Item-ology: Glint of the North Stars

    One of the things I've been loving about playing through the fantastic souls-like Another Crab's Treasure is the way that a different aesthetic approach prompts me to think critically about what I'm playing from different angles. So many action role playing games of this type share the same dark trappings of ruined gothic kingdoms; it's mentally refreshing to see similar mechanics draped in colorful, cartoony art direction.
A refreshed mind wields fresh eyes, and I was struck by the fact that I hadn't really thought about how many treasure chests, item containers, and different models of loot in game worlds have quietly been replaced with a simple particle effect; shining beacons of light that efficiently say "there's something here!"

    The earliest item glint examples I can recall were in 16-bit Narrative Party RPGs of the 90s, where they usually served as a way to hint at the presence of missable/optional rewards or Easter eggs. In a sea of physical chests and containers with "lootable" and "looted" sprite states, these glimmers often had long animation cycles between appearances, making them a small challenge to spot. In today's FromSoft-inspired games, the ratio of glints to treasure chests has fully inverted, with the former taking on a consistently obvious glow, and the latter receding into dark 3D environments, often without any scrolling shine effect to call them out. As such, the contents and placement of these containers have also flipped, with chests containing optional bonus loot and glints often marking key items that designers don't want players to miss.
This doesn't mean most glint-signposted items are high value though, quite the opposite; one of the purposes of loot containers in games is to obfuscate what a reward even is prior to obtaining it. Part of that is to increase anticipation; we wrap presents for similar reasons, but it also deceptively flattens the perceived value of what's inside...

Like so many spiky or hostile design patterns that FromSoft games popularize, ridiculously best-in-class level design helps ground and contextualize their relationship to player inputs and feelings. Carefully shimmying and jumping to reach a little glowing dot on the end of a precarious beam, only to receive a consumable worth less currency than a few seconds of combat drops can feel like an awful joke, but if they could see what it was in advance, players might not even bother. There's value in simply knowing you collected the thing and unloading it from your mental checklist, but the process of getting you out on that ledge in the first place involves not knowing the value of all the rewards ahead of time, in stark contrast to the scattered collect-a-thons of character mascot platformers, (though I must shout out the venerable question mark block!)

    And speaking of manipulating the player, the more you dig into the advantages of representing loot in game worlds like this, the more you realize that when your character has an infinite, 'hammer-space-like' capacity to pick up and retain loot, representing STUFF as little motes of energy glosses over the absurdity of a hundred bulky swords disappearing into a character's pants while exploring!

Examining these design choices in detail while navigating Another Crab's Treasure really highlighted how tricky it is to borrow FromSoft mechanics and conventions without confronting what makes individual action-adventure games work. At first, I considered how thematically small most of the objects that your titular crab, Krill picks up are, and wondered whether it might be more immersive or satisfying to see little 3D models of barnacles, sand dollars, and alligator clips shining in the environment. However, loot needs to share physical spaces with other hot-swappable junk thanks to a clever, hermit-crab-inspired shell system, and those shells come in such a variety of shapes and sizes that being able to tell the difference between loot and a shell at a glance is critical.
    To be clear, I'm not picking on the developers of Another Crab's Treasure at all; it just so happens that Aggro Crab implemented a color-coding trick borrowed from loot games with a lot more randomization to give the player a rough idea of how exotic the reward inside the glint is, and it works well enough that I'm becoming convinced we should see a lot more experimentation around some of these patterns...

• The shape or directionality of the particle effect could hint at the class or category of item.
• Playing with the timing of pulsing or flickering glows could communicate some quality that builds over time...
• (do you need that currency now, or can you afford to let it accrue "environmental interest" so the payout is scaled to later game needs?)
• Larger/brighter or smaller/dimmer glints that are visible from different distances could give level designers the power to tightly control how difficult they are to spot...
• (it would not surprise me if FromSoft has already done this with enough subtlety that it's not well known/documented... yep. There are larger glows signifying uniqueness, they just don't make a big deal about it!) 
• Emphasizing the physicality of special matter that condenses down to energy and back as needed might add verisimilitude to why you can't generally pick up or use any of the things enemies are wielding against you.

    Now, I hear you; "this whole universal item glint business seems fine, what are you on about?" and broadly, I agree! The reason design patterns like this stick in the first place is that they work; the glints serve a clear purpose that also makes the job of handling props and assets easier.
So what's the problem? Why am I spilling all this ink questioning a clever solution to multiple problems?

Well, in short; I'm a worrywart.
I get really nervous when I realize that a convention works its way into my lexicon of best practices. Questioning why games work the way they do and challenging whether they even need to is one of those "difference between good and great design" red flags that tells me I'm losing track of why we make these things in the first place...

• The combat clarity and enemy attack tells are difficult to make out... but players have gotten used to meaninglessly large and splashy particle effects and damage numbers obscuring everything!
• This level design doesn't suggest rapid midair changes in direction/momentum... but Double Jumps are more fun! Why not triple or quadruple jumps?
• Surely there are other live service monetization strategies than maximizing FOMO, (the Fear Of Missing Out)... but Battle Passes just work!

It's easy to forget to question these things, and thus become part of what I fear is a broadly homogenizing force in the industry. Game design is a surprisingly soft discipline that's theoretically responsible for guiding us in new and novel directions, not making all video games resemble each other!

But like I said, I'm prone to worrying too much about this stuff.

In the end, the only way to feel better about catching myself out like this is the document that lies before you; no matter how few people read it, I can stave off lying awake in the dark, sifting through constellations of digital rewards for astrologically ambiguous meanings.