Feedback loops

What are feedback loops?

Well, According to lostgarden.com “The player starts with a mental model that prompts them to Apply an action to The game system and in return Receives feedback that Updates their mental model and starts the loop all over again or kicks off a new loop.” This is essentially saying that when you play a game there may be something that makes you want to or need to perform an action, for example you see a shiny thing and you want to punch it because it is too shiny, this provides some feedback for example the pain from punching the shiny thing causing the player think “oww that hurt my hand, maybe I shouldn’t punch shiny things” and that’s where the player’s perspective or mental model would change.

I have been playing quite a bit of Metroid: Zero Mission this week so I am going to provide some examples of feedback loops that made sense to me, keep in mind these examples apply to pretty much every 2D Metroid Game out there. So let’s begin:

Collecting powerups

The player hears some very mysterious music and sees a power up essentially laying on a pedestal causing them to play the action of colliding with the objects changing the rules of the game by allowing you to access areas previously unavailable to the player. The visuals of the game freeze and a satisfying audio clip plays with a melodic tone plays in comparison to dark atmospheric music that the game is known for which then updates the player’s mental model allowing the player to know that collecting powerups will allow them to access more areas in the game

Freezing Enemies

If the player has the ice beam power up they have the ability to freeze enemies by using their default attack. By attacking smaller enemies their movement and animations will completely freeze, they turn blue and an appropriate audio clip will play letting the player know they have frozen their target. Over time enemies can thaw out of the frozen state if the player doesn’t utilize their frozen state fast enough or doesn’t completely  destroy the enemy, this can be seen when the enemy sprite quickly alternates between the original colour of the sprite and the blue colour of it being frozen. After this happens a couple of times the enemy’s movement and animations will unfreeze and it will return to normal.

Opening a door

The player sees a bright colourful glass door that they want to open to see what’s on the other side so naturally they blast the crap out of it by shooting a projectile depending on what colour the door is allowing the player to access the particular room on the other side of the door. The door makes an opening sound and an opening animation plays  if the door is hit by the wrong type of ammunition it will provide no feedback and the door will simply not open, this lets the player know that if they shoot the green door with their super missiles it will open but without it, it won’t.

Energy(Health) And Missiles pickups

the player sees a glowing purple orb or flashing missile after destroying an enemy causing them to jump up and collide with it because its shiny, this increases the amount of health or missiles they currently have if possible and makes a distinct sounds for each type of pickup allowing the player to distinguish between each item and their effects more easily and also let them know these pickups effect the player in a positive way.

Low Energy

When the player is hit by enemies, enemy projectiles or damaged by environmental projectiles they will lose energy and upon reaching 20 energy or below, the game constantly reminds you that you have low energy by playing a high pitch beeping sound essentially making the player stay on their toes and want to collect some energy to stop the annoying sound from playing.

I hope you enjoyed my examples and that they have enlightened you in some way, thank you for reading.