Good Design, Bad Design Vol. 16: The Best and Worst of Video Game Graphic Design

[@DesignDoc]

Thanks to Milanote for sponsoring this video! Sign up for free with no time limit: milanote.com/designdoc1124

[@TwilightWolf032]

One thing I want to see is a dive on the tutorials of the Xenoblade series. Xenoblade 1 has really competent tutorials that encourage you to experiment with different party compositions, try out new characters as they become playable and even has a specific tutorial for Melia a few hours after you obtain her because her gameplay is very different from the rest of the cast and needs special attention, while still keeping it within the confinements of the story. Xenoblade X has really bad tutorials, that is to say, it just has some pop ups telling stuff has changed and then good luck figuring it out (O.C. gear, anyone?). Especially egregious is the Doll/Skell License Quest, a quest that is supposed to prepare you to drive your giant mecha but instead sends you to do chores instead of learning to pilot one. Doubly so because the quest for the Flight Module actually has you testing out the module in your mecha as a form of teaching you the mechanic, so the game knows how to tutorialize its mechanics properly, it just chooses to not do so! Xenoblade 2 is infamous for how long it takes to "get good," as the battle and exploration mechanics are inherently linked to the extremely stupid "Progression Locked Behind A Gacha Mechanic In A Single Player Game!" disease it suffers from. The game will tell you it's possible to link up elements during a battle to create orbs that can only be broken in Chain Attacks during its earlier chapters, BUT YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH BLADES TO PULL IT OFF UNTIL MUCH LATER ON! Especially since most of the battles are won before you can crank up the combos to reach that point in the first place, it is a mechanic relegated to use on bosses or enemies much stronger than you currently are, at which point you completely forgot that mechanic even exists or don't understand it well enough to make proper use of! I haven't played X3 yet, so I can't say anything about it. But I would love to see an in-depth look at how the Xenoblade games tutorialize their mechanics, especially from the perspective of a game designer!

[@arnoastra]

wow it's so cool! Wish I discovered this earlier for one of my group projects this semester, but excited to incorporate this into my future group projects! thank you

[@TwilightWolf032]

WTH? KZbin deleted my comment for no reason but I still receive notifications from this thread? I just said I wanted to see a video about Xenoblade 1, X, 2 and 3's tutorials and where they failed or succeeded.

[@KlementtM]

"An intricate meal should not be hindered by a complicated fork" I guess that's the equivalent to try to simplify a fork by removing all but one of its prongs

[@Aghul]

And you also need to keep in mind that not all meals can be eaten with a fork. At the very least, I'll need a spoon for my soup.

[@robhillen8007]

I suppose a lone chopstick is best used like a fork, and so is a knife without an edge, but both are objectively worse than the things they're based on and the thing we're being told to use them as.

[@Gloomdrake]

@@Aghuland you need both, because a spork won’t cut it

[@AubriGryphon]

@@Gloomdrake For that you need a sporknife.

[@weirdalexander8193]

Isn’t that just a knife with a lopsided handle/blade ratio?

[@LittleBeanGreen]

A developer interview for Echoes of Wisdom came out recently and they provided the rationale for that long scrolling menu. The dev team wanted you to have to scroll through all the echoes because randomly scrolling across one may entice you to experiment with it. I understand this rationale, but I still think implementing it that way was a bad idea.

[@lpnp9477]

They should have had groupings. They could have had a spotlight row at the top with random echoes or some recommendations per area. That would have accomplished what they were going for without frustrating people.

[@madelinemccoolname]

ig i understand that, but more rows or a random sort would solve that and be far less annoying than the solution they went with

[@Liggliluff]

It's also typical Nintendo adding things that are frustrating just because they want you to play the game the way they want, and not how you want. They make great games, but this is something that shows up from time to time

[@MattRose30000]

@@Liggliluff Nintendo is probably the most conservative and patronizing game company there is. Which can be a good thing in that they aren't so easily swayed by trends. But their refusal to cater to their enfranchised customers is really annoying.

[@titan6062]

Not the worst reasoning but still terribly executed

[@pikamario99]

UGH the MOMENT you mentioned Lorelei uses every single button on the controller to perform the same context-sensitive action I got flashbacks to Balan Wonderworld. I never thought I'd have to deal with that mess of a menu design ever again, complete with not having a Back button so you have to find the one option to close the menu within the menu itself. edit: are you kidding me they even gave the exact same justification as the Balan devs. How is it less complicated to have to cycle through an entire menu searching for a way out than to just have a button to close it at any time

[@robhillen8007]

"Instead of making menu navigation have a universal learning curve that you need to go through only once, we're going to give each menu its own learning curve and decide for you which one you want to open at a given time. After all, it's not like controllers today have >10 buttons for the exact reason of games today having too many interactions to all map to

[@nidohime6233]

If anything it makes it more complicate because people would still try all the buttons to see if it works or not.

[@Liggliluff]

Feels a bit like Apple. Android has* a dedicated back button but Apple let that up to the developer to include in the UI. Usually top left, but not always. Is it a cleaner design? Maybe when there's nothing to back out of, but this button is also often far away to press. Apple then introduced a universal gesture ... to solve an issue they made. * Android has moved over to Apple's design, because copying bad design is a good idea. Away with all universal buttons, and only hidden gestures for navigation.

