Making Casual Games

Hi! I’m Eric Heimburg and I’ve been creating video games for the casual audience for about a year, give or take. Before that, I was a developer of larger video games. During my time in the games industry, I’ve been an engineer, a producer, and a systems designer, so I found I had a lot of ideas about how to make casual games. When I had the opportunity to try my hand at it, I took it!

As of this writing, I do not have a game published. My first game is finished, and the publishing contract is signed, but it is in limbo awaiting QA. My fingers are crossed that I’ll soon have a million bazillion dollars. Actually, I don’t even bother to hope that. I just hope I make enough money that I can afford to make a second game!

If not, it’s back to the massive game teams for me. No more waking up at 11pm and working until 2am… well, okay, I guess I did that a lot on actual game teams. But it’s different now! Trust me. We’ll explore all about how it’s different, and why, in this blog. But more importantly, we’ll explore how to make casual games, and we’ll examine casual games and see what makes them tick.

I’m a big fan of learning by example, and there are plenty of example games to study! Every week I’ll put up an analysis of a different casual game. But these reviews have a special target: they’re aimed squarely at other casual game developers. They will use lots of screen shots and technical details to help give you a solid picture of the game’s innards. Let’s get started, shall we? Time for the first game analysis!