The Design Behind Super Mario Odyssey

If there’s one company I’ve talked about more than any other on this channel - it’s Nintendo. Their games are fun, wildly inventive, always accessible, and - most importantly - precision designed, giving us a wealth of awesome game design lessons that can be used by anyone. And so, with the recent release of Super Mario Odyssey, I thought this would be a good opportunity to recap everything we’ve learned about the company so far - to see how Nintendo’s design lessons have been applied to Mario’s latest adventure.

So, Mario Odyssey is the latest game to adhere to Nintendo’s most fundamental design philosophy, which I explored in this video. In short - Nintendo often starts making a game by coming up with some interesting new way to play, like shooting ink in Splatoon, or using the vacuum cleaner in Luigi’s Mansion. This gimmick then becomes the core of the game, with pretty much everything else being used to support and frame that delicious nugget of interactivity.

What’s the core of Odyssey? Well, ultimately, it’s this... The hat throw. In the game, you can press a button to make Mario throw his hat in the direction you’re facing. And you can also hold down that same button to make the hat spin in place. This basic move, according to director Kenta Motokura, was “part of the game right from the beginning” - and it went on to inform almost every other piece of design in the game.

For one, the hat throw is Mario’s new attack. Nintendo has always known that jumping on a tiny target like a Goomba is tough to pull off in 3D, so Mario has different ways to attack his enemies in these games like the kick in Super Mario 64, the FLUDD in Sunshine, the spin in Mario Galaxy, and now the hat throw in Odyssey. Of course, most creatures in Odyssey aren’t there to be defeated - but to be captured. This lets Mario take over an enemy, or a taxi or a dinosaur, and use their unique abilities.

It’s essentially Odyssey’s version of the power-up, but this allows for entirely new mechanics and ways of playing - instead of adding to Mario’s existing move set. Now, some of these things are brilliant. The Tropical Wiggler and the Gushen and the Pokio are so much fun to control that each one could sustain an entire Snake Pass-style indie game. But Odyssey has a whole cast of different capture targets, because this mechanic needs to impact every element of the game.

So there are things that you capture to increase Mario’s platforming abilities, things you capture for combat purposes, and all sorts of things you capture to solve puzzles - like guiding Goombas to shy lady Goombas. Goombettes. Now, this does slightly break the simplicity of the game - because each target can completely change the way the game works and Odyssey needs to pop up a tutorial at the bottom of the screen to detail the new controls.

But there’s a couple things to keep in mind. One, is that Mario often has loads of things he can do in his games, except, they almost always exist as distinct and separate states. You can’t be a fire flower Mario in a half bee suit, half squirrel suit, throwing boomerangs. And, likewise, you can only capture one thing at a time, in Odyssey. This means the game has lots of ways of playing, but without the complexity of controlling a character who is capable of performing 20 different actions with different button presses.

But also, Nintendo is careful to reveal these mechanics with its usual step-by-step introduction. Take the Uproots - a sort of cabbage on telescopic silts - found in Steam Gardens. When you first find these guys, you’ll use them for very simple platforming tasks - before using them for more complex challenges later in the stage. And finally - a boss. You see, even though Mario Odyssey has an open, sandbox design, each level still has a critical path that lets Nintendo slowly ramp up a challenge from beginning to end.

In Tostarena, you’ll start by messing around with capturing bullet bills down here in the ruins, before guiding them through more difficult sections later in the stage, and then using them - in spirit, at least - against the boss. You’ll also notice this sort of design in the game’s sub areas, where a single idea is introduced and then remixed over and over again in more complicated and difficult variations. After you’ve finished a level, new elements and shortcuts are added to let you explore freely and without needing to follow the same linear path that you took at the beginning of the stage.

