Ways To Turn Tasks Into Games?

As a collectible, i love the Grubs in Hollow Knight. You get money, a charm and something else if you find them (so immediate reward, and not only if you find them all) but also, as you progress and you see them, you start to care for this tiny things. You hear them cry, and you want to rescue them. You are invested in finding collectibles because slowly you forget that they are collectibles, and you just want them to be reunited with their papa.

I’m surprised you mentioned Pokémon without talking about it’s biggest problem; the tradition of releasing two versions of each game makes your ability to complete your collection is dependent on other people. It doesn’t matter how good or invested you are, if you can’t find that one person who’ll trade a certain Pokemon with you then you can’t 100% the game.

I’m surprised that Ape Escape wasn’t on here. Collecting the monekys using all gadgets and player knowledge, and how each monkey protests a unique challenge. In Ape Escape 3 each monkey had a something extra tied to it. And then also eventually playing the Metal Gear Solid mini game (which got me into the metal gear series)

Genshin Impact also does collectibles well. In both the Mondstadt and Liyue areas, there are numerous timer challenges, “follow this blue spirte” seelie statues, beautiful vantage points, and there’s probably at least 1000 treasure chests across the entire map (so far! More of the world has yet to be revealed). And, they all provide a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. With a huge map, the purpose is to just explore, see what’s around, climb everything, etc. Seelies are a lovely little distraction where you follow a little blue spirit for a bit, timer challenges are fun challenges (except when enemies spawn to freeze you), and chests are hidden in easily-overlooked areas as well as behind unmarked challenges – deciphering a poem, setting some torches ablaze, etc. The rewards from these serve as an extrinsic reward to doing something that’s generally already intrinsically fun and engaging. At the same time, they’re all incredibly optional. Sure, they give you money, things to enhance stuff with, etc., but the game is based around the stories found in quests, which guide you on the map from point to point. The only thing that you simply cannot get without completing challenges, following seelie, and opening chests… are achievements (and none of those achievements require 100%, either). And even for the achievement hunters and completionists, after doing a number of quests to help out the citizens of Mondstadt or Liyue, you unlock a treasure compass, which points you to nearby treasure chests – since there’s so many of them, it’s easy to miss a few.

I love collecting virtual items, so DK 64 was actually one of my favorite collectible systems! The intrinsic motivation kept me at it, and as you mention, each item unlocks its own particular set of things. With only a few exceptions, I didn’t find it hard to find the collectibles for each ape, largely because they’re not quite random, but rather on a path to a golden banana for that Kong, with a few slightly off the path to keep you on your toes. For the most part, if you’re missing a collectible for someone, you can backtrack along that path and use first person view to look around the area, or just go after a different Kong’s collectibles until you find the ones you missed, in their ghostly un-pick-upable form for that Kong. You also usually can’t get every collectible for each Kong right away, since some are locked behind abilities you have yet to get in that level or sub-areas within the level, so you’re usually good if you collected everything you saw and your number ends in a 5 or a 0, again with only a few exceptions. What I am surprised you didn’t mention was the Arkham games, although you did include a clip of them at the very end. The Riddler trophies are strewn evenly throughout nearly every area in the game (except for the Batcave, which makes sense story-wise), and are either out in the open in a tricky spot, behind an obstacle that requires a certain gadget, or in some sort of puzzle. Collecting some of them isn’t hard at all, which is just enough to start the Riddler storyline, and completing the storyline doesn’t require 100% of the collectibles (I think the first game might be an exception there).

