Tomb Raider

Lara is terrified on the radio tower, but the player is not. In Tomb Raider 2013 the player scales a massive wobbling radio tower by holding up on the stick for about five minutes. With no consequence for failure, the fear stays on screen and never reaches the player.

Under the mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics framework, mechanics shape behaviour and behaviour shapes emotion. "If you want players to feel scared, then you probably need some sort of consequence for failure."

The modern climbing was designed as downtime, so judge it on that. In later analysis Brown notes that Tomb Raider and Uncharted climbing was meant as simple downtime between fights, so criticising it for lacking realism misses the developer's aim.

Take what works as a reference and treat the rest as room for a different game with different intentions. "I'll instead take the game on its own merits."

Shadow of the Tomb Raider splits difficulty into combat, exploration and puzzles. Players can ease fiddly fights while still having their logic tested, with Lara not giving away puzzle answers. A single difficulty setting would force them to give up challenge they want to keep.

Relaxed settings give leeway in combat or more time to handle the controller, which helps players with motor disabilities. It also lets hint-lovers and puzzle-lovers each tune how much help they get.

The reboot uses colour to move Lara from despair to hope. As Lara climbs in the Tomb Raider reboot, the palette shifts from dark green low down to warm orange sunlight high above, marking a turn in her situation.

Portal does something similar, moving from a white sterile lab to a warm orange maintenance area.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider splits difficulty into combat, exploration and puzzles. Players can ease fiddly fights while still having their logic tested, with Lara not giving away puzzle answers. A single difficulty setting would force them to give up challenge they want to keep.

Relaxed settings give leeway in combat or more time to handle the controller, which helps players with motor disabilities. It also lets hint-lovers and puzzle-lovers each tune how much help they get.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider does not force stick rotation on cranks. Sudden stick wiggles and button mashing often demand more motor ability than regular play, so the game skips stick rotation for turning cranks.

"A big brick wall for gamers with disabilities are these tiny micro-games."

Rise of the Tomb Raider names a speaker once, then uses colour. A character's name appears on their first subtitle line, then their dialogue gets a unique colour. This shows who is speaking without enlarging every subtitle with a repeated name.

God of War, by contrast, puts the speaker's name on every line. "From now on, the name can be dropped because the colour tells you who is speaking."

Make a wrong puzzle approach look clearly impossible. In Rise of the Tomb Raider, the dropping platform sits so far from the exit that Lara obviously cannot reach it in time, so players drop that assumption at once and try something else.

"You definitely don't want to make it look like Lara could make it in time if she was just a bit quicker."

The old controls were clunky for real technical reasons. Tomb Raider 1 ran on an unrealistic grid system built for digital input as a first try at 3D. Its PS1 controls showed the d-pad no longer worked once games went 3D, until the N64 analogue stick made 3D movement effortless.

Crystal Dynamics brought in instant acceleration, air control and automatic grabs when it rebooted the series with Tomb Raider Legend in 2006. Brown grants this is more palatable and accessible but says the aim should be removing the clunk while keeping the demand on the player.

The 1996 original made traversal a skill players had to master. To cross a gap you lined up the jump, took a run up, held jump so Lara leapt after exactly two steps, then held a second button to grab the ledge. Mark Brown compares this learned mastery to flick tricks in Tony Hawk's and the deliberate intent of Dark Souls.

A chasm leap felt nearly as terrifying and rewarding as it would in real life. "The old system demanded expertise."

Remove the challenge and players stop noticing the action happened. The same chasm jump rebuilt in Tomb Raider Anniversary is so easy that it barely registers. An action needs enough challenge to feel like an achievement.

Quote: the remake's jump "is so bereft of challenge that you barely even register that it happened."

The old controls were clunky for real technical reasons. Tomb Raider 1 ran on an unrealistic grid system built for digital input as a first try at 3D. Its PS1 controls showed the d-pad no longer worked once games went 3D, until the N64 analogue stick made 3D movement effortless.

Crystal Dynamics brought in instant acceleration, air control and automatic grabs when it rebooted the series with Tomb Raider Legend in 2006. Brown grants this is more palatable and accessible but says the aim should be removing the clunk while keeping the demand on the player.

Traversal was automated step by step while combat kept gaining depth. The grab button went, then the run up, and monkey bars became automatic. Combat meanwhile grew from firing at bats to stealth kills, cover, crafted bombs, distractions, readied arrows and several ammo types.

By Rise of the Tomb Raider, traversal is "Jump at the coloured ledge. Hold a direction. Press jump." Combat stays a game of weighing options per enemy and improving through upgrades and practice. Brown argues movement can be as deep as combat if it asks players to consider momentum, inertia and grip.

Lara is terrified on the radio tower, but the player is not. In Tomb Raider 2013 the player scales a massive wobbling radio tower by holding up on the stick for about five minutes. With no consequence for failure, the fear stays on screen and never reaches the player.

Under the mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics framework, mechanics shape behaviour and behaviour shapes emotion. "If you want players to feel scared, then you probably need some sort of consequence for failure."

Prescribed routes take away the choice between safe and risky paths. Rise of the Tomb Raider often has one linear route through a room. Games with deeper movement let you take the slow easy path or the fast dangerous one, and nailing the hard route's timed moves feels earned.

Brown imagines a Tomb Raider with Mirror's Edge physics, I Am Alive's grip meter and Grow Home's hand-over-hand climbing, while noting the challenge tombs keep their appeal.

Mirror's Edge rewards a wall-bounce route over taking the stairs. In an early section, players can take the stairs or bounce off a wall, clamber up and vault a bar. Both reach the same place, but the trick route takes far less time.

Faith's speed build-up, mid-jump tucks and landing rolls are the game's main tools, not a way between fights.

Grow Home maps each robot hand to a trigger for tense climbing. Players grab rhythmically with two triggers, and wobbling along thin branches high up becomes genuinely tense. B.U.D. is animated in real time rather than with canned animations.

GIRP has players hold several keys like gripping a cliff, and I Am Alive and Shadow of the Colossus limit climbing with stamina and grip meters.

Tomb Raider paints important elements white to guide the player. One consistent signal colour marks what matters, but it only works if the rest of the stage's colours are carefully controlled.

Mirror's Edge uses red and Uncharted and The Last of Us use yellow for the same purpose.