Now, in any other game, I feel like that would be it for the hat. It’s simply your way of capturing enemies. But we should never forget that classic Miyamoto quote, “A good idea is something that does not solve just one single problem, but rather can solve multiple problems at once.” Proper dual purpose design stuff. So, in this game, the hat throw is also linked to your platforming. Now I’ve spoken before about the expressive and versatile nature of Mario’s jump.

Because this isn’t just a jump but a rich toolbox of moves that can be used and combined - letting the player put together the perfect sequence of leaps for any situation - whether that’s covering a huge gap, dodging a difficult enemy, or quickly saving yourself from danger. And in Mario Odyssey, that toolbox includes the long jump, triple jump, wall jump, ground pound jump, backward somersault, sideways somersault, and dive.

It’s one of Mario's most extensive move lists in his history. But the hat expands your options even further - for one, it works a bit like the spin move in Mario Galaxy, because throwing the hat pushes Mario up a tiny bit, and keeps him in the air for a bit longer, giving you a tiny bit of leeway on tricky jumps. It also immediately reorients Mario in mid-air, so you can bounce away from a wall, then throw your hat backwards, and dive on top of the wall - similar to Sunshine, where you can use FLUDD to swing back onto a wall you just bounced away from.

And, finally, Mario can also step, jump or dive onto his hat, to spring off - again, increasing the height and distance of his leap. But, even better is that this move can be chained into Mario’s already bursting move set. So, you can cover an enormous distance by doing a long jump, then throwing out your hat, and diving onto it. You can even do another throw and another dive after that, letting you leap all the way between buildings in New Donk City.

This stuff gives you an enormous set of options for tackling each part of the game, as you decide whether to find some safe way to access an area - or try to use your moveset to get to the same place quicker and with more style. There are even areas that are only accessible to those with real mastery of the controls, and Nintendo is careful to reward anyone who gets up there. You’ll also need to be masterful with the controls when doing certain late-game challenges, like these Koopa races.

Here, I’m completely going off the main track and using a whole bunch of different jumps to get to the goal before the other racers. The company’s current take on difficulty, after all, seems to be to make the main game pretty easy and accessible - and then add additional challenges, after the credits roll, for more dedicated players to tackle.

Beyond combat, capturing, and platforming, Mario also interacts with the world in different ways by throwing his hat. You can open doors, collect coins, and pull switches by chucking your hat. And you’ll notice that many coin blocks are now on the ground, instead of in the air, further establishing that this isn’t a game about jumping - but about throwing your hat. Oh, but in general, anything that would take control of the game away for a transition or a dialogue screen, like taking to a character or calling a Jaxi, is done through the A button to make sure you don’t accidentally throw your hat at something that would halt the game.

So, what’s the benefit of making one mechanic so central to the entire game? Well, for one it means Mario Odyssey can provide depth and complexity, with only three buttons and a control stick. You don’t need separate inputs for producing a trampoline, attacking enemies, pulling switches, and possessing characters if they’re all the same action. And yeah, there’s also some motion-controlled moves, which you can’t really do when the Switch is in portable mode and, well, let’s just pretend those don’t exist.

At least they’re almost entirely optional. There’s also hardly any confusion about how to interact with something in the world. If in doubt, just throw your hat. There’s not much else you can do, after all. This removes what Anna Anthropy calls “orphaned verbs” which are so specific and unique that “the player has forgotten about it by the time they reach the one situation that demands it”. And really, it just gives the game an amazing sense of cohesion.

Nintendo games might be weird and unpredictable, but they’re not just a messy hodgepodge of random ideas and mechanics. There’s always a certain unity to the entire package. And, to tie this all together, the unique gameplay is often reflected in the game’s presentation. Take Splatoon’s punky aesthetic, which came from the graffiti-style ink mechanic. Or Mario Sunshine’s tropical groove, which was inspired by the super soaker gameplay.