Every time I think of collectables I think of Lego Games. Lego Games have at least 4 different collectibles per game. The four staples are Gold Bricks, Red Bricks, Minikits, and Character tokens, two of which (Red Bricks and Characters) are then locked behind an in-game paywall (that is, buying them with in-game currency. No Microtransactions involved) once you collect them. Each of them serves a different purpose. Gold Bricks unlock a special bonus level (or a stud fountain depending on the game), each Red Brick unlocks an extra, some of which are useful (collectible detectors (yes that includes a detector for Red Bricks themselves. Yes it is annoying when you find that one last) and currency multipliers) and some of which are silly (making the floor really slippery or giving every character groucho marx glasses), Minikits unlock a special Lego Build that you can visit in a gallery, sort of like a photo gallery but with Lego Models. There’s five to ten minikits in each level depending on the game. Finally, character tokens unlock characters, all of which have different abilities and powers (later games start having a lot of power overlap because of the large amount of characters but whatever) that will help you solve puzzles in order to unlock other collectibles. And of course a lot of games have their own unique collectables such as “characters in peril” which usually unlocks the character that is in peril (such as Stan Lee in Lego Marvel Superheroes) as a playable character.

The Knick-knackatory side quest in the Dragon Quest 5 remakes deserve a mention. It’s a purely intrinsic quest that consist of collecting rare souvenirs for all around the world, and exposing them on a Museum. It’s pretty extensive too, with way to upgrade and clean items. While some of the items you get may be of value (most notably an infinite source of Yggdrasil Leaf), most of the items are absolutely useless. It’s just a reward for exploring the game and returning to old locations. The best thing is that it’s not a single linear subquests, but a multitude of smaller goals, so you can take the quest any way you want. Anytime you need to take a break for the actions, you can look around for Knick Knacks in previously visited places.

One great thing about Celeste’s collectables is that it is totally possible to get 100% just playing through each level 1 time(and get it’s secret collectibles on the second playthrough of each level) and if you miss a couple it will tell you how many and allow you to see which checkpoint you missed them on for strawberries, so you can easily go back for them. So, Celeste not only sets up it’s intrinsic collectables well, it also makes collecting them no more frustrating than necessary. Even in cases where it definitely didn’t have to go to that effort(the chapter 7 crystal heart remembers your progress on the gems even after you beat the stage) For the collectables that aren’t noted on the map(Crystal hearts and b-side tapes) the game does a decent job at letting you know they exist. One clever thing chapter 1 does is that it has a strawberry right next to the crystal heart puzzle, so if you go through the level without finding that puzzle you’ll be missing a strawberry. And if you go back and try to find that berry, eventually you’ll find the puzzle along with it. The b-side tape’s location is very clearly signaled and that signal is also next to a berry so you’ll probably find that too if you look for all the berries. Chapter 3 also does this very well, with the b-side tape being in an exceedingly obvious place and the crystal heart just requires a basic understanding of how that section of the game works and finding the fairly obvious spot where the path is blocked by something you need to clear.

Something else I think would be great to discuss in a Part 2, is the idea of collectibles having a “purpose”. Take currencies, for example: In many early games, especially side-scrollers like Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, Coins/Rings were just a means of earning 1-UPs or improving your score. In Sonic’s case, Rings were also tied directly to the health system; get hit, and you lose ALL your Rings, get hit when you don’t have Rings, lose a life. Simple. In Sonic Unleashed, however, the role of Rings was expanded slightly. Since the premise of the game is a globe-trotting adventure, Rings could also be used as currency at various shops in the world, so you could buy things like souvenirs for the Gallery, like concept art and music tracks, and food, which give EXP when consumed, increasing your stats. However, the rules of Ring collection still apply (this is still a Sonic game, after all), so while the amount of Rings available in a given stage are much bigger, you still need to be careful not to lose it all, especially in the late-game. Thankfully, this only applies to the Daytime stages, since the Nighttime ones use a health-bar (that can be filled by grabbing Rings) instead. Of course, Mario Odyssey does something similar with Coins, with the added caveat of eliminating lives entirely.

Ghost of Tsushima was one of my favorite games of 2020, but it had a lot of collectables that ranged from locations, flags and cosmetics. Even though I love exploring the world, I wouldn’t go out of my way to carefully search for flags or outfits, but the games wind guidance system was really well done. Instead of just drawing a line or putting a circle where an item was hidden, the wind would just blow in the direction of the closest thing you wanted, and anything you can find or discover was select-able. So instead of ignoring them, finding all the hidden flags became a fun diversion of searching thanks to being simply guided by the wind, it didn’t hold my hand, but it also didn’t give me no idea where to look, either.

