Pokemon Rangers: Why Drawing Loops is so Engaging

If you’re familiar with the “circle drawing” combat of the Pokemon Ranger series, you might be under the impression it’s...sort of dumb. But you’d be wrong! It’s actually clever and engaging, and I want to talk about why.

Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia (Creatures Inc./The Pokémon Company/Nintendo, 2008) is the second Pokemon Ranger title, for the Nintendo DS. Combat in Shadows of Almia is quite a bit different from the first Pokemon Ranger, and somewhat different from the third (Guardian Signs). For example, in the original game, you need to capture Pokemon in a single, unbroken line with a set number of loops. You can draw extra loops beyond the minimum to earn bonus XP. The combat in Guardian Signs is more similar to Shadows of Almia, except Pokemon can also become "agitated", which functions as an extra shield you must break through. But we’re going to discuss Shadows of Almia specifically.

“Combat” in the Pokemon Ranger series is, in fact, all about making friends. You befriend Pokemon by drawing circles around them with the stylus, but they have a friendship bar that is effectively HP, and they attack you because they don’t like you invading their space. So, we’re just going to call it combat.

On the battlefield, Pokemon dash about and periodically attack. Your goal is to capture them by drawing lines in loops around them. But your line length is limited, and when the Pokemon attacks your line, or even walks through it, your line breaks, forcing you to lift the stylus, place it again, and start drawing a new loop from scratch.

(You can also attack with your own Pokemon moves on the battlefield, but we’re just going to focus on the line drawing.)

Here’s a demonstration.

I want to highlight a few aspects of the loop-drawing mechanics that make combat so enjoyable.

The key is that Pokemon can break your line. Pokemon passing through your line will break it, but it will not deal damage. Pokemon landing an attack on your line breaks it and deals damage. An attack or unexpected dash into your line, and your line shatters like glass. The sound is brilliant. And suddenly your line dissolves and your stylus is dead, like it’s out of ink. You’re doomed to drag your dry styler about impotently, forever, until you start a new line. The only way to start a new line is to lift your stylus, press it back onto the screen, and start drawing again. The impact of taking damage is so visceral, literally physical.

Further incentivizing you to perform well are little “bonus” achievements that grant extra XP. For example:

-Capture a Pokemon with a single line. -Capture a Pokemon quickly (or very quickly!) -Capture a Pokemon without taking damage

These bonuses are the real game, like letter grades in Devil May Cry; in fact, battle performance is graded in this game too! To excel at capturing Pokemon, you need to know how to read the battlefield, anticipate attacks, understand how Pokemon react to your stylus, and know when to use your assistant attacks. But the core component, really, is risk vs reward. Drawing loops takes time. Drawing large loops takes more time, according to the laws of physics, and is therefore slower to complete a capture, but it’s also safer because your line is farther from the attacking Pokemon. Drawing smaller, tighter loops is faster but riskier, the line being that much closer to the target, more vulnerable to attacks and erratic dashes, and at risk of being snapped. It happens so fast.

Take too long, and you miss out on one or both of capture speed bonuses. If your line is broken, you lose the unbroken line bonus, and if your line takes damage, you lose the flawless victory bonus too. And then there are bonus streaks you can earn from succeeding in multiple battles sequentially.

As you level up, your line grows longer, allowing for larger and safer loops. You also gain damage reduction perks. But nothing in-game improves your manual dexterity or your skill reading the battlefield, nothing freely grants bonuses, and nothing dampens the viscerality of a breaking line.

The Wild at Heart: Personality and Information through Voices

This article contains spoilers for The Wild at Heart (2021, Moonlight Kids/Humble Games). If gaming is among your hobbies, I recommend just playing it instead. It’s exceptional.

The Wild at Heart is an action-adventure game of sorts. Players play as young teenagers Wake and Kirby, best friends who have run away from their homes to live in the woods. Unexpectedly, Wake and Kirby find themselves in a magical realm called the Deep Woods. It’s populated by quirky elder beings, roaming monsters, and little friendly creatures called spritelings. Players team up with squads of spritelings to save the realm from dark forces encroaching upon it.

