I will provide examples from a number of platformers to categorize gameplay mechanics and their respective sub-elements. Beyond platformer games, other genres - including first-person shooters and action/adventure games like Portal, Journey, Papo & Yo, Tomb Raider, and Mirror’s Edge - have platformer elements. All platformer games often contain all of three of these mechanics, but other games tend to focus on one more than the other two. With the aid of some theoretical reading on platformer topics from The Big List of Game Design, I categorized three main mechanics above all platformer games: Exploration, Action, and Puzzle. My first target was a long-term game research study of 300+ platformer games that varied from past releases to new games. So before going into depth with puzzle-platformers, I examined the whole platformer genre with its sub-mechanics. Since most of the platformers include some puzzle elements, it is very hard to define which platformers are puzzle-platformer games. The main part of my research was to define puzzle-platformer elements. This gap gave me the perfect opportunity to investigate core design choices of other puzzle-platformers. However, I couldn’t find materials that focused solely on puzzle-platformers. As the creative director and designer, it was my job to search for articles that could help us understand the core gameplay mechanics in pre-production. Monochroma, a cinematic puzzle-platformer game, is the first big project out of Nowhere Studios and has been in development for 18 months.
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