Are there ANY other "proactive" platformers besides Sonic?

I recently redownloaded Super Meat Boy on Steam, and it's a good game. I love it. But there's something missing from it. It's something that basically no platformer besides Sonic gives you: a feeling of freedom and a physics engine that lets you fly around and do awesome stuff.

You know, the more I play the Genesis triology of Sonic games, the more I realize how they are different from every single platformer ever made. All other platformers are "reactive": they throw you into a level, with a strict set path with few deviations, and expect you to figure out that path and follow that as cleanly as possible, reacting to any obstacles.

Sonic 1, 2, and 3&K, however, are the exact opposite: they are "proactive", meaning that they throw you into huge massive levels with tons of ways to get to the end. The levels are more like massive playgrounds that let you do whatever the hell you want, and honestly, I feel, personally, that this style is objectively superior to the "follow our path or die" method other platformers use.

But literally every other platformer is reactive. Besides Sonic, I cannot name a single platformer game or series ever made that was proactive, except for Freedom Planet I guess, but that was a fucking Sonic fangame at first. Even in the currently-going boom of indie platformers, ALL of them are reactive, with Super Meat Boy pretty much being the epitome of that style.

On a more minor note, the Genesis triology is also like the only series which actually has a physics engine and uses slopes and curves frequently. Other platformers whenever they use slopes just hack a way through them and never incorporate them into the level design; for instance Super Meat Boy's engine completely goes nuts on anything but small slopes and cannot handle curves at all (the creators' response to this for the level editor was "well don't use them then").

This seriously mystifies me. Why has NO ONE ELSE tried to make a proactive platformer? You'd think with Sonic being one of the most famous platformer series ever, on equal relevance as Mario (which is reactive), people would try to follow in its footsteps. But no, everyone follows in Mario's footsteps. If I want a proactive platformer, I gotta play the Genesis triology or fangames like our lovely Sonic Robo Blast 2 here.

I'm learning coding right now (just a complete beginner though). I think after I get out of college (I'm a high school senior now) I'm gonna try coding my own engine for a proactive 2D platformer that tries to follow in Sonic's footsteps, because goddammit the lack of them is bugging me. I have a few ideas for how it would work and sketched out some level design concepts and maps, but that's neither here not there

Because it's easier to make reactive platformers, thereby more profitable. This isn't a very justifiable reason, but it's just what happens.

Actually, I think this whole 'proactive' thing you're describing is an illusion created by the mechanics of the game. If you get right down to it they're not different from what you've described as 'reactive' games. They have multiple paths in the same level, but they're still set paths with obstacles you have to react to, lava pits you have to ride blocks across, seesaw things you have to jump on, water slides, etc, etc. It's certainly far from doing 'whatever you want'.

Now what Sonic games do have, is flow. The obstacles are specifically designed so that they don't stop you in your tracks but let you move right into the next thing and make the 'gotta go fast' thing possible. The flow though creates the illusion of freedom because you don't feel like anything's stopping you and you're just able to do what you want, when in reality the level design has been controlling you the whole time which is impressive in itself.

Reactive platformers are a lot easier to design, because it ensures that the player is only going to be coming from one direction, and as such obstacles can be designed with that in mind. You can create branching paths to reduce linearity, but Sonic isn't even that, as you can almost fall from one path to the next. In Sonic, falling onto a lower path is sometimes a punishment. Remember Aquatic Ruins? The designers actually expect you to mind the platforming and not fall off haphazardly. If you do, you have to deal with the water.


Sonic demonstrates well on how to create a proactive platformer, but I don't think it's the only method. I think of proactivity in this context as creative freedom, hence there needs to be multiple valid user choices in the same scenario. Minecraft is a proactive game instead of reactive, due to the player's multiple movement, crafting, and item actions in any one scenario. Mario's levels are primarily reactive, but its overworlds are often proactive, especially in the case of SMB3 and SMW due to how they handle multilinearity. In fact, sometimes its abilities can make it proactive, as was the case with Mario's cape and racoon abilities, Yoshi etc.

If you were to create a shooting platformer, what you could do is design sprawling levels around weapons or abilities which open up new paths. It might be easier than creating a physics engine in the same vein as Sonic while still accomplishing basically the same objective.

---------- Post added at 11:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:04 PM ----------

Klinx the Weasel said:

Actually, I think this whole 'proactive' thing you're describing is an illusion created by the mechanics of the game. If you get right down to it they're not different from what you've described as 'reactive' games. They have multiple paths in the same level, but they're still set paths with obstacles you have to react to, lava pits you have to ride blocks across, seesaw things you have to jump on, water slides, etc, etc. It's certainly far from doing 'whatever you want'.

