Just a small correction: torches in terraria don't actually "keep enemies at bay", the only effects they have are lighting things up, allowing you to make housing (which I guess counts as keeping enemies at bay), affecting your luck, and summoning the torch god.
I appreciate a fire level that isn't simply "don't touch fire, don't interact with fire". Whether that be extinguishing the fire with a new ability, or finding a way through it rather than exclusively around it, it's nice to have some level of interaction with the main elements of a level, even fire. Fire is a good pathblocker, but it can also be so much more!
That description of "don't touch fire, don't interact with fire" can make it almost interchangeable with a poison level, for example. Swap lava for poison and you have a similar concept with a different paint job
Or that one area early in Final Fantasy 13 with the frozen exploding fire/water crystals. It didn't have much gameplay purpose, but it was one of the coolest-looking environments I've ever seen in a game.
Minor nitpick: Terraria doesn't stop monsters from spawning near torches. In fact, torches do almost nothing aside from illuminate the environment. A light source is required for NPC housing, you can get a luck buff when using certain torches in certain places, and there's a one-time event you can trigger by placing an absurd amount of torches in a tiny area. That's it. You can count the gameplay mechanics they involve on one hand with room to spare. It looks very similar to Minecraft so I understand that a lot of people assume that what's true of one game is true of the other, but they're very different once you actually get down to the gameplay mechanics.
Exactly, for those wondering how enemy spawns can be stopped. You can either: - Create a village with NPCs that will stop most enemy spawns (with the exception of invasion events). - Or, Player-placed walls. This means that walls that are automatically generated by the game won't stop enemy spawns, since they have a different ID than the ones placed by players. There's other things you can do to prevent spawns (with Lava for instance) to prevent spawns, but those are the two most reliable and accessible methods.
I was just gonna come here and mention that! Terraria gets conflated with Minecraft so dang often that people don't seem to realise that they're fundamentally very different genres of game; they may both be blocky sandboxes but Terraria isn't a survival game (except in the Don't Starve crossover seed but I feel like that doesn't really count), it's an action-adventure game. I feel like a better example to have used of Terrarian fire being a nice helpful tool would've been campfires and fireplaces buffing life regen when the player is near them, or torches and related light sources being needed for NPC housing. Would've really emphasised that whole "fire = safe and cosy" thing :)
Don't forget how they update the games. MC is very methodical (often in a bad way) while Terraria is fucking nuts, where you won't know what the devs will add, and they also accept community ideas, even if they are hilariously stupid, such as the dirt pet.
@@JamesTDG You could also look at that as the opposite given that mods exist. If I want crazy bs items I can download a mod not bloat the game with a ton a jokes and media references that break the already little immersion there is into the game's world. Orginal Minecraft mobs have a style (Ghast, Allay, Guardian, Enderman) while half the Terraia mobs are just references to other games and movies
Tropical Freeze actually does have a narrative through-line for its fire level. In the level immediately previous, one of the hazards is frequent lightning strikes, and you can even see it on the world map. What happens when you mix lightning with dry savannah grass?
Narrative through line isn’t being able to explain why things happen, it’s why the author made those things happen. How it connects to the rest of the story. (Maybe. This is a term invented by an acting coach that was co-opted by writers. It actually has no formal definition. Acting through-line meant why the characters do what they do, with regards to their overarching plots, rather than in any one scene.) If there’s a motif of cycles/rebirth in the levels, there’s a narrative through line here, maybe. Sometimes you just want cool fire hazards, though. Very reasonable. Frame it through a lightning storm, why not. (Sonic levels are weirdly consistent for being built with an environmentalist throughline, as a platformer-level-theme example. Easy Green level-> deadly circus.)
Tropical freeze levels might be some of my favorites, I mean c'mon you're platforming through one level where the land is getting ripped apart by tornadoes one minute and fighting a polar bear on top of a giant grape juice bowl the next
I like the occasional mixup where fire is sort of a cleansing force, be it like, literally burning corrupted areas or reforging something into something stronger. It's a nice positive spin on a commonly "bad/evil" associated element.
5-31-23 May I add an example? Five Nights at Freddy's! Fire is used to clear "Remnant", spiritual energy. It acts as a cleansing force, especially in the ending of "Pizzeria Simulator". "This is where your hell begins, so don't keep the devil waiting."
One thing that's notable with fire levels between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is that for me they solved that exact problem of having some kind of outfit that acts as a "magical AC" as you called it. This is because they have several outfits and recipes in TotK that give you an attack boost depending on what the current weather conditions are. Which means now I actually engage with the cooking mechanic (which was the whole point of these weather conditions) a lot more because I want that attack boost by wearing those armour sets.
It's especially neat since you can only have one cooking effect at a time so before you get all the armor there will be times where you have to choose between better attack or better survivability.
I really dig the use of high temperatures in subnautica. At first, staying near hot areas damage you. After some time, you upgrade both with your dive suit and vehicles to resist the heat. Near the end of the game, you can actually use the heat sources as powerplants that give you energy to power vehicles and bases. I think it gives a very nice sense of progression.
Yup. Went back to it recently and actually took a risk to build a thermal power generator for my base, even though I don't have the best dive suit yet. Gave it an extra level of danger that I appreciate.
Faj'ro Temple in Crosscode is an extremely good fire dungeon! It makes full use of the interactions between water, ice and fire. You can even evaporate water into steam to power machines! Crosscode is a game that does elements perfectly.
Minor spoiler alert: I always loved the running gag how nobody knows what element wave is lol, and yet the otherworldly nature of wave perfectly fits in during its puzzles since most of Wave's solution requires you to think out of the box
The Asphodel level in Hades is such an excellent fire level. Yes, the lava hurts you, but your enemies as well. It both functions as a thing to avoid and a weapon. Some enemies create small lava pool forcing you to keep moving. The boss in a skeletal hydra living in the lava, so you actually have to be qucik if you wanna hunt it. All in all, great fire level.
what makes it extra fun is the fact that the best god powerset to use for pushing enemies into the lava is Poseidon with his knockback so the synergy could even kind of count as a "water mixing with fire" type of scenario.
EM2 may be the fastest way to deal with Lernie, but having so few places to stand makes using the sword and fists especially dangerous. Really have to have a specific build in order to minimize the threat...
NPCs are a pretty large factor. If all they do is walk around randomly or stand in place waiting to hand out quests, the town will feel artificial. If they have some kind of schedule and they do various activities, like eating, working, playing and talking with others, the town will feel more alive.
It's also important to make the world look truly lived-in. One thing that always impressed me about Shenmue 1 and 2 is all their little true-to-life details. Houses can look a little banged up, pieces of set dressing are knocked out of place, bad areas of town look rough, etc. It's all a bit messy, and that level of detail is particularly impressive for a 6th gen game.
I like how some games mix in Fire with Ice elements, like Celeste, Crypt of the Necrodancer and Blaster Master Zero 2. For a moment, it's a fire level, and the next moment, it all became an ice level. Sometimes, both elements interact with each other too.
Ironically enough, despite fire being used in Tales of Symphonia to indicate the destruction of Iselia that the mayor uses as a reason to banish Lloyd and Genis, giving them a reason to pursue Colette in her journey, the actual fire level, Ifrit's Temple, doesn't have any hazards related to fire. Aside from lighting some candles with the Sorcerer's Ring with fire, all you do in that temple is push some blacks to reach the candles and some chests.
Always appreciated how the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time used fire in a lot of different ways, like how Keese can fly into the fire to become Fire Keese or pushing blocks onto lava geysers to ride them up, plus I got the version with the original choir. A good fire level will have enemies who have adapted to their environment and become entirely new threats, making the level feel that much more distinctive. Although it would be funny to have some villains arrive there to challenge the protagonist only to find themselves unprepared to take the heat.
One aspect of fire in games that I haven't seen implemented anywhere yet is a fire's need to breathe, require the player to either escape before the fire uses up all of the air, find an alternative source of air like an air mask, or find some way to suffocate the flames
Celeste's core is also a great fire level(and an ice level too). In hot mode the level feels more dangerous and paced faster, often using coreblocks and conveyors to get high speeds or dash spam to dodge flaming hazards. In cold mode things are usually slower and more methodical(at least until you get to the rising lava/ice part). Through the level managing the core mode is important, and you have to react to the changes the new core mode brings. The music even adapts to the changing environment
I remember one level in a Spellforce 2 campaign, a strategy game, which had an interesting ice map with fire as a central part as you had to escort a group of civilians from a fortress to a portal at the other end of the map. The catch of the matter was that there was a terrible blizzard in the area and all the civilians and the soldiers escorting them would freeze if they stay out too long, however there was small camps with fires along the path. Your heroes and your faction units were immune to the freeze, meaning you had to split off your group, having your heroes move forward to clear the path to the next checkpoint where they could heal up again while your soldiers had to stay back and defend the civilians from enemies.