Huge Crash fan here, and I really appreciate your critique of Crash 4, as I similarly felt the wearying amount of collectibles. I would love to see a Design Doc on fun challenge versus frustrating challenge. Despite having every predisposition toward wanting to love Crash 4 and having intimate knowledge of Crash’s moves and physics, I found the platforming challenges of Crash 4 more frustrating than fun – and I even enjoyed N. Sane Trilogy’s harder Crash 1! I chalk it up to many obstacles being unfair by way of not being telegraphed enough (in many cases it seemed like you had to die to something in order to know to avoid it), but I would love to see a Design Doc analyzing that phenomenon. This has become one of my favorite websites – keep up the great work!

For DK64, I definitely have some nostalgia goggles, but when I play through I’m always pleased at how the collectibles are segmented. Usually I basically play through the stage once per character, and because I like the world design and atmosphere so much, it’s fun to see the same place through a different lens, or to have individual areas and challenges for each character. Frantic Factory was really good at having the same general layout, but having a lot of specific areas and challenges for each character. But I can definitely see why that game isn’t for everyone. Fungi Forest especially was really hard to navigate sometimes, even though I thought it was a really cool level. I would always be left with 5 or so colored bananas that I just couldn’t find.

I just thought of tokens in Pac man world 2. Sometimes they were a serious pain to find. Other times they were pretty easy. And the more you collected, the more arcade games unlocked in the arcade in level 0. Real world arcade games. And the final reward was Mrs. Pac man. I never actually found enough to get it, but I blame the levels on ghost island for that

Thank you for giving Banjo-Kazooie the respect it deserves, as refining the Mario 64 formula. One of my favorite collectables in gaming are the clue bottles from Sly 2. They’re only in the hub world (so no need to worry about having to replay missions, like in the first game), they make a nice clinking sound to hint at where they are, and give you the combination to a safe with a new move. Plus, they have a very satisfying breaking sound when collected.

The collectible that never gets old for me are the figurines in Wind Waker’s Nintendo Gallery. No matter how many times I play that game, I always have to complete it. Like you said, it’s more about recording your adventure than anything, but the method of collecting them is the perfect balance of risk vs. reward. Similar to the Tattle Log in Paper Mario and Paper Mario TTYD, you have to risk your characters safety to record your journey. So fun!

As a game developer. From this article I gathered that if I want my players to actively want to get collectibles, I need to place them with purpose. I need some form of a guide to help players keep track of collectibles. And i need the collectibles to feel like a reward. Thanks design doc. Love your articles.

I like the Garibs from Glover, they function as score pickups that also give health and lives. finding all in a world will unlock a bonus stage for even more lives completing all the stages in the game unlocks an in game cheat list, if you can’t find some in a level you can search for them in easy mode just by holding a button!

My favorite type of rewards are lore. I’m extrinsically motivated in games; never cared much for collectibles that don’t offer something interesting. Lore and backstory for the game’s world or characters can be more meaningful and satisfying because it leaves the player with something to think about long after the game is over. For example, collecting a shine sprite may give you a brief moment of happiness, but discovering that Peter Parker’s parents were secret spies because you found a backpack on the docks of Manhattan holds far more emotion. God of War 4 is a great example; that game loves giving the player collectibles in the form of lore markers and stories from Mimir that tell you things about their world you would never find out via the main story, and has a lot of hints at what the story may be for future games.

I’d like to add Ori Will of the wisps to the list, I know it has been a year but for a Metroidvainia it was really well done. It was really fun to find them all in the first and second game with all the challenges with each one, and they were optional but really help-full. It was enough for me to have fun collecting every one after I beat the game.

The platinum time relics were the last staw on Crash 4 for me and my friend, we spent so many hours getting all the gems and completing all the flashback tapes and then couldn’t even get the platinum relic on the first level, at some point you just get burnt out and it does just become a chore rather than fun.

