Consistency (within each game)

Theme of the Natural vs the Unnatural

Throughout all of the games there has been a theme, which has subconsiously driven the design team in the direction that things should go. This theme has been the natural vs the unnatural: in Rayman 1, Mr. Dark sends out his evil darktoon forces to destroy the world and entrap the electoons. In rayman 2, the Robot Pirates attempt to industrialise a world primarily driven by magic and natural forces, defiling the water sources and creating viscous machines only intended to harm. In Rayman 3, the shoddy buildings, ugly mechanical enemies and convoluted machinary (slightly reminiscent of the machinery in the previous game) are contrasted the beautiful natural world which is so utterly devestated by the hoodlum forces. In Rayman: Origins, the darktoons invade from the Land of the Livid Dead in much a similar way to how they invaded in the first game. This constant contrast of what is considered natural in Rayman's world against the evils of industrialism (or something) is thematically there and provides a strong art direction for the team and also conviniently provides a visual motivation for the player to continue in their duty to save the world.

This is provides the art team something that most art teams don't have: an extra general guide, allowing the team to think up more ingenious designs than your typical developer.

There is actually another theme which remains pretty strong throughout the series, wehich I will discuss under the art direction section.

Creature Design

The creatures that exist within Rayman's universe are  all very well designed. Due to its roots in a relativity lo-fidelity era in terms of graphics (and polygon count), the series' creatuers are all designed around basic shapes which makes them nearly instantly recognisable, as well as quickly conveying what they are like to a new player:

This creature is obviously not very nice, and upon sight a casual gamer could flee from the room, crying in fear.

These small creatures, on the otherhand clearly convey that they are quite silly and are allies of the player.

This is contrasted against a game such as Crysis, which has 2 fairly unoriginal enemy types (human and stereotypical evil biomechanical alien), or a game such as Braid, which only has one enemy, and a fairly badly designed one at that.

Good re-use of art assets

As is the case with many older games, they don't have enough memory to store a huge variety of textures and objects (I'm mostly referring to Rayman 2 here). However, they are used very well (overall), and the game never looks repetitive or bland (unlike most shooters, or many games of yore).

Art Style

This is probably the second most important thing about the way the world is designed. The general art direction has been "wacky" or like a cartoon, with the subtle undertones of the above mentioned theme of Natural vs Unnatural. With this overall art direction throughout all the games, you can tell a Rayman game at a glance, but it also allows for quite a large amount of variety in each game. Each game has a vaguely different style: Rayman 1 is more 16 bit colour and imagined detail and has the air of something absolutely rediculous:

Rayman 2 is Dark and Edgy simplistic shapes and colours that gives the sense of a living cartoony-but-serious world:

Rayman 3 is more lighthearted, and is like a crazier version of Rayman 2:

Rayman Origins is kind of like Rayman 1 (in terms of wackiness) but in HD:

And the world is designed around this crazy art style, creating a much more intresting world.

The Bad:

Inconsistency accross the series

The world changes every game. There are absolutely no similarities between the worlds in Rayman 1 and Rayman 2; 2 and 3 appear to be set in the same world, however many characters and many locations don't return. (As a note with the locations, this is actually mostly a good thing, meaning that there can be different levels in each game). Rayman Origins appears to try and remedy this, as the world appears to be a comglamoration of the previous worlds. Surprisingly, this actyually works really well and Rayman Origins' world is what reminded me about this in the first place.In fact, Rayman Origins has a level called "Didgeridoo Desert", which is a sister level to "Band Land" in the first game. However, it feels like they are rebooting the series with every game, which is not very good.

Biome Jump

Every one of the games suffers from this to some degree (except Origins). Biome Jump is when the player is in the middle of one kind of Biome, then suddenly they finish the level and travel on to something completely different. Rayman 1 and 3 have this in spades. Rayman 2 has it moderately, the levels do have some kind of progression through to each other between each boss fight, but after each boss fight, you get shoved into an entirely new location. Rayman Origins does much better, there are sections at the end of each chapter where you travel to the next biome, observing how things change as you fly on through. That is how it should have been done, but the previous games seemed to ignore this possibility.

The Fourth Wall

In Rayman 3, the characters are constantly breaking the 4th wall. This ruins any sense of immersion into this strange universe the player may have as they are reminded once again that none of this world is real. I honestly have no idea why the writers were so lazy in Rayman 3.

Often Obvious Biomes

For many reasons (which I won't outline) the games have a tendency to choose stereotypical platformer locations  for their biomes. A snowy mountain. A gloopy bog. Of course, some of their biomes (e.g. band land) are very original, and the wacky atmosphere allows these places to feel different and quite alien.




So we have arrived at the final paragraph of my love letter to the Rayman Universe.Where does this universe stand in relation to other games? Rayman is quite close to the top in terms of world design (in my book). Where does this world stand compared to other world building endeavours? Unfortunately, this would be placed around 1/4 of the way down the list, simply because there are more media to choose from and many more franchises and original IPs to look at.

TL;DR: Rayman has an excellent world design that should be studied by anyone interested in world or level design for video games.