[@TheGeladoo]

​@@Liggliluff Speaking of Android copying Apple's horrid design ideas, RIP Headphone Jack...

[@EGadjo]

Yeah there's a lower bound of complexity where you have actually increased the complexity by refusing to go above a certain amount of complexity in an interlocked system (like limiting yourself to only one button, when even *two* buttons would be an extremely low learning load for any player, and would lower the complexity of how to use the context-sensitive single button by a lot) Like, the original NES controller had *four* buttons and no one would ever accuse it of being complicated.

[@Kyrephare]

One thing Echoes of Wisdom absolutely needed was a placement marker for summons. More than a few times I thought Zelda was drunk as I was pointing her in a direction, but she would summon off to the side instead. I feel like a lot of games I play are now going a bit too minimalist with their UI design, to the point its needlessly frustrating.

[@0Clewi0]

Without playing I guess a round menu with categories could be good? then the selection should be narrower enough

[@Kyrephare]

@0Clewi0 nah too many options still. They really needed to divide up echoes between animate objects, inanimate, and maybe an oddball quest related selection and let you pick from there imo. Or better yet, let players favorite stuff.

[@LashknifeTalon]

This is especially true when you're trying to use the ranged summon function and it's entirely trial and error whether something lands where you want it or not. I feel like they mostly only assumed you would ever want to place things at max distance or right next to Zelda, but that's entirely untrue.

[@JustAnthon]

@@0Clewi0 I'd say you could introduce some verticality by sorting echoes by category (e.g. monsters, furniture, or even sea-creatures, bugs, humanoids...)

[@RealityMasterRogue]

3 buttons is not a "complicated fork", yeah. examine/menu/exit

[@vlim5601]

Yeah that was an unbelievably pretentious line. Acting like their game is so complex and the player is too dumb to understand it so it had to be simplified to the point of being half-functional

[@matthewlong7547]

Threek

[@RSFArocks]

3 buttons is in fact, a normal fork (assuming each button corresponds to one prong of the fork in this analogy). What the devs here have created is a pointy stick, which the devs have told you is a fork, which it clearly isn't, it sucks at it's job, why would you do this, just give me a damn fork!

[@AnotherDuck]

RPGMaker has by standard two buttons: Confirm and Cancel. Cancel on the field brings up the menu. That's all you need unless you want fancy stuff like page turning and what not.

[@ripopol]

The thing about a fork is, the three prongs are what MAKES a fork work. If you have a 1-pronged implement, thats eating chicken with a spoon.

[@fearsomefawkes6724]

Okay, but what if my meal requires a fork AND KNIFE?!

[@azuarc]

I'm trying to imagine eating soup with a fork.

[@aliengeo]

Forks aren't very good at rice either, but you still don't eat it with just one chopstick...

[@CynicalEscapist]

Good metaphor bad metaphor: 'A penny might not be much, but you can drown in a pool of pennies'

[@peardude8979]

Good Metaphor: Refantazio

[@FrotanHD]

i actually said out loud 'what a shitty metaphor' when i heard it in the video lol funny that someone else felt the same

[@onyx.avenger]

Re: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes - I've really enjoyed the game so far (I'm like 10-15 hours in?) but the control scheme is the most infuriating thing. I play on Switch, so accidentally bumping the shoulder buttons will open up menus/puzzles seemingly at random, and the lack of dedicated cancel button (e.g. "B") means that I end up clicking on a ton of things I don't intend to and dive further into the menus rather than finding my way back out. (Also having the cancel/back menu item as inconveniently and inconsistently placed as possible is annoying.) I don't even think that the issue is fully that they've oversimplified the design too much, it' seems more like a terrible combination of [1] defying existing standard design language (e.g. a cancel button, which is standard for most menu/textbox-based games) and [2] a lack of configuration options (e.g. being able to just disable the shoulder buttons would be a huge boon for clumsy players like me).

[@BrazenBard]

For Echoes of Wisdom, I don't think I ever used the horizontal menu... the notebook menu was better organized and fairly easy to remember where the different echoes were on the list; the sorting was consistent.

[@gerharddamm5933]

Imagine being one of the UI designers watching this video and your game appears in the bad section

[@0Clewi0]

I doubt the people in zelda where given much choice to improve

[@Gloomdrake]

It’s constructive criticism

[@itscharlieschannel]

Imagine believing everything this guy says is correct. Half the things he says is just wrong. His views of persona 5's UI and UX is so blinded. Its horrible design.

[@Lucifronz]

@@itscharlieschannel I doubt you even realize how dense and unpopular your opinion is. If you think he's wrong, you lack the basic common sense of game design that I would have thought *everyone* was aware of. Seeing these bad UI choices from developers who are too zoned in on the game they're making that it gives them tunnel vision and blinds them is one thing, but you're standing outside of the problem, yet still you're just as ignorant and condescending. That takes a truly massive level of ego and incompetence that even these developers cannot boast. Try harder to not be you, please.