One important thing that can motivate the player to collect is the checklist. For example, Sonic Frontiers has quite a few things to do in the open zones. Before the second content update, Memory Tokens, Portal Challenges, Guardian Battles, and others weren’t listed on the zone’s completion percentage. Only the Map Challenges were necessary for 100%. This led to me not caring about the Memory Tokens and other things because there was no motivation given to me. After the update, a checklist of everything to do was added, along with some nice golden stamps if you manage to complete the checklist. It was a great addition that made me understand the importance of the checklist.

This was a really interesting article, and very helpful. I’m an independent game developer. My first game is, in part, a 3D collect-a-thon and one of my main design goals is to create a deep and enjoyable movement system. To support this goal, there’s a couple of different collectibles. Small, numerous “coins” and big, hard-to-get “stars” are the main collectibles, with “coins” being used as currency and “stars” being the keys to story progression. Obviously I’m not gonna call them coins and stars because coins and stars are Mario’s collectibles, but I don’t like to talk too much about the artistic design of the game on public forums because if I say my game is about a chicken collecting kernels of corn and golden eggs, then I run the risk of someone else making a game about a chicken collecting kernels of corn and golden eggs. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that I deeply appreciate the hard work you put into this thoughtful analysis of a common game design tool. It’s interesting to the game player side of me and useful to the game maker side of me.

I believe we can count souls in Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow as collectibles, and also demons in Devil Survivor series. Those collectibles are optional and game can be completed without getting all of them but they give impact on gameplay. Souls give alternate attack or ability for Soma while demons give ally to aid battles in Devil Survivor.

To this day, I still have not collected every single Korok seed in Breath of the Wild — but I honestly appreciate just how many of them there are. The player is never too far away from something to collect, but the player is also not forced to scour the entire map and get absolutely all of them in order to unlock all of the slots for weapons, shields, and bows. It kinda frustrates me a little when people complain that there are too many of them, as if making more of them required or reducing the overall number are really better options. Forcing the player to collect all of them in order to get all the slots would just be exhausting and pointless; what does the player need one more inventory slot for after seeing everything there is to see in the game? Likewise, reducing the number of Korok seeds in the world to just those necessary to get all the slots would still force the player to scour the entire world for them, but the whole experience would feel emptier and longer as a result. There are more of them than a player needs so that the player doesn’t feel pressured to search absolutely everything. Unless they just want to.

I was gonna say… Pokémon should be on a list like this lol Though, I didn’t really like how you said “in the earlier generations”, it’s true that the message of “Catch’em all” is not present in the newer games but it’s still something that you do and they keep giving you motivation to do it. Such as Sword and Shield’s system of telling you Pokémon that you can find right now, and how they give you a certificate and special icon in your trainer card if you complete it. It’s rewarding enough.

For lore as motivation for collecting things – Something I have noticed, comparing how I engage with Pokemon vs Monster Sanctuary – Pokemon? Getting new critters gives you a couple of sentences of lore about those critters. And I will read every single pokedex entry, and always have done. Monster Sanctuary? I’m having a good time with the game, don’t get me wrong, but you get the game’s equivalent of the pokedex after you’ve got 5-7 or so monsters, and each monster has four pages – not long pages, each about a paragraph or so long, and I think some cut off on the first line of the last one – and I just completely noped out of that system despite finding the lore dumps in Metroid Prime a compelling reason to Scan Everything. Hell, I read every entry I unlocked in the Star Ocean: Till The End of Time in game wiki which is, an in game lore document that unlocked entries whenever you saw the title of the entry mentioned anywhere in the game, including in the entries you were reading.

