How Monaco Fails Its Players

I picked up (against the better judgment of my bank account) several games during the last Steam Sale. Three of those were stealth titles of recent publication - Monaco, Gunpoint, and Mark of the Ninja (the last a gift from my friend Pat). And I bought them despite the fact that I have very real problems with the stealth genre.

Monaco has gotten the most play so far. The Girlfriend and I are moving through it, and the emotions it evokes have been a little roller-coaster-y. When it's working, it's fantastic - the art design is incredible, the character abilities well-balanced, and the challenge often invigorating. Until we hit the wrong mission, anyway. Then the alarms go off, the guards start shooting, and soon we're dead.

Now, Monaco, as far as stealth games go, is quite forgiving. You're given plenty of information about what the guards are thinking and seeing, and they have pleasantly elastic memories - if your character can stay out of sight for long enough, you'll be forgotten, and the level will go back to an un-alerted status. And in co-op, a dead player can be revived by his or her co-conspirator, making survival much easier. And yet...

There is no sensation in gaming more infuriating than loss of progress. One of the reasons we play games is that it gives us a pleasant, if artificial, sensation of achievement. We are doing things, growing stronger, passing through levels. And when those achievements are stripped from us by our own mistakes or failures, the feeling is crushing. Feeling crushed isn't why I play games.

To give a Monaco-specific example: it is a significant task to grab every single piece of loot on a floor of Monaco. It involves stealth, hacking, combat, all of your characters' skills. And if, after achieving that task, you die on another floor of the same level, it's all gone. That progress is deleted as though you'd done nothing for the last half hour of your life.

Worse, you're forced to repeat the areas you've already completed. Novelty is another important aspect of games, and by punishing players by stripping them of progress when they die, you're also stealing novelty from them. I want to experience new challenges, not be forced to re-complete ones I've already done because I died on an unrelated part of the level (this is a problem I had with Hotline Miami, as well). If a challenge kills me, I want to try that challenge again. Not spend twenty minutes doing the things that lead up to the challenge.

Am I just whining and asking to have my hand held? I don't think so. I still want hard, nasty challenges in my games, but I want the challenges to be their own reward. I don't need the stakes of knowing that failure means losing half an hour of progress in order to take the challenge seriously.

For an example of someone doing it right, look to Gunpoint. One of Tom Francis's stated design goals with the game was to never make players feel like their time had been wasted. As such, Gunpoint saves every few seconds, and after a failure, you can simply rewind a few clicks to try again. You still have to solve puzzles and execute tricky maneuvers, but there's no sense that you're being punished by the game. If you're seen, you die pretty much instantly, and then the game immediately reloads an old save; it's exactly what players have been doing when being spotted in stealth games for years, it's just automatic and far less painful.

I love Monaco. But it has made me feel legitimately upset because of how it treats its failure state, and that's not a great way to feel while playing a game. There are better ways.

Gunpoint: Where Player Freedom Becomes An Artform

Tom Francis is one of my favorite gaming writers. He works for PC Gamer UK, and has been responsible for some of my favorite features written on the ways players can explore and engage with the games they play.

You can always tell one of Tom's reviews by the glee with which he approaches the subject. They're full of breathless descriptions of bizarre or interesting situations the games let him get into, dumb, fun tricks he's logic'd himself into trying. For instance, take this example from his review of Deus Ex: Human Revolution:

He’s inside gang territory, trying to make it to a door at street level. He decides to use the surprising development of a vending machine falling out of the sky to distract the gangsters, so that he can drop down and get to the door without attracting attention. A sort of pepsi ex machina.

Jensen hurls the vending machine arbitrarily and tumbles off the building after it. His Icarus Landing System kicks in, floating him safely towards the street below in a dazzling ball of golden light. When the vending machine crashes to the ground, the armed gangsters nearby all look at it in surprise. Then they look at the dazzling ball of golden light floating down to land across the street, and they draw their guns.

Francis's critical perspective on games seems fueled not so much by the choices and scenarios that games force on people, but by the ones that they allow. His writing celebrates games like Deus Ex for allowing the player's own mad ideas to be a major factor in their success. As such, it's not surprising that when he decided to design his own game, it became something like an art studio for brilliant works of player creativity.

It works like this: Tom's game, Gunpoint, is a stealth platformer about breaking into buildings without being shot by some EXTREMELY trigger happy guards. The levels are full of interactive elements - light switches, door panels, cameras, alarms. On the surface, these are all on the side of the guards, systems in place to thwart your hero, Conway, from reaching his goal. Except Conway has an ace up his sleeve (also: springs in his pants, but that's neither here nor there): The Crosslinker.


Mousewheel up, and you enter Crosslink mode. All of the details of the level fade into darkness... Except the devices. Those light up like lights on a Christmas tree. And, like a child opening his presents on Christmas morning, you can start to play...

