Why are there no famous indies similar to Mario 2D?

i have about 10 mario-likes in my steam library i've never gotten around to. they're out there just not very popular

There's Giana Sisters.

Mario games are based on simple concept of accurate and good feel of jump. Not very easy to make something impressive with such simple concept.

Unless you go ubisoft route and make rayman. That ones dripping with personality.

It seems to be a very hard thing to properly reproduce without going full-on plagiarism, let alone a quality game. Classic Mario is so simple in its movement system and its design, especially the first one, and yet it's basically perfect at what it does. I played a lot of Mario-inspired indies, but most of them had incoherent art styles, weird animations, and most importantly a movement system that didn't feel so good. Also the genre evolved, releasing an indie SMB1-clone, even if good, wouldn't be received too well because it's barebones. Nowadays people expect more from their platformers: deep meanings, hardcore level design, shittons of content, great animation, in some cases a cinematic presentation (see Limbo and Inside) and so on. The original Super Mario Bros. games perfected that simple formula so well that it's hard to make a game that does that but equally good or better, without feeling like a whole new subgenre altogether. Very much like Doom: no matter how great Heretic, Hexen, Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, etc. felt, that original Doom formula aged so much better than those "clones", because Doom was like the maximum expression of that concept.

There's Rayman Legends, it's not inde tho.

Glio said:

Yes, but Rayman is not exactly an indie.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Thats the point. Why mario and rayman so loved, besides gameplay, its character and the world. Level design is excellent too. But if an indie game attempts something similar, it will fall way short on charaters, world, graphics etc.

And concept of platforming is too simple to carry a whole game on its shoulders.

Platformers with smaller levels/repetition maybe need less assets (sprites, level art) than something like Mario which has new areas, gameplay mechanics and enemy designs in each level.

Mega Man Zero said:

There's Giana Sisters.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Which Nintendo took legal action against.

And that's why we don't see many games copying the Mario formula.

Because Nintendo keeps churning out NuSu games so the appetite never has time to form properly.

In replaying what are in my mind, the best 2D Mario games - Yoshi's Island & NSMBU - I noticed that there's just a boatload of content in there. Practically every level has a major gimmick to it that isn't seen elsewhere. So you've got a large content creation burden along with a large design burden and it's easy to see why indies gravitate towards smaller self-contained challenge room platformers like Super Meat Boy and N++.

Which Nintendo took legal action against.

And that's why we don't see many games copying the Mario formula.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

I'm guessing they were referring to the modern Giana Sister game rather than the old one that was a blatant Mario copy-cat.

Mega Man Zero said:

There's Giana Sisters.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

<3
Best Mario copy ever.

Box Maker.

Also, I feel like Mario has that lane of platforming cornered so well, and the indie platforming scene right now is more divided between masocore, metroidvania, roguelikes, and narrative adventure that a straight-up mario like would have to do something really well to get buzz.

Shovel Knight is pretty famous already

Noisepurge said:

Shovel Knight is pretty famous already

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Closer to a mega man no ?

Dascu said:

Platformers with smaller levels/repetition maybe need less assets (sprites, level art) than something like Mario which has new areas, gameplay mechanics and enemy designs in each level.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Yep. I imagine being AAA Mario has the privilege of being able to introduce and throw away assets and mechanics on a whim, as do the recent Donkey Kong games, and it's a big part of what makes those games unique experiences. That said the indie scene never ceases to impress me so who knows.

Glio said:

Yes, but Rayman is not exactly an indie.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Even if you consider it one, it's very different from Mario. Levels are designed with a kind of one-way quick flow and rhythm in mind rather than the kind of precision and stop and go pacing you get with Mario.

I think games like celeste and meat boy while not the same offer that indie platform goodness peeps like.

People don't seem to realise how hard it is to make a game as simple and good as the Mario 2D games. They're so simple by design, but so so much fun and it's very hard to recreate it. Nintendo practically perfected that kind of platformer.

Glio said:

That's an urban legend, there was never such a demand and the original game copied entire levels.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Interesting, so do we know why the game was taken off sale if that wasn't the case?

Glio said:

You're right, Rayman Legends is more similar to for example Donkey Kong

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Yeah. And we did get a pretty great Rayman-esque game last year with Splasher (even has former devs) but it's not very well known.

