Extended Practice Game Play Mechanics and Collectibles Research: Crash Bandicoot

Game Play Mechanics
The next game series that I wanted to look at for this module is Crash Bandicoot as another game that provides a huge influence for this project. The basic game play mechanics for Crash are fairly different to that of Spyro as the world in which Crash move around is constricted to more of a lane instead of being open world. But this definitely works for the game, using this lane you can very basically move Crash around forward and backwards, in most levels, and then slightly from side to side. This offers some interesting game play later on in the levels in most of the games, when animals are introduced. All of a sudden you find yourself coming across a level that involves Crash riding on a Hog that can't be stopped and the only movement you can do is side to side along with the occasional jumping to clamber over obstacles, but this works for that lane like feature they decided to go with, and despite it not being open world it doesn't make the game feel too constricting on at the same time.

Along with the obvious movement Crash also has some basic moves that allows him to jump, to get to higher platforms and he has a number of different attacks that he can perform to kill enemies that he may face in the world as well. He can spin attack them, jump on them and in later games slide through them as well to ensure he is not hurt throughout. The mechanic that comes into play when he is hurt destroys the protector that follows him around, which is the wooden board with feathers. When you gain an extra part of him through destroying a certain box, Crash can take another hit. When you collect two of the boxes and gain another part to the mask Crash will get a length of invisibility allowing him to destroy all boxes in his path along with enemies, which is a really nice feature to the game.

The general mechanics that are featured throughout all work well for the type of game that this is, which is all about destroying all of the boxes that you find, killing the enemies in front of you in your path and finding the gems in the level. The concept of it is fairly simple and having mechanics that limit your movements to a small amount of side to side with full forward and backwards controls makes this game simpler and allows you to enjoy the premise of the game instead of exploring a huge world and becoming lost in the vastness of it.

When trying to get inspiration for the collectibles, this game series is probably not the best to look at as it doesn't really have much to collect apart from apples. The apples are scattered throughout and once you get to 100 you get an extra life and the counter resets and you can continue to collect them. If the level ends and you have 32, this number gets carried over to the next level where you can continue to collect them to gain that extra life. Besides apples, the other thing you collect is number of boxes destroyed throughout the level and this can't really be seen as collecting as you are simply jumping or spinning through them. The boxes are destroyed on each level to count towards a total and when you have destroyed them all you get a gem for that level. Get the gems on ever level and you get 100% altogether. As stated this is probably not the best example for collectibles, but the mechanics are something that interest me a lot to keep going back to the game series for more inspiration.