[@0Clewi0]

@@itscharlieschannel you can't come throwing your own opinion as fact without at least trying to bring up one point.

[@noirtreize2713]

I see that Lorelei’s dev take note from Balan Wonderworld’s one button design, LOL.

[@Shakzor1]

Balan is truly and jump'n'jump game

[@brandonwithnell612]

@@Shakzor1 unless you have the wrong outfit....then you cant even jump

[@hesterfranks9716]

At least with Balan Wonderworld, you're not going in an out of menus, you're only ever gonna Just Jump. The one button design is *boring* more than annoying or a hinderance. There are some costumes that don't let you jump, but you can hold 3 costumes so if you don't have ANY that can jump that might just be on you

[@GigaOtomia]

About the metaphor for the Laser Eyes section: They have not given the player a complicated, morphing fork. They have given the player an icepick instead of a fork - a utensil entirely unsuited for eating, with one point and a difficult handle to grasp - and a complicated, morphing plate upon which their food is placed.

[@Stephen-Fox]

For Echoes of Wisdom, let's be honest here - Most Zelda games have menus somewhere between inefficient and infuriating, this isn't a modern problem for Zelda: Iron Boots in the N64 Ocarina of Time, anyone?

[@BladeSerph]

Atleast they had the old hardware design to make sense. But it would have definitely been annoying if you had to equip and unequip the iron boots thru the pause menu just like changing tunics and weapons. Thats probably why quick menus, hot key bars and equipment sets were invented to properly expand button maps to have way more options to work with and not make it some complex menu like final fantasy actions and spell usage in the older era games. Ultimately though, Zelda games have always evolved retarded and ignoring intuitive control design that you can see with games like final fantasy 16 these days. Where they enable a way to have 3 sets of abilities that each have 2 special moves and a action centric move that can be controlled with a mere 4 or so buttons that only really makes use of around 2 face buttons, one toggle button and one push and hold button to turn the two face buttons into other actions.

[@Gigi-zr6hp]

​@@BladeSerph and look at how modern Final Fantasy games are vastly dividing their fanbase unlike Zelda on the Switch.

[@lyzder7298]

​@@Gigi-zr6hpZelda on the switch has also divided the fanbase tho. Many people have expressed they wanted a more classic and linear game rather than another botw, some even say Totk was boring. The difference is this division hasn't been present for long, unlike FF

[@Reydriel]

@@lyzder7298 With Final Fantasy at least the games have been very different from each other for decades now

[@lukebytes5366]

​@lyzder7298 they've "divided" an internet minority in the same way mario odyssey did when that game launched. "I don't want the same game again" and "i want old zelda back" are two different sentiments that happened to work against totk.

[@SaltyIsaac]

I love chants of sennaar. Figuring out the meaning of what you see your own way through contextual clues feels very rewarding. I'd say Outer Wilds uses them as well, though it doesn't rely on them as much. I do have one issue with Chants of Sennaar though, which is the journal. I understand its importance: In a postmortem Julien Moya pointed out that such a mechanic is necessary in this kind of game because without validation, most players would get completely off-course and more and more confused as time goes on. And I believe that. This is why we have similar systems in Obra Dinn (three fates) and Outer Wilds (the ship log). However in these two examples, the systems give you next to no information that you didn't already get otherwise. The absolute minimum necessary to confirm that you are making progress and that you didn't miss something. In Chants of Sennaar though, the journal gives you lots of additional information: The drawings tell you some info about the glyphs you have (i.e. if I see a fire drawing I know that I have a glyph that means fire), tells you when you're supposed to be able to figure it out (when the drawings appear), when you complete a page, it tells you the exact correct meaning of the word and its nuances, etc. There are moments in the game where I just saw a few glyphs with very little context, and right after that, the game shows me drawings that very strongly implied which one would go where, and when I did that it gave me words that it seemingly just made up (the most egregious example of this is at the entrance of the final floor). I think that's why many people like me felt like the journal was too handholdy: instead of being simply a *tool* that supports my investigation, it felt like I often had to rely on the information it gave me that I couldn't see in the game world; and because of that, it sometimes felt like the developers were walking me through the "intended investigation".

[@pochocho8225]

The worst one was when I didn't get the image Spoilers from close to the end of floor 1 The one about making something had a pot and I asume that the word for shop had to be about pot because it was the only thing making sense, because of that weird image in Wich I tried all combinations

[@Runegrem]

Yeah Chants does get a little handholdy at those times. I think the closest thing Obra Dinn has is that it does tell you when you should be able to figure out the identity of a character as well as how hard it's supposed to be. But in that case I think it really just does limit the amount of frustration felt by players trying to figure out things they don't have the information to do. Of course, it wasn't entirely perfect. For example, many LPers seem to figure out who the surgeon is far earlier than the game expects them to.

