Author：Straw hat standing guard Ziming Wang

Contents

In 2017, when I was just an average college student, I was unable to see the cleverness of the design of this game when I played it. I recently replayed it and couldn’t help but admire the high level of game design, which made me gain a lot.

1. System Design

1.1 Sneaking Mechanism

Patrol range: Each enemy has a patrol range (see below), where in the green dotted part players must crouch to not be found, standing will be found, and the solid green part is the area where the enemy must be found. If you want to successfully infiltrate, you have to ensure that you pass through the area without being discovered by the enemy. (Of course, killing the enemy silently is also a way to sneak)

Grass and Houses: The level includes many effective grass and houses for players to cover their tracks. Enemies will not check the grass and houses during regular patrols, which also provides cover for players to find the time to pass the patrol. It also allows players to hide killed or stunned enemies in grass or houses in case the enemies find the body and trigger an alarm.

Alerts: Alerts are punishment mechanisms that force players to think and encourage them to sneak. Once an enemy triggers the alarm, all enemy troops around will start searching for the character’s whereabouts, will carefully search the grass and houses, and will shoot the intruder as soon as they found enemies. The alarm will also generate some enemy troops, which will be used to strengthen the area’s defenses and further enhance the difficulty of infiltration.

Visibility and Sound: The game does a better job of restoring the real-world setting. Stand tall and see far, enemies on high towers have a greater patrol range. The sound of running is much louder than crouching quietly, moving in the pool is much louder than on land, etc.

1.2 Enemy AI Mechanism Design and Character Skill Design

There are three types of enemies in the game: soldiers, straw hats and samurai: soldiers are units with only regular scouting ability, will easily leave their posts and be attracted to attention, and are easy to deal with for players; straw hats are more difficult to deal with units, they are difficult to be disturbed and will not leave their posts; samurai are the strongest enemies, they will not be easy to kill, need the character to use a pistol first and then a general attack to kill ( except for Mugen), at the same time samurai can also demolish Aiko’s disguise, sneak when you need to bypass the samurai to have a chance to succeed.

The game makes a full distinction between the three types of enemies, which also leaves a very large design space for the character design.

Hayato is a traditional ninja who can safely kill soldiers and straw hats using his mid-range throwing weapon, the shuriken. His disruption skill is throwing rocks, which can make the enemy’s detection direction change for a short time, facilitating the team to sneak around safely.

Yuki can set traps and attract soldiers to scout through his whistle so that he can safely kill enemies. Compared to others, Yuki is very good at dealing with heavily patrolled areas, but because tactical skills and disruption skills need to be used in conjunction, Yuki is only good at dealing with a small number of patrolling enemies.

Mugen is a traditional samurai, he is the only character who can kill samurai with just his general attack and pistol. Also, his tactics can kill all non-samurai enemies in a small area in one hit. His disruption skill, on the other hand, releases a bottle of sake, attracting soldiers to come closer to pick it up, thus killing enemies in a safer way (similar to Yuki’s skill, but much weaker. In the mid to late levels it is often necessary to work with Yuki’s disruption skill in order to lure enemies to the safety zone we have designed).

Aiko is a traditional female ninja, her tactical skill is to release smoke so that all enemies in small area visibility is reduced, and thus quickly through the enemy detection. Interference skill is camouflage, after obtaining the costume can be disguised, all soldiers and straw hat enemies will not find Aiko, and Aiko can talk to these enemies so that they have a long time vision direction change.

Master Takuma is a weapon inventor who can use a sniper rifle to silently kill enemies. The tactical skill is to throw a grenade that can directly blow up all enemies within a certain range. Interference skill is to release a raccoon, the raccoon can make a barking sound to attract soldiers within a certain range (similar to Aiko’s disguised dialogue, although the raccoon can only attract soldiers, but can also briefly attract the attention of the straw hat, samurai, can provide opportunities for other characters to sneak)

In addition to the difference in skills, Hayato, Yuki, and Aiko are athletic and can climb vines or use hooks and locks to fly up to the eaves (high places that are not easily detected by enemies) and can assassinate enemies from high places; Infinite can pick up two enemy corpses at the same time and move faster than other characters when carrying corpses; Master Takuma is very loud when moving because he has a wooden leg and cannot carry corpses (the character usually kills key sentries at high clicks)

