Making Casual Games

Today I explore the 2006 hit match-3 game, “Magic Match.” I have to say that it’s a very unusual game, and really drives home how impossible it is to predict what games are going to be successful.

If I took the text off of some of the screens, I bet I could convince you that they were screenshots from the Amiga version of Bard’s Tale II. They’re a little squished, very brown, and feel retro.

But the game is not budget quality, by any means. It actually has tons of polish… it’s just not the the polish I would have added. For instance, there’s lots of animation, but the game pieces are tiny and often indecipherable. And while the game helpfully brings up a box letting you turn off the annoying in-game sound effects, perhaps it would have been better to make the actual sound effects less annoying.

In the end I think it works because it’s so cheesy, without being unpolished. People can’t tell whether to take the theme seriously or whether it’s all in jest. Like the singing minstrel? Do the authors�realize how horible that is? They have to, right? So it’s in jest? Right?

Because of its somewhat inexplicable success, this is a tricky game to analyze. I’m still mulling it over, and would love more feedback on why it works. You can read the full analysis here. If you haven’t played the game, start by scrolling down to the pictures at the bottom of the analysis. The pictures and captions will get you up to speed quickly.

Magic Match Analysis

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I think I’ll settle into a weekly Game Analysis for now. Have to head out of town for a week, so until next week, here’s Elemental. It’s a very polished little tetris-esque game. The most puzzling technical aspect is that it’s limited to 640 x 480 resolution. That’s pretty unusual these days.

The game works hard to give you that “you are playing a polished game!” feel, which is crucial, especially during the first 5 minutes of gameplay. The menus, though simple, feel really good because of the sound effects they use. It almost sounds like you’re playing a melody as you traverse the game’s menus. Very nice!

On the other hand, the multiplayer simply didn’t work at all when I was trying the game. That was a couple weeks ago, so maybe it’s fixed now?

Read the Full Analysis of Elemental

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Today’s analysis is a classic casual game. It’s Minesweeper crossed with a murder mystery. Check out the analysis of:

Betrapped!

Next up is a Flash-based casual game called:

 Pizza Frenzy

I have a bunch of conclusions I want to share about the various games I’ve analyzed so far, but it seems silly to talk about the conclusions before I’ve posted the data. So all this week I’ll be putting up game analyses. It’ll be a while before there’s enough games up that I can draw conclusions from them, but I would at least like to have example games to talk about when I make various points!

Here’s analysis #2: a break-out type game called:

Treasures of the Deep

First up, let’s take a look at Luxor 2. This is a sales juggernaut that has earned its position by being incredibly polished. Check out the analysis here:

http://www.heimburg.com/analyses/luxor2/index.shtml