Drag a line from any device to any other to connect them. A light switch will now open a door. A guard walking through a motion sensor will call an elevator to his floor, distracting him. Re-wire a hand-scanner so that, instead of opening the door it's connected to, it activates the scanner on the other side, activating the door in the opposite direction, slamming into the guard and knocking him out. The Crosslinker turns every level into a playground for crazy Rube Goldberg machines and nasty pranks.

The brilliant, compelling thing about this design is how unnecessary most of these tricks are. Gunpoint is built so that brute force is almost always an option; guards can be pounced from behind and knocked unconscious; you can even buy a gun and shoot them dead - although, in keeping with the idea that this is a stealth game, gunshots will quickly summon difficult-to-avoid-snipers at the level exit (although even these can be avoided with enough upgrade points invested in a bullet-deflecting belt). Even when using the Crosslinker, there are a few simple moves (the aforementioned suicide-by-door trick, for instance) that can be used over and over to clear levels... efficiently. You could play it that way.

But most likely, you won't. Instead, you'll sweat, and puzzle, and play, until you've found a convoluted, beautiful solution to your problems. Because you can.

The motivating philosophy behind Gunpoint is, I think, that if you give players freedom, and have faith in them to use it, they will. You don't HAVE to set off a cascade of opening doors, moving elevators, blaring alarms, and darkened hallways that culminates in a man being electrocuted by a light switch. You do it because it is, objectively, awesome. And it is equally awesome that the game allows you to do it, with no scripting or forcing. The only motivating desire is the desire to do something great with the vast, flexible tools provided. It's the difference between "Man, that game just did some awesome stuff," and "Man, I just did some awesome stuff."

It's challenging, refreshing, rewarding. I expect videos of Gunpoint solutions to be a big hit on Youtube (and I'm quietly hoping Francis will implement some basic video-capture elements into the game to make sharing mad, inspired solutions that much easier). Because who doesn't love showing off just how crazy they can be, when someone gives them the chance?


In closing, please enjoy this: Three unscripted, me-designed moments from my most recent Gunpoint playthrough that had me laughing or feeling like a badass. These are, I guess, technically spoilers, but since the whole game is devising your own personal way around obstacles, I don't think it'll hurt to see my approaches.

1) I'm standing at the window of a building. Across a small alleyway stands another building, with a guard, above me, looking out. I'm safe now, but when I move my cursor into the space between the buildings, it turns red, telling me that I'll be seen as soon as I step (or leap) outside. He's in pouncing range, and I've upgraded my leap enough to propel me through the window, but there's no chance I'll cross the distance before he puts a bullet in me. I could shoot HIM, maybe, but I've still got objectives left in the level, and no time to clear them before the sniper shows up, blocking the exit.

I slip into Crosslink mode, look at my options. I'm in luck! The switch behind me is on the same circuit (devices on different circuits can't be linked together, usually) as the lights on his floor. I hook my switch to his lights, exit Crosslink, and flick it. Lights go out, he turns around to turn them back on, and as soon as his back is turned, I pounce, crashing through the window and slamming my fist into his face. Awesome.

2) Problem: I need to get through a door, and there are guards on either side of it. I can't open the door myself, and they'll shoot me on sight. What to do, what to do....

Solution: I've bought a new gadget in the between-mission store: the Longshot. It allows me to, with the expenditure of a power core, Crosslink a guard's gun. I laughed out loud when I saw that. I pull out the Crosslinker. A few tweaks later, and I set a tragedy in motion.

I flick a switch, and the lights on the floor go out. Guard A is the closest to the light switch, but it's on the other side of the door. So he activates the hand-scanner to go through. This activates the door... which activates Guard B's (standing guard further down the hallway on the other side) gun... Guard A crumples to the floor, shot. Guard B stands there, slapping at his gun, wondering why it misfired... as I come up behind him and pounce. Beautiful.

3) There's a Pro on the floor below me. Pros are special types of guards, clad in black suits like high-price bodyguards or Will Smith hunting aliens. Annoyingly, they're much harder to manipulate than their less-professional brethren. They won't follow noises. They won't freeze in place when you point a gun at them. They just shoot you, and then you're dead. Like I said, annoying.

I leap down, crashing through the hallway's plate-glass roof. Quick as lightning, the Pro unholsters his gun, points it at me, pulls the trigger... And the lights go out. The door behind him opens. And, grinning at his misfiring gun... I pounce. It is exceptionally Batman.

Thanks, Longshot.

Gunpoint is still in development. You can follow its progress and sign up to test (which I've been doing for the last nearly-2-years, and highly recommend) at www.gunpointgame.com and on Twitter at @GunpointGame. The game is up for the Audience Choice award at the Independent Games Festival this year, so if what you've read here (and on Tom's blog) sounds interesting, consider voting for it here: http://igf.com/audience.php
Voting ends Sunday 2/19.