What makes a good casual game

The company's games have always had a higher percentage of female players then men, but it seems that this has never shaped the design process. For every feature we add, however, we do ask, is that going to turn off a female gamer?

Or a child? We put everything through that filter. We approach it inversely — it's not, will this feature appeal to a certain demographic, but will it make a certain category of person not want to play this game, and if it does, what's it doing there? A key risk the company took in this light was the inclusion of the undead in Plants vs Zombies.

When designer George Fan originally came up with the concept for the game, it was going to pitch plants against aliens — it soon became clear, though, that extraterrestrial invaders would be too smart to fall victim to a garden full of vegetable warriors, so he switched to zombies.

However, the art team specifically designed the characters, not only to be rather cute and non-threatening, but also to look much less human: the horror of zombies is the idea that they were once someone alive, someone recognisable. By removing that element, the company was able to put stumbling corpses into a casual game without scaring anyone. As with many other developers in the casual sector, most of Popcap's games are now free — the revenue comes from in-app purchases, including virtual goods.

It remains a controversial model, open to abuse and viewed with suspicion by traditional gamers. So how does Popcap implement it without becoming a free-to-play pariah? We want to create great experiences regardless of how you charge the customer and we have erred on the side of being gentle with in-app purchases so that we don't ruin the experience.

But obviously this is a business - game development isn't free, so we need to make sure we have a mutually beneficial relationship with the player. Sure, that all sounds lovely, but how does that actually impact development? We treat that very respectfully — it has to be a positive part of the relationship. I think people do trust Popcap. If you respect the players and don't try to trick them into getting out their credit card that's a win-win situation — they'll be a more loyal customer and they'll do it again.

We're not a charity making games for free, but in terms of running a business - the best businesses provide you with value. That's the driving force". Most truly creative game design studios organise special events where staff get together in small teams, either to pitch new ideas or to actually prototype their own games.

Turns out Popcap has a similar scheme in operation. Popcap began with three guys working in a garage, it wasn't one guy, because game development is a multi-disciplinary endeavour.

So you have a project and you have a team and if it seems like something worth exploring you get a week to work on it. We then do a sort of expo in one of the meeting rooms where we show case all of these projects and everyone, from the marketing teams to publishing, comes and plays around with what people have created. It's a great process, and although most of them don't see more than a week's effort, some do emerge — Solitaire Blitz came out of Popcamp".

Popcap also runs its own indie spin-off label, 4th and Battery the address of the development studio in Seattle , where staff can work on and release experimental projects. The label's second title, Candy Train, was created by Sophia Hohing who originally worked for an external technology group, until she asked if she could take part in Popcamp. Her prototype was so good, she was given a few extra weeks to complete it and is now on the in-house design team.

That's one of the greatest myths about this industry — that the idea is everything. It's not, it's the execution. And if it resonates with a certain group then you build on that momentum. It turned out to be a good strategy — it gives our franchises a longer life and it ensures the game is the best it could be for each individual platform.

Popcap puts a lot of its success down to one simple facet: all of its staff are obsessive gamers. Yeah sure, every studio says that, but the difference here is that the team seem to be trying to get back to the fundamentals of electronic game design. What would be the modern equivalent of that? A lot of us are of a similar age, we grew up on Atari and Pac-Man — we're looking for inspiration that will bring to a broad group of people the feelings we had when we first experienced those introductory games.

Thus, casual games usually do not have a high learning curve. To achieve this, most of them have just a few controls. They normally have a single button or two that will predominantly control the majority of the game.

Casual games generally have simpler rules, shorter sessions, and less learned skills than hardcore games. As a result, they require a significantly less amount of time to play and win. Also, they can normally be played in small periods of time. Its release in , has drawn approximately million gamers. Countless casual games have been developed and published, alongside hardcore games, across the history of video games. A concerted effort to capitalize on casual games grew in the s and s.

Many developers and publishers branded themselves as casual game companies. They published games especially for PCs, web browsers, and, after , smartphones. Casual games generally cost less than hardcore games, as part of their strategy to acquire as many players as possible. Also, any game monetization method can be used, from retail distribution to free-to-play to ad-supported.

Games that require no download and being played in an existing app like a web browser or messaging app. Also, they usually monetize by showing advertisements to the player. Many different game genres have Casual games.

Earlys categorizations by Big Fish Games and Gamezebo, a casual game review site, named seven popular genres in casual games:. The best hyper casual games do well because of their broad appeal, you want to focus on the masses rather than on the few. Choosing a theme that is recognisable to everyone and anyone, especially themes that work well with multiple cultures do well.

These include Animals, Sports, a common social situation like jobs or life or work, or even the removal of all references to the real world and focus on geometric patterns, shapes or actions that are known by all.

Working with themes and ideas that are understood across all ages and cultures will lead to a broader appeal and potential reach. When a player downloads your game you want to get that player into their first game loop as soon as possible. Every extra second that it takes from the time the game is opened to the first time the player is giving input and receiving output, you are losing attention and as a result losing players.

Your best option is to consider 5 seconds as your limit to gameplay. If a player cannot click the app to start it up and within 5 seconds be able to have started a game, then you already are becoming too slow. Hyper casual games focus on simplicity. A simple game is obvious from the first play through and has almost no progression in features, form or controls as you play longer.

Striking a balance between a game that is simple to pickup, but hard to master is the skill of hyper casual game designs. There are 10 main tricks to the mechanics that we covered in our Top 10 game mechanics for hyper casual games.

Too difficult or too simple and players will drop after a couple of game loops. Difficulty is usually achieved by quickly ramping up the complextiy of the game with time, or as the game loop develops. Often you will want to change only one of game mechanics at a time, for example if you were to increase the speed of the game, increasing the number of enemies at the same time can be quite a jump.

Play around with difficulty until you find a nice balance. One of the key aspects for many hyper casual games is the level of focus that is needed during each game loop. In these games you do not plant some carrots to come back and pick them in 4 hours, here your entire focus is on the screen all of the time you are playing. This is often because any lack of focus will lead to death or failure. Making sure the game design leads to constant focus makes the game much stickier. This also leads to a nice loop in intense focus during gameplay and relaxation at the end of each game loop.

Imagine a tensing and relaxing, which leads to many positive emotions in the player. When considering how long you want the game loop to be, this can range quite heavily in mobile game design, but for hyper casual games, we want to focus on a much shorter game loop that we would expect from other genres of game. The shorter the game loop, the more opportunity there is for the player to start up the game for a quick round.

Hyper casual game loops can grow over time, but the longer the game loop, the fewer the opportunities that the player can get their phone out and play.