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[Muffinhat]

It seems like old 3D platformers like Banjo Kazooie with the core aesthetic of exploring 3D spaces have died out in a way, possibly because the novelty of the genre has worn out. Old genres like roguelikes have been brought back from the dead by modernizing mechanics and improving accessibility. What kind of things could be done to modernize this kind of genre?

[Glyph]

I wouldn't say collectathons are gone, and like roguelikes, maybe they've just evolved to another form. This article makes mention of some modern collectathons (Assassin's Creed, GTA) and some of the most prominent problems with them -- as well as some games that did it right.

[ThemsAllTook]

I was wondering this very thing the other week, and it prompted me to start working on my own. Dunno why there hasn't been more of this type of game lately.

[Kyle O]

Sometimes I feel like Minecraft is a collectathon.

[Muffinhat]

Sometimes I feel like Minecraft is a collectathon.

I've heard this argument before. I'd say while both these games share a common aesthetic (exploring 3D Space), Minecraft is more open ended than games like Banjo Kazooie.

[baconman]

Minecraft also lacks the kinds of level design and mechanics to make it fun, the way that more contrived games do.

They do certainly exist, but it's not so much a grind anymore. One could say a game like La Mulana is a terrific collectathon, or everyone's favorite example of everything: Dark Souls. But there should certainly be some element of deliberate 'hide and seek' with reward elements about it.

Two new DKC returns games, a bunch of Mario, DuckTales Remastered, VVVVVV, and... let's just say there's plenty out there to challenge that notion.

I AM LEVEL.

[Paul Jeffries]

An interesting thing to note is the slight attempt at 'modernising' this mechanic that happened between Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie.  In the original, you had to get all of the notes on a level in one sitting, the game just saved your maximum 'score' for that level.  In the sequel, it saved each individual note separately and once you'd picked one up it stayed picked up.

That prevented you having to go back and find notes you'd already collected again, although personally I found that I enjoyed it less because it removed an element of challenge that was present in the original and made collecting them all feel more like a litter-picking chore.  Banjo-Kazooie is one of the few games I've ever done a 100% completion speed-run on, because trying to plot out the fastest route through each level while picking up everything in one go was an interesting optimisation problem.

I think collect-a-thon-ism is still a fairly common gameplay element, it's just that the collectables are generally optional extras rather than acting as a key to main-game progression the way they did in BK.  I think the biggest change since then is actually in level design, which seems to have moved away from the open-but-self-contained 'playground' levels of Banjo and Mario 64 etc.  Nowadays the trend is more towards either tighter, far more linear levels where you are guided from goal to goal or much more massive open-world games where the whole game world is one big map.  In either of those cases, if you miss a collectable you need it can be much more time-consuming and frustrating to go back and find it again, which I suspect is a major reason why it's no longer commonly used as a progression-gating mechanism and instead is just a cruel and unsual way of torturing completionists.

Another important difference is that Banjo-Kazooie very rarely went to too much effort to hide collectables from you - they were generally fairly easy to spot during normal exploration and the challenge was in figuring out how to get to them.  They were there to reward skillful application of the moveset rather than to encourage snuffling around in every dark corner like a structural surveyor with a missing contact lens.

So, I think that collectables have been modernised (not necessarily all that well) and if anything are a little overused.  If the question then becomes 'how do you modernise them better?' then I'm not entirely sure, but I think that re-integrating them with the main gameplay rather than treating them as a side distraction and also using them as an impetus for more than just exploration would be steps in the right direction.

[valrus]

It seems like old 3D platformers like Banjo Kazooie with the core aesthetic of exploring 3D spaces have died out in a way, possibly because the novelty of the genre has worn out. Old genres like roguelikes have been brought back from the dead by modernizing mechanics and improving accessibility. What kind of things could be done to modernize this kind of genre?

Yeah, collecting seems to have become a bit of an afterthought: ubiquitous but no longer given much effort, and no longer sustaining entire games.

Some things I'd do if making a "modern collectathon":

• Paying a lot of attention to retraversal, the way a well-put-together Metroidvania does, always allowing backtracking, but also encouraging it with shortcuts, etc.  (Metroidvanias themselves may be collectathons, of course, but normal collectathons don't usually concentrate on this.)  That platforming challenge might be fun the first time, but not when I'm on my third retraversal looking for that last geegaw.
• Giving the player lots of ways to narrow down what they're missing, whether that's a radar of some sort or some old bearded sage intoning riddles.
• Similarly, giving the players ways to know where they have and haven't searched, rather than forcing them to remember.  The classic way is to have the "outline" of the collectible there, or something similar, but that's mostly useful insofar as the player can see it and remember how to get there.   More broadly, it could also be ways that the player's progress through the environment leaves behind changes (footprints, bent branches, debris, etc.), vs. places they haven't been (closed doors, intact destructibles, etc.).  Maybe even letting the player leave marks -- I use certain torch patterns to tell me where I have and haven't been in Minecraft.  Every game benefits from letting the player leave a mark where they've been, but it's critical in a scavenger hunt and (I think) rarely done.
• Giving each collectible a bit of personality.  My favorite collectathons were always the Ape Escape series for this reason.  While not all of the collectibles were funny, there was at least the chance of the next one being funny.  (And even if you think none are funny, it's heartening to feel that someone put some thought into them, that the designers cared about them to take that time.  It makes me the player care about them more.  And in a collectathon the player ought to care about the collectibles, otherwise why get them?)
• Displaying what's collected in an interesting way, in some thematically appropriate "display case".  Like the statue collections in the new Fallouts, or the photo album in Arkham Asylum.  If the point of the game is to work on the player's "completion urge", underline this by letting them see that complete collection.  (And motivate them by letting them see that incomplete collection!)  This, of course, works better if the collectibles have some personality.  Seeing trays of cubes in Fez didn't motivate me to complete my cube collection.

