Innovation of the Week: Trapping/Trap-Laying

Today, let's discuss the roots of a gameplay mechanic that has been beloved by strategists and stealth players for decades: Trap-laying. This innovation adds an extra layer of strategy to gameplay and can create intense, suspenseful moments where you carefully set up a plan and hope that it executes properly based on what the enemy or another player does. While some games center around this mechanic, it hasn't quite hit the mainstream as far as genre names go.

The first example seems to be from Heiankyo Alien (1979), an arcade game which challenges players to dig holes to trap pursuing aliens in single screen, maze-like levels similar to those found in Pac-Man (1980). The year after, what is sometimes seen as the first platformer, Space Panic (1980) seemingly followed in Heiyankyo Alien's footsteps while introducing verticality and playing out in a 2D side view. This latter game became a direct inspiration to the more well known and successful Lode Runner, which added more complex levels, smarter enemies and a collectathon element to the formula.

Some More Notable Retro Game Examples:

Qix (1981) - This creative action puzzle game introduced the zoning/lassoing mechanic where the player draws a box using their player avatar around enemies to take them out of play, trying to color in as much of the playfield as possible while not getting hit in the process. Several clones followed!

Dig Dug (1982) and Boulder Dash (1984): In Dig Dug, players dig through the ground to eliminate enemies by either crushing them with falling rocks or strategically inflating them until they burst. Boulder Dash later took some inspiration from Dig Dug while adding a lot more rocks as well as unique physics to them, which the player needs to learn in order to progress. Some other interesting features were also included such as the virus that keeps replicating until you've completely surrounded it.

Ghostbusters (1984) - This ambitious game, originally released for the C64, blended trapping mechanics with action adventure while adding a strategic element to the trapping in that players could now shop for traps among other gadgets. This can be done either before or during gameplay, with money earned over the course of the game. The trapping element itself is fairly basic, gameplay-wise, consisting of moving your car into ghosts flying around the streets during autoscrolling segments, or once you've arrived to a haunted building, trying to align your ghostbusters so as to trap one or more ghosts in-between their lasers. In the US this game seems infamous for its poor NES port, which is a shame.

Spy vs. Spy (1984) - The game based on the classic comic strip has two agents come up with inventive ways to trick and kill each other, generally involving trap-laying. There's a single player vs the CPU mode, as well as a vs mode. Each player starts somewhere in a foreign embassy, and their main objective is to steal five randomly placed items, then board a plane at the nearby airport. To prevent the other player from beating you to it, you can fight them directly and steal their items, but you can also set five different traps in the rooms' furniture and doorways (you start with one of each and can easily find more) - bombs and time bombs, springs, acid buckets and spring guns can be used. Players can see as well as hear when traps are placed but eventually it becomes more and more challenging to remember both your own and your opponents' placements. However for each trap besides the time bomb there is also a specific protection item that can be used. The experience is also pretty customizable for the time: Level size, number of traps to find and AI difficulty, whether or not the airport is hidden and the time limit can be set before gameplay begins.

Home Alone (PC/AMI, 1991) & Home Alone (MD/GEN, 1992) - In the MD game you are tasked with defending the houses of your neighborhood until police show up, hurting the two thieves from the movie with traps until they give up and before they loot and flood every house. Entering a house before the thieves lets you lay 7 different traps in it via a side view map screen, and these include torches (can be placed in door jams), ice (placed on the floor sections), tar (slows a thief down giving you more time to escape or shoot him with a weapon). The weapons are crafted out of up to three different items found in the houses, a rarely seen featured at the time. Most traps also harm your avatar if you walk into them and there's a neutral enemy in each house which attacks both the player and the thieves. The PC game is different, taking place in Kevin's house only, and starts off with you having an hour (closer to 9 mins IRL) to search for objects to use as traps. Once the thieves arrive, it's best to try and manually lure them into the traps to ensure that they don't disarm them, and like in the MD game the traps can hurt you too. What does it have over the MD game? Well, what suburban fantasy is complete without a tree house?

Tecmo's Deception (1996) - In this game the unique and surprisingly dark premise is that you were set up by your brother, who is now king, and are seeking help from none other than the devil after being summoned by him, to regain your power and get your revenge. To do this, you take over a small castle which you then lure adventurers and monsters into using various traps (and later on monster summons as well) to capture or kill them. This means each level takes place in the castle, starting with a planning phase where traps are selected and consisting of a wave of enemies invading the castle while the player generally moves in close to manually trigger the traps. This game provides one of the more fleshed out trapping experiences up until this point, mixing the mechanic with a 3D, FP view dungeon crawler RPG with light horror elements. There's even a construction element in that you can add to the castle with new rooms and hallways. Going back to the traps, there's a pretty large variety of them, sorted into three categories called "Capture", "Destroy", and "Confuse". You gain more of them as you level up until level 6, then from level 13 onwards you can upgrade these traps with gold. Traps can be placed on floors, walls or ceilings, and include bear traps, pits, spikes, magnet walls, spring floors, cages and cranes.

Dungeon Keeper (1997) - In this great genre hybrid game (RTS, FPS, God Sim, Trapping, more?) which lets players be the bad guy, each level takes place underground and has the player explore for gold, items and heroes while building a lair to attract monsters with via one or more portals. This is done using worker imps that they can summon, pick up and drop, or slap if they don't work hard enough. One of the monsters is the troll, and once researched in the library one can build workshop rooms to attract them. Trolls will happily move into the workshops on their own and start inventing doors as well as 6 different kinds of traps that once finished, your imps will place where you choose to. Among these are poison gas, lava (removes the floor beneath to reveal a lava tile), alarms and the extra deadly boulders, which after triggering keep rolling back and forth for a while before finally crumbling.

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What are your favorite retro games that feature trap-laying mechanics? Did any specific title stand out to you for its innovative use of them? Share your thoughts and memories!