Archive for July, 2007

31 July, 2007 | No comments

Making Casual Games: When is it okay to be confusing?

I play a lot of DDR, and recently I got the old PS2 game “DDR Max.” It’s a little less polished than the newer games, but it does have a couple of very interesting bits at the end. If you get a high score, it lets you enter your name. But it doesn’t tell you how to enter your name. Letters just zoom up from the bottom of the screen, and you sort of have to work out what’s going on.

Actually, it’s just an extension of the normal game mechanics: if you stomp on the pads when the appropriate letter comes by, it’ll be added to your name in that position. The positionals are the same as the ones in the game, so the left pad is the first character, the up pad is the third, etc. The first time I got a high score, I couldn’t figure it out. I just sort of muddled through it and shrugged, and got a random string of letters for my name. Whatever, not important. But the second time I got a high score, I figured it out. It was so obvious! Yet I couldn’t see it the first time. I actually felt a little clever for figuring it out.

It’s a neat mechanic because it lets you do a little dance move to enter your name. Very cool. The question is: would it have been better, or worse, if it had given the user some instructions?

How likely would users be to read “enter your name” instructions, anyway? Plus, the actual mechanics would be very hard to explain. It’s unintuitive until suddenly you just “get it” and it’s completely obvious. So I suspect instructions would have made things clunkier, not easier.

The easter egg in the DDR Max credits is great, too. As the credits roll up the screen, you can step on the pads right when a name reaches the top. The name explodes, as if you’d stepped on a note. Just another cute continuation of the game mechanics. Instructions there would have been very detrimental.

So what’s the rule of thumb? Obviously, you can’t be confusing at the beginning of the game. But perhaps it’s okay to add mechanics that aren’t completely intuitive later in the game, as long as they’re very isolated, like the “enter your name” screen. (Or an optional mini-game, in the case of casual games.) Of course, it has to be fun enough to justify the confusion. DDR Max could have used a traditional “enter name” screen that was very intuitive… but it wouldn’t have been as much fun!

Note that I’m not standing up for the GUI’s in later DDR games. The GUIs for the “adventure mode” in DDR Extreme 2 and DDR Supernova are amazingly unintuitive, and they don’t have any “fun factor” to fall back on, either. They just suck. If you’re going to be unintuitive, it’s gotta be for a really good reason!

31 July, 2007 | No comments

GameZebo: Just In - Ricochet Infinity and Daycare Nightmare

Today Reflexive Entertainment launched Ricochet Infinity, a game that offers a new take on the traditional paddle-and-ball control scheme of brick-busting games.

And if you thought babysitting was hard enough, try beastie-sitting with Injoy's Daycare Nightmare.

We'll be posting reviews of both games very soon, but click on the links above to try them out.

31 July, 2007 | No comments

GameZebo: 15 Minutes of Game: Featured Web Game of the Week

Bear with this game for the first five levels (about 20 seconds of your time) and then you'll see how cool it really is. Using the spacebar to shoot and arrow keys to aim, the goal is to destroy the target using physics and gravity to alter the course of the projectile.

Click here to play GravityPods now.

31 July, 2007 | No comments

GameZebo: Gamezebo Podcast: Interview with Colin Wilkinson and Megan Kans about Puzzle Quest

If you haven't heard of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, you need to check it out. It's becoming one of the biggest sleeper hits for the PSP and DS and is attracting gamers who would have never played a casual game if you forced them too. Now with the announcement for the game on PC, Wii, Xbox Live Arcade, and mobile phone, we thought we talk to Collin Wilkinson, a Designer at 1st Playable Productions, and Megan Kans, a Publicist at D3 Publisher about the creation of the game, the effect it has had on the industry, and some insight on what is the best magic spells in the game.

Click here to download and hear to our podcast with Colin Wilkinson of 1st Playable Productions and Megan Kans of D3 Publisher

31 July, 2007 | No comments

GameZebo: Moorhuhn Kart 2

Moorhuhn Kart 2 is an arcade racer starring the crazy chicken Moorhuhn, who has appeared in more than 20 self-titled casual games spanning genres from Mah Jong to Soccer. Like Mario Kart and other similar offerings, the measure of any racing game's worth can be found in a few basic criteria, including track design, graphics and controls, characters and environments. Let's get to work.