Uh.. I would argue that super meat boy IS a mario-like platformer. Prettymuch anything where the goal is to get to the end of the level and you have free jumping I would consider to be of the same sub-genre as mario. Including sonic-like mascot platformers, so probably freedom planet.
Like I don't know, how similar do you want it to be? Close enough to be considered a copycat game like giana sisters? I don't think even most popular 'metroidvania' platformers aspire to be that suspiciously similar to the games that inspired them. I think most games in any genre try to contribute some kind of innovation or at least a hook.
With that in mind, Braid is a famously mario-inspired indie.

Glio said:

There were problems with Nintendo but never to the point of lawsuit.

The original was an obvious plagiarism, the one of today did not have the slightest problem.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Ah, I was only talking about the original. The new one isn't much like Mario at all.

The thing is, virtually nobody managed to make something as good as 2D Mario even when the gaming landscape was all about platformers and "Mario killers". Seems like it's incredibly difficult to make a 2D platformer interesting after all, much more than it is to make a passable "Metroidvania". This is also the reason why Nintendo themselves never completely recaptured the feeling of their classic Mario games when they came back to the formula with the NSMB series. If you can't make something that's at least as good as SMB3 - a 30 years old game - AND make it sufficiently original so it isn't just a carbon copy of Mario, don't bother.

Shugga said:

Closer to a mega man no ?

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Oh yeah if you want specifically mario-mario platformers and everything else in the platformer genre is excluded then yeah, no :P
I think that's really hard as everything would be seen too simplistic with just running and jumping. And if it doesn't use an established character like Mario, it's really hard to stand out.
Super Meat Boy i do think is the evolutionary step of that genre and like many have said Rayman, but it's not even indie.

I suppose the Mega Man format provides more room for creativity. By that I mean fixed movement and jump arcs without any real momentum for more precision platforming, single screen obstacle courses and multiple weapons and health items. Plus I'm not sure how far you can really take the traditional Mario format without putting some spin on it

werezompire said:

In replaying what are in my mind, the best 2D Mario games - Yoshi's Island & NSMBU - I noticed that there's just a boatload of content in there. Practically every level has a major gimmick to it that isn't seen elsewhere. So you've got a large content creation burden along with a large design burden and it's easy to see why indies gravitate towards smaller self-contained challenge room platformers like Super Meat Boy and N++.



I'm guessing they were referring to the modern Giana Sister game rather than the old one that was a blatant Mario copy-cat.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

You are exactly right.

The amount of content in a Mario game is unbelievable.

There is one unique gimmick per level, it's very rare to see the same gimmick repeat on another level.

Levels are generally split in three or more parts. The first is the gimmick with training wheels, then without them and then with added difficulty.

There's something mathematically beautiful about Mario games (or some Japanese philosophy), and contrary to popular belief, the games are not cheap to make.

When ideas are used once per level, the game design is inefficient and expensive, more resources are needed to do it right, which is the exactly what indies don't have.

Compare that to a Metroidvanias, which is the opposite, levels are reused multiple times, those are based on efficient design, thus need less resources to be made.

Still, there are tons of Mario like games out there, most just suck.

i wanna be the guy

There's a Mark Brown video which touches a little about this, when speaking about Tropical Freeze though.

Glio said:

The New Super Mario Bros are tremendously successful games .

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

I think you just reinforced his point because the NSMB series is easily the most contended inside the main mario series. Some love it, some hate it (i'm in this camp), many are indifferent. The concept kept 'too simple' doesnt work in this day and age anymore, and NSMB throws plenty new tricks in the mario formula still - just not to the point of differentiating itself and gaining new followers like the 3D Land series

Glio said:

We are talking about games that sold almost 30 million.

It works.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

games that sold 30 million because they are mario

no indie "copying" just the formula will have this luxury

Celeste is actually heavily inspired by the level design of Mario patformers (both 2D and 3D). It even has a direct nod to Super Mario Bros. 3 for one of the crystal hearts.

Tito said:

You are exactly right.

The amount of content in a Mario game is unbelievable.

There is one unique gimmick per level, it's very rare to see the same gimmick repeat on another level.

Levels are generally split in three or more parts. The first is the gimmick with training wheels, then without them and then with added difficulty.

There's something mathematically beautiful about Mario games (or some Japanese philosophy), and contrary to popular belief, the games are not cheap to make.

