game.

I think one of my favorite "blend" examples in recent memory is Ultrakill, which mashes fast-paced Quake-style FPS gameplay with the stylish comboing of Devil May Cry. It's crazy fun and unique while encouraging lots of experimentation and improvement

I was initially on the fence with Sundered. Like Chasm, it's a Metroidvania with procedural level generation. You will always know the general direction you need to go, but never the exact route. And some of the reviews panned the swarm mechanic, where a horde of enemies would randomly start to chase you. But I ended up loving that particular mechanic. Even otherwise trivial platforming becomes thrilling when you have a half a dozen snipers aiming at you, and the randomized map meant that you had to think on your feet. And of course, the ageless choice between fight or flight.

Nier: Automata (in fact a lot of Yoko Taro's games) constantly blends space invaders-esque play with action JRPG with platforming with shooter-puzzles (I dunno how to describe them) and it's so damn seamless. I typically found genres harder than others, but it was such a creative way to vary gameplay.

IMO the thing about genres is that thinking in terms of them when talking about games can be very usefull. But especially when you want to make a game with a unique concept that hasn't been done before, the concept of "genre" might do more harm than good because it put's your mind in a box when what you probably actually want to do, is to think outside of that box. That is also why I think the "blend method" is the most interesting of the three. I feel like that is what happens when you think less in the lines of "I want to make a game that is a hybrid of multiple genres" and more like "I want to make a game with mechanics a, b, c etc. and coincidentally similar mechanics are getting used in completely different genres".

One thing that I feel forces players into a particular playstyle is Achievements. Dishonored is a good example since some Achievements that people are inclined to go for involve never getting caught, being completely passive, and only using the base set of abilities. This can sometimes lead to players really clinging onto their current playstyle since if they break the conditions for unlocking these Achievements half way into their playthrough then they might feel like they just wasted a lot of time playing the game in a very specific manner.

Prey: Mooncrash was a stellar mash-up of immersive sim and rogue-like mechanics. I love immersive sims, but like puzzle games, they tend to lose replay value once you figure out the ideal way to solve a problem or encounter. Mooncrash uses random enemies, environmental hazards, and loot to make sure that you are constantly forced to solve new problems with limited equipment, making each run exciting, challenging, and fresh.

Metroidvanias are, themselves, a mashup between different genres. Oftentimes, it's a mix between action games, platformers, and collectathons, but you only really need two of those features to make it at least feel like a metroidvania.

I'd add a sub category of the first type: the "surprise" games as I'd like to call them. Aka games where the whole gimmick is that you never know what type of mechanic is gonna be next. It takes two is a great example, but there are even more wacky stuff like What The Golf (which is surprisingly a good well thought game even as the whole gimmick is to be as wtf as possible).

I liked the comment about the worry of the game "betraying" the player. One of my biggest disappointments in recent years was the re-release of Etrian Odyssey 2, part of a series of RPGs that mixes mapmaking and dungeon-crawling. In every other game in the series I've played, there are a ton of options for the style of party you want to build and the way you approach each boss fight. In the EO2 remake, every boss is the same: every 25% of the boss's health bar, it goes into a panic mode where you have to DPS a set amount in just a few turns or your party gets wrecked by whatever the boss' mechanic is. As someone who enjoys a turtley, buff-based party, I had to completely rebuild AND grind so my team could do massive DPS for each new boss and that really ticked me off.

I hate that almost every single RPG has a thief class but you can't do anything substantial if you choose to be a thief, you still have to fight.