Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 13

 

Porgy (March, 1986, 1P, Adventure, Shooter) "Strange happenings near the coast! Dive deep and get to the bottom of what's fishy in the sea."

"The first title released under the new UFO Soft brand."

I've been diving into this "sub-nautic adventure" lately, in search of a UFO 50 title that pairs well with podcasts and second screen content. The whole setup and presentation of an oceanic researcher trying to get to the bottom of why all the local sea life have become video game enemies is very charming!

I'm perhaps slightly less charmed by the submarine's brand of anthropomorphization. It reminds me of the Cars franchise, with its giant eyeballs in place of viewports. Of course this is what makes the yellow sub look a bit like a titular porgy fish in the first place, so I may just have to chalk this up to my usual brand of overthinking things.
Unlike the Disney vehicles, this one has a human pilot inside and she does the talking, but I don't really want to think about whether she's looking out through the giant eyes or not. The endless discourse about "the fact that there's a Cars pope implies the existence of Cars Jesus" has well and truly poisoned my ability to just slap giant eyes on things without any further introspection.

    There's just one big FUEL bar to worry about that represents your ability to travel and return with the powerups you need to go deeper next time, meaning this is an exercise in folded level design. Because the return trips are a part of the core loop, there's lots of opportunities for small decisions like taking the time/fuel to deal with an enemy to come back around. "Do I want to potentially avoid this guy twice or take him out" isn't a super impactful player choice on the face of it, but when combined with some of the gating and "stalker" type enemies that are like future boss battles hunting you; there's just enough here to keep me at that pleasant podcast-grokking 60% engagement threshold.

I do wish there was some light progression system encouraging me to turn back and bank something instead of intentionally running myself out of fuel to reset when a run goes badly. Death penalties don't belong in this particular mix, but there's value in reinforcing the ludonarrative desire for self-preservation. It feels bad when the most efficient use of time is to get blown up for that free teleport back to base. 

   Having a singular fuel resource is very clean and minimalist, but it makes the tuning tricky on how much of your single stat it costs to dodge an enemy attack versus how much enemies take away for hitting you. All the tension around spending less of the player's time to get somewhere in exchange for less total distance covered is roughly working, but I can see how most games like this wind up having roughly three meters:

• Fuel tied to traversal
• Hull tied to combat
• Oxygen tied to time

By complicating the design you buy yourself a lot more handles you can use to get specific about which challenges drain and which accomplishments refill. You can also set up little virtuous cycles where succeeding at one thing can gas up one of your other points of friction. Fringe strategies or upgrades can let you burn a resource you don't currently need to remove pressure from one that's about to end you; all that jazz.

    I think the thing to take away from Porgy is that none of these theoretical complexities necessarily would add depth. It would be very easy to add and tune all that stuff and wind up having the same player habits, motivators, and core loop. If adding an Oxygen meter doesn't in turn inspire you to make a fast aquatic mosquito enemy that steals a bunch of air and then tries to run away with it slowly all bloated...
Well, let's just say a lot of mechanics find their way into modern games that lack the creativity to transform them into experiential depth.

All these neat underwater vibes are making me slightly guilty that I haven't checked out some of the neat oceanic indies that have been coming out, like Loddlenaut and Feed the Deep...

[You're going to keep playing Porgy because at the end of the day, it really does pair well with another "thread" of content, and your tendency toward multi-threading is well established, if not well documented.]