1.3 Illumination and Footprint Mechanism

In order to increase the difficulty of sneaking, the game adds the mechanism of light and footprints: the visibility of the enemy in the dark is low, but one can clearly see the players around the flame, players who want to sneak through, must extinguish the flame or detour around the dark area (the enemy will take the initiative to rekindle the torch of extinguished flame, the character can use this mechanism to lure the enemy to come to light the fire, so as to safely solve the enemy). Characters walking in the snow will produce footprints, footprints can be observed by the enemy, if you can not leave the area in time is likely to be detected by the detection of the enemy to trigger an alarm (of course this will also provide a deliberate means of leaving footprints to lure the enemy to a dead end safe solution).

To sneak into the core, additional light and footprints of the scene mechanism, increasing the difficulty of the level of the strategy, but also to provide new sneaking ideas, the first play will have a lot of failures, but if you can follow the game guidelines to open the mind, you will be able to open up.

1.4 Shadow Tactics

Players can configure behavior for multiple characters at the same time and have them perform this preset behavior at the same moment to achieve a silent kill/stalking. Just because the characters have their strengths, when encountering difficult levels, players must use their current roles and resources to think of the optimal solution to the problem.

2. Level Design

2.1 Fully Exploit the Capabilities of the Combat Role

I think the Kanazawa attack and defense battle is the best-designed level in the game: in the first part of the level Hayato and Mugen, Yuki, and Master Takuma are divided into two groups, allowing players to attack Kanazawa Castle from two directions. In this case, Hayato and Mugen will encounter individual soldiers on patrol (handled by Hayato), straw hats standing opposite to each other (handled by Hayato’s hand sword or Mugen), and samurai (handled by Mugen); while Yuki and Master Takuma will encounter soldiers standing within shouting range of the enemy (handled by Yuki), and enemies on the city and rooftops (handled by Master Takuma). In the second part of the level, the four of them converge and work together to deal with the samurai of Yishi, with Hayato handling the straw hat standing guard, Yuki dealing with the soldiers on patrol, Mugen carrying the explosives and fighting the samurai, and Master Takuma detonating the explosives to defeat Yishi. Level terrain, enemy type settings to the number of enemies set to give full play to the ability of each combat character, a variety of skills between the cooperation of players shouted enjoyably.

2.2 Open-ended Puzzles

Although the skill design of the game’s characters is very impressive, a small number of their skill roles still overlap (Hayato’s interference skills with Aiko, Mugen, and Yuki). This problem is particularly evident in the level of Lord Shadow’s death: the mission objective of this level is to kill and obtain Lord Shadow’s corpse. Although all five people are in battle Master Takuma is not too versatile (Master Takuma’s birth point is located at the top of the mountain, to get down the mountain need to climb the vines, however, he does not have this mechanism), can only use the only three shots to snipe the enemy at the sentry tower from high places. The remaining four people have overlapping skills, resulting in the awkward experience of “A+C and B+C” shadow tactics can pass patrols, while “A+B+C” will only do better.

When I realized that the experience would not be very good if the level allowed all five characters to fight, the game eliminated my concerns through the plotting.\

3. Plot Design

3.1 Mugen’s Friends

All four characters in the game have established a deep friendship with Mugen, an asset brought about by his charisma. Mugen will see Hayato as his best friend, and he will share information to seek advice; will save the villagers to the credit of Yuki alone so that she no longer failed to deliver information and blame herself; will appreciate and praise Aiko even if she is lowly; will joke with the optimistic Master Takuma lamenting that the years are unforgiving.

3.2 Hayato is No Longer a Ninja, Mugen is Still a Samurai

A samurai is supposed to be loyal and obey the general’s orders to the death. But when he saw that his friends were about to be killed, he had to choose to give up his samurai spirit and protect his precious friendship.

A samurai who loses his samurai spirit is equal to losing his dignity. Even though he was ashamed of the general but Mugen not regretful, he protected his friends and cut himself open to preserve the last samurai dignity.

Mugen’s death enraged Hayato, and even with his ninja training, he could not control his emotions. He is bent on cutting off the head of the General’s brother and nephew to avenge Mugen’s death. At this point, Hayato has long since ceased to be the ruthless ninja who gets paid to do his job, and he is Mugen ’s friend, infected by his values - to live up to the mission in his heart.