I've recently replayed original Metroid Prime, and holy cow, the Magmoor Caverns were genius. Fire / lava there is mainly used as an obstacle, but as you get more abilities, you can navigate it more easily and convenient. You need "AC Suit" to explore it in the first place, but it's still tough. Platforms are small and getting out lava is difficult if you fall in, because you partially sink in it. To reach some areas you need to traverse tunnels / rails in Morph Ball form. And monsters (especially the 'fire snake') block and push you around and take a lot of hits to get rid of. Then you get the Space Jump (double jump in Prime) and can skip some tricky platforms and can save yourself from a bad fall. Then you get Ice Beam and can delete most of enemies there. Then you get Grapple Beam and can skip some platforming you already did before entirely. And when you return with Gravity Suit you can just plow through and jump out of lava in any spot because liquid doesn't slow you anymore. That way you can skip some Morph Ball-detour tunnels. You still take some damage but at that point you have so much health it's minor inconvenience. It might sound like game systematically trivializes this area as you progress, but imo, it makes you feel like you're overcoming a hostile environment to the point you're comfortable there lol
Volcanic areas in Monster Hunter games force you to bring consumables or wear heat-resistant gear to stave off ambient heat damage, and they feature lava and geysers that can damage you if you're not careful. Those volcanic areas also tend to be the best places to mine in Monster Hunter games, too, being where you'll find valuable minerals, talismans, and ancient weapons you can restore.
4:58 Another thing to add is the following entries for the GBA where the pillars only appear if you step on them. But they count as trap tiles, meaning that Thieves, Assassins and Rogues are able to disable them. No, I don't get how either.
Some of my favorite fire levels are the Rollercoaster level in New Super Mario Bros Wii, Grumble Volcano in Mario Kart Wii and Lava Landing in Kirby's Epic Yarn.
Lava Reef Zone is one of the best imo, it being the beggining of the climax of Sonic 3 and Knuckles is really clear from the visuals (the death egg in the background getting closer and closer), the epic OST and it being a fire theme level which raises the tension. The second act switching to a cooler crystal/obsidian cave only for it to switch back to Lava to fight the boss makes it stand out even more.
When you were talking about fire and water, I was hoping for a little shoutout to Minecraft and how the different interactions between water and lava can create either cobblestone, stone, or obsidian. Additionally, there's an interaction between lava and a certain ice block that create smooth basalt. This mechanic can be used in a lot of fun ways, whether it's simply to make a lava pond or lake crossable or in a more complex way to build structures like Nether portals, cobblestone/basalt generators, etc. And speaking of that... the Nether! A whole dimension based around that threat of fire and lava. Very cool stuff imo! I know Minecraft doesn't necessarily have "levels" per se, but it is definitely a cool example of various ways to use fire and lava to great effect.
Crash and Burn from Wrath of Cortex is a good example of implementing fire mechanics without adding an entire new system. The level is an ascending spiral up the side of a volcano, and the farther you go, the more fire-based obstacles you have to contend with. It really feels like you're slowly turning up the heat, and it's a notable high point in a game that doesn't have many of those.
You could also add fire as an abstract tool, RPGs will always use fire weapons and spells to put enemies on fire to harm them over time with them doing nothing about it (most of the time), or also mention how some levels are not on fire but the enemies are and your goal is to stop them from spreading the fire, basically the zombie variant for places instead of people.
Very interesting! Thought I might share some thoughts of my own. In my own game, I have a core mechanic where you change your state of matter to gain different skills. Cloud form lets you jump higher, and ice form allows you to freeze lava. For fire levels in particular, I've had to design them almost completely differently from most games since the level's temperature affects your state of matter. Sometimes, it's beneficial to stand near the lava to turn into cloud form so that you can jump higher while in other situations, you want to stay in ice form so that you can freeze a path across. So basically, lava is both something you need to actively progress as well as something you want to be careful not to touch. Essentially, a level's theming and environment can be heavily influenced by what your character's abilities are. I think the best levels are masters of integrating an aesthetic theme with how it plays.
While not a fire level, I love how in Shadow of the Colossus, one of the Colossi was actually afraid of fire so you would light a torch and make the beast cower as it moves back. The minute it went out, it went agro so hard. Lol Such a great game.
Actually you can blow out the fire wall in Torch Man's stage, use a powered up Tundra Storm and it gets blown out and you can do those sections without worry of OHKO
Fire levels are... a bit tricky. If asked what my favourite dedicated fire levels would be, I honestly don't know what to tell you. I feel like a lot of fire levels have very similar concepts, focusing on hazards, very very frequently set in some volcanic area with tons of instant-death lava everywhere, and more often than not coming in around the lategame. It's an inherently daunting level archetype, after all. And naturally, they are also very red, orange and brown most of the time, the colours most commonly associated with fire itself or volcanic rock. I can't say I care a whole lot for the usual contenders. Fire, in my opinion, is at its best mechanically when its elemental chemistry is being explored rather than just being a kind of barrier over and over. Tonal shifts might be one of the most effective uses of fire in general, though. Only considered it due to the video, but yeah, a fire-themed scenario is remarkably often the setting of a game's narrative turning point. Suddenly, it's no longer all fun and games, now there's real stakes and urgency. ...I guess it is actually quite a common trope, now that I think about it, but I suppose it's popular for a reason. Let's see, some other potentially interesting fire concepts that come to mind: cooking, festival (one with like firedancers and stuff), fireworks, glass, smithing, steam...
Fire can be used to create mazes, too. The example of a burning village can make a rescue mission where you have to dodge the flames in order to free civilians from a burning house. And the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time had a room before the mid boss where several paths were blocked by a fire wall that appears as soon as you approach it, making a deadly surprise if the player is not careful.
Stage 1-2 in ULTRAKILL is a very well executed fire level. It starts off with a similar feel to 1-1, that being a beautiful yet obviously and incessantly fake landscape meant to portray the first layer of hell. The music is calm, and some basic enemies are there to shoot at. Many doors are locked by skulls, so the player knows there will be backtracking. A bit after going into one of the indoor areas and picking up a skull, you find a pit of gore that you did not make, that is also on fire. At this point the music stops to let you know something is wrong. After backtracking to the starting room, you find that everything is on fire. The music starts back up, this time being an awful ringing. The contrast between this and the rest of limbo has severe dramatic effect, and you will need to experience it for yourself to understand it. At this time, the game introduces you to street cleaners. They are a robotic enemy that attacks using a flamethrower, they are incredibly dangerous up close but can't do much at long range. The room and some of the rooms after are structured like playgrounds for you to learn and understand them, featuring verticality and large areas. I will never forget them breaking through the wall right after picking up the second skull, that certainly exists to teach the player the hard way if they did not get the memo that they are dangerous up close earlier. The level finishes itself off by going back indoors and testing your knowledge of street cleaners by putting you in a smaller, yet still vertical arena with street cleaners and several other enemies, perfectly wrapping up the level in a short and sweet way whilst accompanied by early ultrakill's signature breakcore music.
I greatly enjoy the Sprawl area of Darkest Dungeon 2. A great, enlightened city that has been ransacked and burnt to hell by fire-worshiping cultists as a response to the end of the world, and the Fanatics do a lot with the fire theming. Most Fanatic enemies have an Ignite move they can use. It empowers them and gives them new, more dangerous attacks. Pit Fighters use every turn a move called Accelerant, which makes it faster and increased the amount of Burn DOT it can add. Imolatists can Ignite other enemies ahead of time, meaning they don't have to waste their turn using the move, and can even set fire to corpses to heal their allies. The whole theming makes fighting them basically trying to put out a fire before it gets to big. The longer they're around, the more dangerous they become, till everything goes out of control.
I really like Crisis City on Sonic Generations, both acts are really interesting, at least going to the end of them. While in the Act 1 you have the Tornado that insta-kills you, then you get slighly pushed by it and my favorite, how the tornado is carrying the goal post. And the Act 2 how on the 2D section you have Lava geisers that you have to stomp on them and finally, the tornado at the end throwing you some cars on a speed section
In one section of Dark Cloud 2 you have to build a city at the base of an active volcano. There's a Fire Storm raining ash everywhere, so you can't build anything unless it's brick, stone, or metal. You can stop the Fire Storm by going through the area's dungeon, but you can't actually get to it until you've built enough of the city already that someone in the future can create a fix specifically for the Fire Storm (yay time travel shenanigans).
Ori’s fire level and then sequence near the end was a really good mechanical and then narrative fire. The level itself really pushes your abilities to their limit as there is hardly any safe ground. You are forced to adapt. Then despite feeling easier than the tREe (shudders), the narrative of the forest burning was much more tense. I think it was so effective because it threatens your entire journey’s work to restore the forest. It really creates the tipping point of the climax.
Sometimes, you can have that immunity to the heat be reserved to certain characters, acting as a difficulty mode, like in Sonic Rush Adventure's Sky Babylon level, which you can play either as Blaze the Cat whose fire powers prevent her from being burned or as Sonic where you actively have to dodge that fire.