The worst thing you can do with collectibles is make them missable after a point of no return, so that an entire extra playthrough is required to access them. While not conventional “collectibles” I was particularly bothered by Final Fantasy 7, as both Yufi and Vincent were entirely missable characters. Yufi was particularly annoying, as I encountered her a couple times, fell for her dumb tricks (go for the save point, etc.) and then she just… stopped appearing. Another awful category are randomized collectibles. Trophies, stickers, spirits in the Smash Bros. games. Anybody remember making custom “sticker factory” stages in Brawl? Kirby and the Crystal Shards on the N64 gave random collectibles at the end of a level, so you eventually get to the point where if you want them all, you just keep replaying the quickest level in the game. And just a terrible way of getting things in general is the time gate, where you just need a certain amount of time to pass in order to receive a reward. I think it’s more common in mobile games, mainly as a way to sell microtransactions, but I see this occasionally in console/handhelds as well. Bravely Default had a village to build in this manner. Pokemon has daycare and egg hatching. Metal Gear Solid 5’s base made me decide to just not get the true ending, as I needed o grind a bunch of materials, and then wait behind an in-game timer for the base facilities to be built. This is an aspect of the game I had ignored throughout almost the game’s entirety, and then to unlock the last mission, I suddenly needed a largely upgraded base, which would involve hours of material collecting, and just waiting, since I had already finished all of the required missions at this point.

Another example is letting the player figure out themselves where to go or what to do to get their reward. I remember Mario Odyssey had those pictures that gave a hint where you could find a moon in a certain level. You have that “aha” moment when you recognize it and it then excites you to find more. Breath of the Wild had it too with the memories.

You know what collectable I want to shout out? The extra songs in Brutal Legend. They are a collectable and they tie to the usual game stuff, but they’re also songs, and you want to listen to them. You want to see which band gets another song represented, and you want to see if you can hear another cool song you may not have known. Also, the collectables in Metroid games can be pretty sweet if you know some of the secret stuff. I’m playing more Zero Mission and learned some of the cool things you can do with shinesparks and how you can get certain items early, like super missiles and the screw attack. If you do that, you now have a very different feeling playthrough and experience due to getting the collectables differently. How awesome. Also, sweet that you got verified. Very funny that it happened not long after I wondered how you weren’t. Then I started paying attention and noticed that some pretty major creators I know of somehow aren’t. It’s crazy.

Crash 4s completion IS optional….but it”s also most of the focus in the Crash series. Crash 1-3 without boxes is a unremarkable experience, you don’t bother with secrets because they are focused around boxes and you ignore bonus stages because outside of some lives you don’t neat it’s JUST.MORE.BOXES. Crash 4 is designed with so little care in the effort to complete it I’d believe the devs if they said they did it to spite the players.

The Pikmin series is a perfect collectable game. They are console RTS games based on using minions to collect treasure and kill enemies, and its adorable. In the some of the items are also upgrades like imunity for the player from certain damage (your pikmin minions are color coordinated for their abilities, which are fixed), or quality of life like a radar or proximity detector to collectables.

I liked how Ori and the Blind Forest (haven’t played Will of the Wisps yet) went about collectibles. The Life Cells, Energy Cells, and Spirit Light Containers were all bound to help you through the game, and actively looking for them also helps toward 100% maps. Some are easily spotted through casual gameplay, some are rewards for exploring the area, some are cleverly hidden, some are just hard to reach without skill mastery, and some require backtracking to a previous area after you’ve gained the required skill. If you’ve powered up your Ability Tree enough, you can get the exact locations of all of them to appear right on the map, including the ones hidden in secret areas that AREN’T part of the 100% map completion. And finally, you get separate achievements for collecting all of each 3 collectible types. There’s multiple layers of motivation. I’ll admit that some of them are ANNOYING to get, such as the ones you spot during the Ginso Tree escape, though thankfully you can later backtrack to get the ones you missed. There’s also a few that take a lot of trial and error, especially the ones in high up places that require multiple Bashes or Triple Jump.