[s0]

those lego games (lego star wars, lego lord of the ring, lego batman etc) are pretty much streamlined collectathons.

from my perspective, collectathons (meaning basically n64 3d platformers) "died" in the 00s because the genre became very tedious very quickly. like, super mario 64 is great and still unparalleled in a lot of ways, banjo kazooie was still pretty good, but by the time donkey kong 64 rolled around and made you collect 50 different types of bananas and 20 types of coconuts a lot of people just got sick of those games.

i'm trying not to hate on collectathons too much because i like a lot of games that other ppl would probably call "tedious" myself, but i still think 3d platformers could be more vital today if developers like rare had chosen to expand on mario 64's actual platforming and "sandbox" aspects rather than the collection stuff.

or everyone's favorite example of everything: Dark Souls.

not really, you can play through dark souls without ever picking up an item and the game's central goal is to fight bosses, not collect trinkets to progress.

[denzgd]

Something you might want to keep an eye on is this game A Hat in Time. Its devs cite notable collectathons as inspiration, and are attempting to create their own entry in the genre. It looks pretty good so far - still a little rough, but full of the same kind of colorful character that was offered by the collectathons of gaming's past. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I am particularly fond of the old collectathon games, and it's a genre I miss dearly. The game industry of late has seemed to go in a different direction, but I think indie devs could revive the genre. I see many of you giving modernized examples of games, but I don't think they offer a comparable experience. They may have some hallmarks of collectathons, but they don't quite scratch the same itch.

I think A Hat in Time does a lot to show how a modern entry can be reasonably adapted/achieved. But there are a lot of ways to go about it. With ever-improving hardware, games allow for bigger levels, with more instances, better graphics, etc. But it comes down to what the designer prioritizes. Imagine if Mario 64 had multiple castles, or if Spyro the Dragon had more detailed combat mechanics. There's a lot of room for growth and experimentation, and as long as people keep the core values of a collectathon in mind, we could very well get some interesting projects in the future.

Personally, I want to see something with a lot of variety in the objectives. Platforming is ever important, but how about a level where gravity is thrown off, and you can walk on walls and stuff, without relying on the mechanic through the entire game as a gimmick? And I think it would at least be interesting to see one with objectives driven by story arcs, a la Fallout 3. Collectathons are about discovery, and I think discovering story could be a driving force behind the player's desire to explore the game.

[Muffinhat]

Something you might want to keep an eye on is this game A Hat in Time. Its devs cite notable collectathons as inspiration, and are attempting to create their own entry in the genre. It looks pretty good so far - still a little rough, but full of the same kind of colorful character that was offered by the collectathons of gaming's past. I'm very much looking forward to it.

I am particularly fond of the old collectathon games, and it's a genre I miss dearly. The game industry of late has seemed to go in a different direction, but I think indie devs could revive the genre. I see many of you giving modernized examples of games, but I don't think they offer a comparable experience. They may have some hallmarks of collectathons, but they don't quite scratch the same itch.

I think A Hat in Time does a lot to show how a modern entry can be reasonably adapted/achieved. But there are a lot of ways to go about it. With ever-improving hardware, games allow for bigger levels, with more instances, better graphics, etc. But it comes down to what the designer prioritizes. Imagine if Mario 64 had multiple castles, or if Spyro the Dragon had more detailed combat mechanics. There's a lot of room for growth and experimentation, and as long as people keep the core values of a collectathon in mind, we could very well get some interesting projects in the future.

Personally, I want to see something with a lot of variety in the objectives. Platforming is ever important, but how about a level where gravity is thrown off, and you can walk on walls and stuff, without relying on the mechanic through the entire game as a gimmick? And I think it would at least be interesting to see one with objectives driven by story arcs, a la Fallout 3. Collectathons are about discovery, and I think discovering story could be a driving force behind the player's desire to explore the game.

I completely forgot about this game! Thanks for reminding me.

[SirNiko]

Modern Mario games have some of the collect-a-thon features of Mario 64. I feel like the biggest difference is that modern games tend to ditch arbitrarily hidden items for a smaller list of items hidden in significant ways (eg, Mario Galaxy denoting the location of each star and meaningfully changing the level for each one you collect). A smaller number of more significant things to find strikes me as an improvement over a large number of generally uninteresting items. Despite my fond memories of Mario 64, looking back I recognize that repeating the same first half of Tall, Tall Mountain or Tick-Tock Clock to collect another star a few platforms higher was not very good game design compared to Galaxy's take.

I also feel like a lot of the allure of early collect-a-thons was the big open levels to explore, which don't require collectables to make them worth exploring. The non-linear levels in Mario Galaxy (eg, Honeyhive or Beach Bowl) don't need a large number of items tucked away in corners to be fun to explore.

Rocket: Robot on Wheels is my favorite collect-a-thon from the N64 era. The levels were like big playgrounds (which fit the theme park theme perfectly) and the unlockable vehicles gave you a good excuse to go back and comb the levels for missing tokens because driving the glider-cycle was just fun. If any collect-a-thon would fit well in a modern remake, I think it would be the one.