Now that we have videos on Fire and Ice levels, I think a water level video would be pretty good. A lot of people seem to dislike them for their slow pace but some games do them really well. You could also talk about the underlying threat of giant sea monsters which everyone seems to like (or be terrified of)
So what really annoys me from a storytelling perspective is that everyone forgets that fire can be a symbol of KNOWLEDGE. Humanity's ability to harass and use fire not only showed our ability to move past our fear of something beyond our comprehension but marked the moment we evolved from a mindless beast ruled by instinct into an intelligent creature capable of understanding the rules of the universe. Fire's symbol of power is meant to come from the fact that knowledge equals power and not just from its destructive power. Speaking of fire's destructive power it also annoys me that people always show that change in a negative light (aka something you love is burning down) but they never even try to show that change in a positive light. Maybe that home you lived in was a bad place, something toxic that you couldn't escape from and now the fire burning it down gives you a new start? Change doesn't always have to be negative.
(Long comment, be warned) For me, fire levels are usually either the best or worst levels a game has to offer, with very little inbetween. Some are tense, exhilerating, fun and often climactic stages, and others are nondescript lakes of lasagna. Redgar Forbidden Lands in Kirby and the Forgotten Land is probably one of my favourite fire worlds so far (and I swear I tried my hardest to not use KatFL as an example again, because literally every level in that game is my favourite ever). Some fun fire mechanics, with dynamic level design, and even a sort of narrative throughline. The first few levels take place in a ruined city, destroyed by what appears to be an active volcano. Flaming rocks rain down from the sky like meteors, as the lower platforms sink into the lava. Your path is also obstructed by pools of lava on the ground, which you can clear out with the Water-Balloon Mouth - as well as destroy the flaming rocks as they come down, which you actually need to do to complete one of the missions. As it is also the final world, the music and atmosphere are tense and climactic, and you even re-fight all the members of the Beast Pack here. Fire is portrayed as a formiddable hazard. Man's oldest foe. But as you progress, you see that even though the fire has destroyed elements of civilisation before, the inhabitants of this new world have also been able to harness it for their own benefit. The third level, Burning Churning Industry, sees you traversing through a geothermal power plant, where the fires of destruction have become the fires of industry, powering the machinery that both opposes you as a hazard, and can benefit you if you know how to work with it. Though the fire isn't as prominent in the actual gameplay here, its presence is still felt, as it is portrayed as the underlying fuel that gives the environment life. Man's greatest tool. And of course, capping it all off is the boss fight against Forgo Dedede. The regular fight is pretty good on its own, but the Phantom variant found in the postgame level Forgo Zone goes hog-wild with the fire theming. It mixes the standard fight with the hazards found in the earlier levels, and even has him tipping the arena into the lava, making it more than just a set-dressing. One last thing I should mention is how Lab Discovera being connected to the power plant in Redgar caps off the narrative throughline of this world. It represents science, the study of the world around us and how it works, and using that knowledge for our benefit. And looking back, the discovery of fire was the beginning of that. The moment we learned how to light a fire, we started learning nature's laws, and how to use them to our advantage. Maybe I'm looking too deep into it, but Redgar Forbidden Lands as a whole tells an interesting story of how important and influential fire has been in our civilisation.
Clyde in the caldera from pac man world 2. I wrote a paragraph describing it but when I went to post it RUclips crashed and I don't want to rewrite it so basically it's a good fire level and one of the hardest boss fights I've ever done.
Love the video and the narration. You do a great job covering these concepts as always. There is one tiny thing I have to add though. You actually CAN stall the giant flame walls in Torch Man's stage in MM11. Hitting them with a power gear boosted shot from Tundra man's weapon somehow does the impossible and freezes the wall solid for a good five seconds.
Limbo /// second A burning world. is a good fire changed level. It starts out so calm and green with the beautiful song "A thousand greetings" playing, there aren't too many enemies and the enemies that are there are weak. Then you go through a few doors and end up in a hallway and the music stops. The ground is littered with burning corpses. You go through the first door again, and the entire level is on fire! The once blue projection of a sky is now dark and a bit orange, and "a complete and utter destruction of the senses" starts playing, a wonderfully frantic song that really symbolizes the state the level is now in.
Kirby Mass attack has a similar mechanic to Magma starscape in its own fire world when you get hit by fire, you can completely control the Kirbys as normal while he’s on fire, but there’s a timer until you take damage and each Kirby can take about two hits, and a couple fire attacks already deal one damage, so you gotta chuck them all into the nearest pool of water before they burn to a crisp. Also briefly shown in the video, I like how A hat in time also does well in its first ex level replacing all the water with lava, and giving you a timer before you die of heat exhaustion that can only be stopped by finding the few places of water that haven’t been replaced, or a few new spots.
Four types of fire needed in a fire level. Instant death fire:/Lava one touch you die. Eh fire: You touch it, your health goes down half a point, you blink for a few seconds. then you move on. Dance fire/lava: You don't die but your health slowly goes down as you frantically move your character to put out the flames. or your character automatically runs around only to stop back in the fire. (looking at you Mario.) Quick sand Lava: you dont die, your health slowly depletes as you sink down all the while trying to run back to a safer spot. most of the time ending with you having to wait until your characters life bar is empty or has sunken past the bottom of the screen.
I like the last part on the meaning of fire in storytelling and especially the last line was great, "this fire level is all about the destructive potential for change that fire symbolizes". When I was the narrative director for Yunoia (a game about the five stages of grief), and we defined a "problem" for Anger, we thought a forest wildfire would capture our interpretation of Anger. A desire burning so passionately that not only consumes oneself but extends to those around you. Our solution to this "problem" was a mechanic that required the player to demonstrate mastery over their fervor by staying calm when faced with adversity(wildfire) rather than feeding into the hectic situation. Theres a lot to it, but fire can have a lot of stimulating messages I think 🔥 thanks for another video design doc
It's clichéd, but i really love Angel Island burning in Sonic 3&K, simply because of how beautiful the pixel art is, and how well it uses and subverts mechanics from the earlier parts of the game, previous sonic games and even the elemental shield abilities.
I love the videos on Level Themes. They've been helping me with my work in progress game's level design, so thank you for making these. Mario Galaxy 2 has my second favorite Lava level (My first Favorite is the Luncheon Kingdom) ShiverBurn Galaxy. The first half of the level is a volcano and general Lava level, but then you hit a button and it changes everything to ice. I would love one on factory/facility levels. There are some fantastic levels like Frantic Factory (DK64), All of Portal, chemical plant zone, and even Nintendo Land's third stage of the Luigi's Mansion minigame. The aesthetic can be bustling and busy, or lonely and creepy.
I think one of the coolest fire mechanics I've seen is in Spark the Electric Jester (as well as Sonic After the Sequel) where lava works like normal, damaging you on contact, but once you get a fire shield, you can now enter the lava to find that there are more paths underneath. In addition to being really cool aesthetically, it adds a lot of tension due to the fact that getting hit even once or the shield running out means that you are now just a regular dude standing under the lava (bad). It could easily be written off as a fancy underwater section, but it could also be used as water with different properties; in Spark, water has no time limit, but these lava sections do. Maybe in another game, you swim in water but platform normally in lava. I think there's a lot of potential for a mechanic like this, especially for secret paths that reward the player for keeping their fire shield in tact. It is a bit lock-and-key-esque, but the difference is that you have to continue holding onto the key even after you open the door.
3:56 See also, Burning Rangers. I always liked Hailfire Peaks from Banjo Tooie, mixing fire and ice levels together (or any two level themes really) was always such a cool concept to me. How not to do a fire or lava level is Phantasy Star Online's Caves 1, no real fire themed enemies (Nano Dragon looks like one but doesn't breath fire), no heat related hazards of any kind, and is just a boring slough to get through. Caves 2 and 3 ditch the lava and go for a underground cave theme so they're fine. It's not like PSO couldn't do fire hazards, the quest Central Dome Fire Swirl is all about putting out fires and recusing people that are trapped. Sure, using photon based weapons to extinguish fires doesn't make a whole lotta sense but at least it's something.
One fire level that fills me with nostalgia is the burnt forest from Prehistorik Man. I remember fragile branches and using spears to make platforms in burnt trees. Weirdly soothing after a volcanic boss fight followed by running up a tree away from rising flames. I also tend to like fire levels that are just parts of factories, like Turboman from Mega Man 7 mostly being a vehicle level until a fire segment. Also Flame Mammoth in Mega Man X whose fire can get frozen by beating Chill Penguin (which would be a good topic about level completion changing other levels). This definitely makes me want to see more seemingly calming or soothing fire levels like Luncheon Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey.
Nitpick: depending on the special weapons you have access to it *is* possible to freeze the insta-kill fire wall on Torch Man's stage for a short time. Doesn't delete the problem, but it does lessen the problem.
