Smash Ultimate and Learning from Mobile Design

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Mobile games get a pretty bad rap these day. People tend to look at them as exploitative, and only designed around making money. In a lot of cases they aren’t even wrong. Truthfully, a lot of mobile design does in fact revolve around the ideas of user retention, and converting free-to-play users into paying customers at the highest possible rate.

The issue however is that, this tends to be the only thing that a lot of people can see, when in reality, there is a lot more than that that goes into making a successful mobile game. I’ve always felt that there are a lot of concepts that, if applied in a way that isn’t tied to trying to push micro-transactions, could add a lot of value to a game.

Enter Super Smash Bros Ultimate, for the Nintendo Switch, a game that, as it turns out, uses a lot of said mechanics.

RPG Elements, and The Spirit System

To begin with, the crux of Ultimate’s Adventure Mode is it’s “Spirits” system. Essentially, this is a Pokemon-like RPG system wherein the player can at any time equip a “Primary” spirit, and up to 3 “Support” spirits. Each primary spirit has a type (red/blue/green), as well as stats, and potentially special effects. Support spirits add additional special effects that take place in battle, such as starting battle with a particular item, dealing extra damage with weapons, ignoring stage effects such as fire or electricity, etc.

This is pretty huge, because it.. well, does all the things an RPG system does. It gives the player a sense of progression by leveling up their spirits, allows them to diversify their strategy by choosing the right spirits for their style and the particular challenges of each individual battle, and gives the developer more ways to reward the player. This is why you see so many games these days that have RPG elements injected into them.

Of course this isn’t unique to mobile games, but the Spirit system also capitalizes on the idea that each spirit is a Nintendo character, and so the player has an emotional investment in these Spirits before even loading up the game. This makes them somewhat collectable (similar to trophies in previous games), and just innately you are going to care about spirits from your favourite game series. This is exactly the tactic relied upon by games like Fire Emblem Heroes, Final Fantasy: Record Keeper, Kingdom Hearts χ, and so on.

Events, and the Spirit Board

Besides the actual single player campaign, is the Spirit Board. Here the player can face rotating challenges similar to what they would see in the actual Adventure Mode, but instead of being accessed on the game’s world map, they are simply placed on a board from which the player can freely choose from. Every few minutes the available challenges rotate out, and on some weekends there are even special events. Essentially, for the duration of the weekend, the contents of the Spirit Board will be themed around a specific franchise or concept, allowing the player to more easily collect spirits which follow that theme.

This uses the idea that, users are very susceptible to the concept of time pressure, as well as the player’s desire to collect their favourite Nintendo characters. If someone gets hooked by the Spirit system, they are encouraged to check the Spirit Board often, especially during the weekends when the special events are happening. In fact, even if they beat the desired Spirit in battle, the player may still not actually acquire the given spirit, as they must still have to complete the capture minigame.

This just further increases the retention side of this system, because if the player doesn’t quite get the spirit they’re trying to acquire, they at least weakened it’s shield, making it easier to catch the Spirit the next time. Suddenly you are on the look out for that spirit that got away. Not only that, but you even get the ability to spend in-game currency to instantly try capturing the Spirit again, instead of going back to the Spirit Board again and having to wait for the Spirit to come around again. It’s capitalizing on the idea of the “near-miss” to try again *right now*, and if this isn’t a mobile design trick, I don’t know what is.

Time Restricted Activities

As the player discovers more of the map in Adventure Mode, they will discover various spots that offer special services to them and their spirits.

Three such spots allow the player to send spirits out to “Explore” the Cave / Ruins / Jungle. In other words, send out some spirits, and 2/6/10 hours later, those spirits return with goodies for the player.

Once the player discovers the Gym, they may place up to 4 spirits at a time in the Gym, and those spirits will continually level up for as long as they are there. The player can return at any time, and those spirits will have passively leveled up without the player having to manually level them up, either through battle or feeding them treats.

Dojos work very similarly to Gyms, but instead of increasing the Spirit’s experience, it increases a specific type of attribute, at the cost of another (such as gaining attack at the cost of defense).

Scattered across the map are 5 different shops, each with Spirits and other goodies for sale. However each shop only has 4 items for sale at a time, so if there’s nothing there you’re looking for, well, you just have to check back later.

The common thread amongst all of these Activities is that all of them offer the player something, but have a deferred benefit. This creates a loop wherein the player interacts with all of their activities, and then are encouraged to do so again in x number of hours. The first thing they want to do when turning the game on is check how their Spirits in the Gym are, see what’s in the shop now, or see what they got from their Cave Exploration. This is a great retention system because it’s using the game’s own mechanics to reward the player - not so much for anything they did in the game, but just for coming back and playing it again.

Character Unlocks

This one is probably a bit more of a personal experience than an explicitly designed mechanic, but I’m adding it here anyways.

There are 2 ways to unlock characters in Smash Ultimate. The first is by playing normal versus mode matches. Every 10 minutes or so, the game should face you up against any eligible challengers - beat them to unlock the character. The second unlocking method, is by unlocking the character in Adventure Mode, which, can take a very long time for some characters (if we assume it takes 40 hours to clear Adventure Mode, and there are 74 characters in the cast, we’re averaging about 32 minutes per character).

However what this also means is that, if one exits out of Adventure Mode every 10 minutes or so, they will be able to face a challenger, and then jump back into Adventure Mode. Much faster than every 32 minutes, and potentially more entertaining than just fighting the CPU for 10 minutes at a time.

I don’t expect that many people did it this way, but my experience with doing it this way just further added to that mobile game feel of juggling time-restricted resources. It makes the Adventure Mode last just a touch longer, so you don’t burn through the content quite so quick, while also rewarding you for being mindful of the other processes going on in the background.

Conclusion

So with these elements in place, Smash Ultimate’s single player mode has a lot of that feel of a mobile game. You are encouraged to load up the game frequently, and check back on these reward mechanics often. I can practically see the little resource bars slowly filling up in the background, counting down until I can do my next arena match or free item drop. The only difference is that, there is no “speed the timer up for just $4.99!” mechanic.

To me, this feels like it has all of the pluses without any of the negatives that a system like this can afford. I feel like it’s increasing my engagement. I feel clever for managing my time and maximizing my benefit from these systems. And once I’ve hit up every mechanic and used up all of my “resources”, I feel like I can either choose to keep playing the main game to my heart’s content, or just quit out, content in the knowledge that I’m not losing out on anything because my next timed reward won’t be for several hours.

The only caveat to this is that, it relies heavily on the game’s ability to engage you with the Spirits system, which sadly has zero use once you’ve completed Adventure Mode. Once the usefulness of your spirits has run it’s course, there’s no reason to continue engaging with these mechanics unless you just really need to collect and level up every spirit. Collection isn’t really something the game does a good job of encouraging, and so the more likely outcome is that even if you continue to play Smash Ultimate online or with friends, you probably only care about the spirits for exactly as long as you play Adventure Mode.

Which is sad to me, because it felt like there was a full on mobile game baked into Smash Ultimate, and I was about it.