The game plays similarly to the Pikmin series from Nintendo. Coincidentally, the fourth Pikmin game releases tomorrow (July 21) for the Switch, and that series uses voices similarly as will be discussed here. In The Wild at Heart, players wander about the Deep Woods, collect and spawn spriteling companions of different varieties, battle monsters with their spritelings, and complete quests to save the realm.

The Deep Woods has five kinds of spritelings, each with a unique design and approach to battle, but more relevant to the point, they have their own personalities that are expressed, in part, by their voices. The designers and sound engineers at the game’s developer, Moonlight Kids, imbued the spritelings with voices that both express their personalities and also inform the player of battle conditions.

The sound design in The Wild at Heart is incredible throughout. Simply exploring the Deep Woods is extremely enjoyable because of rolling brooks, swaying trees, cavernous echoes, and the footfall of Wake and Kirby on the surface. But this essay focuses on the voices and sound effects of the spritelings in particular.

I’ve recorded a video of The Wild at Heart to demonstrate the spriteling voices and how audio cues assist the player in combat. This video is clinical to isolate the focus on the spriteling voices, but know that the game in actuality plays smoothly and blends all sorts of sounds wonderfully. It’s a joy to play, and listen to.

There are five spriteling types: Twiglings, Emberlings, Shiverlings, Barblings, and Lunalings. Spritelings can be tossed at objects and monsters to attack them, called back to the player character, split into squads, sent to gather resources, and praised for being perfect just as they are.

When the player tosses a spriteling, the spriteling chirps a signature cry of its type as it flies through the air, both aurally identifying the type and expressing personality for the creature. In this section of the video, I toss each type of spriteling, ten at a time, to demonstrate their range of vocal responses. Each of the spritelings has a distinct voice and is accompanied by unique sound effects.

On blogger, embedded videos always start at the beginning, even with a time code. So I've linked to the timecode of each section instead. The link will open in a new winow.

• Tossing Spritelings by Type

Notice how the shiverlings (I’ll allow you to infer which ones they are) make little icy crackling sounds as they’re tossed. Emberlings make fire popping sounds as they trill joyfully. And Barblings swish through the air as they spin, rolled into balls. Notice also that each spriteling has a unique landing sound effect. I love that the Twiglings land like stumps.

• Here are the five types in sequence

By holding a shoulder button, players can select their spriteling type with a selection wheel. When a type is highlighted on the wheel (by tilting the analog stick in that direction), the spriteling effect plays there too.

• Highlighting Spriteling Types with the Selection Wheel

When the player has multiple types of spritelings in tow, he or she may swap between types by pressing a shoulder button. When a spriteling type is swapped to, the spritelings coo distinctively to aurally notify the player which type he or she has at the ready.

• Swapping Spriteling Ranks

Spritelings are tossed one type at a time until that type is depleted, when the next type steps forward. In this video, you’ll see me toss the spritelings one at a time, as before, but listen for the voices when a new rank steps forward. The effect notifies players that they’ve depleted the type they’ve been tossing, that a new type has been selected, and which.

• Spriteling Type Rank Advance

Spritelings are perfect just the way they are, and the player can praise them with a button tap, called a “Quick Pep”. As always, the spritelings purr uniquely when praised. Here they are individually.

• Quick Pep by Individual

Here’s their collective voices when praised in groups. This is also a good demonstration of their landing sounds when dispatched all at once.

• Quick Pep by Type

And here’s a bunch of spritelings all together.

• Quick Pep Collectively

Finally, here’s a brief clip of combat showing off the variety of sounds during live play. The spritelings make unique attack sounds as well, but they are more difficult to hear because monsters make their own sounds when hit.

Tchia: Matching Mechanics to "Boring" Level Design

In Tchia (Awaceb, Kepler Interactive Limited, 2023), players become the titular character, a young girl of twelve, to explore her home islands of New Caledonia in the South Pacific. Tchia is incredible in every regard and I highly, highly recommend it. Tchia is best experienced first-hand to discover the magic of its movement and mysteries, and it's available on PS4 and PS5, Steam, Epic Games Store, and streaming over GeForce Now if you own the Epic Games Store version. If you’re interested, play the game first and then come back to read this little article.

