Everyone knows about the classical elements,
right? Water. Earth, Wind, and Fire. You remember. Metal and Wood sometimes. Throw in Light and Darkness. Psi. Slag. Noise. Ground AND Rock. Dragon. Scissors. Elements are an incredibly popular motif in
games, used in tons of different places. Technology. Characters. Locations. Weapon types. And especially magic systems. They’re everywhere. But have you ever wondered why games keep
hammering on the elemental theme over and over again? Elemental motifs come pre-packaged with all
sorts of things a game can use to help create its world, characters, and mechanics. They’re adaptable to tons of settings and
can be easily changed and expanded upon to give a game some custom flair without losing
any of the built-in benefits. Let’s take a tour of the elements, how they
provide flexibility and customization, and why elemental systems are such an enduring
part of games. Harness the cosmic elemental power of… sensible
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up to Milanote for free and help take your projects from a dream to a plan. Sign up now to Milanote, it’s good. Thanks, Milanote! So, elements. They’re super popular, showing up in game
after game. We’ve got elemental gems. We’ve got characters who do nothing but
stuff with water. We’ve got entire cities built around and
in and with fire. We’ve got systems with 3 elements in balance. Or 4. Or 5. 6, 8, 18. We’ve got cultures themed around the way
of the wind, or of nature. The elemental motif is familiar, but rarely
is it implemented in the same way twice. But why does it keep showing up over and over? It’d be one thing if it were just a cool
aesthetic, but there are tons of different cool aesthetics that games could incorporate. What is it about elements specifically that
makes so many games lean on them in so many different ways? Well, there are a lot of parts of a game that
elemental motifs can help reinforce. First and foremost, game mechanics. Probably the most familiar place to see elements
is in a game’s magic system. RPG combat is full of elements. Like status effects, elemental systems are
meant to help keep a fight from getting stale. Magic helps give an alternative way to attack,
and elemental systems help add different angles within magic. Elemental systems are there to stop a first-order
optimal strategy problem. Basically, if the ‘right move’ takes no
effort to either figure out or execute, and stays the same in just about every situation,
that’s a problem, and is the quickest way to making a stale combat system. The opening segments of tons of RPGs fall
into this trap by not giving players very many decisions to make. The early parts of games like Xenoblade Chronicles
2 and Final Fantasy XIII start by giving players a bare minimum of combat options with simple
neutral attacks. The more complex combat systems get mixed
in over time, but both games just spin their wheels for their first stretches until the
narrative kicks off and gives the main characters a power boost. There’s not much decision-making going on
without that, and combat is very one-note. Elemental systems add a surface for more complex
decisions to be made thanks to elemental weaknesses. A basic enemy can now be a basic water enemy,
and what would’ve been your go-to fire move might not be the best option here. Or they’re undead types and light, or even
healing magic would be effective. The elements force you to set up your team,
your equipment, or your approach just a little differently. It’s not complicated, but it doesn’t have
to be. Just that little extra effort in planning
and execution makes the same combat system last longer. There’s a game that absolutely had to avoid
a first-order optimal strategy problem, and the designers turned to a weird spin on an
elemental system. Ring Fit Adventure uses elements to keep you
from ruining your own arms. Each exercise Ring Fit Adventure is associated
with a body part, and each body part is assigned a color - red for arms, blue for legs, yellow
for core, and green for yoga and flexibility. They’re pretty much element types. Monsters in the game almost all are given
a color, and they’re actually WEAK to exercises of that color, which is unusual. They’re hit with way more damage if you
do an exercise with that corresponding body part. Some exercises do more base damage than others. If the game had no elemental system at all,
the optimal strategy would be to do ONLY, say, crunches over and over again and do nothing
with your arms and legs. You might get weak legs, spindly arms, no
flexibility, and devastate your obliques from overuse. The game saw this coming and does start a
cooldown timer that keeps you from doing the exact same exercise over and over, but it
also throws enemies of a wide variety of colors at you in most normal battles. Your best move strategically is also better
for your overall health. There are items to temporarily change colors
of exercises and of opponent weaknesses, so you can switch it up if one body part is getting
tired, so there are some safeguards. The elemental weaknesses incentivize moving
from body part to body part throughout a session in order to get a more well-rounded workout. When you use elements to help balance game
combat, you have to design how the elements will play off of each other. Elemental balancing commonly shows up in a
few different styles. First, opposing pairs. In this one, two elements are like rivals,
directly opposing each other. Final Fantasy X has a simple version, where
fire opposes ice and lightning opposes water. Enemies of one type are weak against their
opposite. That’s it. It’s pretty straightforward, but this makes
it a little tricky to get good strategic matchups. If both sides have an innate magic affinity,
both sides will be equally ‘weak’ to each other. Matches between characters with two opposing
elements can be full of haymaker punches and resolve quickly. Final Fantasy X avoids this by having the
