Slippery Slope

Here, David Sirlin talks about the concept of "perpetual comeback" in gaming. The gist of it being that in certain games such as Starcraft, a minor disadvantage in the early game can translate into major disadvantages later in the game. For example, losing an SCV in an attack means less resources can be collected, meaning being less able to defend against the next attack, meaning less resources and so on. In fighting games, there is no such slope because a player with half the life would still have the same tools at his disposal as the player at full health. Sirlin then goes on to talk about Puzzle Fighter, the only game he is aware of where the player who is losing may actually be winning (it makes sense if you actually read the article, which you should). In that manner, the game is never over until it's over.

Well, I've another game to add to his list:


In Phantasmagoria of Flower View, you destroy things on your side of the screen (bullets, enemies) to build up a charge meter, which you can then use to send massive patterns of bullets to the opponent's side in a bomb. The power of the bomb is dependent on the amount of charge you use. The perpetual comeback aspect is that by bombing, you also destroy all the objects within range on your own side and when your opponent bombs, you can counter bomb to destroy large amounts of projectiles and build up your charge meter. This continues with progressively larger and larger bombs until one side collapses under the pressure. Of course you can just wait out the bomb and then the opponent doesn't get many objects to reflect back at you, but that's the wussy strategy.

Then there's the whole "omfg bullets everywhere" aspect of it.