Hollow Knight has five major collectables: Essence, grubs, enemies, rancid eggs and artifacts. Essence is gained randomly from normal enemies, special dream warrior fights, special hunt challenges by striking soul trees and then collecting its fruit for a tad of lore. The rewards are upgrades or material for upgrades. (Material for upgrading your magic pool and weapon, as an example). It’s also required for one of the endings and a heavily-challenging platforming area. If you don’t want to collect all the essence, you don’t have to! You’ll get one of the other three endings for doing so. The grubs are not required, but give you a good amount of currency, power ups and it provides through an optional boss, a map to finding the ones you’ve missed. Once you find the Hunter, you get his journal, which gives you bits of information on your enemies and the ability to look more closely at their art. By completing it, you get recognition and a trophy from the Hunter. (Also many of the entries are funny). Rancid eggs are actually very useful, if not apparently so at face value. On the map for the first village is a locked door and inside is an NPC who can help you get your ghost back, say from a very awkward position that’s dangerous to return to. If you fail to get your ghost back and die, you lose any money you carried when you died the first time. Confessor Jiji can help make recovery a lot less painful, but they are a finite resource. The only area that makes retrieval of your ghost back easy is the Colosseum of Fools, which has a room by the rest area where it always spawns when you inevitably die in a trial.

i really like when the collectibles are well contextualize. like how the bananas for dk or gems for spyro were stolen by the antagonist. an ape wanting his banana back and a dragon wanting the treasures of their species back makes sense to me. Maybe it is because i had siblings when growing up, who stole my stuff, that I feel rewarded in spyro when recovering gem that are entitle to me. Gem being limited makes them more valuable.

One of my favorite collectibles has got to be the bestiary entries in Bug Fables. From the Spy Card quest alone, you get to play like 5 new mini-sidequests, have a whole extra outlet for currency farming, and best of all, YOU GET TO PLAY A FREAKIN CARD GAME USiNG YOUR ENTRIES AS CARDS When it comes to collectible rewards, you really can’t beat Spy Cards

PS2 era: Beyond Good and Evil has, if memory serves, two main collectibles – pearls and animals – and an in-game shop sells you trackers for each that simply make them show up on the map. You don’t need to 100% either (though each offers you a bonus for doing so) but the game is small enough that doing so isn’t a significant chore. Pearls are often found in groups, making reaching the required thresholds faster, while the same animal can often be found in multiple locations. It’s also impossible to lock any of the collectibles out from being collected.

Something I thought I should note for Rayman 1: While the system is as described in every official release of the game, the fan-remake known as “Rayman Redemption” does NOT force 100% completion to beat the game… and not just because cages are no longer the sole important collectible. Now the cages are for the purpose of extending your max health, and there’s an upgrade that can help narrow down the location of remaining cages if you so wish. They also go towards unlocking cosmetics in the Shop. Magician spots have also been replaced by Magician Tokens, and the more you find, the more Bonus Stages you unlock. Beating more of those also unlocks Shop items. There’s also Presents, and finding all of those in a world… you guessed it, more Shop items. However, obtaining most of these item types completely unlocks one final level. Like the Toybox and most of the Candy Chateau, this is an original stage. Unlike any of those, it is brutal, and one possible capstone to your 100% run. The other option? That would come from completing every Magician Challenge before it, including a Kirby-esque Boss Rush. The final challenge there is also Kirby-esque: EX forms for every last boss in the game! Note that there’s quite a few more bosses than in the official release, and most originals had already been adjusted to be more engaging and/or difficult.

One development in the last couple decades is the rise of achievement systems to become almost universal – they are basically a spin on collectibles, just non-diegetic (usually) but with a very similar set of design considerations. Like intrinsically-motivated collectibles, ideally they are a way to encourage a player to try stuff they otherwise wouldn’t, but uninspired design makes them just a chore in many games! A rather more pernicious development is the coupling of collectibles to a rng gambling system, as in gacha games and mmo random drops. A game like Warframe has decently rewarding core gameplay for a shorter game, but it is spread thin over a terrible collectible grind for weapons and frames, where getting late-game-viable requires you to spend a lot of time collecting and leveling useless weapons to raise your rank, and most items are gated behind doing slight variants of the same levels until the right pieces drop. A case of a business model destroying what could have been a much better game. CrossCode by contrast does a pretty good job of intrinsically motivating collectibles behind exploration and puzzles. I still remember having fun getting familiar with the design logic of levels, seeing a chest and figuring out how to get to it or thinking “I bet there is a chest there” and then finding one. It’s totally optional because the extrinsic rewards are minor but useful (slightly better gear for example), and it adds an extra dimension to the game.