DQXI does a neat little thing other Dragon Quest games don't with it's fire dungeon: instead of just having a lot of damaging floor lava thrown around, the dungeon is a maze of rock corridors over a pool of lava, and, sometimes, streams of flames will fly above a platform and make a rain of fire on it. It deals small damage, is not very menacing, and you probably won't get hit by it, but it's a neat little mechanic that made the place stand out to me a bit more. -It's also probably that the boss is very easy because all of his attacks are fire-related and thus using Hymn of Fire makes him do no damage at all lol-
Unrelated to level design but I'd like to take this moment to shoutout some of the best fire level *music* I've ever heard; the fire trial theme from Tales of Zestiria. Hell, all four trials have music that absolutely nail their element, but the fire trial is in a league of its own.
One of my favorite "fire" levels (it might be a bit of a stretch to call it one) is Golden Lair from Etrian Odyssey IV. You reach a snowy mountain area and find a cave that's surprisingly scorching hot, with lava enemies, pools of hot water, and these hot scales in the ground that hurt you when you get close to them. At first, you might be thinking that this is just how the cave always is, but a few things start to stand out. At a gathering point where you can find materials, you get these naturally occurring ice stakes that can destroy the aforementioned hot scales. Furthermore, the lava enemies are accompanied by identical tiny ice enemies. Eventually, you find a giant hot scale on one of the floors. Upon hitting it with an ice stake, the whole area suddenly freezes over. Pools of water are now slippery ice tiles, the smaller scales are frozen, and now the ice monsters are bigger while the lava ones are small. Upon meeting the race of people who live inside the cave, you learn that a threatening flaming lizard has invaded the cave, which is responsible for the shift in temperature. I know that fire and ice levels being combined into one is nothing new, but to me, EO4 does a great job at presenting this kind of level, and being a somewhat niche game, I figured I'd give it a shoutout here.
Rayman 2 has the excellent Sanctuary of Stone and Fire. It mostly revolves around not standing in lava, but you go about it in dozens of different ways. You start outside of the sanctuary, where there's the most solid ground - but you sling over the lava parts via purple lums. You then grab a plum to ride across the lava, transporting your mode of transport through the level as you go. There's of course some jumping challenges, webs to climb, etcetera. Lava becomes ever more present as you descend into the level, as if delving towards the earth's core. Eventually you make it to the sanctuary in the level title, which has Mayan-esque statues and traps that themselves breathe fire. The temple has a puzzle or two but is relatively short-lived by comparison, which really highlights the journey there.
Platforming with a bit more narrative beat to the fire changing the level - Sonic 3's Angel Island, where Eggman burns the zone down with a firewall (which conveniently hides a loading screen where the palette's swapped from a typical first Sonic level to a typical first Sonic level, but on fire)
Brave fencer musashiden has a good fire mechanic. You can you the water scroll to extinguish flames and travelling on lava. Later on you can use fire scroll to melt ice.
8:15 lighting up the environment doesn't influence enemy spawns at all in Terraria. The only time it's necessary to have any light is in the Don't Starve crossover seed. Light in Terraria usually serves the sole purpose of letting you see what's going on.
One of the first Rising Lava levels I played was in Cold Shadow, involving an escape from an erupting volcano. Like the MM11 level you described this was a do-or-die skill challenge, and it was unforgiving enough that I get the sense its designers were probably coming from the arcade game space where instant kills meant another quarter of profit from the kid at the machine. In general I'm pretty glad this kind of thing has fallen out of favor. "Execute on the set of buttons I tell you or lose" is fine in a rhythm game, but adventure games are supposed to feature player choice and exploration, and most of these Rising Lava levels had such a short timer that even if the game actually had multiple solutions (and most of them did not) you didn't have time to seek out alternative routes so you were usually stuck acting on instinct and/or memorization.
Even digital fire in megaman battle network makes for an epic level design. Players need to stop fire as an immediate oven bursting threat. Then need to extinguish, and maneuver around fire strategically, when inside the oven dungeon. Plus as a bonus if you grind a few fire battle chips they can help you beat woodman in the next section of the game.
Haiku was great (in general, but the fire segments too), I can't think of that many memorable fire levels to be honest. I like them, but to think of one without looking through my game selection to see if something jogs my memory, not much comes up.
Would be interesting to see a video about levels that combine fire and ice, such as the Core from Celeste, where you need to switch between the two to progress, culminating in a final escape sequence where the lava will rise until it kills you from below while the ice does so from above, and you have to constantly be moving to the next switch to keep the two in balance (and if like me you go and do a bunch of modded stuff and gain skill that way before returning for the C-side, also pace yourself to avoid getting them out of balance the other way)
I think one of the most striking uses of fire in a video game is Mother 3's first chapter, where the forest ist set ablaze by the Pigmasks, symbolising all that they stand for and kicking of the entire game's plot to fight against them.
wouldn't it be really cool if you did a version of this episode with the remaining 3 elements. Also imagine making one on about dream-levels, ethereally connected non-existences, etc. Great video!
Commenting before watch: I just finished the last of TotK's temples and felt fire was rhe best in terms of the actual dungeon itself so this is an aptly timed upload
Wario Land 4 had a great example of fire and ice with Firery Cavern. During the stage its all lava geysers and enemies that throw lava rocks at you. When you hit the frog switch the stage freezes over. The lava geysers become frozen columns that block off paths and open others. The rock throwing enemies don parkas and replace the rocks with a freezing breath attack. Overall a great level.
Surprised you didn't mention Sonic 3 & Knuckles or Sonic Mania. The former had some great narrative themes with its fire levels and the flame shield to make navigation through them easier, while the latter also had the flame shield and expanded how it interacts with the environment. Oil Ocean Zone from Sonic 2? Using the flame shield there turns the place into a fire level because oil is flammable.
I would love to see a video on unique level themes in games, whether that means unusual settings or clever twists on the usual ice/fire/water/air/etc themes. I feel like elemental themes in games have become creatively stifling in many aspects of design, but especially so when it comes to level design. I always appreciate when designers think up interesting level concepts instead of generic volcano, glacier, desert, forest, etc. levels.
It feels like every Mega Man Zero series fire level has a different take on the trope every time, and are always accompanied by a kickass track.The area zero camp from zero 4 and the volcano from zero 3 are definitely my favorites
In the game patapon, you make a small eyeball army using rhythm. In one of the levels the princess is captured by evil eyeballs and they try to lose you in the desert. Going into the desert without the rain song straight up lights your guys on fire. And the rain song doesn’t last the whole level, you need to re-up halfway through while still trying to break the cage the princess is held in. Also doing the rain song takes like 6 beats which feels like forever when your guys are on fire and your thumb has Parkinson’s from the stress.
Aside from Super Mario's castle levels, my earliest memories of a specific fire level is Sega's Aladdin Magic Carpet level in the crumbling cave of wonders 😵😄
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Just a small correction: torches in terraria don't actually "keep enemies at bay", the only effects they have are lighting things up, allowing you to make housing (which I guess counts as keeping enemies at bay), affecting your luck, and summoning the torch god.
What Makes A Great Fire Level?
Queston What If The Main Charater Is Made Of Fire
that segue was not fire
I appreciate a fire level that isn't simply "don't touch fire, don't interact with fire". Whether that be extinguishing the fire with a new ability, or finding a way through it rather than exclusively around it, it's nice to have some level of interaction with the main elements of a level, even fire. Fire is a good pathblocker, but it can also be so much more!
That description of "don't touch fire, don't interact with fire" can make it almost interchangeable with a poison level, for example. Swap lava for poison and you have a similar concept with a different paint job
@@jorgec98 that could also be basically any liquid with a different colour pallet. thats why it sucks to so lava used so basically.
Fire and ice combined into one area, like in Freezeflame and Shiverburn Galaxy, creates a very interesting atmosphere
Yeah, that's also a cool atmosphere for Lava Reef Zone in Sonic & Knuckles. Weirdly never connected those two together in my head until now.
Or that one area early in Final Fantasy 13 with the frozen exploding fire/water crystals. It didn't have much gameplay purpose, but it was one of the coolest-looking environments I've ever seen in a game.
Just remembered Mario and Luigi Dream Team also use it lmao
Hailfire Peaks in Banjo-Tooie.👍
Celeste chapter 8: the core
A chapter where the level's new gimmicks change their mechanics based if the room is in its cold or hot state
Minor nitpick: Terraria doesn't stop monsters from spawning near torches. In fact, torches do almost nothing aside from illuminate the environment. A light source is required for NPC housing, you can get a luck buff when using certain torches in certain places, and there's a one-time event you can trigger by placing an absurd amount of torches in a tiny area. That's it. You can count the gameplay mechanics they involve on one hand with room to spare.
It looks very similar to Minecraft so I understand that a lot of people assume that what's true of one game is true of the other, but they're very different once you actually get down to the gameplay mechanics.
Exactly, for those wondering how enemy spawns can be stopped. You can either:
- Create a village with NPCs that will stop most enemy spawns (with the exception of invasion events).
- Or, Player-placed walls. This means that walls that are automatically generated by the game won't stop enemy spawns, since they have a different ID than the ones placed by players.
There's other things you can do to prevent spawns (with Lava for instance) to prevent spawns, but those are the two most reliable and accessible methods.