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I want to address this, because I don't think it's an illusion; the definition is just obscured.

Proactivity is "I'm going to go my own way." Examples of this include going in any direction in a rougelike, doing whatever in Minecraft, playing as your favorite turtle in TMNT. Reactivity is "I'm going to beat this obstacle"; all games have this, but a good example is Castlevania, which is heavy on it. In fact, I think pretty much all games have proactivity on different levels. But you're much more likely to be reactive on say, a game like Megaman, in which there's a specific order that is clearly optimal if you want to complete the game (or just beat a single level, in some cases!), even though you can proactively take any path.

Like, me personally? I'm designing a platformer shooter. You can choose your level order just like in Megaman. But I want to avoid level difficulty disparity from making the player feel like he has to take a specific order to do well. So I'll design it so that levels automatically start easy and get harder, no matter which you take. A different experience every time depending on which choices you make; still just as beatable. That's proactive encouraging.

Klinx the Weasel said:

Actually, I think this whole 'proactive' thing you're describing is an illusion created by the mechanics of the game. If you get right down to it they're not different from what you've described as 'reactive' games. They have multiple paths in the same level, but they're still set paths with obstacles you have to react to, lava pits you have to ride blocks across, seesaw things you have to jump on, water slides, etc, etc. It's certainly far from doing 'whatever you want'.

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I'm not so sure about this. Yes, every platformer has some shortcuts and alternate routes. But only Sonic from what I've seen has levels like this:









Huge, sprawling levels which you can play completely differently each time.
Holy fucking shit S3&K has huge-ass levels compared to S2

Now what Sonic games do have, is flow. The obstacles are specifically designed so that they don't stop you in your tracks but let you move right into the next thing and make the 'gotta go fast' thing possible. The flow though creates the illusion of freedom because you don't feel like anything's stopping you and you're just able to do what you want, when in reality the level design has been controlling you the whole time which is impressive in itself.

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This is actually part of what I was talking about when I meant "proactive", yeah, in Sonic you almost never feel like you have to stop and take things super slowly (though there are exceptions METROPOLIS ZONE I'M LOOKING AT YOU)

I think that really, instead of "proactive" and "reactive", you guys are really talking about how much freedom the game gives you to explore its environment. Some games, such as classic Sonic, allow you to explore the environment pretty freely, with physics that encourage experimentation and minor punishment for failures. Other games, such as Mega Man, are a lot more focused on reflex, and there's very little freedom to explore beyond just occasional secret items. Classic 2D Mario tends to operate in the middle, with linear stages that are loaded with secrets to encourage exploration, especially in the games with flight powerups. While exploration-based 2D platformers aren't as common as reflex-based ones, they definitely exist, and exploration-based 3D platformers are everywhere thanks to Super Mario 64 defining the 3D platformer genre with an exploration-based model.

I think another thing I was kind of vaguely alluding to was the physics engine. God the physics engine makes Sonic so much damn fun, especially since the slopes, curves, and loops it allows for makes the level a lot more interesting.

And of course almost no other platformer tried to have a physics engine that robust. Sigh.

Mystic said:

I think that really, instead of "proactive" and "reactive", you guys are really talking about how much freedom the game gives you to explore its environment.

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Whichever way you want to put it, I think it's basically the same thing in this context.

I think Charlie the Duck or Charlie II is kinda like a combination of 2D Mario and 2D Sonic games, but it has been a long time since I have played it.

Frostav said:

I think another thing I was kind of vaguely alluding to was the physics engine. God the physics engine makes Sonic so much damn fun, especially since the slopes, curves, and loops it allows for makes the level a lot more interesting.

And of course almost no other platformer tried to have a physics engine that robust. Sigh.

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::Refuses to plug his own game.::

No need :v:

I'm really loving SRB2's physics engine, it feels exactly what I'd expect Modern Sonic to feel like, if you didn't have boost. Sega should try something like that for the next Sonic game--I like the boost style, but this would be fun as hell (sometimes when playing Generations the highly canned physics drive me crazy, I hate how Sonic stops right after a homing attack like he's hit a brick wall, it should work like the thok personally).

However to the uninitiated SRB2-like physics are really floaty and slippery...I feel a game like that would get panned a little by people who aren't good enough to grasp the controls.

God DAMMIT when I get out of College I want to start coding my own 3D platformer engine with physics sort of like SRB2 (but with slopes and stuff). I have an idea I just need to get coding skills so I can make that idea an actual Thing(TM)

I think he was talking about wizard or possibly roly poly golf, though I don't know if I consider that a platformer :P.