My favorite is still Spyro the Dragon 1. It plops you into the first hub world with no guidance. You can do the obvious thing and free the dragon directly in front of you, and he will give you some ideas of what to do. But you can also ignore freeing him entirely. But the best part is in the opening scene, where a dragon mentions they have “12,000 gems… or was it 14,000?” This immediately got me interested in collecting all the gems to find out, and I was rewarded for doing so, as the last 2,000 gems were a bonus level where Spyro can fly indefinitely. Spyro the Dragon 2 made an entire amusement park the reward for collecting everything, but even that wasn’t as exciting for me, as I knew what was coming and was in a sense herded to get there.

Every time you bash Rayman 1, a wide grin spreads on my face. I grew up with that game and I love it to bits, and hearing your (legitimate!) concerns about it are great, in a sort of The Roast of Rayman 1 type of way. I understand completely how you feel, and although I don’t agree (i.e. I personally think it’s great fun to try and figure out where the hell all the Cages are, and also that some of that design lends itself to a sort of ‘puzzle game’ type gameplay loop), I can totally see how incorporating your point of view in my own thoughts about game designs are a healthy way to think about solving the problems that creating a game presents for its desginers.

Makes me think of the Golden Sun series with the Djinns. I personally loved them because they enhanced the game so much with classes, skills, and summons. Only thing I didn’t like about them was that a few of them can be unobtainable after a certain point so if you miss one, you may lose out on a summon. But that drawback doesn’t take away from the overall enjoyment I had with the Djinn system.

Another game with collectibles with intrinsic motivation is Rayman 3. If you collect them in succession, your score racks up. There is also an extrinsic motivation as it unlocks bonus games, but it’s nice getting a higher score the previous time you played it. I was obsessed with this as a child lol.

The Jak and Daxter example is an interesting one. The intrinsic value of collecting each power cell is fairly high due to the assorted funny dances they do upon collection however the reward for collecting all of them is pretty insulting. Upon completing the game (which requires finding many but certainly not all of the power cells) you are given a scene where the characters find a mysterious door which will open if you insert all 101 collectible power cells, so back into the world you go to find any that you’ve missed. Once you return with them they all flashily leap onto the door, powering it up fully and in a blaze of light it opens up… and that’s it. The door opens. You don’t see through it, you don’t find out what is behind it, you don’t go through it. All you get for your effort is a brief close up of the character’s faces as they look impressed at… something. At the start of the second game you find out what it was but your big reward in the first game – non existent.

I think one of my favorite collectible experiences was not exactly an original game, but a port. Sonic Adventure DX rewarded players with extra playable games (12 to be exact) by collecting the game’s emblems and doing missions. As I had never played any of the Sega Master System/Game Gear games before, getting rewarded with an entirely new game every so often was a really good and addictive feeling. Another decent collectible is the heart tank and armor pieces from the Mega Man X series. Not only are some of them satisfying to find, but you likely WANT to find them so you’ll be upgraded and won’t die as easily. They enhance HP, defense and character abilities and who wouldn’t want that?

THPS always had physical collectibles as a part of their objectives, but what I like most are the gaps. Their names are hints to their location, and if you find them, congrats, you have a new place to do tricks and get a free increment to your score multiplier. KH2FM had these puzzle pieces, some in hard to reach places, and getting them unlocks little jigsaw puzzles with cool artwork. Although a bit frustrating to collect (in theory, having to confuse an opponent into casting heals on you is a clever mechanic, but in reality it’s a tad finnicky), Final Fantasy’s blue magic are a collectable of sorts that gave you skills to use in combat, some of which were even useful! Mighty Guard, White Wind, Auto-Life, and some damage skills could be quite strong.