Thumper and Difficulty | Critical Mode

Thumper is a pure rhythm game through and through, but although the game's design might seem deceptively simple, its approach to difficulty is surprisingly deep.
Critical Mode is a video essay series that offers an in-depth analysis of a particular game and uses those observations as a catalyst to examine a larger topic within the world of games.
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#videoessay #analysis #thumper #videogame

[@JacobGeller]

This is very, very good.

[@Ludocriticism]

I mean, you can say "You can make it through Thumper by just doing these few things" as much as you want. I'm still gonna NOT get through Thumper :'D Really nice video!

[@CashewDoodle]

I've seen a lot of "Difficulty in Videogames" videos on KZbin and this is by far one of my favorites! Subbed :D glad I found ya

[@SelectScreen]

Thank you, that honestly means a lot.

[@melodyredacted1015]

there are quite a few video game difficulty video essays that I've seen, and they all seem to copy each other, but your video certainly introduced me to the idea of a subconscious choice of difficulty. great video and I'm certainly subscribing to see what kind of videos come from your channel

[@SelectScreen]

Thanks and glad you enjoyed the video, this kind of difficulty is certainly something I've been thinking about a lot recently. It's always encouraging to hear someone say they feel like they got something new out of one of my videos. As you said, the market for video essays about games is certainly a crowded market.

[@Beurkeek]

A wonderful analysis, thank you!

[@Julian_H]

Wow, this deserves more views. Really interesting stuff, I loved thumper and it was partially because of this. It does a really good job of making every action so satisfying that i wanted to get everything perfect, but I also didn't feel much pressure. If something was too hard, I could just make it easier. Just for the future, try to talk a bit further from the mic, for a lot of the video it sounds like you're almost whispering. Otherwise, great video! I hope your channel grows.

[@SelectScreen]

Thanks for watching. You're not the first person to mention my voice. I've right different tricks, but I think part of it is that's just how my voice sounds? Either way thanks for the feedback and I'll keep tinkering with things on my end.

[@isaacwilson8682]

I thought I couldn't even finish this game at first. Then I did it. I got low scores, but I did it... Then I wanted to play each stage perfectly and get all S ranks on every level. I had to relearn how I played and practice. I got stuck retrying the last few levels for a long time, but I did it. I had to. It felt really good.

[@isaacwilson8682]

Then I found out you don't even have to do it perfectly to get S ranks.

[@subprogram32]

Well, this a new channel that I have found and is awesome! Subbed!

[@SelectScreen]

Greatly appreciated!

[@subprogram32]

Keep making essays as good as this one and this channel will go places, I'm sure of that!

[@Infozentrale]

Calliiiiiii

[@subprogram32]

Yes it me!

[@DavetheTurnip]

Great stuff. I think a lot about "playing the game the way it's meant to be played", and you've demonstrated that with Thumper beautifully. You CAN play it this easy way, but it doesn't really feel like you're playing the game. I felt similarly earlier this year replaying Bit.Trip Runner 2. You don't have to collect all the treasure chests and complete the difficult routes, but it feels against the spirit of the game not to at least try. I'll be looking forward to whatever you come out with next :D

[@SelectScreen]

Thank you! I've been playing Celeste for the first time this week and it has had me thinking about this whole thing all over again. There's so much to talk about in regards to this stuff that I may try to tackle a bigger broader video about it.

[@davidclark765]

Very intriguing. Hard to manage, as you say, but intriguing.

[@freshboy3968]

Ughh, my eyes can't handle Thumper. Good video tho, keep it up.

[@BoyMadeOfCardBoard]

i finished thumper or so i thought and i almost broke emotionally

[@W3Rn1ckz]

Honestly, Thumper isone of my new favorite game. I put it up there with games like Patapon, Vib-Ribbon and Lumines. Some day soon, I would like to see someone do some sort of theory video about what the story of Thumper might actually be.

[@SelectScreen]

I would definitely be interested to watch a video like that, and thanks for watching.

[@KarolaTea]

Mhh, my experience with the safety net of difficulty options is kinda the opposite. If there's no difficulty option (or other safety nets, like save slots) that fact is always at the back of my mind, potentially distracting. Whereas if there is a safety net I'll just enjoy the game, pretty much forget about the option until I feel like I need it. And in that case the net might save me from turning off the game completely lol. That might be down to me usually playing a game to enjoy it, rather than for some thrill of mastery. Not that that's not cool either, but usually not my main objective. I played Thumper a few years ago at a friend's place... not sure if I was even trying to sync up to the music, or if I knew I just had to do those three things with the A button, but I remember being bad at it XD Honestly sounds like dancing to me. Which makes sense, being a rhythm game. Just moving across stage, being in roughtly the right location at the right time, doing a jump, doing a turn when required? Yeah sure, can do, s'alrite. But doing it properly? Moving your body exactly with cm precision down to your little finger, making sure to hold each position the exact number of milliseconds required, all with a face expressively portraying an emotion that probably isn't the one you're feeling in that moment? Yeah, that's awesome. (To me. But I also know a lot of people who enjoy just walking across stage and doing a jump veguley in the right corner. Yay for people enjoying different things.) Great video!