Tchia can jump, swim, slide, paraglide, and climb trees. If Tchia climbs to the top of a tree, she can cling to the crown, sway the tree back and forth, and catapult herself into the air. It’s the best thing ever. Once she’s in the air, Tchia is free to open her glider, or dive into the sea, or grab onto other trees that she’s flung into. Then she can catapult herself again.

At one point in the game, an NPC gives players a quest to retrieve a specific species of crab from a mangrove forest called Kwéö. Mangrove forests are salty swamps, and when I first saw it, I thought to myself, “Oh man, I’m going to have to walk through this flat swamp; not too exciting.” But then I realized that I could just climb a mangrove tree and launch myself deeper into the forest. What I had feared was a chore was suddenly a super enjoyable little game because the swinging and gliding physics are so well tuned. If I wanted to, I could try to launch myself all the way across the forest, tree to tree, without ever touching the ground, like a monkey playing hot lava.

Shamefully, I realized that I needn’t fear the forest floor anyway because it’s gorgeous and fascinating and we’re privileged to stroll through it. But by matching an inspired mechanic with deceptively boring level design, Awaceb transformed a flat, (seemingly) repetitive area into a brilliant joyful playground.

Haven Wants to Reassure You

My goal is to write a short, mostly stream of consciousness post every day, to reflect on my thoughts of games I’m playing and get back into the practice of games writing.

In Haven (The Game Bakers, 2020), the player/s clear floating islands of “rust”, a pollutant destroying the habitat. Dark red and menacing, rust often blankets most of an island, spreading from crystal-like deposits scattered about, like creep nodes in StarCraft II. Clearing rust is as simple as gliding over it, like a paintbrush, and passing near a rust deposit clears a large swathe of rust surrounding it. Each island is polluted with a finite number of rust deposits, and with a little diligence and exploration, cleaning up an island entirely is a fairly simple task. Island topography and navigation becomes more complicated as the game progresses, but to give you an idea, clearing an island might take about 10 minutes, as a general estimate, if you’re fairly directed in your goal. Collectible fruit tends to distract from the task and roaming monsters inhibit it.

Clearing an entire islet is rewarded with an “Islet Cleared” commendation and positive acknowledgement from the characters. Additionally, players can then fast travel to that islet, so players are incentivized to clear islets if only to open up the spot as a shortcut for later exploration. However, clearing islets is not necessary to complete the game. Clearing rust (for the most part) is optional.

While exploring islets and clearing rust, one of the characters will occasionally say, “you know, you don’t need to clear all of the rust.” I think this callout serves two purposes: one, it's a reminder that clearing rust is not required to complete the game. More interestingly, though, the statement alleviates the pressure on players to clear the rust just because it's there. When playing games, I'm constantly, constantly thinking about "optional obligations". That's my term for optional objectives that feel like their required if only because their present, or if the benefits of completing the objectives is essentially necessary or feels that their necessary, facts aside. Clearing rust in Haven is a good example. Rust is all over the place; is bright and garish and draws players to clear it; is satisfying to clear; and is particularly satisfying to clear in entirety because players are rewarded with a wonderful sound effect. I'm susceptible to optional obligations and frequently find myself victim to their draw. I suspect that the need to complete optional objectives (or find optional collectibles, or complete side quests, or stealth past all enemies, etc) is likely related to OCD behavior, but I believe that many players feel obligated to fulfill optional game elements regardless.

This is why I appreciate the characters explicitly explaining to one another and to the player that, really, you don't need to clear all of the rust, if you don't want to. The statement is reassuring, forgiving players for feeling emotionally obligated to clear the rust, and providing an off-ramp for players to abandon the option, particularly if players aren't enjoying the task. Clearing rust becomes time consuming, and I bet the developers knew that not everybody would enjoy the task and wanted to both remind and reassure players that they can just walk away if they prefer. It's a generous, considerate inclusion and respects players for having tendencies that may be counter to their preferences.