31 July, 2007 | No comments

Reality From the Sidelines: Quick Indie Game roundup!

It’s been a very busy few weeks for all at Reality Fakers and Atomic Pond (i.e: Me). And more and more quality indie games keep appearing. So here’s a quick mention of the games that have caught my eye over the last few months and ones that you should be checking out too!

Mr Robot

Gorgeous looking isometric 3D game harking back to the classic Spectrum and 8-bit era games. This of course uses modern hardware to great effect and was in development for a long time so make sure you try it out! Download

Professor Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery

The Professor is back (again!) and doing what he does best: Pushing stuff out of the way or onto other stuff while enjoying his floating platforms. This looks to be every bit as good as the first game and probably better! Download

Ricochet Infinity

The latest in Reflexive’s ricochet series. This looks to be the best yet for this popular series of breakout style games! Download

Dream Chronicles

A casual game, very well produced. Has some extremely nice looking graphics! Download

Venice

The latest Pop Cap game co developed with Retro64. Great concept and loads of polish (as is to be expected of Pop Cap). Download

In other news, work on the first 2 atomic pond games is still going on (of course)… hey we all know it takes a long time to make good games worth making in the first place! Updates on those soon (this year at least )

31 July, 2007 | No comments

Game Producer: 3 Benefits of Having a Newsletter

There are several reasons why every indie developer out there should get a newsletter. They are relatively inexpensive (from free to little money) tools for promotion.

#1 - Newsletters are good reminders
You can remind people to visit your site. That’s one of the greatest benefits of newsletters. Somebody goes to your site - even for the first time - and if he subscribers to your newsletter you can easily remind him to get back. Use newsletters to remind your subscribers about your product, new website or game updates - anything useful for them. In my case I announce people about sales stats, interviews and other special stuff that might not be available anywhere else.

#2 - Use newsletters as the extension of your product
You can provide additional information - anything from announcing tips and hints to discounts. This will give additional reason for people to come back to your website. Use newsletters to provide additional value and give additional benefits for those who subscribe. For example, I’m giving a free game production ebook for those who subscribe to my newsletter. This type of free gifts are great way to get subscribers.

#3 - Newsletters are good sales tools
Newsletters can be an effective sales tool. I have used newsletters mostly to remind people to visit my site, but one can easily use newsletters to sell stuff. If you have a list of players you can tell your subscribers about other games. There are plenty of portals that can provide you tools to sell other people’s games. You can use newsletters to announce sequels or expansion packs of your games - something your players will definitely want to see.

For those interested, I use YMLP to send my newsletter. I’ve been happy with YMLP’s performance.

If you liked this entry, feel free to visit GameProducer.net to read more similar articles.

31 July, 2007 | No comments

Free Game News: Square Meal

Square Meal is the latest arcade game created by Nitrome.

The goal here is to help a little troll to escape a 50 levels dungeon. To do this, you need to eat all the monsters in each level, but before you can do this, you must stun them by hitting them with blocks.

Use the arrow keys to move and press space bar to eat.

As usual with Nitrome, the game is very polished and nicely done. Unfortunately, if Square Meal is fun for 5 minutes, you will quickly realize that the lack of a solid enemy A.I. is a serious problem to keep players interested for long.

That being said, Square Meal will probably appeal to young people and at least deserves a try.

Have fun!

31 July, 2007 | No comments

GameZebo: Wedding Dash Review

If you liked Flo, you'll love Quinn.

Yep, fans of the hit game series Diner Dash have been anxiously waiting to swap brooms for grooms in PlayFirst's first official Diner Dash offshoot Wedding Dash, and after a week of intense play, Gamezebo can confirm it lives up to the hype.

30 July, 2007 | No comments

Free Game News: TNT Escape

TNT Escape is a new very short Room Escape game. “Click in the right places and find the items. Some of the items can be used by clicking on them and then dragging them to the right object”. Hum, it reminds me a lot of Locked Forever 2… Have fun!

Update: walkthrough in comment #7 (thanks pOlo!) 

« Next entries