Issue #78: I'm Gonna Wreck It! - July/August 2025

Emergent gameplay is emerging with escalating frequency! Be warned that you are now at increased risk for an upsurge in personal creativity!

You might’ve heard that term getting kicked around more and more in recent years, but what does “emergent gameplay” really mean? Well, it’s when video game designers, rather than crafting specific gameplay moments that play out the same for every player, instead focus on creating systems out of which an untold number of unique and interesting events can emerge.

Take Breath of the Wild, for example. Nintendo’s designers built a vast, open world, which was one of that game’s main draws — but the real magic was in the physics systems they put in place to dictate the myriad different object interactions that would be possible within that world. I was playing a Shrine challenge recently that involved using metal objects to conduct electricity across broken circuits in the floor — but I needed one more point of connection than the environment provided. No problem! I simply opened my inventory, selected a big metal hammer from among my melee weapons, and dropped it on the ground. It then conducted the electricity perfectly! A unique solution, dreamed up on the spot. Thousands of other players solved that same puzzle in different ways than I did, too.

Fire setting off blazes across wooden objects, water being splashed on muck to wash it away, wind giving you a boost to your paragliding flight speed in the air, or blowing away items you were trying to just pick up off the ground (Tulin! Stop that!) . . . both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were filled with emergent moments that only you ever saw. No other player ever witnessed the exact same interactions.

And I bring all that up now because we’re on the brink of the next wave of great, unique, emergent moments — courtesy of Donkey Kong Bananza! Its novel gameplay system is centered on destruction. Terrain deformation. You can break the whole world around you, bashing it to bits with DK’s sensational simian strength!

The technology that Nintendo has developed over time to allow for a game in which we can freely wreck the world around us is mind-boggling. Video games truly still have not peaked in realizing their potential! Gameplay like what we’re about to enjoy in Bananza just would not have been possible decades ago. (Or if they tried, it would’ve been much more limited in scope.)