[@aliengeo]

Oh, yeah, there were some glyphs that I immediately got the meaning of from the picture (having not gotten it from the game world) and others where the picture impaired my ability to understand the concept. Spoilers for floor 4 . . . . . My first guess for the "transformation" glyph was "science" or "alchemy." While not accurate, this is at least vaguely in the area, and I did grasp that this is the thing they're trying to do. Then the game gives me a picture of 🐛🦋 and I had no idea how that was supposed to relate to anything. Trying to find the glyph for "insect" for the next hour set me way back in my understanding, as compared to allowing me to believe that the "transformation" glyph meant "alchemy."

[@Shiroze]

I LOVED Chants of Senaar. Though I had a little issue with navigating at times.

[@AnotherDuck]

Played it more or less just after Outer Wilds. I found it the better game.

[@Artista_Frustrado]

"An intricate meal should not be hindered by a complicated fork" ok but that doesn't mean you need to give me a single chopstick

[@ripopol]

"remember to check if the problem you are solving has changed". Great advice, succinctly put.

[@Norkas_0]

Oh god, Lorelei yes. I loved this game, but the menuing is so dumb. Even close to the end I still tried to exit out of the menu or some puzzles by using a cancel button, that this game "simplified" away. Look if your players are able to handle the puzzles the game throws at you, they will be able to handle the complexity of a confirm and a cancel button.

[@Momoka7]

9:25 The joke is, they could have used a grid-based menu, like they had in the very First Zelda game on NES as well as many other Zelda games prior to the Switch ones... even that Links Awakening still usesthat, where you see like 10 items on screen. Then add the ability to flip through pages left and right and you had a way better system then what they added.

[@NisseDood]

The Zelda Echoes of wisdom problem could easily have been solved by just using the weapon wheel from console fps. Just be able to add items to the wheel and then hold button to bring up the wheel in game play and select an item by pointing to it with the stick and release to select.

[@TheWrathAbove]

I would add that specifically, the way mario maker 2 handled the wheel with its many catagories would have been ideal.

[@Lucifronz]

I think having several rows as someone else mentioned would be better. You don't want to favorite things in Echoes because that means you over-rely on them and don't experiment, which is the whole reason they went with the flawed "single row for everything" design to begin with. But if you have multiple rows on top of each other of various items from all the different categories, you can toggle between a few smaller rows in no time at all. There are other things you can do like having each row be a category set to a specific button being held and then you scroll, but I don't know how many buttons are used in Echoes.

[@NisseDood]

@@Lucifronz If there is no reason to switch between items it just means they designed them badly.

[@jonasholm-mw5bn]

19:42 seams like in the attempt of making a “simple fork” he made a utensil that change between fork and knife, instead of giving you both.

[@ultimate_pleb]

18:50 true but "a fork that can't do the job of a fork will ruin an intricate meal"

[@Stephen-Fox]

I played Chants of Senaar a while ago and it is, indeed, excellent. "One button controls" are great. Love them. For something like Downwell - It sounds like in trying to simplify the act of navigating menus in Lorelei (up to and including not having a dedicated back button), they accidentally made the entire game a single menu which is overall more complicated.

[@PoorDesign]

I'M SO GLAD YOU MENTIONED METAPHOR'S MONSTER DESIGN!! the giant egg human is also a direct reference to hieronymus bosch's work depicting hell and when i first saw it, it reminded me EXACTLY of that painting, i just forgot the artist's name

[@sekiro_the_one-armed_wolf]

This might surprise you but as far as I can tell most of the Human designs are based on his work Edit: Brodie said it for me right as I posted this comment lol

[@darrylaz3570]

Oh you just know from the thumbnail Design Doc is gonna simp the hell out of Metaphor's graphic design lol

[@chuckchan4127]

I'm totally OK with this.

[@verygoodfreelancer]

i wish people would stop using “simp” in this way lol

[@arianghorbani1305]

@@verygoodfreelancerkeep wishing

[@chuckchan4127]

@@verygoodfreelancer I wish people would stop saying they'd wish for others to stop something, but we both know that's as likely as your original request.

[@verygoodfreelancer]

@@chuckchan4127 nah, it’s good for people to hear it lol

[@manicantsettleonausername6789]

These videos are so fun. Not only are they interesting, educational and calming, they also introduce me to so many cool new games. As a non-native English speaker, I would love it if you made a video about intuitive UI design that does not require you to speak the language in order to enjoy a game. Growing up, most games I played on my Nintendo DS were not localised to my native language, so I played them in English. Did I speak English? No, and because I was a young child I was only just learning how to read, even in my own language. Yet I spend hundreds of hours playing Pokémon Pearl, Super Mario 64 and many, many other games. Sometimes if I really didn't know how to progress I would ask my mom to translate something for me, but she's also not a native English speaker and even if she did manage to translate the text, she wasn't always sure what it meant in the context of the game since she hadn't played it. These games taught me some early English vocabulary with words like 'attack', 'flee' and 'potion' and replaying these games as an adult, now fluent in English, it adds a whole new dimension of enjoyment and detail that I could not yet access as a child who didn't speak English.

[@sbrowley947]

I don’t think a swimming pool of pennies can drown you per se. But it can certainly crush you

[@mattkuhn6634]

I love Chants of Sennar! I got my bachelors in linguistics, and it was a fantastic experience for me, too! It was a real thrill to research the languages in a realistic way, and developing hypotheses about their structure and having the game turn out to have actually gone to that depth! I didn't know the languages were based on real ones, because that definitely makes the consistency of them make sense.

