Unlocks are dead-simple systems. Do thing, get thing. Easy. How complicated can they be? Well, they aren’t complicated exactly, but
they are complex. On the surface it’s a simple system, but
unlocks can hide design complexity and a game’s unlock system can be used by its designers
to help meet dozens of different goals. Game designers use unlocks to help shape how
a player experiences a game and reward them for the time they spend. Let’s go over what things an unlock system
can do for a game, what combinations of unlocks and prizes work, and how to design a stop
sign… that’s fun! I bet you’ve got a million game ideas floating
around in your head as we speak. But they’re locked away. No one else can collaborate with you on them
in real-time if they’re stuck in your head, and even worse, you could just forget them
forever! You gotta get ‘em out of there! With today’s episode sponsor, Milanote! Milanote is an online tool that helps you
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PRO subscriptions for free. Let Milanote help you organize what you’re
dreaming about. Thanks, Milanote! If we want to start to tackle unlock systems,
I see two big questions that we need to talk about: the WHY and the HOW. Let’s start with the WHY. WHY do games use unlock systems? Well, there are a lot of reasons. The first is the most basic. Unlocks are a quick and easy way to inject
a sense of direction and sequence to a game. First, do this tutorial, then you unlock the
main mode. First, do level 3, then we’ll unlock 4. First, get used to this weapon, then you can
use the better version. Games like Mini Motorways will unlock a new
map once you’ve delivered a number of passengers on one of the earlier maps. The passenger gathering threshold isn’t
set very high. The goal isn’t to keep you OUT of Dar es
Salaam for very long, but the threshold stands in the way just enough to make you play certain
maps before other ones. Guaranteeing that a player does one thing
before they do something else is the absolute most basic role of an unlock. But don’t sell unlocks short. They can do a lot more than just sequencing. Unlocks are also good at easing a new player
into the depth of a game. Laying out all of the options a player will
eventually have at the start can be overwhelming, especially when a new player doesn’t have
the context to understand the options they’re being given. WarioWare: Get It Together took the series’
frantic micro-game formula and added complexity to it with its cast of 20 playable characters,
each with their own unique moveset. Depending on who you’re playing as, your
character might be able to fly around freely, or fire off projectiles, or teleport, or they
can’t stop moving. Some can’t even move at all. Every character plays so differently to each
other, and combine that with how you’re switching between several of them, plus the
already-frenetic pace of the micro-games and the short timeframe you get to learn and perform
the tasks you need to do, that new players can easily become overwhelmed by the options. To fix it, Get It Together carefully adds
its characters one at a time through its short campaign. Every stage introduces a new character with
a quick tutorial and forces the player to learn by putting them in your character pool
alongside other characters of your choice. By the end of the campaign, you’ll have
access to everyone and some understanding of what everyone can do, and that’s when
the game can truly begin. You can shoot for high scores in previous
stages with your preferred characters, or go full-frenzy by playing with the entire
pool of characters all at once. Get It Together’s unlock system structure
smoothly guides new players through what would otherwise be a dizzying array of options. Unlocks can be used to gate off modes that
would be inappropriate for new players to stumble into. The Devil May Cry series hides increasing
difficulty modes as major unlockable rewards. For most players, the default difficulty is
already fairly challenging, but for each difficulty you clear you unlock the next one higher. The changes can get pretty complex, too. Enemies are more aggressive and get tougher
to take down, sure, but bosses get new moves too, and the margin for error gets smaller
and smaller. Keep beating the difficulties and you’ll
unlock some fun ones like ‘Heaven or Hell’, where everything dies in one hit, including
yourself. There’s also ‘Hell and Hell’, where
enemies take hits as normal but YOU still die if someone breathes on you wrong. The unlockable difficulties serve as an achievable
but difficult goal to strive for, a reward for long-time players to keep playing through
the game, and an inherent skill check to keep out players who are not ready for the challenge
that waits for them inside. Unlockables can impersonate other kinds of