Torgo said:

I think he was talking about wizard or possibly roly poly golf, though I don't know if I consider that a platformer :P.

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Yeah, Roly Poly is pretty much Sonic movement limited to spindashing around.

God DAMMIT when I get out of College I want to start coding my own 3D platformer engine with physics sort of like SRB2 (but with slopes and stuff). I have an idea I just need to get coding skills so I can make that idea an actual Thing(TM)

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Fast-moving, anything-goes physics is really hard. Sonic physics don't follow the 'rules' of real physics simulations, so you can't just toss in a physics library and let it handle it (which is what they did in Generations and why it doesn't feel right). My biggest enemy has been collision tunneling, which brings back nightmares of falling through the floor in Sonic Heroes.

2D Sonic worked alright, mainly because it was 2D in the first place, and every 16x16 block was treated like a convex object -- if you got stuck inside, you would be pushed out to the bounds of it. In 3D this is way more difficult, especially depending on the kinds of effects/behavior you want to have.

Funnily enough I just played Generations on my PC and Modern Sonic actually feels close to what a classic Sonic game in 3D would be like...when you're not boosting.

It's obviously far from perfect, but the basics are there; slopes affect your speed (though it's skewed way towards speeding you up--you lose almost no speed going UP slopes but gain tons going down) and the spin attack has really nice physics, I actually tried using it all the time instead of the homing attack. The main issues I saw were that he slows down way too quickly after letting go of the stick and he feels too much like a train--you can't really turn very well. There's a part in Rooftop Run where this is obvious--you go in a roundabout:

At the edge is a grind rail. If you try to take the turn normally at top speed, Sonic just doesn't turn well enough and ends up hitting the grind rail ANYWAY. SRB2 is miles better in this regard, Sonic can actually TURN.

Also he just doesn't get affected by the lay of the terrain enough--it's THERE, but not very much.

With some tweaking I feel it would feel similar to SRB2. But then again they abanoned that for the Lost World gameplay style...sigh. SEGA, follow the Genesis Trilogy's lead and just stick with one style and perfect it.

Frostav said:

You can't really turn very well. There's a part in Rooftop Run where this is obvious--you go in a roundabout:

At the edge is a grind rail. If you try to take the turn normally at top speed, Sonic just doesn't turn well enough and ends up hitting the grind rail ANYWAY.

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...You're supposed to drift there.

you're missing his point

Blue Warrior's got it. Yes I know you're supposed to drift there. But I was testing Sonic's ability to turn while running, and he can't really turn at all. This results in Modern Generations levels being mostly long corridors--now they're very well designed and have a lot of good areas and shortcuts and alternate paths, but Generations could never support a level like, say, Techno Hill Zone Act 2--too many turns. Ironically this is how Sonic would probably turn if he was real and going that speed, which lends credence to SSNTails' statement that they just threw a physics library into Generations and didn't tweak it much.

I wish they had just buffed the physics and not completely thrown them out.

You pretty much explained how I feel about Generations as a whole, haha. Fun game, but certain types of levels would not fit.

Other than Freedom Planet, which is pretty much similar to Sonic to an extent, I am having a hard time figuring out other games that are proactive.

Mega Man X does allow for a few instances pro-activity in a couple of the stages, but feels like it headed towards being more reactive with its level design with side paths here and there as the games went on.

The Dash ability allows for more freedom in exploration opportunities, but later games seemed to have opt for a more linear experience in stage design. The first X game felt the least linear in stage design even though there was still quite a bit of linearity.

The types of examples I am thinking of are the stages that allow you to skillfully use dash-jumping when you are wall jumping to just skip obstacles altogether, the first half of Cyber Peacock's stage from X4 comes to mind. The Mega Man Zero seemed to have improved on this greatly as the games went on, barring the last game in some instances however. The utilities in conjunction with the Dash ability helps this.

Super Mario 3D Land with the power-ups and normal abilities allow you to either get MASSIVE airtime or cover great distances. The rolling ability introduced in this game is what helped me pull this stuff off mainly.

I will try to find some more, just cannot think of too many right now.

You know, when you say something like "multiple ways to get to the goal", I start thinking more on the lines of Terraria, Risk of Rain and Mercenary Kings. I'm pretty sure this isn't what you mean, though.

Though now that you mention it, there really aren't that many platformers with the multi-path level design that Sonic boasts. Well, if you don't count Freedom Planet, that is.

The one thing that I loved doing in the old games that you can't do in the modern ones, is spin the analog control like crazy and see you character spin in circles. In generation/unleashed/colors sonic just goes a bit forward, stops, turns, forward, stops, repeat.