Streets of Red was announced for Switch earlier in the week, and at first glance, it looked like a loving tribute to the beat'em-up genre. That's definitely part of the experience, but there's something else bigger going on here. Unlike most games in the genre, Streets of Red has a permadeath mechanic, and it's right at the core of the experience. In an interview with Polygon, Secret Base developer Tobe explained how the mechanic works and why they implemented it.
”True permadeath like this might sound a little daunting at first, but the game is really designed around it. Unlike many modern beat-’em-ups that rely on grinding and leveling up ... we wanted to create something more skill-based, which allows players to improve as they learn to understand the mechanics.
Players learn to fight with style to make more cash, which they can use to purchase upgrades or a soul token to revive themselves when they die. When the team is wiped out, and you run out of soul tokens, the game ends, deleting the player’s save data completely.
We’ve spent a lot of time revisiting the classics, trying to understand what worked and what didn’t. That’s where the idea of using cash and soul tokens to revive comes from — to get players more invested in each opportunity they [have] with the game, just like when they were forking out token after token in the arcade. We reward players for effective strategies, like crowd control, and we encourage them to perform special abilities at the right time.
The best beat-’em-ups in the arcade were designed around risk-versus-reward systems that tempted the player to dash into dangerous but exciting situations where they could really flex their muscles. Knowing that you were playing with not only the life of your in-game character, but your own pocket change as well, really worked to drive up the tension. Likewise, when you got good enough at a game to play for hours on less than a dollar, it truly made you feel like a king.”
from GoNintendo
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