progression systems, too. Many games use things like skill trees and
leveling, but unlock systems can provide the same sense of progress and change through
the course of a game. If you have enough small, unlockable prizes,
that set can be the carrot on a stick that helps string a player along through a game’s
content. Psychonauts 2 has a host of abilities to use
both in and out of combat, and hides a collection of upgrades behind its unlockable system. The upgrades aren’t required to get through
the game. The system doesn’t serve to block you out
from levels or content, but the upgrades do give players an edge and can make things just
a tad more fun. To unlock these abilities, you have to rank
up and earn skill points to spend. Skill points are earned just through playing
the game normally, exploring levels and finding collectibles. Figments, Mental Nuggets, Emotional Baggage,
Psi Cards and Psi Challenge Markers will all rank you up once you find enough of them. You spend the points on just what unlockable
skills you want, and get a little reward of your choosing for seeing more of the game. The unlock system gives you an incentive to
go out of the main path a little and explore the nooks and crannies of a game chock full
of the little details that shouldn’t go unnoticed. Developers also use unlocks to give concrete
goals to a player. Plenty of people create their own goals in-game,
but having some ready-made goals provided by the developers is great for keeping people
interested, and the right unlocks can give players goals for both the short term and
the long term. Unlocks can help point out what’s possible
and suggest how high the skill ladder can go. If someone sees that there’s a prize if
they beat the game in a few hours, that implies that you CAN beat the game in a few hours,
and then the question is just how to do it. If there’s an achievement for Rocket Jumping,
players might have to go look up what that even means, where they might never have stumbled
on it otherwise. Players may take a second look at a game’s
combo system, how to optimize movement, or other systems in a game that might lie a little
bit under the surface. Without that goal, it might be easy for players
to assume a game’s skill ceiling is lower than it actually is. In fact, if you create an interesting enough
goal you might not even NEED a prize that’s worth much in-game. A little nod might be enough, like a star
in your save file in Mario 3D World or a crown in Kingdom Hearts 2. The process of unlocking can be its own reward,
and the proof that you’ve done something either hard to do or that not many others
have done can be their own inherent ‘prize’. Lots of people love achievement hunting just
because PSN or Xbox Live list the unlocks as ultra-rare. OK, so that’s a lot of the WHY, now let’s
get into the HOW. HOW do you go about making a satisfying unlock? Each individual unlock is made up of two parts:
the Criteria, which is what you have to do to get the prize, and the Prize, which is
a prize. You can make a good unlock with just about
any Criteria you can think up, but what makes for a great unlock is how you harmonize the
criteria with the prize. But how do you know what prizes should go
with what criteria? This isn’t the only way to create an unlock,
but if you want a rubric that can help put some guardrails in place when you’re thinking
about unlock criteria, we’ll have to break it down a little more. Most criteria fall in a couple of schools:
Accumulate, where you just gather a bunch of stuff and eventually unlock something,
or Achieve, where you do one cool thing and get your prize. Those two styles can make the satisfaction
of winning the same prize feel very different. Some combos will make getting the prize at
the end feel especially satisfying, and some will just be nice little bonuses you earn
along the way. But not all combos work well together. Let’s start by talking about Accumulate. Accumulate-type criteria are where you gather
up something over time to eventually unlock your prize. It could be that you collected 100 red somethings,
racked up a bunch of time in-game, played enough matches, or you earned a lot of money. It’s easy to think up and implement this
type of unlock criteria, so it’s no wonder that they’re extremely popular to sprinkle
in all over the place. Easier ‘accumulate’ criteria tend to pair
well with prizes that unlock more content. Putting a big chunk of the game you don’t
actually want players to miss out on behind an unlock with a criteria that most players
will find easy enough to perform is an OK combination. Streets of Rage 4 has a short and sweet campaign
full of replayability, thanks to its unique characters, a high skill ceiling, and a scoring
and leveling style system used in its set of unlocks. At the end of a stage, your score goes into