When ideas are used once per level, the game design is inefficient and expensive, more resources are needed to do it right, which is the exactly what indies don't have.

Compare that to a Metroidvanias, which is the opposite, levels are reused multiple times, those are based on efficient design, thus need less resources to be made.

Still, there are tons of Mario like games out there, most just suck.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Yep, this is the reason. Mario's level design requires every level to have its own thing going on, which is a large ask for a small indie dev team. Much more cost efficient to have a single control gimmick (such as gravity flipping in VVVVVV or Giana Sister's dual world) and build an entire game around escalating takes on the concept. Same design philosophy, but applied to an entire game as opposed to every individual level.

Noisepurge said:

Shovel Knight is pretty famous already

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Shovel Knight is nothing like 2D Mario, neither in gameplay, level design nor game design.

I think the reason is either because these series stopped being supported by their parent company, or because people liked the idea of those older games more then they actually played upon revisiting.

2d mario by comparison continues to get new titles regularly from Nintendo, and the old games still hold up to this day.

I believe this creates a scenario where if you're an indie and you want to make a platformer you're likely to try something new and often that new ends up pushing you away from the design sensibilities that would make you "indie mario".

It's kind of hilarious seeing this thread, considering a frequent (if admittedly misguided) criticism leveraged at indies is "it's all 2D platformers!". :)

No matter how you look at it, Super Meat Boy is the modern Mario.

It's different, because games now are different from back then. There's several indie mario clones but they will never get any expression because people doesn't really want a Mario that isn't a Mario.

Modern Giana Sisters has more going on than an actual Mario clone, and that's why people like it.

Weltall Zero said:

It's kind of hilarious seeing this thread, considering a frequent (if admittedly misguided) criticism leveraged at indies is "it's all 2D platformers!". :)

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Criticism like "There's too much of something" or "It all looks the same" are always made by people that doesn't play them. This is true for 2D platformers, mobas, shooters, Jrpgs...everything basically haha

Noisepurge said:

Shovel Knight is pretty famous already

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

I'm having trouble thinking of how this is similar to Mario. Can Shovel Knight even run?

ResetGreyWolf said:

Shovel Knight is nothing like 2D Mario, neither in gameplay, level design nor game design.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

InteractiveSoftwareUser said:

I'm having trouble thinking of how this is similar to Mario. Can Shovel Knight even run?

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

You run and jump on things? :D And i clarified my post later. But saying it's "nothing like 2d mario" is a stretch

The truth is that 2D mario just really isn't all that interesting.

Honestly, it isn't. The majority of the New Super Mario Bros. games were pretty underwhelming.

And despite years and years of new 2D Mario games from Nintendo themselves, people still generally agree that either SMB3 or SMW was the peak of the series.



IMO Mario gameplay at its core is just too boring to really warrant a faithful copy-pasta like you would for Metroid or Castlevania. It's like one THE most vanilla videogames ever made.

Noisepurge said:

You run and jump on things? :D And i clarified my post later. But saying it's "nothing like 2d mario" is a stretch

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Yea fair enough, I'm pretty sure the titular Shovel Knight can't run though... It's a very cool game though, I have to get back to it and try the Spectre-expansion.

Maybe Yacht Club could pull of an SMB 1.5 type game?

Noisepurge said:

You run and jump on things? :D And i clarified my post later. But saying it's "nothing like 2d mario" is a stretch

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

By the definition even Call of Duty could be classified as a Mario game. Shovel Knight is absolutely nothing like Mario. The level design, the player movements, the game design, the relics/trinkets, the money system, the story.

Tito said:

There is one unique gimmick per level, it's very rare to see the same gimmick repeat on another level.

Levels are generally split in three or more parts. The first is the gimmick with training wheels, then without them and then with added difficulty.

There's something mathematically beautiful about Mario games (or some Japanese philosophy), and contrary to popular belief, the games are not cheap to make.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Eh??

Mario games generally stretch single gimmicks over entire WORLDS.

An actual faithful Mario-esque indie game can't be that difficult to make, certainly not assets wise...I mean it's not going to be easy but i can see it being on the lower end of the spectrum. The majority of the work is going to be in the level design itself.


but there is nothing about Mario that's inherently expensive to make. The 2D games generally reuse like the same 3-4 music tracks no less than 20 times throughout the entire game and world acts all share assets in some way or another.

Why doesn't Super Meat Boy count?