Mega Man being a classic game series and that is why it is a good game for analysis.
Mega Man game mechanics are:
- Movement – This is needed to move around.
- Particle movement affect – Makes moving him around more satisfying.
- Environment interaction – This is a common pattern for popular games and that is because, it works, it just works, it makes the character feel fun to play the game with and feels like it is a part of the game, however this is not the most important thing for a game, it just helps a lot.
- Multiple weapons – This spices up the gameplay and makes the player think before they fight that boss, but this is only good for slow pace or medium pace games, it definitely wouldn’t work for a Sonic game.
- Character development – By this I mean developing the ability to use abilities and accomplish things through the game and not just through dialogue, this in my opinion is massively important, especially if the game has a story, because you want the player to grow with the character and not make them feel overwhelmed by the amount of content.
The level mechanics were:
- Different rooms – The mixture of rooms makes the game feels more fresh than putting the same generic room over and over again, because even if it has different textures and sprites, it still feels the same. A game can get away with this, but not for long.
- Room patterns – This is a small detail (well big, but you know what I mean, I hope), but very affective, because it gives a sense of harmony or organisation of the levels, which makes adding in new things more easy for the player to digest, because they don’t need to memorise the level layout for every level, because it is the same or very similar.
- Re-introduction of events, but with a twist – By doing this, it allows you to reuse mechanics, but not making them bland, all this could be is, an enemy is now guarding the platform and you have to figure out how to beat it.
- Checkpoints – These not only let the player relax that they don’t have to redo everything if they die, but it also gives the player a goal to reach and then another and another.
Mechanics for the enemies are:
- Ranks – By this I mean, normal, mini bosses, bosses and possibly elites and others. This tells the player what they should expect if they try to fight the enemy.
- Reacting with environment – Even though this can be hard to do, it will give the enemies a extra level of threat every-time you encounter them or making by using the environment as a weapon or making the environment harder to use.
- Enemies as tools – This one I found very interesting, but cleaver, which makes me rethink how enemies work in games. Normally you see them as just an obstacle, but in Mega Man they become a tool, a vicious tool, but a tool, which makes you want to keep them alive.
- Abilities – More common nowadays, is abilities on enemies, these balance the playing field, because you are no longer the only one that can use abilities.
- Health – This makes enemies tougher and more variant between one another, which ends up making a good game.
Game Growth 