filling up a meter. Once the meter reaches a threshold, you’ll
unlock a new legacy character. Unlocking new characters is as simple as just
playing the game. Skilled players will get through the system
faster by scoring more points through combo streaks, but everyone will eventually be able
to unlock the entire roster. Streets of Rage 4 also does another good thing
that might feel obvious, but it’s important for accumulate criteria. It’s a good idea to spread the rewards out
over multiple tiers. Small rewards unlocked along the way help
encourage players to continue better than saving the entire prize for the end. Think of how weird it would seem if you unlocked
every character at once only at the very end of the road instead of multiple new characters
along the way. That’s also part of why battle passes are
really effective for getting players to keep playing a game. Fall Guys and Rocket League among others use
their battle pass system to evenly spread out little unlockable items as prizes for
playing. Accumulate-type unlocks are very easy to create,
but they’re also very easy to make grindy and unpleasant. Sonic Mega Collection’s method of unlocking
games falls into two pitfalls at once. There are several games in the collection
that are prizes to unlock, like Ristar, Flicky, and Sonic 3 and Knuckles, but the game doesn’t
tell you how to get them. That’s not a problem by itself. If you don’t want to spell out exactly what
a player needs to do, that can make it more surprising once a reward does pop. But if you do that, a player needs to reasonably
be able to get the reward naturally. To get the extra games in the collection,
you have to boot up specific other games either 20 or 30 separate times. It doesn’t sound like all that much, but
it actually takes a ton of time for each one. It’s not hard to do, but it’s not that
likely that anyone is going to stumble on them naturally. More likely they’re going to see the question
marks on the menu, have no clue how to unlock them, look up the secret criteria online,
and spend a boring hour grinding booting up a game over and over. That’s what I did. It sucked. You aren’t getting better at a game, or
finding a secret in it. It’s not even just booting up a game 5 times,
which a person could easily do naturally. The grind to unlock the extra games in Sonic
Mega Collection isn’t satisfying, and makes for a worse unlocking experience. It’s so easy to create little unlockable
prizes and little criteria for unlocking them, that their sheer number can become overwhelming. If you have a lot of goals you want to add
and don’t want to pair up a specific item for a specific unlock, you can add an intermediate
step. In-game currencies work as a central point
to help simplify an unlock system. If you earn money that you can spend on prizes
instead of earning the prizes directly, you don’t have to worry so much about matching
the right prize with the right criteria, plus players can spend their money on the prizes
they most want to have. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania keeps the
majority of its unlockable content in an in-game store where players can spend points they’ve
earned through playing various game modes and earning achievements. Most of the unlocks are cosmetic with extra
characters, skins, costume pieces, and a whole lot of filters for the game’s photo mode. There are also more expensive options that
hold more modes, reverse versions of stages, deluxe stages, and more. You can even buy a jump button! It breaks most of the stages, but as an unlockable option it’s great! The store system helps make sense of the huge
amount of unlocks, gives players a lot to work towards over time, and helps players
unlock exactly what catches their eye. Let’s look at the other side. Unlocks that make you achieve something are
a different animal. This is the set of unlocks where you have
to complete a single, self-contained task and then you’re done. It could be as simple as beating a level,
or fly through these arches once, or choose some specific dialogue options. Achieve criteria can be a great place to put
bonus sections of a game. Super Mario World’s unlockable secret stages
are one of its most memorable features. In tons of the game’s levels, there are
hidden exits that lead you to a secret Star Road, full of gimmicky and unique stages to
play. Get through the Star Road and you get access
to the Special World with even MORE crazy gimmicks that put a new creative spin on the
usual Mario level design. Completing each stage in the Special World
would even give you extra visual changes that persisted through the rest of the game, like
how these Koopas would wear strange Mario masks. The secret exits aren’t THAT easy to find,
but they’re easy enough that most players will stumble onto one by exploring just a
