The Four Horsemen of Bad Minigames!

Good grief! I began writing this in November 2019. Now, since my own game is out, I think it's the right time to go back and finish this entry...

So, on my voyages through the low-end of the Nintendo DS gaming library (and beyond the DS as well), I noticed a notorious pattern in the minigames department. The same minigames (or iterations thereof) kept popping up, again and again. It reached the point where it's both hilarious and sad to me seeing them in a game, or even in a trailer of an upcoming product.

If there's a low-end game (be it a kids game, a girls game, a knock-off game, a quick-made game, etc, etc...), then it's guaranteed that one of the Four Horsemen (as I like to call them ;)) appear. And this isn't only a "cheap games" specialty, as these can be found in the more defined works - games considered good, or classic, as well.

To be clear, it isn't entirely wrong to throw one horseman once in a while into the gameplay (especially if done cleverly, ha!). Designing minigames (and creating new, compelling ones) is a heck of a difficult task after all. It's especially tough to design something new, fresh, and original, given the long history of humankind. ;) And I suspect it's even harder for a burnt-out gamedev, with multiple puzzle games on their account! Thus, the Four Horsemen are proven concepts, even though they feel annoying (if not plain offensive) to the players. With their continuous appearance, they prove that they are good... gameplay fillers.

01. Sliding Puzzle

Probably the most notorious and tedious thing to put in your game, most likely hated by anyone who was forced to solve one just once, and also somehow one of the most common puzzles to appear. Those sliding puzzles seem to have been in gaming since forever, and they just won't go away! While there are okay games revolving around the idea (Rooms: The Main Building comes to my mind), this puzzle alone, shoved forcefully into gameplay for no reason whatsoever is a ginormous no-no in my book.

02. Simon Clone

The game plays sounds first, and you repeat them in the correct order! More sounds are played the longer you play! A proper button combination to repeat may be used instead of the sounds. The simple mechanics allow it to appear even on v-pet devices from time to time (Rikou no Koibito, Anipalz/Anipods), but it won't prevent it to show up in bigger games (Yooka-Layle). It's usually a filler (with a prime exception in Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee!), and a particularly tedious one, but at least exercises your brain cells a bit.

03. Jigsaw Puzzle

Unless your game is targeted to little kids (or to people who simply LOVE fiddling with small pieces on their screen)... please don't include this one as a minigame. :') Whether it's a flat image, or a broken 3D cup (which makes it even worse to interact with), this... puzzle is made to waste the player's time. Don't get me wrong, I used to solve a lot of real-life jigsaw puzzles and they are indeed fun! But I don't think in this day and age gamers will appreciate a jigsaw puzzle appearing in their games without any good reason... The only *good* example of it I can think of is... Banjo-Tooie (in which it was incredibly frustrating, but excusable from the gameplay perspective!).

04. Whac-A-Mole

Ah, a classic. A good and short arcade action... which appears in almost every children-targeted product, and even beyond that! Sure, it can be challenging... But the game usually ends up as a tedious task which is simply not fun to play (Spore Hero Arena, Spyro 3)! It's as brainless as it can get and it only gets worse when you have to whack tremendous amounts of moles over and over again (MediEvil Ressurection).

There it is, the Four Horsemen of Bad Minigames! The minigames make my shovelware senses tingle (and I do love good shovelware). But wait, there's more! There's a bunch of other minigames, which... are actually great on their own and I feel I should feature them as well. It's time for...

...Honorable mentions! Aka. good games but victims of being used as fillers.

H1. Sokoban Clone

Sokoban is a great puzzle on its own, but more than often I see a clone of it thrown into the gameplay as a throwaway mechanism, with no connection to the main game whatsoever. Why not just play a good Sokoban game instead? (Speaking of which, my peers at Kurki Collective made one Sokoban-like game, check it out: link /shameless ad ends here).

H2. Pipe Mania Clone

It's a good game itself as well! But suffers the same fate as Sokoban, hence there's not much else I could talk about here. I stumbled upon a particularly *in your face* one in Fabulous Finds.

H3. Colour Mixing Puzzle

(I'm purposefully using a limited palette here, so pretend the colours are RBY)

They don't show up as often as I'd hope to, but they still have a considerable appearance in gaming. The formula leaves room for creativity, though: a properly done color puzzle can be fun, especially if more gameplay elements are thrown into it! And -believe it or not- it teaches you a bit about how colours work (or rather: how they should ideally work)! Whether it's light (additive mixing), or paint (subtractive mixing) you will leave the puzzle with a bit more knowledge about the world (well, the first time you solve one anyway). Notable appearance: MediEvil 2.

But but but-! I feel it's important to say it here. Let's not forget about one small but crucial detail gamedevs keep forgetting about. Colorblind people.

Any colour based puzzle should definitely be double-checked because badly chosen colours will likely render your game unplayable. Since we are at it, have some tips from me:

• check how your game looks like in BW (it's an art thing, which I may write about someday),
• ask an experienced artist/colorblind person,
• use shapes or symbols to identify colours,
• and/or have a short description of the colours.

H4. Sheep look-a-like

Personally, I'm not a fan of this one, but hey, there's Sheep on Playstation, and it looks like it was a good game! Shepherding appears often enough to list it here and it ranges from very obnoxious (I'm looking at you MediEvil Resurrection), too bland (Pokemon SwSh), to okay (Spyro 2, and thus Reignited Trilogy), and to almost absent but fitting the theme (MediEvil).

***

There are probably more minigames which make gamers go "sigh... not this thing again!", and which I forgot about, but I feel that I covered enough "bad minigames" and "not as bad minigames" in one blog entry! In any case, and when in doubt, it's a good thing to ask yourself - does the minigame fit the game's world/theme? Why is it there? How connected to the in-game world/story is it? Because context can change everything, and even make a bad minigame stand out! (Or at least make it less... obnoxious).

Proofread credit: Moco13