I worked on achievements this week! You can’t trigger them in-game yet, but other than that all the artwork and design is done.

I gotta be real with you here: I generally find achievements to be boring and patronizing. I don’t think simply playing a game is worthy of praise (unless you’re playing Ikaruga, then good for you!!) But seriously. “Started The Game?” “Beat Level One?” “Died 100 Times?” Those aren’t worthy of note (the last one is almost a cruel mocking of the player!)

But, instead of endlessly ranting about the big bad cheevos, I’ll explain how my distaste for them informed my own achievement design!

I should say that I’m all for achievements that celebrate *actual* achievements on the part of the player. If you beat the whole game, then of course I want to acknowledge that! Above are the achievement icons for beating Story Mode in the original Bleed, and Bleed 2 — both ranked by bronze/silver/gold, but now you have a better indication of what difficulty they correspond to.

I’m also trying to take the psychology of less-skilled players into account. The achievement for Easy isn’t marked by a difficulty, and is simply called “Story Mode Clear”. On the opposite end of the spectrum, “Story Mode Clear: Very Hard” comes with a fancy purple background and a big VH to distinguish it as being more worthy of note (ooooooh, aaaaaah.)

In the original Bleed, you’d get achievements for beating each boss with an S-Rank. That was pretty neat but kinda half-baked in my opinion — now you get achievements based on your average rank at the end of a level. There are only achievements for S-Ranks and SSS-Ranks. Neither one is easy to get, but you can earn them on any difficulty, so I guess it all balances out.

Another bit of being-nice-with-achievements I’m trying to pull off is making many achievements hidden. There were complaints about the original Bleed, that some achievements (like “Arcade Mode Clear: Very Hard”) were simply beyond the skill level of some players, and it really bugged them to never be able to unlock it. I’m not taking those achievements out, but at least I can make them hidden until you unlock them so they aren’t cruelly staring players in the face.

At the same time, I want to encourage people to get better at the game and not be satisfied with just stumbling their way through. So, achievements for clearing Story Mode and Arcade Mode on any difficulty aren’t hidden. Neither are the S-Rank achievements. But, SSS-Rank achievements are, as are the higher-difficulty Story/Arcade ones.

Finally, I’m all for achievements that change the dynamics of the game, or ask the player to do unusual things. This is why I created the “Secret Mission” achievements for the original Bleed. If I had to have achievements, I wanted some of them to have a sense of mystery or experimentation about them! Unfortunately, I don’t think Bleed 2 will have “Secret Missions”… the levels just don’t lend themselves as well to those kinds of achievements, and I don’t want to shoehorn them in.

Achievements that serve the game are cool, too. For instance, I have an achievement for finding a health pickup in Arcade Mode, and that’s probably the lamest one of the bunch. But, it’ll help clue people in to the fact that there are health pickups in Arcade Mode, and that they’re hidden, and maybe it’ll result in a minor sense of mystery in itself for a short while. (Come to think of it, it’ll also encourage people to play Arcade Mode at least once, so yay for that!)

Fun fact, the original Bleed had an achievement called “Intrepid Explorer”, where you were rewarded for falling down a conspicuous hole in the first level. It was fun as an easter egg, but it also served a useful purpose to me — even though I can’t count on every player going down the hole, I wanted to get a rough ratio of players who bought the game, vs players who actually played it. I wonder if this isn’t the reason so many AAA games have achievements for beating every single level, tracking player engagement and seeing where people lose interest. On the other hand, maybe it’s just laziness. Who knows!

And there you have it! More about my feelings on achievement design than you ever knew you wanted! Have a good week!