Los nuevos jugadores no se pasan el Mario

I see a lot of discussions here regarding checkpoints, and suggestions to add more --particularly right before a boss fight. I made a post on another message board about this that I'm going to post here as well to give our stance on this.

First, let me clarify how it actually works, since there's been some misinformation:

With the exception of World 6 & 7, each world has 2 checkpoints - one at the start and one half-way through. Those that have said there are none have just never reached one. Checkpoints are marked by a large blue crystal or the Valkyrie.


So, on the subject of adding a checkpoint right before every boss:

This is an intentional design decision, not due to a technical limitation. Its not just for the sake of difficulty either, nor was it an arbitrary choice.

When you re-spawn you start with a wooden shield. You need to open chests to collect better gear, and avoid getting hurt or you'll lose that gear. Get to the boss with better gear, and you'll have a much easier time beating them. That is a core element of the game's design.

If a checkpoint was immediately before a boss, you'd have to continue to fight them with only the wooden shield, over and over again. Your only option to come back and beat the boss with better gear would be to restart the entire world (or the entire game, if you are going for the Path of the Valkyrie).

On the flip side, if we just gave you all the best gear before the boss for free, then we take away much of the motivation to collect chests and avoid getting hurt as you make your way to the boss. Players could "blunder through" to the boss checkpoint, never bothering to learn the layout well enough to gather the power-ups on the way and avoid losing them.

This is why this same style of checkpoint is used in games such as Super Ghouls N' Ghosts, which uses the same chest system, Super Mario Bros, with its power-ups like mushrooms and fire flowers, and many top-down shooters. They send you back further than just the boss fight when you die so you can try to get better power-ups for the next attempt. This is also why bosses in these games (and ours) are generally very pattern-based and fairly simple, to somewhat counter the fact that you have to get back to them each time you die.

Let's also touch on the psychology of frequent checkpoints. Legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto talked about how having a checkpoint just before a difficult spot can be much more frustrating to players than having them spaced out more. Having spaced out checkpoints allows the player to learn and master an earlier section, and re-gain their confidence and calm their nerves as they go back through familiar territory before they tackle the difficult part again. Being stuck right at the difficult spot, hammering against it over and over again, can make for a much more frustrating experience.

It also makes for a more forgettable one. In games like Volgarr, you are unlikely to EVER forget the layout of a level once you get to the point where you can get through it with all your gear intact and beat a boss. Most other video games today, you'll have forgotten the level layouts by the time you move on to another game, as you probably only had to get through each one once and were not required to demonstrate mastery of it before you could move on.

On that note, frequent checkpoints can also take away the feeling that you actually "got it" and mastered a portion of the game. You can accidentally reach the next checkpoint by just bum rushing to it. Some players express disappointment when they reach a new checkpoint this way, because they didn't really understand how they were SUPPOSED to get there, they are just there now, and they missed out on the "aha!" moment from figuring out the correct way to get past an area.

You may learn to like this style of play if you really give it a fair shake. I mean, you usually only lose 2-3 minutes of play at most when you die anyway (and you probably learned something that will help you when you try again) -- if you ever play games like Skyrim and died when you hadn't saved recently, or died in Dark Souls on your way to collect your souls from a previous death, you likely lost WAY more time.

Keep in mind the game can be completed in less than 30 minutes. If you can only play in half-hour chunks, you will still start to get better and better each time you sit down to play the game, and eventually you will be able to beat the first level in a single play session, and then multiple levels, and then the entire game. That's honestly how the game was meant to be played - just like actual arcade games in the arcades, you'd go and play them for a half hour or so, and then have to come back another day to try again, and eventually you'd have played it enough to complete it with 1 quarter. It wasn't meant for marathon play sessions where you complete the whole game the first time you sit down to play it, nor was it meant for you to complete a level and never see it again like a modern story-focused game.

Its unfortunate that not everyone is happy with the checkpoint frequency, but they are integral to the core design of the game and they are not going to be changed. We never set out to please everyone (that just leads to mediocre games), but its still sad to see people unhappy with an aspect of the game. That said, if you feel frequent checkpoints are absolutely necessary for your enjoyment, there are many, many indie retro platformers that offer such.

NOTE: This does not mean we are unwilling to consider changes to other aspects of the game though, and you are free to disagree and debate our design choices as much as you want -- just know we aren't going to change where checkpoints are placed.