I was just gonna come here and mention that!
Terraria gets conflated with Minecraft so dang often that people don't seem to realise that they're fundamentally very different genres of game; they may both be blocky sandboxes but Terraria isn't a survival game (except in the Don't Starve crossover seed but I feel like that doesn't really count), it's an action-adventure game.
I feel like a better example to have used of Terrarian fire being a nice helpful tool would've been campfires and fireplaces buffing life regen when the player is near them, or torches and related light sources being needed for NPC housing. Would've really emphasised that whole "fire = safe and cosy" thing :)
Don't forget how they update the games. MC is very methodical (often in a bad way) while Terraria is fucking nuts, where you won't know what the devs will add, and they also accept community ideas, even if they are hilariously stupid, such as the dirt pet.
@@JamesTDG You could also look at that as the opposite given that mods exist. If I want crazy bs items I can download a mod not bloat the game with a ton a jokes and media references that break the already little immersion there is into the game's world.
Orginal Minecraft mobs have a style (Ghast, Allay, Guardian, Enderman) while half the Terraia mobs are just references to other games and movies
@@JamesTDG Methodical and really, made inavigable thanks to the death of the Minecraft Wiki to Fandom's incompetence.
Tropical Freeze actually does have a narrative through-line for its fire level. In the level immediately previous, one of the hazards is frequent lightning strikes, and you can even see it on the world map. What happens when you mix lightning with dry savannah grass?
I mean sure, the lightning. But don't forget that the tornado literally tosses around *burning* porcupines.
@@clash_pineapple_ but how did those porcupines become burning?
Narrative through line isn’t being able to explain why things happen, it’s why the author made those things happen. How it connects to the rest of the story.
(Maybe. This is a term invented by an acting coach that was co-opted by writers. It actually has no formal definition. Acting through-line meant why the characters do what they do, with regards to their overarching plots, rather than in any one scene.)
If there’s a motif of cycles/rebirth in the levels, there’s a narrative through line here, maybe. Sometimes you just want cool fire hazards, though. Very reasonable. Frame it through a lightning storm, why not.
(Sonic levels are weirdly consistent for being built with an environmentalist throughline, as a platformer-level-theme example. Easy Green level-> deadly circus.)
Tropical freeze levels might be some of my favorites, I mean c'mon you're platforming through one level where the land is getting ripped apart by tornadoes one minute and fighting a polar bear on top of a giant grape juice bowl the next
I like the occasional mixup where fire is sort of a cleansing force, be it like, literally burning corrupted areas or reforging something into something stronger. It's a nice positive spin on a commonly "bad/evil" associated element.
5-31-23
May I add an example? Five Nights at Freddy's! Fire is used to clear "Remnant", spiritual energy. It acts as a cleansing force, especially in the ending of "Pizzeria Simulator". "This is where your hell begins, so don't keep the devil waiting."
Sky: Children of Light uses fire as a means to burn away evil plants and restores energy when you stand near it.
This is often when fire mixes with a holy or light element. It purges demons and evil energy to cleanse the area.
One thing that's notable with fire levels between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is that for me they solved that exact problem of having some kind of outfit that acts as a "magical AC" as you called it. This is because they have several outfits and recipes in TotK that give you an attack boost depending on what the current weather conditions are. Which means now I actually engage with the cooking mechanic (which was the whole point of these weather conditions) a lot more because I want that attack boost by wearing those armour sets.
It's especially neat since you can only have one cooking effect at a time so before you get all the armor there will be times where you have to choose between better attack or better survivability.
I really dig the use of high temperatures in subnautica. At first, staying near hot areas damage you. After some time, you upgrade both with your dive suit and vehicles to resist the heat. Near the end of the game, you can actually use the heat sources as powerplants that give you energy to power vehicles and bases. I think it gives a very nice sense of progression.
Yup. Went back to it recently and actually took a risk to build a thermal power generator for my base, even though I don't have the best dive suit yet. Gave it an extra level of danger that I appreciate.
Faj'ro Temple in Crosscode is an extremely good fire dungeon! It makes full use of the interactions between water, ice and fire. You can even evaporate water into steam to power machines! Crosscode is a game that does elements perfectly.
CROSSCODE MENTIONED LEZZ GOO
Can never go wrong with Crosscode!
I came to the comment section especifically to mention Crosscode. Happy to see someone beat me to it.
Minor spoiler alert:
I always loved the running gag how nobody knows what element wave is lol, and yet the otherworldly nature of wave perfectly fits in during its puzzles since most of Wave's solution requires you to think out of the box
@@awesomehazimex7410 wdym? its the element of chill vibes of course
The Asphodel level in Hades is such an excellent fire level. Yes, the lava hurts you, but your enemies as well. It both functions as a thing to avoid and a weapon. Some enemies create small lava pool forcing you to keep moving. The boss in a skeletal hydra living in the lava, so you actually have to be qucik if you wanna hunt it. All in all, great fire level.
what makes it extra fun is the fact that the best god powerset to use for pushing enemies into the lava is Poseidon with his knockback so the synergy could even kind of count as a "water mixing with fire" type of scenario.
EM2 may be the fastest way to deal with Lernie, but having so few places to stand makes using the sword and fists especially dangerous. Really have to have a specific build in order to minimize the threat...
Awesome! A suggestion: what makes a town feel alive?
Some cities and towns like Shenmue II feel amazingly real while some others just feel artificial
I believe he already did a video like that.
NPCs are a pretty large factor. If all they do is walk around randomly or stand in place waiting to hand out quests, the town will feel artificial. If they have some kind of schedule and they do various activities, like eating, working, playing and talking with others, the town will feel more alive.
We do have an "RPG town" episode
@@yotobist that's why Radiata Stories is still one of my favorite PS2 JRPG. Xenoblade also incorporate that really well. 😁
It's also important to make the world look truly lived-in. One thing that always impressed me about Shenmue 1 and 2 is all their little true-to-life details. Houses can look a little banged up, pieces of set dressing are knocked out of place, bad areas of town look rough, etc. It's all a bit messy, and that level of detail is particularly impressive for a 6th gen game.
I like how Super Mario Galaxy's Freeze Flame Galaxy combines both fire and ice elements in an interesting way.
I like how some games mix in Fire with Ice elements, like Celeste, Crypt of the Necrodancer and Blaster Master Zero 2.
For a moment, it's a fire level, and the next moment, it all became an ice level.
Sometimes, both elements interact with each other too.
Oh, like Freezeflame Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy!
@@schwa4883 Exactly!
Ironically enough, despite fire being used in Tales of Symphonia to indicate the destruction of Iselia that the mayor uses as a reason to banish Lloyd and Genis, giving them a reason to pursue Colette in her journey, the actual fire level, Ifrit's Temple, doesn't have any hazards related to fire. Aside from lighting some candles with the Sorcerer's Ring with fire, all you do in that temple is push some blacks to reach the candles and some chests.
Fyre festival wasnt a well designed level
Bruh
Epstein Island was LIT 🔥🔥🔥
My favorite part was the moloch boss with the sacrifices
Fyre festival was the environmental hazard part of the level without the rest of the level
I disagree, personally I found the whole thing to be quite entertaining indeed 😅 truly a once in a lifetime show 🤣
It wasn’t even a fire level
Always appreciated how the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time used fire in a lot of different ways, like how Keese can fly into the fire to become Fire Keese or pushing blocks onto lava geysers to ride them up, plus I got the version with the original choir. A good fire level will have enemies who have adapted to their environment and become entirely new threats, making the level feel that much more distinctive. Although it would be funny to have some villains arrive there to challenge the protagonist only to find themselves unprepared to take the heat.
One aspect of fire in games that I haven't seen implemented anywhere yet is a fire's need to breathe, require the player to either escape before the fire uses up all of the air, find an alternative source of air like an air mask, or find some way to suffocate the flames
Celeste's core is also a great fire level(and an ice level too). In hot mode the level feels more dangerous and paced faster, often using coreblocks and conveyors to get high speeds or dash spam to dodge flaming hazards. In cold mode things are usually slower and more methodical(at least until you get to the rising lava/ice part). Through the level managing the core mode is important, and you have to react to the changes the new core mode brings. The music even adapts to the changing environment
the talking fox flying a spaceship between planets in seconds i get, but a star violating the laws of thermodynamics? that's too much, man!
I can't believe you have forgotten the most infamous fire level:
*Through Fire and Flames*
I remember one level in a Spellforce 2 campaign, a strategy game, which had an interesting ice map with fire as a central part as you had to escort a group of civilians from a fortress to a portal at the other end of the map. The catch of the matter was that there was a terrible blizzard in the area and all the civilians and the soldiers escorting them would freeze if they stay out too long, however there was small camps with fires along the path. Your heroes and your faction units were immune to the freeze, meaning you had to split off your group, having your heroes move forward to clear the path to the next checkpoint where they could heal up again while your soldiers had to stay back and defend the civilians from enemies.
