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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After a very long wait my game has now entered beta with the publisher! Although the beta is short, they say that they get many hundreds of testers, whose usage patterns are recorded and analyzed. They can also fill out an optional poll about their experience. I’m very excited to get feedback, and I can’t wait to see what problems they have and where they get stuck.

Sorry for the lack of a game evaluation this week, oh imaginary readers; while I did evaluate a new game, I haven’t had time to write up the results yet. I figure that with no users reading my blog, it probably isn’t too big a deal.

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 we analyze a pretty little match-3 clone called Galapago. It’s nothing too special, just a clean and simple match-3 clone. By far the best thing about this game is the easter egg on the main game screen: the heads can talk, and one of them says very funny things. I was surprised at how much improved my opinion of the game was just due to this entertainment factor.

Another interesting aspect of Galapago is its menu — the main menu also doubles as a level-selection screen. After you beat a level, you return to the main menu, where you can pick another level, or quit your gaming session. It feels very clean, albeit simple.

I ponder this and much more in the full analysis of…

Galapago

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

Betrapped!

Gamezebo points to an interesting article on casual game clones. One of the most interesting things in it, to me, is an off-hand comment made by someone in the article:

“You feel a little bit dirty, but you know that if you can make some money — maybe $30,000 to $40,000 on a clone, which is actually a pretty decent return on your small investment of maybe $5,000 to 6,000 — you can then go out and build the game you really care about.”

Really? $30k to $40k for a straight clone? That’s awesome. One of the most frustrating things about the casual game market is that if you’re a new company publishing with a big portal site, there’s no way to know how much money to expect. Nobody will tell you. And the thing is, they can’t. Their contracts disallow it. So even when I find out how much my game makes, I won’t be able to tell you. That’s why I am always on the lookout for numbers that give any sort of clue about what a high-end, professional casual game might make.

The article has other tidbits — read it here:

In casual games, imitation is no flattery

Next up is a Flash-based casual game called:

 Pizza Frenzy

And now I can start dispensing advice and criticism! Woo. I feel bloggy already. First up, a bug that was mentioned in my analysis of Treasures of the Deep, but one which is present in many 3D games: they don’t support left-handed mouse users! The Control Panel option to swap mouse buttons isn’t new or wacky; it’s been there since the early 16-bit Windows versions. Not all lefties use this option, but many do.

When I start playing a game that doesn’t support swapped mouse buttons, I don’t realize it at first. I think, “that’s weird, the game isn’t responding.” I click on buttons and nothing happens. It takes a bit to realize what’s wrong. In the mean time, my first impression is that the game is broken.

I would never consider buying a game that didn’t support left handed mouse mode. It’s not spite or prejudice or anything … but think about it from the right handed point of view. If you downloaded a game and the mouse buttons were reversed, so you had to right-click on buttons to use them, your impression of the game would be pretty low, wouldn’t it? That’s how I feel.

If you use mouse messages like WM_LBUTTONDOWN for input, you don’t have to do anything to support lefty mouse mode. The operating system will take care of it for you! This is why 2D games tend to support lefty mouse even if the author didn’t think of it. However, if you’re using DirectInput for your mouse data, you have to check for swapped mice manually.

It is incredibly trivial to support lefty mouse mode in DirectX applications. You just make one single function call:

BOOL IsMouseSwapped = GetSystemMetrics(SM_SWAPBUTTON);

If this boolean is true, then simply swap the logic for your left mouse button and right mouse button handlers. That’s it! Ta da, you’ve made your game not suck for left handed users.

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