[@manicdogma2240]

Something I'd like to see comment on in the future is the use of stance/posture gauges in gaming. Sekiro was a great game, I'm glad we all agree, but next to zero other games seem to have internalised that such systems should actually be something the player engages with, a mechanical layer that affects how they approach combat. Almost every other game I've seen try to do that sort of system just makes it a free damage chunk if you hit the enemy enough times in extremely normal, bog standard combat rhythms. No thought put into it at all. As an example of a game that does it right, Vernal Edge works a posture system into its combat in a very compelling way, attaching reduction in enemy posture to a variety of specific, highly forceful attacks. And you *want* to posture break enemies, because that's how you open them up to your big damage combos without risking damage in return. It's a system that colours the combat and demands engagement to apply.

[@rocky38964]

17:38 : "This all sounds great" - No it doesn't, it sounds absolutely awful. If your game is doing the same thing as Balan Wonderworld, please reconsider

[@TheKarishi]

Your final review is reminiscent of a Bob and George comic from 2003. Specifically, the arc starting September 23, 2003. Dr Light explains that his time machine has just one button for the sake of simplicity. "You can access different features by varying the amount of pressure, duration, and frequency of button presses."

[@parkourboio1062]

Holy crap, someone remembers Bob and George!

[@Ashtarte3D]

Jokes on you Mr. Video Essayist; I've already beaten Chants of Senaar 100% so you couldn't spoil any part of it for me. :D

[@DesignDoc]

Jokes on you, you did what I wanted!

[@SirBrittanicvs]

Chants of Sennaar is one of those rare games you wish you could forget so you could play it again fresh.

[@AnotherDuck]

Don't think about it for one or a few years, then return to it. See how much you remember. It's not exactly new, but you probably have a lot of things you need to solve again.

[@greengaleproductions]

I thought Balan Wonderworld taught us that "One button does everything for you" was a bad idea. Sucks that it affected a good game like Lorelei.

[@CordeliaWagner1999]

Zelda A Kink to the Past has a extremely simple soulotion against long scrolling. It's at the Beginning where you give your character a Name. Instead of moving to each letter one by one you can aim at the letters with a crosshair cursor. It's extremely intuitive and very fast. That's how you maneuver through hundrets of items.

[@Runegrem]

It really just works like a keyboard with letters in a rectangular grid. It's extremely common when you need to write stuff like your character's name in video games. So yeah. They totally should've done something like that in EoW. Why use new bad solutions when old reliable ones exist?

[@zacharynguyen7286]

A kink?

[@GL_099]

Can not tell if typo or on purpose

[@endlessemptyvoid]

Those Mario and Luigi portraits are gonna haunt me for a while.

[@applesthehero]

when you're controlling a game, if you have to think "what will this button do if I press it right now?" then you haven't removed complexity, you've added it

[@QwixLF]

Shoutout to Ringo Star art references for the bad design.

[@renegaderaven3777]

Chants of Senaar looks really neat. Like being dropped in a foreign country and having to figure out the local people’s customs on your own or something.

[@MrFoxInc]

Not trying to focus too much on the bad, but it's baffling how Echoes of Wisdom and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes are such absurdities in their design. You got these finely crafted games where so many things go right in gameplay, visuals, artstyle, sound design etc. ... and then you see the menu in EoW and the one-button-action in Lorelei and you think "Wow that sounds really stupid on paper" and surprise, it actually ends up being really stupid, too and yet it's in the final game and they don't seem to see anything wrong with it. EoW is especially confusing. How they expected people to be creative and innovative with echoes when you have 127 in total, combined with this idiotic scroll menu is beyond me. What made them think this was a good idea? How do you work on a project for years and not see that?

[@TheWrathAbove]

I'd wager that it was probably a manadate from on high to make the menus as similar to Botw/TotK as possible since the menus have literally no identity of their own in a game that otherwise very much strives to have a unique visual identity. Not much the developers could do if that was the case.

[@BJGvideos]

​@@TheWrathAboveBut how did the TotK menu ever make it to print when it's terrible?

[@MrFoxInc]

@@BJGvideos Probably for the same reason, too. "It worked in BotW and people loved that" (and for good reason... a reason that doesn't exist in TotK anymore). I could see someone higher up on the ladder making that decision superficially... which would suck.

[@Gigi-zr6hp]

​​@@MrFoxInc that's because Japanese devs don't give a fck about Western design tropes for better or for worse. If they listen and follow the trends then we won't have Pokemon , BoTW/ ToTK, Final Fantasy 15/16, etc. being bad as it is

[@goranisacson2502]

@@MrFoxInc There was apparently an interview some time ago where Aonuma said that by making it a long menu, he hoped that people would be more curious to look at each menu options and consider using it, instead of just scrolling to what we used last no matter how long the distance got. Essentially it sounds like he hoped to induce people to just go with what was closest, and see how they can make a solution work with that. At least judging from the comments here, that did not work out.