little. Once a player finds one of the doors and enters
the Star Road, they’ll be on the lookout for more hidden doors for the rest of the
game, and there are plenty to find, even in the Star Road itself. The hidden-but-not-too-hidden nature of the
doors and the unique persistent prizes made Super Mario World feel like it was hiding
something worth finding around every corner. There’s a funny thing that happens as an
achieve criteria gets more and more difficult. Look at superboss rewards. Your reward for beating Ruby Weapon, the most
powerful boss in Final Fantasy 7, is the Desert Rose, which can be traded for a gold chocobo. Gold Chocobos let you into the area that holds
the ultimate materia, Knights of the Round. But Ruby Weapon is the toughest boss in the
entire game. There’s nothing left to beat that you couldn’t
beat WITHOUT the Knights of the Round. Or you got Knights of the Round yourself by
getting your own Gold Chocobo. Either way, the prize for beating the game’s
toughest challenge is theoretically cool, but practically useless. It’s like winning the key to a lock you
had to break on your way in. For the most difficult achieve criteria, it
might help to think of the prize as a certificate, not a coupon. Those little nods I mentioned earlier work
as prizes here. Kingdom Hearts 2 has bronze, silver, and gold
crown rewards for completing three special end game tasks - beating every Data Organization
boss, completing every special mushroom heartless minigame, and defeating the “Lingering Will”
superboss. In Breath of the Wild, completing every shrine
in the base game gives you the Tunic of the Wild, which looks like the classic series
outfit. What do you get In Final Fantasy VIII if you
beat Omega Weapon? Proof of Omega. This tutorial option line. You did it…okay maybe these rewards should
be a little cooler than that. Powerful but normal items might not be a great
idea, but there are other worthwhile things that affect gameplay that you can lock behind
the most difficult Achieve criteria. Difficult achieve unlocks are a perfect place
for cheat codes and other game-breaking things. The kinds of players that are able to complete
more difficult achieve-type criteria are the people who know the game the best. At this point, they can likely do anything
the game throws their way, so giving them cheat codes won’t break the experience for
them. Adding a little expectations-breaking fun
through infinite health, or big-head mode, or some other bonus that would otherwise break
a game fits well. Look at Goldeneye. The top rewards involve beating levels extremely
quickly. The prizes you get for them are things like
unlocking the golden gun that insta-kills in one shot, 2x rocket launchers you can use
in levels that really don’t need rocket launchers, slow animations for NPCs, or DK
mode, where characters have huge heads and arms. They totally break the game balance, but the
people getting these cheats have already proven themselves experts at it. They’ve wrung a lot of enjoyment out of
it already, there’s not much else for them to do, so making the game a quasi-parody of
itself with weird cheats helps wring out a little more fun. OK, that’s a lot to take in, but if you
want to see how small tweaks can make big differences in how an unlock system feels,
take a look at the entire Super Smash Bros. series. It started with fun unlockables, and game
to game made small but significant changes to how its prizes and criteria were combined. Not all of the changes worked out. Smash 64 doesn’t have a ton of things to
unlock. There are only four characters, one stage,
some item setting options, and a sound test. But it makes up for quantity with the unusually
prominent role they play. First, the game makes it immediately clear
that there are secrets to discover. The intro cutscene, the first thing a player
sees, highlights and hypes up the secret characters. The sizzle reel shows mysterious silhouettes,
and the characters are fuzzed out on the character select screen. The criteria to unlock each character is
pretty straightforward: Beat the single-player mode once, beat it once but kinda fast, beat
the game on normal or higher without using a continue, and complete the target bonus
stage with each of the starting characters. The goal of these unlocks isn’t to keep
the characters away from the player. It’s to reward them for playing the game. However, each character is a double-unlock. Once you satisfy the basic criteria, there’s
a music stinger, a warning screen, and then you play a one-on-one match against the CPU. Win, and you unlock the character. For a new player, the extra match raises the
stakes, and you get to see exactly what you’re fighting for. The item options, sound test and stage unlocks
are more accumulative, requiring you to play 100 VS. mode matches and beat the single-player