There’s certainly some of that in Mario Odyssey, with a race of hat-like creatures, living in a hat-based kingdom, flying hat-shaped crafts around the world. And everyone in the game is wearing hats, from this tiny dog’s fedora to Princess Peach’s tiara. Enemies wear hats too - and that’s not just an aesthetic thing, but a way of signalling that you’ll need to hit an enemy twice to capture them. In fact, the more hats a boss character is wearing, the harder they’ll be.

And that’s ridiculous. But it’s also amazing how much sense it intuitively makes. And then, of course, there’s Cappy. Because, you’re not just throwing a hat, but a cheeky chap who transforms into Mario’s cap. And, Nintendo has a long tradition of turning its more outlandish gameplay mechanics into characters - I mean, this isn’t even the first talking hat in Nintendo’s history. So, Mario’s water gun in Sunshine was a talking robot called FLUDD, and in Mario 64, this wild, new-fangled invention called the camera, was given character in the form of a Lakitu camera man.

This helps to ground these ideas in the game world, and make them feel organic instead of cold, mechanical, gameplay entities. In Mario Galaxy, instead of having a user interface tell you when Mario’s spin move has recharged, you simply see the Luma under Mario’s hat pop up. Oh, and while we’re talking about game design impacting aesthetics, I should point out that many of the game’s kingdoms were designed specifically to house the new gameplay mechanics that Nintendo’s designers came up with.

Motokura told The Verge, “when we had all of those different prototypes, those different play ideas, we also started thinking, ‘Well what kind of location can this fit into? What kind of location would be fun for this play idea?’ For example, if we came up with a gameplay idea that kind of required ice or snow, maybe a slippery surface, we would have to think that would be fun to use in a place that had ice or snow.”

Now these kingdoms work like the sandbox levels in Mario 64 and Sunshine, but at times the game feels closer to a very different Nintendo game - Zelda: Breath of the Wild. These two games are dotted with intriguing sights and shapes, teasing you to explore every nook and cranny as you satisfy your curiosity about what’s over the horizon, or around the corner. Still, Mario’s stages are definitely more densely packed than Zelda’s sprawling Hyrule.

Probably the biggest change from 64 and Sunshine to Odyssey though, other than the frankly ludicrous increase in the number of collectibles, is that collecting a moon doesn’t shunt you out of the level and back to a hub world. You just keep going, letting you bounce around the level, sniffing out more collectibles

and secrets. Now, there’s one final thing that Nintendo likes to do in a game that’s so heavily built around a single mechanic. And that’s to take it away. They give you a wonderful new gameplay tool that’s powerful and adaptable - and then suddenly remove it and see how you get on without it. The same thing happens in Odyssey, when you have to hang up your hat to explore certain areas. And there are also enemies who don’t take kindly to being captured, like these explosive enemies who grab your hat and then fly back at Mario, or piranha plants that eat Cappy and you must stomp on the plant’s head to let your hat free.

These might force you to use Mario’s other abilities, or just add a surprising new wrinkle to the way the game has worked up until this point.

So, I think that’s Mario Odyssey in a nut shell. A game this good doesn’t just come out of nowhere, but it’s the product of applying Nintendo’s most treasured design philosophies when it comes to level design, difficulty, game mechanics, and more. Stick them altogether and you get a game filled with endless curiosity, clever mechanics that are explored to their full extent, an incredibly fun and versatile movement system, and a certain sense of cohesion that ties everything together and makes even the most weird and disparate elements feel like part of a greater whole.

Mario Odyssey ain’t perfect, but it’s certainly one the very best games of the year and anyone interested in Nintendo’s design would be smart to dive deep into this game’s many treasures.

Hey thanks for watching! GMTK is Patreon-powered and these are my top tier supporters. Just a reminder that every week, on a Wednesday, I’m live-streaming games here on YouTube. We’ve played Mario Odyssey, Shadow of War, Heat Signature, Cuphead, and more. It’s a good time with a nice group of viewers watching and chatting about the game so make sure you’re subscribed to the channel so you get a notification when I go live.

Cheers.