[@notanotaku1101]

So glad to see someone promoting Chants of Senaar, picked it up earlier this year and absolutely loved it

[@kozermax]

Chants of Sennaar was my GOTY 2023 but it went almost completely unnoticed by everyone. Happy to see it's getting some recognition!

[@sagidraconis9376]

The moment I heard the Chants of Sennaar music I was so hyped!!! Love this game with all my being

[@chronicallychic]

That definitely bugged me in Lorelei. I wanted a dedicated "open menu" button and a dedicated "back button." That would have made things much smoother.

[@RoninCatholic]

RPGs on the NES got this right for the most part, then the SNES and Game Boy iterated on it and perfected it.

[@kevinr.9733]

Heck, the dedicated "open menu" button and the dedicated "back" button could even be the same button. When you're in something that you can (or should be able to) back out of, such as a menu or puzzle, it goes back one level. When you're not, and just walking around, it opens the menu.

[@RoninCatholic]

@@kevinr.9733 That's how the OHRRPGCE handles things (it's the software I make most of my games in; think like an indie RPG Maker programmed by a novice just learning how to program and patched continuously from 1998 through today).

[@will_wmgc]

Love the Ringo Starr MS paint art reference, "Yer baby" is my favourite :D

[@Commander-Ledi]

good thing someone is spreading the word about chants of sennaar. that game changed my brain chemistry permanently, and i wish so badly that i could erase my memories about it just so that i could experience playing it for first time again.

[@SkywardWind]

Glad you mentioned Chants of Senaar, one of my favourite games recently. The art direction on this game was so strong, what a pleasure to play. I've been recommending it to everyone who like puzzles!

[@sabikikasuko6636]

I played Chants of Sennaar just a few weeks ago! It was utterly amazing. I am a conlanger, so I went to the game already with expectations. I wasn't entirely sure what I would find. Would the languages be European in nature? What grammatical features would I find? Count marking? Noun classes? Evidentiality?! Nah, the languages were fairly simple. But even if they were fully self contained languages with words that appear in maybe one sentence and nothing more, a) the game managed to stay true to its concept, with all of the dialogue and most of the text being fully monolingual, and b) the game really understood the assignment and gave you a bite sized, easily digestible interpreter experience. You dealt with languages not having the same words for everything (All languages have concepts that other languages not. The first floor's people only have words for themselves and the people one floor over. Fourth floor people have numbers that no other people have, and the third floor people have a rich vocabulary of arts and emotions), languages using different grammatical strategies to mark things (For example, the people of the first floor mark plurality with reduplication, the people on the second mark plurality with a prefix, on the third it's a suffix. Also the third floor's language introduces question marks and circumfixes, which is a rather advanced concept communicated masterfully to someone that might've never seen 'em), having different syntax (Third floor's language is OSV, VERY rare and VERY trippy if you're not used to that). It gives you puzzles about translating things from one language to another, finding alternatives in the target language to communicate things that it doesn't have a word for, gives you tons of little Rosetta stones to compare sentences in two languages, one of them always being one you already know. In fact, there is no indication that there are "more floors" besides a door that stays closed the entire playthrough of the first floor. So after you've risen above the first floor's language, finding yourself again not understanding anything can be demotivating. As such, literally the third screen of the second level instantly solves like 6 glyphs for you, a HUGE boost to morale. So yeah, as a conlanger I didn't get the experience of learning a conlang I can use extensively to talk about my life with complex grammar and vocabulary. All languages have little more than 30 to 40 words,

[@EpicGamer10075]

With Echoes of Wisdom, I really feel like their could be some sort of update that makes a fix for the menus. Like, adding other Echo selections on X and L would help a ton, and having sorting options for the Notebook menu would fix about everything else.

[@alessandromazza4557]

I recently finished Chants of Sennaar, I played it with a friend and it was one of the best experiences as for every new language and word we found we discussed the context and the grammar of each one

[@albertand2484]

Very happy to see Lorelei And The Laser Eyes mentioned! It is one of my favourites from this year 😌

[@needamuffin]

It should be in video essay 101 to *always* put the movie/show/game in one of the corners when showing clips like this. If someone happens to see something they find interesting, they have no way of finding more out about it without them other than going in the comments saying "Hey, what's the game at XX:XX?" You're not the only channel I've seen have this issue, a *lot* of them do, and some of them are huge.

[@maromania7]

Because they're in the description, and in the words he's saying. He usually does put it on the screen at the start of the section at the very least, since he likes to start with the title screen as he says the title. but he says the title quite a few times, and it's in the description.

[@aliengeo]

But there are clips from more than four games in this video, which I think is what OP is talking about. Like, I don't see Animal Crossing: New Horizons listed anywhere in the description, but this video contains a clip from ACNH.

[@Sam-yg1lt]

I get so nervous every time you bring up a game that I really love because I never know if you're going to like it or not I'm so glad you like chants of senaar

[@Hyziant]

Haven’t heard of chants of Senaar before, but it sounds awesome. Definitely giving it a shot now.