[@SelectScreen]

Yeah, this is one of only two videos I've ever considered remaking. My feelings on my own personal experience with Thumper haven't changed, if anything, the only aspect to that part of the video that would be different now is I could probably better explain it since I have a lot more experience writing and making videos. But the video as is also shows an embarrassing amount of ignorance in regards to the conversation around accessibility in games. I think my analysis of Thumper's difficulty still applies for who is assumed to be the "average" person (able bodied without any cognitive or physical disabilities) but that is still leaving a lot of people who love to play games out of the discussion, and that's something I would at least mention if I were making the video for the first time today. But me being who I am, I can't really just let myself make the same video again, only with an extra paragraph added in, I'd probably end up turning it into it's own thing, thus why I probably won't be remaking this video any time soon. Maybe some day.

[@KarolaTea]

Still seems like a decent video to me. As you say, to the average able-bodied gamer a difficulty system like this does probably work pretty well and chances are they'd share your experience. Nothing wrong with talking about that and explaining that system at length. Especially since you never say other difficulty settings are bad, and you do mention settings with disabilities in mind. Sure you can try to bring up every single perspective out there regarding a subject, but there's also absolutely nothing wrong with telling your own perspective, other people can tell their own experiences. So yeah, good video?

[@SelectScreen]

Thanks, and I appreciate it. I guess I'm just coming from the place of, accessibility in games is still a pretty fringe topic of conversations, so normalizing it some by including it in a more prototypical analysis like this one is something that has become more important to me over time, even with just the (relatively speaking) fairly small platform I have on my channel. In some sense, I kind of consider it a personal obligation. Thankfully though, it's something I've learned from and gotten better at over time. Regardless, glad you could enjoy the video as is anyway.

[@KarolaTea]

True, always good to remark there's other perspectives as well if you know about them, esp when they're usually ignored. Still, I think an at length analysis of a something that is only relevant to some part of an audience doesn't necessarily render the other parts of the audience irrelevant. Difficulty systems are certainly closely linked to accessibilty, so it does make sense to bring up the subject when talking about them. But it seems to me in this video you were more discussing how the "hard mode" version is made and what makes it good. Which yes, is also part of the difficulty system, but less closely related to accessibilty. If that makes sense? Like, in any talk about colour choice colour blindness is relevant, but if you're making, say, an essay about the technical, historical and cultural implications of the colour purple, it's probably not going to be the focus. (Definitely good to bring it up tho, sure!)

[@SelectScreen]

Totally. I don't think, by definition, every discussion of difficulty *has* to include accessibility, but for me personally, that's the kind of topic that I've felt has become more important for me to try and highlight in the work I do. So I'm mostly just trying to hold myself accountable and get better with each video I make.

[@samwallaceart288]

You fail to mention that you HAVE to hit the green lights to get past the boss. Anything blue, you can skip (if you’re a pussy); but if you skip the green it will loop you back to the beginning of the section like “nah, you’re not leaving until you do it for real!”. This happens in the boss battles. You can scramble for survival for the mid sections (and the mid sections get pretty hectic), but the boss battle is exam day and you need to hit those lights to beat the level. My experience playing the first level was “okay, so if I hit the blue I got a point, but skipping it is safe.” But then I got to the boss and saw green lights that would go groundhog day on me if I screwed up, and I was like “shit. I should have been using blue as practice that whole time”

[@criticalinput]

As someone who has never played Thumper, I'm not understanding the bit where you said "lane switching makes you feel more vulnerable by forcing your thumb off of the A button" (paraphrased). What does the A button do and why do you need to release it to switch lanes?

[@SelectScreen]

That was in reference to lane switching which I could have gone more in depth on. As with the other three aspect I chose to explain in more detail (breaking bars, making turns, jumping spikes) the A button is essential to performing these commands. Holding down the A button is what protects you from the red bars and turns, so you develop a feeling of safety and invulnerability when you are holding that button. But you can't switch lanes while holding the A button, you have to release it, but you will now be vulnerable to turns or bars if you don't quickly return to holding the A button. I really only mentioned this in the video at all just to show that there is a lot more depth to Thumper than just the three essentials I brought up, but, as you can see, going over it in more detail would just add more of me rambling about mechanics, so I opted to just go with a brief mention because I ultimately think it helps the flow of the video overall. It is a fair point to bring up. It is hard (maybe even impossible) to make a video that explains enough of the basics about a game so someone who hasn't played it can understand, yet still be interesting enough for someone who has already played it. Often I aim for somewhere in the middle, but it also usually feels like a moving target.

[@criticalinput]

You did a wonderful job balancing those two approaches. I was just curious if this were a controller limitation (like line shifting was on right stick so you had to move your thumb) or if it was a mechanic that was built into the game. Thanks for the explanation!

[@SelectScreen]

My pleasure

[@samwallaceart288]

When you hold “thump”, the beetle crouches low to the ground and can’t shift lane. Switching lane adds a slight delay to the beetles reaction. So you have to thump the light, IMMEDIATELY let go and switch lane ASAP, and the second the beetle settles into the lane, hit thump again. Do it to quick, you’ll accidentally fail to thump in the first lane because you’re already switching; do it too slow, you fail to switch lanes because your second thump has canceled the lane-switch. On PC thump is space and movement is arrows, so in a way it’s easier. On console you have to do all that with one thumb? Harsh.