monsters have an innate elemental weakness, but not the players. It’s one-sided, but it lets prepared players
actually have an advantage. You also probably don’t want to leave an
element unpaired. Unpaired elements can easily be overpowered. In Breath of the Wild, Fire and Ice oppose
each other, but Lightning has no real elemental counter and is very strong. Though you can intentionally unpair elements
or even two opposing ones for dramatic effect. Sometimes there are tiers of elements, where
some are just more powerful. The idea of an elemental tier list goes way
back. In the classical element system of the ancient
world, Aristotle added Aether to the original four to represent what stars and the heavens
were made of. Aether stood above the rest. It was more important - incorruptible, unlike
the other four. Many games treat Dark and Holy elements the
same way, often tying to life and death magic. Usually, they’re used as story MacGuffins
or super-magics that beats all the rest. Maybe the story gets resolved by holy magic,
or the bad guy uses super evil magic outside of the existing system to do stuff. Another standard way to balance elements is
with a cycle. This lets different characters more easily
have the upper hand in different situations. Each element becomes powerful against certain
opponents and vulnerable against others to form a rock-paper-scissors loop of strengths
and weaknesses. Lost Odyssey does this, among lots of others. Elemental Water beats Fire, Fire beats Wind,
Wind beats Earth, and Earth beats Water. The cycle lets each element have a role and
a place to shine while keeping any one from just being straight-up better than the others. But you can get more complicated with cycles,
too. If you get enough types into your system,
you can put cycles within cycles. That’s the strategic backbone of Pokemon,
which has one of the most extensive type systems around. Pokemon has 18 unique elemental types, each
with multiple weaknesses and strengths. Each Pokemon and each move have an inherent
element, with bonuses for attacking opponents with an element they’re weak to and matching
your Pokemon’s attack with their intrinsic type. Some elements are also strong against others. Trying to poison a ghost is gonna work about
half as much as you’d like. Some combinations are even immune to actions
of certain types. Ever try fighting a flying type with a ground
Pokemon? Don’t. Throw a rock instead. The elemental relationships aren’t paired
up either - just because one type is strong offensively against another doesn’t make
it strong defensively. They’re all related on a case-by-case basis. The interactions between types are complex
enough that you literally need a chart to get it all down, and dual-typing vastly increases
the strategic complexity. The cycles and cycles within cycles create
plenty of nuances to combat, not always necessary for the main game but enough for a competitive
scene to thrive. So elements feel right at home in RPG combat,
but they aren’t stuck there. They work just as well in other kinds of combat. What about in a shooter? In Borderlands, elemental ammo changes how
you approach different types of enemies to keep combat from looking too similar encounter
to encounter. Most weapons use one of several types of elemental
ammo: Incendiary, Shock, Corrosive, Explosive, and Slag. Each work best on different types of enemies. Incendiary for defenseless, or ‘fleshy’
ones, Shock vs. electronic shields, and Corrosive against armor. Explosive does massive single-blow damage,
and Slag works more like a status effect, lowering target defenses against other types. The different ammo types feed into the game’s
focus on weapon variety, giving yet more options to think about when selecting your arsenal. As you play, you’ll be swapping weapons
from ammo type to ammo type as your enemies change, and even mixing in Explosive and Slag
attacks in the middle of fights. The variety keeps the game from just having
the one ‘best’ gun for every situation. Elements in gameplay aren’t limited to games
with combat, even. They work great in environmental puzzles,
too. Luigi’s Mansion has you running around a
Ghost House solving little elemental-themed puzzles. You can suck up an elemental spirit and turn
your vacuum into a… ice vacuum or whatever. Use fire to light up some candles, water to
extinguish a door, or ice to freeze a bunch of Boos during a boss fight. The elemental spirit is pretty much right
next to the bit you need to use it for, so these aren’t the toughest to figure out,
but they’re fun little lock and key puzzles. Or the keys and locks can get a bit more complicated. Pikmin is designed around using the unique
properties of different Pikmin types to get through obstacles and enemies as efficiently
as possible. Most types of pikmin are given an elemental
resistance: red pikmin can’t be burned, blue can’t drown, white ones are immune
to poison, and yellow ones can’t be shocked. The world is full of elemental hazards and
enemies that are color-coded or have abilities that telegraph what type of pikmin is right
to take it down. Using the wrong type on the wrong part of
the map is a fast way of not having that pikmin anymore. The game becomes more of a resource-manager,
where having enough of the right type of pikmin in the right place at the right time is the
core puzzle to solve. Elements can also be the backbone of immersive
sims, where elements interacting with each other makes up most of its ‘immersiveness.’ Breath of the Wild created what they call
the ‘chemistry engine’, where elements have a wide range of properties that can be
infused into enemies, weapons, items, and other objects. The properties behave fairly consistently
no matter where they’re applied. Fire can burn away wooden things, melt chunks
of ice, create updrafts, and keep the player warm in cold climates. They aren’t entirely realistic, but they’re