[@Tetriser]

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes actually did the same weird design choice that Balan Wonderworld did: setting every button on the controller as primary action, including the B button which should've been the standard "back" button for generations

[@randomlitchi8320]

metaphor ReFantazio blew me away. These people truly do know how to make a game that is fun and beautiful at the same time

[@koobiie]

lorelei and the laser eyes reminds me of tesler's law - for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced. they tried to reduce the complexity of having different buttons but it certainly did not work!!

[@XeniKobalt]

That YER BABY Mario at 6:55 is PERFECT lmao

[@DesignDoc]

yer baby

[@flippedmasterguardian]

Played Chants of Sanaar on recommendation and it is by FAR one of the most engaging puzzle games I've ever played. Seriously, its definitely worth a try. There's also a demo for you, in case you want a trial before committing to it! 10/10, would look at symbols for 5 hours again.

[@RealityRogue]

15:10 when it said “BAD DESIGN” then switched to Tunic, I was like “WDYM?? 😢”

[@AlastorShadow0]

Tunics UI sucks.

[@RealityRogue]

@ uhm okay. I like it, but people have preferences ig Doesnt suck enough to have a section showcased in the video

[@princeapoopoo5787]

I feel like I'm the only person in the world who finds that the style of P5 is conceptually good, but too overwhelming in practice. I'm honestly happy personally that Metaphor doesn't look as overwhelming because I love the medieval motifs.

[@VoidtoScream]

I've played Chants of Sennar twice, (with a 1year gap) and fell in love with it both times. It's so satisfying.

[@chris_1988]

The quicktime interface from DB Sparking Zero that you briefly show at 00:49 is just awful. I still don't know if I'm supposed to mash the button or wait till it reaches a certain point and then only press it once. It happens way too quickly and even now pausing the video, Inhave no idea what the game wants me to do.

[@Triforce_of_Doom]

having played the tutorial portion, it's hold to get as close to the line as possible without going over (the R2 button prompt is to sacrifice ki for a bigger limit because whoever filled it more wins the clash)

[@Dw7freak]

For that last one, to prevent overcomplication, just use controller buttons as the limit. For a menu based game, there should be at least 3 buttons: interact, menu, and exit. You can have all that on the NES controller, plus the fourth button to access the quit menu. What they did isn't "not overcomplicated", it's not wanting to put in more work to separate the actions.

[@SuperMystermistery]

Never heard of chants of sennar but it sounds exactly like my type of game, very glad I clicked on this video today

[@JediMB]

Huh. I'd completely forgotten to add Chants of Sennaar to my Steam wishlist. I know I've watched a video about it before and found it fascinating. Well. I just went ahead and downloaded the demo, so I can give it a try when I'm done with Metal Slug Tactics.

[@ivanbluecool]

I can't count how many games got potential to be great by shifting a few of their systems around to be more fluid. Dot hack for example. Three menus to do one thing. Wasted so much time. Make it one big menu snd it would save on time. Fe echoes a lunatic mode and no fatigue system. Never like that ib any game. And some others could use a better saftey net on beating foes before doing a mission and getting the reward immediately not having to beat 19 goblins again when you already did

[@BlazeMakesGames]

God that bit about Lorelai and the Lazer Eyes makes me wanna make a whole video just going over games that seemingly think that reducing the number of buttons you need to press somehow equals less complexity and more ease of use and just go into detail about why that is such a dumb trope and bad design

[@godofsquirrels494]

Have you though about doing a good design/bad design of 2 games in the same series? The UI from Monster Hunter World->Rise could make a good topic as World's UI I hear complaints about constantly while Rise is complained about for a whole bunch of reason, but not UI.

[@Gloomdrake]

Might be more interesting if he waits for Wilds to come before doing that. Just so we can see what they’ve learned since then

[@Twisted_Logic]

Hover references, no matter how brief, will always make me happy. I can't help but love that janky little game

[@walters8748]

It's a sign of the good times whenever design doc drops

[@GustavoFernandesKing]

Chants of Sennar is SO F-ing GOOD, oh my god.

[@jasonblalock4429]

11:00 This whole progression of over-complicating a previously solid interface reminds me of Red Dead 2. The weapon wheel introduced in GTAV was quick, responsive, and worked great. But then RDR2 tried to graft an entire inventory system onto it, turning it into a claw-gripping nightmare that I consider possibly the worst inventory ever designed.

[@Urekyu]

Right on d pad for satchel.

[@sheepbit]

I'd be curious to see what you have to say about The Silver Case. I recently played it and I'm so in love with its presentation. Super unique and ahead of its time, in my opinion.

[@larrylaffer3246]

Other than it's clunky item selection UI and inability to craft multiple smoothie potions easily LOZ: EOW was actually an enjoyable experience. It had some fun puzzles and how it handled it's combat where you don't really fight as much as you would in a normal LOZ Game was interesting twist on the usual formula.

[@Gabe_29]

The main aspect about Echoes of Wisdom was how cozy it felt. Going around solving problems and helping people was great. Seeing interactions between some characters felt so heartwarming. I can name a few quests that stuck with me by how wholesome it was. There's the king and the little girl quest. The quest where the cat wanted to give a treat to it's human. Playing hide and seek with a Scrub etc...

