What is this called and do any other games use it?

[cacao]

Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask but couldn't think of anywhere else. There's a game called "Year Walk". If you've never heard of it or played it, it's a first-person game with 2D graphics. You move by walking sideways and sometimes there's a path that lets you go back or forward to another 2D plane. Is there a name for this type of 2D movement? Are there any other games that use it?

[toei]

To my knowledge, there is no term that describes all these different characteristics together. In a first-person context, walking sideways is called strafing. Typically this applies to both games that use 3D graphics and games that use 2D (such as a lot of older first-person dungeon crawlers or early FPSes), though usually movement is less restricted, and you tend to move forward more than any other direction. There are quite a few 2D games that let you move between different horizontally-scrolling planes, but you typically navigate them in 3rd person; in that sense, Year Walk seems like it's basically just side-scrolling without a visible character.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Back in the day such games generally had tile-based movement (or at least movement in steps like in Myst) and let you turn around. It is technically 3D gameplay in FP view but not full 3D like Quake for example. I guess I would use 2.5D or limited 3D gameplay/movement in a 2D engine and then explain it further or just link to a video of it.

[mainpatr]

The Super Spy?

[Snake]

I was thinking the same thing. The Super Spy, Crossed Swords on Neo Geo.  Operation Wolf. Golgo 13 Top Secret Episode/Twilight of the Gods.

[windfisch]

Based on videos I'd say it's basically a sort of parallax scrolling, but with the additional ability of zooming in and out. Not quite sure whether it's 2D objects in a 3D space or just layered 2D objects that move at different speeds and are displayed in different states of blurriness (to give the illusion of depth of field) - I'd assume it's the former, as it seems the easier way to achieve convincing results. So, agreeing with ommadawnyawn2 , "2,5D" seems about right.

edit: Watching some more footage, this certainly seems interesting, as the zooming in and out does not seem to affect all layers equally. It's also a bit weird looking, almost like certain layers are pulled downwards (while zooming?). All this could still be achieved with a 3D camera and some layers scaling and moving independently or some layers placed very, very far away, but huge in size. Or it actually is just all 2D with elaborate parallax scrolling and object scaling. (I used to work with After Effects some years ago, which is able to produce similar results. So that's my point of reference here.)

[edmonddantes]

For those who haven't played it, Year Walk's style isn't like strafing in an FPS... its more akin to visiting the town in Shining in the Darkness.

[Null0x00]

The horrible Tiger Game.Com port of Duke Nukem 3D is another that's closest to being like an unholy fusion of the ZX81's 3D Monster Maze crossed with The Super Spy.

[condroid]

Reminds me of Electrocop:

[windfisch]

So this fella calls it a "first-person sidescroller" (I only watched the beginning of the video, because I've got Year Walk in my backlog intending to play it. But the video seems very well made.)

And incidentally Dan Root just made an video-essay on parallax-scrolling (great stuff as always):