robust enough for a player to design experiments and have a good chance that the game will
behave as you’d expect. Lightning is drawn to metal objects. Electricity stuns characters wearing metal,
but a non-conductive wooden shield will block the effect. Ice can freeze enemies in place but it can
also freeze ingredients and materials. The elements form the skeleton of the game's
clockwork system to make the world feel more alive and believable rather than just a set
of scripted events. But the elemental motif isn’t limited to
game mechanics at all. Elemental systems can just as easily guide
how a game’s storytelling and world-building works, and provide just as much structure
to let designers build in all different directions. Elemental motifs are a great angle to add
flair to character creation and enemy design. You’ve got a cat? Meh, it’s just like all the other cats. Kinda boring. But what if you add in just one element? What about a CLOUD cat? A fire cat? A TIME cat? A grass cat? A shadow cat? It doesn’t even matter which element you
picked, they’re all cooler and more memorable. Rivals of Aether’s whole roster is filled
with one elemental motif after another. Every one of these is an animal plus an element
or beloved character from other property plus element. If that’s a little too on the nose though,
you could instead use elements to help design character personalities. Like Kingdom Hearts, the most subtle franchise
of them all. Organization XIII has a pretty big roster
to fill out, and the game uses elements to help make each character more memorable. Each member is given a personality and a moveset
based on 1 of 13 attributes. About half are based on classical elements
like Wind, ice, and light. The other half take creative liberties and
base themselves around more unusual attributes like ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘illusion’,
‘flower’, ‘moon’, and ‘nothingness’. They all create a distinct visual motif to
separate one anime boy from the next and serve as a cool base for each of their respective
boss fights. Their attributes are sometimes even used for
metaphorical storytelling, like the strained friendship slash rivalry between Saix and
Axel, the moon and… fire, which I think works as the sun. Individualizing a roster of 13 bad guys all
cloaked in black is a tough challenge to tackle, but elements helped their designers blaze
a trail to success. You can use elements to help design locations,
too. They can shape an entire setting. The world of Skies of Arcadia is a series
of floating islands amid an endless sea of clouds. Above it are 6 colored moons, one for each
element in the game. The moons impact their surrounding lands with
their respective magical attributes, and the civilizations nearby shape themselves around
that moon’s climate and magic. The fiery red moon creates the desert continent
of Nasr. The yellow moon infuses electricity into the
land, which the militaristic Valuan Empire uses to build its bright, tech-filled cities. The green moon of nature flies above the lush
jungles of Ixa’Taka. Each moon and its respective magic are the
game’s main plot device, driving the biomes and cultures you travel between, making the
game feel like a whole globe-trotting adventure. Though, you have to watch out when designing
cultures entirely around elements. It does make it easy to create very one-dimensional
and stereotypical cultures if you aren’t careful. Or the very story itself can revolve around
the elements. Golden Sun takes place in a world constructed
by the four classical ones, and the plot centers around a group of magic-wielding Adepts trying
to stop the bad guys from releasing magic seals that would cause all kinds of element-based
chaos throughout the world. There’s really very little of the game that
doesn’t revolve around using elements, discovering new elemental powers, getting sent on dangerous
elemental quests, or recruiting elemental mascot characters. The antagonists are either using elements
for evil, or doing things that will help them later use elements for evil. Every bit of Golden Sun’s story is steeped
in elements, and it’s one of the most beloved stories on the Game Boy Advance. So elements are extremely versatile. But there’s one more secret power with elemental
motifs: Adaptability. If every game was stuck with the same 4 elements
interacting in the same way, the theme would get stale pretty fast. Luckily, elements aren’t stuck just as they
are. You can customize them. Is fire a little too predictable for your
game? You can tweak it. Fire doesn’t have to be fire, it can be
magma, or ‘heat’, or 'dragon', or something else that fits better. If you think plasma would be cool, just add
it in. It might give you new ideas for enemy designs,
or an extra way to counterbalance some types, or another story theme to explore. This adaptability is probably why even though
element theming and tropes have been used for literally millennia, the concept doesn’t
really get as stale as you would think. The elemental motif is so popular because
it’s so powerful. Hardly any other one can fit simultaneously
in mechanics, story, and worldbuilding. From setting the foundation of a strategic
system, to rock-paper-scissors balancing acts. From puzzle solving, to immersive systems. For creating everything from the look and
personalities of both characters and enemies alike, to the places, things, and motivations
of the entire created world. Elements fit in practically everywhere you
can think of, and if not, you can customize them to make them fit. Let’s talk in the comments about unusual
elemental types, characters with cool elemental theming, or just some interesting gameplay
interactions in an elemental system. Elemental motifs are the best sort of base,
powerful enough to carry a game and flexible enough to make it unique. *chill vibes outro from Final Fantasy X*