I've recently replayed original Metroid Prime, and holy cow, the Magmoor Caverns were genius. Fire / lava there is mainly used as an obstacle, but as you get more abilities, you can navigate it more easily and convenient.
You need "AC Suit" to explore it in the first place, but it's still tough. Platforms are small and getting out lava is difficult if you fall in, because you partially sink in it. To reach some areas you need to traverse tunnels / rails in Morph Ball form. And monsters (especially the 'fire snake') block and push you around and take a lot of hits to get rid of.
Then you get the Space Jump (double jump in Prime) and can skip some tricky platforms and can save yourself from a bad fall.
Then you get Ice Beam and can delete most of enemies there.
Then you get Grapple Beam and can skip some platforming you already did before entirely.
And when you return with Gravity Suit you can just plow through and jump out of lava in any spot because liquid doesn't slow you anymore. That way you can skip some Morph Ball-detour tunnels. You still take some damage but at that point you have so much health it's minor inconvenience.
It might sound like game systematically trivializes this area as you progress, but imo, it makes you feel like you're overcoming a hostile environment to the point you're comfortable there lol
One of my favourite level tropes is Fire-Ice, it's such a simple idea yet I always find it super cool to see in a game.
Or super hot😏
Volcanic areas in Monster Hunter games force you to bring consumables or wear heat-resistant gear to stave off ambient heat damage, and they feature lava and geysers that can damage you if you're not careful. Those volcanic areas also tend to be the best places to mine in Monster Hunter games, too, being where you'll find valuable minerals, talismans, and ancient weapons you can restore.
4:58 Another thing to add is the following entries for the GBA where the pillars only appear if you step on them.
But they count as trap tiles, meaning that Thieves, Assassins and Rogues are able to disable them. No, I don't get how either.
Some of my favorite fire levels are the Rollercoaster level in New Super Mario Bros Wii, Grumble Volcano in Mario Kart Wii and Lava Landing in Kirby's Epic Yarn.
That Starfox level is an interesting take on "Don't fly too close to the sun"
Lava Reef Zone is one of the best imo, it being the beggining of the climax of Sonic 3 and Knuckles is really clear from the visuals (the death egg in the background getting closer and closer), the epic OST and it being a fire theme level which raises the tension. The second act switching to a cooler crystal/obsidian cave only for it to switch back to Lava to fight the boss makes it stand out even more.
When you were talking about fire and water, I was hoping for a little shoutout to Minecraft and how the different interactions between water and lava can create either cobblestone, stone, or obsidian. Additionally, there's an interaction between lava and a certain ice block that create smooth basalt. This mechanic can be used in a lot of fun ways, whether it's simply to make a lava pond or lake crossable or in a more complex way to build structures like Nether portals, cobblestone/basalt generators, etc. And speaking of that... the Nether! A whole dimension based around that threat of fire and lava. Very cool stuff imo! I know Minecraft doesn't necessarily have "levels" per se, but it is definitely a cool example of various ways to use fire and lava to great effect.
Crash and Burn from Wrath of Cortex is a good example of implementing fire mechanics without adding an entire new system. The level is an ascending spiral up the side of a volcano, and the farther you go, the more fire-based obstacles you have to contend with. It really feels like you're slowly turning up the heat, and it's a notable high point in a game that doesn't have many of those.
You could also add fire as an abstract tool, RPGs will always use fire weapons and spells to put enemies on fire to harm them over time with them doing nothing about it (most of the time), or also mention how some levels are not on fire but the enemies are and your goal is to stop them from spreading the fire, basically the zombie variant for places instead of people.
Very interesting! Thought I might share some thoughts of my own.
In my own game, I have a core mechanic where you change your state of matter to gain different skills. Cloud form lets you jump higher, and ice form allows you to freeze lava. For fire levels in particular, I've had to design them almost completely differently from most games since the level's temperature affects your state of matter. Sometimes, it's beneficial to stand near the lava to turn into cloud form so that you can jump higher while in other situations, you want to stay in ice form so that you can freeze a path across. So basically, lava is both something you need to actively progress as well as something you want to be careful not to touch.
Essentially, a level's theming and environment can be heavily influenced by what your character's abilities are. I think the best levels are masters of integrating an aesthetic theme with how it plays.
While not a fire level, I love how in Shadow of the Colossus, one of the Colossi was actually afraid of fire so you would light a torch and make the beast cower as it moves back. The minute it went out, it went agro so hard. Lol
Such a great game.
Doc : "Fire hurts, fire burns, fire destroys, fire blocks your path."
Frankenstein's Monster : "Fire bad!"
Actually you can blow out the fire wall in Torch Man's stage, use a powered up Tundra Storm and it gets blown out and you can do those sections without worry of OHKO
I was about to say this, but decided to check again if someone said it
Fire levels are... a bit tricky. If asked what my favourite dedicated fire levels would be, I honestly don't know what to tell you. I feel like a lot of fire levels have very similar concepts, focusing on hazards, very very frequently set in some volcanic area with tons of instant-death lava everywhere, and more often than not coming in around the lategame. It's an inherently daunting level archetype, after all. And naturally, they are also very red, orange and brown most of the time, the colours most commonly associated with fire itself or volcanic rock. I can't say I care a whole lot for the usual contenders. Fire, in my opinion, is at its best mechanically when its elemental chemistry is being explored rather than just being a kind of barrier over and over.
Tonal shifts might be one of the most effective uses of fire in general, though. Only considered it due to the video, but yeah, a fire-themed scenario is remarkably often the setting of a game's narrative turning point. Suddenly, it's no longer all fun and games, now there's real stakes and urgency. ...I guess it is actually quite a common trope, now that I think about it, but I suppose it's popular for a reason.
Let's see, some other potentially interesting fire concepts that come to mind: cooking, festival (one with like firedancers and stuff), fireworks, glass, smithing, steam...
Fire can be used to create mazes, too.
The example of a burning village can make a rescue mission where you have to dodge the flames in order to free civilians from a burning house.
And the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time had a room before the mid boss where several paths were blocked by a fire wall that appears as soon as you approach it, making a deadly surprise if the player is not careful.
Stage 1-2 in ULTRAKILL is a very well executed fire level. It starts off with a similar feel to 1-1, that being a beautiful yet obviously and incessantly fake landscape meant to portray the first layer of hell. The music is calm, and some basic enemies are there to shoot at. Many doors are locked by skulls, so the player knows there will be backtracking. A bit after going into one of the indoor areas and picking up a skull, you find a pit of gore that you did not make, that is also on fire. At this point the music stops to let you know something is wrong. After backtracking to the starting room, you find that everything is on fire. The music starts back up, this time being an awful ringing. The contrast between this and the rest of limbo has severe dramatic effect, and you will need to experience it for yourself to understand it. At this time, the game introduces you to street cleaners. They are a robotic enemy that attacks using a flamethrower, they are incredibly dangerous up close but can't do much at long range. The room and some of the rooms after are structured like playgrounds for you to learn and understand them, featuring verticality and large areas. I will never forget them breaking through the wall right after picking up the second skull, that certainly exists to teach the player the hard way if they did not get the memo that they are dangerous up close earlier. The level finishes itself off by going back indoors and testing your knowledge of street cleaners by putting you in a smaller, yet still vertical arena with street cleaners and several other enemies, perfectly wrapping up the level in a short and sweet way whilst accompanied by early ultrakill's signature breakcore music.
Yep
Skelos Badlands from spyro is the most beautiful fire level i have ever played
I greatly enjoy the Sprawl area of Darkest Dungeon 2. A great, enlightened city that has been ransacked and burnt to hell by fire-worshiping cultists as a response to the end of the world, and the Fanatics do a lot with the fire theming.
Most Fanatic enemies have an Ignite move they can use. It empowers them and gives them new, more dangerous attacks. Pit Fighters use every turn a move called Accelerant, which makes it faster and increased the amount of Burn DOT it can add. Imolatists can Ignite other enemies ahead of time, meaning they don't have to waste their turn using the move, and can even set fire to corpses to heal their allies.
The whole theming makes fighting them basically trying to put out a fire before it gets to big. The longer they're around, the more dangerous they become, till everything goes out of control.
I really like Crisis City on Sonic Generations, both acts are really interesting, at least going to the end of them.
While in the Act 1 you have the Tornado that insta-kills you, then you get slighly pushed by it and my favorite, how the tornado is carrying the goal post. And the Act 2 how on the 2D section you have Lava geisers that you have to stomp on them and finally, the tornado at the end throwing you some cars on a speed section
The best part about Trollnado is that it appears at the moment when it was reasonable to assume that the level might end there.
I think that tornado was also carrying a car...
In one section of Dark Cloud 2 you have to build a city at the base of an active volcano. There's a Fire Storm raining ash everywhere, so you can't build anything unless it's brick, stone, or metal.
You can stop the Fire Storm by going through the area's dungeon, but you can't actually get to it until you've built enough of the city already that someone in the future can create a fix specifically for the Fire Storm (yay time travel shenanigans).
