The Crash Mask Problem

Okay, so as Crash: N Sane Trilogy has just been ported to the Switch (and PC and Xbox) and in light of rumours that they may be working on a brand new entry in the franchise, I thought it would be a good time to discuss one of the series' central mechanics, the mask system.

For any of you poor souls who have somehow never played a Crash Bandicoot game, this is how masks work: Along his adventures, Crash will pick up tiki masks, and these act as a form of health; having a tiki mask in your possession will negate a single instance of damage (from an enemy or the environment) at the cost of the mask. Picking up a second mask turns the original mask gold, and allows the player to take a second hit. These masks float alongside you, but if you obtain a third one, Crash will don the mask, resulting in a short period of invincibility - much like Mario picking up a star in Super Mario. It's this invincibility where the problems start to creep in.

Thanks to Crash's ability to bring masks from earlier levels, there is a possibility that he will turn invincible on any given pickup, even the first one of a new level. This becomes a problem for the level designers, as every time they want to place a health item, they must be prepared to inadvertently place an invincibility item on the exact same spot. Becoming invincible is supposed to be a reward, allowing the player to charge forwards through multiple enemies without stopping, but gaining invincibility just before a slower section, where you have to stop moving and wait around for parts of the environment to line up, would feel like a huge let-down, and not what the developers would want.

This will have been an absolute nightmare to design around, and explains why the invincibility feature was stripped back in the third game. Of the 30 levels in that game, 8 had no masks at all (the motorcycle and biplane levels, and the secret dino level) and a further 8 don't give you invincibility when a third mask is picked up (the underwater, jet ski and great wall levels) meaning a total of 16 levels, or more than half the game doesn't feature the franchise's most iconic mechanic. I think Naughty Dog were aware of the problem, and were trying to minimise it's impact on the final release.

Now, if Vicarious Visions are continuing the series we need to think how the problem might be fixed going forward. Option A, the nuclear option, would be to just cut the invincibility out of the game entirely, maybe even replacing the masks themselves to draw attention away from the missing feature. Overall this seems like a terrible idea, as removing one of the game's most famous elements, especially for the first new entry in over a decade, would risk destroying the goodwill generated by the recent remake.

Option B would be to split the features of the masks into two items, so gaining additional hits would no longer trigger invincibility. Rather than create a new item, they could simply opt for the two different mask designs, standard for health, and gold for invincibility. This would be the easiest to implement, and cause no real knock-on effect. Care would have to be taken to distinguish between the two items, especially for those with colour-blindness, but that could easily be done by making the sparkles on the gold mask more prominent, and possibly playing a quieter version of the jungle drum music as crash approaches it.

Finally, option C, my preferred option, is a bit more complicated both in implementation and in gameplay, but remains closest to the original design. In this version, players would still be able to gain invincibility when in possession of a third mask, but would have to manually activate it via a button press. This places the onus on the player to use it at the right time, rather than it's use being dictated solely by box-placement. This also opens up more interesting options for speed-runners, and also adds a risk/reward mechanic to holding on to it (as getting hit would knock you right back down to the standard mask, rather than the gold one).

These are just my initial ideas, but whenever a new Crash game finally arrives, I think it's important that Activision/Vicarious Visions finally takes a look at this issue, as I think it really risks holding the series back long-term. And if they could also get rid of that stupid lives system at the same time, that'd also be wonderful.

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