modes with all the characters. Even though the game doesn’t have a ton
of unlocks, they’re spread out in a way where a new player will find them more evenly
throughout the early stages of the game. In an era without as much internet access,
there was mystery in the system, even if there wasn’t all that much to unlock. Smash 64 was the seed from which the series’
unlock approach sprouted. Super Smash Bros Melee expanded every aspect
of the first game, and its approach to unlockables was no exception. Melee has 11 unlockable characters, 11 stages,
a few extra game modes, and an avalanche of trophies. With more unlockables, the criteria for each
one could become more complicated. Most of the modes have at least a few unlocks
tied to them. Some characters are unlocked by playing through
the new adventure mode or tied to completing specific event mode matches. Some are entirely accumulative, unlocking
when you’ve racked up 20 hours of playtime or by just trying out all the starting characters. Like Smash 64, you don’t know when something
new will pop up, and again with the new characters, you’ll have to conquer them once to claim
them for yourself. The higher bar for a lot of the unlocks does
risk keeping players from accomplishing them, so there’s also a safety valve. There are multiple ways to unlock characters,
and the backup criteria is something accumulative, where you simply play enough matches in versus. Sooner or later, everyone gets a chance to
get everything. Super Smash Bros Brawl has yet even MORE things
to unlock. Everything from before, but more characters,
more stages, trophies, stickers, and even music tracks. The approach is the same, but there’s a
new secondary way to unlock characters centered around the new Subspace Emissary single-player
mode. There’s even a new challenge mode with a
grid of minor unlockables listing their criteria. Plus, if you find something in there you really
want but don’t want to bother working for, you can just force-unlock the prize immediately. With a hammer. There’s so much to unlock that the game
really can play around with the variety of criteria, and players will almost constantly
find something new they’ve just unlocked. After Brawl, Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U
took a slight step back from unlockable stages and characters. Extra side content like trophies and music
were largely unchanged, and hey, there was even more of it! But the main unlockable content was toned
down significantly. Most of the game’s large roster is available
at the start, and in contrast with the previous game, there just isn’t that much left to
unlock. It’s not a major problem, but it’s a touch
underwhelming. Instead, there’s an entirely new set of
things to unlock. Custom Moves! There are 376 custom moves to unlock by random
chance through playing the single-player modes. You can barely influence what character’s
custom moves you want to get, and the system allows you to get repeats. If you’re looking for a specific character’s
custom move, you have to keep playing with them over and over to increase your chances
and then just hope the game randomly rewards you. It’s a gacha-influenced system and the lack
of control you have over the outcome makes it a far less satisfying one to use. And custom moves are massively unbalanced
anyway, largely banned from tournaments and unusable in online public matches, so maybe
you’re better off not trying. And now we’re up to the present. Smash Bros Ultimate. They got rid of the custom moves! That’s a good start. Ultimate starts with the 8 original characters
from 64 and hides the other 63 characters as unlockables. The characters are given out at regular intervals
through playing the single player modes or basically any kind of match, and with such
a large roster you’re unlocking new things constantly. The sheer number of them and regularity at
which you’re getting a new character can make them feel a little less special. It’s back to the problem of not feeling
like you as a player are doing anything specific to get rewarded with this character. It’s a minor flaw, but you can feel it. Smash Ultimate may not have the most rewarding
unlocks, but the speed and randomness without repeats at least give the game an exciting
first impression. Boy, that’s a lot of stuff. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but
this is scratching the surface of what unlock systems can do. Head to the comments and let’s talk about
some of your favorite unlocks, especially satisfying accomplishments and really cool
prizes. Unlocks aren’t complicated, but the complexity
of what they can bring to a game is immense, and pairing the right unlock criteria with
the right sort of prize can be the difference between something satisfying or a weird grind. *chill vibes outro from Bayonetta 2*