Ori’s fire level and then sequence near the end was a really good mechanical and then narrative fire. The level itself really pushes your abilities to their limit as there is hardly any safe ground. You are forced to adapt. Then despite feeling easier than the tREe (shudders), the narrative of the forest burning was much more tense. I think it was so effective because it threatens your entire journey’s work to restore the forest. It really creates the tipping point of the climax.
came for the starter town in any rpg getting torched and wasn't disappointed.
Sometimes, you can have that immunity to the heat be reserved to certain characters, acting as a difficulty mode, like in Sonic Rush Adventure's Sky Babylon level, which you can play either as Blaze the Cat whose fire powers prevent her from being burned or as Sonic where you actively have to dodge that fire.
Now that we have videos on Fire and Ice levels, I think a water level video would be pretty good. A lot of people seem to dislike them for their slow pace but some games do them really well. You could also talk about the underlying threat of giant sea monsters which everyone seems to like (or be terrified of)
So what really annoys me from a storytelling perspective is that everyone forgets that fire can be a symbol of KNOWLEDGE. Humanity's ability to harass and use fire not only showed our ability to move past our fear of something beyond our comprehension but marked the moment we evolved from a mindless beast ruled by instinct into an intelligent creature capable of understanding the rules of the universe. Fire's symbol of power is meant to come from the fact that knowledge equals power and not just from its destructive power. Speaking of fire's destructive power it also annoys me that people always show that change in a negative light (aka something you love is burning down) but they never even try to show that change in a positive light. Maybe that home you lived in was a bad place, something toxic that you couldn't escape from and now the fire burning it down gives you a new start? Change doesn't always have to be negative.
(Long comment, be warned)
For me, fire levels are usually either the best or worst levels a game has to offer, with very little inbetween. Some are tense, exhilerating, fun and often climactic stages, and others are nondescript lakes of lasagna.
Redgar Forbidden Lands in Kirby and the Forgotten Land is probably one of my favourite fire worlds so far (and I swear I tried my hardest to not use KatFL as an example again, because literally every level in that game is my favourite ever). Some fun fire mechanics, with dynamic level design, and even a sort of narrative throughline.
The first few levels take place in a ruined city, destroyed by what appears to be an active volcano. Flaming rocks rain down from the sky like meteors, as the lower platforms sink into the lava. Your path is also obstructed by pools of lava on the ground, which you can clear out with the Water-Balloon Mouth - as well as destroy the flaming rocks as they come down, which you actually need to do to complete one of the missions. As it is also the final world, the music and atmosphere are tense and climactic, and you even re-fight all the members of the Beast Pack here. Fire is portrayed as a formiddable hazard. Man's oldest foe.
But as you progress, you see that even though the fire has destroyed elements of civilisation before, the inhabitants of this new world have also been able to harness it for their own benefit. The third level, Burning Churning Industry, sees you traversing through a geothermal power plant, where the fires of destruction have become the fires of industry, powering the machinery that both opposes you as a hazard, and can benefit you if you know how to work with it. Though the fire isn't as prominent in the actual gameplay here, its presence is still felt, as it is portrayed as the underlying fuel that gives the environment life. Man's greatest tool.
And of course, capping it all off is the boss fight against Forgo Dedede. The regular fight is pretty good on its own, but the Phantom variant found in the postgame level Forgo Zone goes hog-wild with the fire theming. It mixes the standard fight with the hazards found in the earlier levels, and even has him tipping the arena into the lava, making it more than just a set-dressing.
One last thing I should mention is how Lab Discovera being connected to the power plant in Redgar caps off the narrative throughline of this world. It represents science, the study of the world around us and how it works, and using that knowledge for our benefit. And looking back, the discovery of fire was the beginning of that. The moment we learned how to light a fire, we started learning nature's laws, and how to use them to our advantage.
Maybe I'm looking too deep into it, but Redgar Forbidden Lands as a whole tells an interesting story of how important and influential fire has been in our civilisation.
Clyde in the caldera from pac man world 2. I wrote a paragraph describing it but when I went to post it RUclips crashed and I don't want to rewrite it so basically it's a good fire level and one of the hardest boss fights I've ever done.
Love the video and the narration. You do a great job covering these concepts as always.
There is one tiny thing I have to add though. You actually CAN stall the giant flame walls in Torch Man's stage in MM11. Hitting them with a power gear boosted shot from Tundra man's weapon somehow does the impossible and freezes the wall solid for a good five seconds.
Limbo /// second
A burning world.
is a good fire changed level. It starts out so calm and green with the beautiful song "A thousand greetings" playing, there aren't too many enemies and the enemies that are there are weak. Then you go through a few doors and end up in a hallway and the music stops. The ground is littered with burning corpses. You go through the first door again, and the entire level is on fire! The once blue projection of a sky is now dark and a bit orange, and "a complete and utter destruction of the senses" starts playing, a wonderfully frantic song that really symbolizes the state the level is now in.
Kirby Mass attack has a similar mechanic to Magma starscape in its own fire world when you get hit by fire, you can completely control the Kirbys as normal while he’s on fire, but there’s a timer until you take damage and each Kirby can take about two hits, and a couple fire attacks already deal one damage, so you gotta chuck them all into the nearest pool of water before they burn to a crisp.
Also briefly shown in the video, I like how A hat in time also does well in its first ex level replacing all the water with lava, and giving you a timer before you die of heat exhaustion that can only be stopped by finding the few places of water that haven’t been replaced, or a few new spots.
Four types of fire needed in a fire level.
Instant death fire:/Lava one touch you die.
Eh fire: You touch it, your health goes down half a point, you blink for a few seconds. then you move on.
Dance fire/lava: You don't die but your health slowly goes down as you frantically move your character to put out the flames. or your character automatically runs around only to stop back in the fire. (looking at you Mario.)
Quick sand Lava: you dont die, your health slowly depletes as you sink down all the while trying to run back to a safer spot. most of the time ending with you having to wait until your characters life bar is empty or has sunken past the bottom of the screen.
this came at *exactly* the right time when i was thinking about how i should make a fire level in the game im working on
I like the last part on the meaning of fire in storytelling and especially the last line was great, "this fire level is all about the destructive potential for change that fire symbolizes". When I was the narrative director for Yunoia (a game about the five stages of grief), and we defined a "problem" for Anger, we thought a forest wildfire would capture our interpretation of Anger. A desire burning so passionately that not only consumes oneself but extends to those around you. Our solution to this "problem" was a mechanic that required the player to demonstrate mastery over their fervor by staying calm when faced with adversity(wildfire) rather than feeding into the hectic situation. Theres a lot to it, but fire can have a lot of stimulating messages I think 🔥 thanks for another video design doc
It's clichéd, but i really love Angel Island burning in Sonic 3&K, simply because of how beautiful the pixel art is, and how well it uses and subverts mechanics from the earlier parts of the game, previous sonic games and even the elemental shield abilities.
Ive always found that the fire levels in kirby alway fitted the design and abilities of the game
I love the videos on Level Themes. They've been helping me with my work in progress game's level design, so thank you for making these.
Mario Galaxy 2 has my second favorite Lava level (My first Favorite is the Luncheon Kingdom) ShiverBurn Galaxy. The first half of the level is a volcano and general Lava level, but then you hit a button and it changes everything to ice.
I would love one on factory/facility levels. There are some fantastic levels like Frantic Factory (DK64), All of Portal, chemical plant zone, and even Nintendo Land's third stage of the Luigi's Mansion minigame. The aesthetic can be bustling and busy, or lonely and creepy.
I think one of the coolest fire mechanics I've seen is in Spark the Electric Jester (as well as Sonic After the Sequel) where lava works like normal, damaging you on contact, but once you get a fire shield, you can now enter the lava to find that there are more paths underneath. In addition to being really cool aesthetically, it adds a lot of tension due to the fact that getting hit even once or the shield running out means that you are now just a regular dude standing under the lava (bad).
It could easily be written off as a fancy underwater section, but it could also be used as water with different properties; in Spark, water has no time limit, but these lava sections do. Maybe in another game, you swim in water but platform normally in lava. I think there's a lot of potential for a mechanic like this, especially for secret paths that reward the player for keeping their fire shield in tact. It is a bit lock-and-key-esque, but the difference is that you have to continue holding onto the key even after you open the door.
I’d love for you to do something on “what makes True/Secret endings good” or something like that
3:56 See also, Burning Rangers.
I always liked Hailfire Peaks from Banjo Tooie, mixing fire and ice levels together (or any two level themes really) was always such a cool concept to me.
How not to do a fire or lava level is Phantasy Star Online's Caves 1, no real fire themed enemies (Nano Dragon looks like one but doesn't breath fire), no heat related hazards of any kind, and is just a boring slough to get through. Caves 2 and 3 ditch the lava and go for a underground cave theme so they're fine. It's not like PSO couldn't do fire hazards, the quest Central Dome Fire Swirl is all about putting out fires and recusing people that are trapped. Sure, using photon based weapons to extinguish fires doesn't make a whole lotta sense but at least it's something.