[@larrylaffer3246]

@Gabe_29 Oh definitely. I hope Nintendo keeps at this art style and makes remakes of the 2 Oracle Games next.

[@lunarkomet]

Oh boy, that scrolling menu for materials in totk was atrocious, I can't believe they brought it back in eow to perform the most frequent of actions

[@btd0ja]

Played Chants of Sanaar a couple months ago and loved it! Very beautiful game in every aspect

[@maddoxhorlacher7082]

I like link vs ganondorf final epic battle in the depths and how he parries you it’s awesome. I love how the improved the demon pig into a dragon fight and I love final sword blow to the cyrstal

[@maddoxhorlacher7082]

And the nuke :)

[@AndyJourney]

"But you cannot remove complexity forever" case in point: Ballan Wonderworld.

[@radenblvckout]

I'm going to be cruel and remind everyone that Echoes of Wisdom isn't the first game of the saga that has Zelda as main character... * PTSD of Phillips CDI*

[@elizabethlamach4172]

Until you mentioned it in this video, I didn't remember you could do Legend Of Zelda: Echos of Wisdom. That does suck, I'd just open the menu to do it, as I didn't know.

[@memorableman3709]

OH GOD THANK GOD THIS SERIES IS FINALLY BACK

[@DesignDoc]

Been back for a little bit

[@Lonray11]

Bought chants of sennaar before the video outro hit…you got me 🤣

[@RenaudBAI]

That black and white game you talk about in the end looks like nightmare... And really too bad for the Zelda game, didn't played it yet and this looks so confusing to scroll forever.

[@GallowglassAxe]

I just recently watched the whole playlist on this and now I keep looking at games with this sort of lens. I've been playing Dragon Quest IX recently which I got in a bargain bin somewhere. Though I do enjoy the game I can see several issues with the UI, art direction, and menu organization. Also I think I would really like Metaphor and I do want to play the new Zelda game when I get around to it.

[@CalebWillden]

It's a good day when there's a new episode of Good Design, Bad Design!

[@Sootielove]

Chants of Senaar is an incredible game

[@robertjif6337]

metaphor UI synced so well with the background music

[@aliengeo]

L&tLE is a great game with a baffling control scheme. I also want to point out that not even the directional navigation is safe: some of the directional controls are top-down RPG-style (up moves you upstage, left moves you stage left), some of the controls are FPS-style (up moves you forward, left turns you counterclockwise). These match with two different camera layouts, fixed camera and over-the-shoulder respectively... except when they don't, and you have to use FPS controls with fixed camera. The design of the game creates scenarios where you will have to use all three one after another, and I found it impaired my ability to walk in game, because I kept giving valid inputs for the wrong mode and walking into walls and tables. Also in fairness Chants of Sennaar does have an unskippable slide puzzle.

[@epislog178]

I’d really like Your Turn to Die to appear in a segment of Good Design, Bad Design, I feel like it’d fit quite well.

[@anapple6912]

Explains the pfp lol

[@pedrocamara885]

The UI elements are fairly simplistic though. Not a bad thing, it gets the job done, but I don't think it warrants the analysis

[@Petrico94]

Context sensitive buttons sounds interesting and efficient for your space, but only if it's vague ideas like USE OBJECT, INVENTORY, LOOK, like a boiled down text adventure where you have 5 easy commands it recognizes and rarely brings up new verbs. One button for everything is hell, especially if it's also your Start button while Select goes to settings.

[@Jayy997]

I could literally FEEL the frustration in Lorelei just by what you described. What absolutely terrible design for a developer that seemingly prides itself on design.

[@ecocodex4431]

I think one thing that would have helped the menu-ing would be to have all "level 2+" echoes replace all of the previous levels. Also, many echoes were unnecessary, such as having 3 types of bed, 4 different lures, 3 designs of pots, all 4 statues for the Gerudo Sanctum after beating the level, the Ancient Orb echo after getting through the Eternal Forest, that alone would eliminate at LEAST 30 of the 127 echoes.

[@Triforce_of_Doom]

well on the bed part of that list, each bed type heals at different rates if you sleep in them.

[@Artista_Frustrado]

also i understand Aounuma's intention with the Echoes menu, but at the very least you could have split the Echoes into categories & have those get arranged by Least to Most used

[@SurveyBM]

Could you look at the design of Ratatan and Patapon 3 (or one of the Patapon 1/2 remasters)? I cannot tell whether the design is good or bad but I love the style of this rhythm series so much that I'd love to hear what others think about its design

[@applesthehero]

there's a very good reason why games gave up on the 'contextual action button' quite early in 3D game development...

[@TheRevolutionary98]

Wow just found this and I loved the video, tho now I'm curious what solutions would u give to Echoes of Wisdom problem, cause I feel like your opinion could be really interesting to hear

[@scottybreuer]

"You haven't touched your soup." "You gave me a fork!"

[@mythaniakeroberos2405]

I'm off to play the Chants of Sennaar demo. I love games that are about learning your world, I have been chasing the experience of Outer Wilds.