Over the past week or so, I’ve been catching up with a game I missed out on the first time around: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Despite being a spin-off of the Mario franchise, there’s a uniqueness to the world Captain Toad inhabits – square “islands” floating in space with seemingly no way to enter and no way to leave. This leads us to one of the game’s main mechanics: rotating the camera around these cubed purgatories to reveal hidden spaces and pathways. You’re never really stuck in Capt. Toad, you just need to consider a different perspective on things to show you the way. The game also differs from other Mario-based properties in that the emphasis isn’t on platforming or speed but rather puzzle solving and, well, treasure hunting. In fact, Captain Toad can’t even jump; instead, he relies on his turnip-pulling skills (He’s been ace at this since Super Mario Bros. 2, remember!) to take care of any baddies in his way. Nothing makes a guy more shy than a root vegetable to the face!
Despite the lack of running and leaping in the game, moving Cap’n Toad around really pulls me into the game’s spaces. There’s a great bit early on where Cap’n Toad grabs some magical cherries (also from SMB2!) and splits into two through some sort of mitosis for sidekicks. Players must then complete the level by moving both virtual bodies through something of a maze, pressing buttons and hitting switches often at the same time. And here’s the squeeze: both bodies are controlled at once and generally must be at opposite sides of the area. The immediate result is a discombobulation in trying to move one character to where they need to be while inadvertently moving the other away from where you put them. The level is the fifth one of the game, so I had gotten quite used to the way Cap’n Toad moves around by the time I encountered it. Now, it felt like re-learning how to ride a bike that someone else was riding. Soon enough, though, I got the hang of using the environment to my advantage, trapping one Cap’n Toad in a corner or on a wall while I move the other towards the goal. I gathered all the diamonds, reached the star, and finished the level.
What really struck me as interesting is what happened next, though. I load the next level and press forward on the controller’s thumb-pad to move Cap’n Toad forward. And he goes forward but it feels so different now. It feels a bit like when you pick up a box expecting it to be quite heavy only to find that it is empty. I had gotten so used to the feeling of moving two characters that I still felt the “weight” of the now-absent second Cap’n Toad, like some sort of phantom limb almost. Moving just one felt… weird. The experience brought to mind Brendan Keogh’s argument that “bodily incorporation is the experience of videogame play” (A Play of Bodies, 4). What other medium could give me this feeling, and more importantly, what can this medium do with the ability to make players feel this way?
~~Originally posted to the Serious Play blog on 2021/01/27~~
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