I always thought the lava in luncheon kingdom was custard
One fire level that fills me with nostalgia is the burnt forest from Prehistorik Man. I remember fragile branches and using spears to make platforms in burnt trees. Weirdly soothing after a volcanic boss fight followed by running up a tree away from rising flames.
I also tend to like fire levels that are just parts of factories, like Turboman from Mega Man 7 mostly being a vehicle level until a fire segment. Also Flame Mammoth in Mega Man X whose fire can get frozen by beating Chill Penguin (which would be a good topic about level completion changing other levels).
This definitely makes me want to see more seemingly calming or soothing fire levels like Luncheon Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey.
Nitpick: depending on the special weapons you have access to it *is* possible to freeze the insta-kill fire wall on Torch Man's stage for a short time. Doesn't delete the problem, but it does lessen the problem.
DQXI does a neat little thing other Dragon Quest games don't with it's fire dungeon: instead of just having a lot of damaging floor lava thrown around, the dungeon is a maze of rock corridors over a pool of lava, and, sometimes, streams of flames will fly above a platform and make a rain of fire on it. It deals small damage, is not very menacing, and you probably won't get hit by it, but it's a neat little mechanic that made the place stand out to me a bit more.
-It's also probably that the boss is very easy because all of his attacks are fire-related and thus using Hymn of Fire makes him do no damage at all lol-
Spicy Snacks, Burning Bushes, Flaming Fauna.
Jedi Survivor had a few clever puzzles which involves making a path to spread what’s basically fire from one point to the next.
I wouldn't underestimate candy levels. Or toy levels. Or anything cute. My experience with them is that they're deceptively hard.
Unrelated to level design but I'd like to take this moment to shoutout some of the best fire level *music* I've ever heard; the fire trial theme from Tales of Zestiria.
Hell, all four trials have music that absolutely nail their element, but the fire trial is in a league of its own.
One of my favorite "fire" levels (it might be a bit of a stretch to call it one) is Golden Lair from Etrian Odyssey IV.
You reach a snowy mountain area and find a cave that's surprisingly scorching hot, with lava enemies, pools of hot water, and these hot scales in the ground that hurt you when you get close to them. At first, you might be thinking that this is just how the cave always is, but a few things start to stand out. At a gathering point where you can find materials, you get these naturally occurring ice stakes that can destroy the aforementioned hot scales. Furthermore, the lava enemies are accompanied by identical tiny ice enemies. Eventually, you find a giant hot scale on one of the floors. Upon hitting it with an ice stake, the whole area suddenly freezes over. Pools of water are now slippery ice tiles, the smaller scales are frozen, and now the ice monsters are bigger while the lava ones are small. Upon meeting the race of people who live inside the cave, you learn that a threatening flaming lizard has invaded the cave, which is responsible for the shift in temperature.
I know that fire and ice levels being combined into one is nothing new, but to me, EO4 does a great job at presenting this kind of level, and being a somewhat niche game, I figured I'd give it a shoutout here.
Man, you didn’t just scratch the surface. You went in depth! With this subject you really thought of everything. Nice one!
What makes a good Circus level?
My brain IMMEDIATELY went to Glover, Cuphead, and Banjo-Tooie for games with a circus level/area.
not being Psychonauts Circus level
i enjoy when the water of Mafia Town in A Hat In Time is replaced with lava
Rayman 2 has the excellent Sanctuary of Stone and Fire. It mostly revolves around not standing in lava, but you go about it in dozens of different ways. You start outside of the sanctuary, where there's the most solid ground - but you sling over the lava parts via purple lums. You then grab a plum to ride across the lava, transporting your mode of transport through the level as you go. There's of course some jumping challenges, webs to climb, etcetera. Lava becomes ever more present as you descend into the level, as if delving towards the earth's core. Eventually you make it to the sanctuary in the level title, which has Mayan-esque statues and traps that themselves breathe fire. The temple has a puzzle or two but is relatively short-lived by comparison, which really highlights the journey there.
Can you do "Desert Levels" next (or at some point)
One day
Platforming with a bit more narrative beat to the fire changing the level - Sonic 3's Angel Island, where Eggman burns the zone down with a firewall (which conveniently hides a loading screen where the palette's swapped from a typical first Sonic level to a typical first Sonic level, but on fire)
Brave fencer musashiden has a good fire mechanic. You can you the water scroll to extinguish flames and travelling on lava. Later on you can use fire scroll to melt ice.
8:15 lighting up the environment doesn't influence enemy spawns at all in Terraria. The only time it's necessary to have any light is in the Don't Starve crossover seed. Light in Terraria usually serves the sole purpose of letting you see what's going on.
Fire. Lava.
Portable cooking pots.
I think the kids today would say this video is lit. Even though the intro was a bit of a slow burn. Don't worry, I'm just getting warmed up.
One of the first Rising Lava levels I played was in Cold Shadow, involving an escape from an erupting volcano. Like the MM11 level you described this was a do-or-die skill challenge, and it was unforgiving enough that I get the sense its designers were probably coming from the arcade game space where instant kills meant another quarter of profit from the kid at the machine.
In general I'm pretty glad this kind of thing has fallen out of favor. "Execute on the set of buttons I tell you or lose" is fine in a rhythm game, but adventure games are supposed to feature player choice and exploration, and most of these Rising Lava levels had such a short timer that even if the game actually had multiple solutions (and most of them did not) you didn't have time to seek out alternative routes so you were usually stuck acting on instinct and/or memorization.
i'm gonna go ahead and guess... fire.
Even digital fire in megaman battle network makes for an epic level design. Players need to stop fire as an immediate oven bursting threat. Then need to extinguish, and maneuver around fire strategically, when inside the oven dungeon. Plus as a bonus if you grind a few fire battle chips they can help you beat woodman in the next section of the game.
Haiku was great (in general, but the fire segments too), I can't think of that many memorable fire levels to be honest. I like them, but to think of one without looking through my game selection to see if something jogs my memory, not much comes up.
Would be interesting to see a video about levels that combine fire and ice, such as the Core from Celeste, where you need to switch between the two to progress, culminating in a final escape sequence where the lava will rise until it kills you from below while the ice does so from above, and you have to constantly be moving to the next switch to keep the two in balance (and if like me you go and do a bunch of modded stuff and gain skill that way before returning for the C-side, also pace yourself to avoid getting them out of balance the other way)
I'm pretty sure man is man's oldest enemy
Shoutout to the bleak tone of the Vanaspati dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, with everything being on fire.
and the residents turning into monsters. It really sells the "end of times" scenario well.
I like it the most when fire levels comine ice elements in their gameplay
I think one of the most striking uses of fire in a video game is Mother 3's first chapter, where the forest ist set ablaze by the Pigmasks, symbolising all that they stand for and kicking of the entire game's plot to fight against them.
wouldn't it be really cool if you did a version of this episode with the remaining 3 elements. Also imagine making one on about dream-levels, ethereally connected non-existences, etc. Great video!
During that last segment I was sure you would mention Mother 3, a very memorable example of that trope for me.
You talked a lot about fire levels, but where are the fire enemies, if not in the fire level? You dropped the entire topic!
Commenting before watch:
I just finished the last of TotK's temples and felt fire was rhe best in terms of the actual dungeon itself so this is an aptly timed upload
Wario Land 4 had a great example of fire and ice with Firery Cavern. During the stage its all lava geysers and enemies that throw lava rocks at you. When you hit the frog switch the stage freezes over. The lava geysers become frozen columns that block off paths and open others. The rock throwing enemies don parkas and replace the rocks with a freezing breath attack. Overall a great level.
Surprised you didn't mention Sonic 3 & Knuckles or Sonic Mania. The former had some great narrative themes with its fire levels and the flame shield to make navigation through them easier, while the latter also had the flame shield and expanded how it interacts with the environment. Oil Ocean Zone from Sonic 2? Using the flame shield there turns the place into a fire level because oil is flammable.
I would love to see a video on unique level themes in games, whether that means unusual settings or clever twists on the usual ice/fire/water/air/etc themes. I feel like elemental themes in games have become creatively stifling in many aspects of design, but especially so when it comes to level design. I always appreciate when designers think up interesting level concepts instead of generic volcano, glacier, desert, forest, etc. levels.
It feels like every Mega Man Zero series fire level has a different take on the trope every time, and are always accompanied by a kickass track.The area zero camp from zero 4 and the volcano from zero 3 are definitely my favorites
In the game patapon, you make a small eyeball army using rhythm. In one of the levels the princess is captured by evil eyeballs and they try to lose you in the desert.
Going into the desert without the rain song straight up lights your guys on fire. And the rain song doesn’t last the whole level, you need to re-up halfway through while still trying to break the cage the princess is held in.
Also doing the rain song takes like 6 beats which feels like forever when your guys are on fire and your thumb has Parkinson’s from the stress.
Aside from Super Mario's castle levels, my earliest memories of a specific fire level is Sega's Aladdin Magic Carpet level in the crumbling cave of wonders 😵😄
A video on water levels would definitivly be cool!