One More Blog

by Ira Willey, February 2008

When I started AddictingGames.com in 2002 the most popular game was Popcap’s Bejeweled on MSN’s gaming zone. Today the market has exploded and casual games have become a lot more complex than simply matching coloured gems, however the addictive quality of the games remains the same. According to the Casual Games Association, the audience for casual games is roughly 200 million people and the market has grown to over 2.25 billion dollars a year.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to play and review, by my estimate, over 10,000 Flash games: some titles engrossed me for hours and some I didn’t even make it past the loading screen. You might ask how I can review a game if I didn’t even get past the intro, but the casual games sector is different from that of traditional video games. This is a market of fulfilling instant gratification and capturing the player’s attention as quickly as possible. The player has invested nothing more than bandwidth and a few seconds of their time, so if a game doesn’t captivate them almost instantly they will move on to another game (and there’s a lot of those!) So what makes a game become an Internet classic like Line Rider or disappear forever into obscurity? In this article I will try to answer that question and define the common elements found in successful Flash games.

Naming

A great game name is essential for separating yourself from the pack. You want to consider a player’s initial attraction to a name, convey a sense of the gameplay, and make it easy to remember so they can find it again. Perhaps one of the best Flash game names I’ve come across is Ninja Kiwi’s Bloons. It’s original, short and memorable. No surprise Bloons has spawned many sequels and spin offs and is one of the most successful Flash game franchise’s out there. Some of my other favourite names are Age of War, Dark Cut, Bowmaster, IndestructoTank and 3d Logic.

Bad names are generic, uninspired or hard to remember. Roll, Ball and Particles will all be difficult names for players to find again. Adding Super, Extreme, Insane etc. has been done to death and over-saturated the market with such titles. You may also want to consider Google when choosing a name for your game, depending how SEO-minded you are. Very generic names will be hard to take a top spot for in search results, such as Feudalism, which is competing with a historical Wikipedia article on the subject.

Originality

There are thousands of Flash games out there and it’s hard to come up with an original idea. Not every game is going to spawn an entirely new genre like Tower Defence did, but you can still have a successful game even if it is a remake. If you can’t come up with a new idea, try some of these approaches:

1. Contemporary touch. Campaign Game and Presidential Paintball both play off the 2008 US election. Neither title has particularly original gameplay yet they are engaging and have done well due to their relevance to current events.
2. Remake a classic. Curveball has been a huge hit and it is a 3D remake of Pong. Portal the Flash Version speaks for itself.
3. Seasonal. Even a another “avoid the X” clone can be a moderate hit if it’s Reindeer or pumpkins you are avoiding.
4. Penguins. People can’t seem to get enough of this flightless bird. For example Spaced Penguin, Club Penguin and Yeti Sports. If your game is boring add more penguins or another lovable member of the animal kingdom… it’s worked for Orisinal.

What’s hot right now? Shift, Cursor*10 and Time Bot have all impressed me and I expect to see more puzzle platformers coming out. The balls/stars/lines/particles/pandas bouncing around waiting to be either collected or avoided by the mouse cursor genre has been beaten into the ground.

Physics

Shooting a bow, pulling back a catapult and bouncing a ball are all simple ideas and the basis for hundreds of popular games. Good physics in a game are essential. Line Rider would not have been the hit it was if the user couldn’t predict how the sled would behave. There have been many popular games based entirely on realistic physics for a ragdoll body, like Stairfall. If your game engine is fun to play and experiment with even before any gameplay elements have been added, you are heading in the right direction. If the frame-rate is low and you can’t figure out what planet or dimension your game takes place in, go back to the drawing board. I suggest Box 2D Flash, a fantastic open source physics engine for Flash.

Presentation and Graphics

Too often the menus and title screen in a game are an afterthought. Filler had a very simple theme and menu system; nothing fancy, but it was clean and got the job done. I’m a fan of the Strategy Defence series, however, the menus and interface are too busy. With so many people involved in making a Flash game: developer, publisher, sponsor, etc. the amount logos and credits can easily clutter the title screen and overload the user. Good examples of presentation are Shift, Raft Wars and 3D logic. I also love the nostalgic look of Nitrome games.

While graphics are important in games they are often overrated. Keeping the look of the game simple, clean and consistent is more important than the latest 3D effects. Casual gaming is the territory of 2D graphics, leave the first person shooters for the PC.

Difficulty

Somewhere between boring and frustrating lies challenging, the ideal spot for a successful game. Consider the first level as the tutorial: it should be nearly impossible to fail. Completing a level gives the player a sense of accomplishment and draws them into the game. If Level 1 takes more than few tries it’s likely they will quit. Conversely if a game is too easy and by level 12 there still has been no challenge presented, the player will get bored and quit. A save/load feature will alleviate some of the stress the player may experience if a game is difficult and is also a great way of getting visitors to return to the game in the future. Spin the Black Circle is a challenging game, but due to the very addictive gameplay and well executed save/load feature, it keeps the player coming back for more. Unbalanced gameplay can break even an otherwise well-made game. I loved the concept of Anti-Pacman(You play as the ghosts attacking Pacman) but it took me about 5 tries to catch that yellow jerk on the first level. Stormwinds had great production value and gameplay, but the biggest complaint in the community was that it was just too easy.

Game Over

When a player dies make it easy for them to restart again. Don’t punish them a second time with a bad user-interface. After death, the level should restart itself automatically, or with the press of the space bar. If the game is primarily controlled by the keyboard, do not make the player use the mouse to reset, or vice versa. Adrenaline Challenge is a good example of what NOT to do: it forces the player to take their hand off the keyboard and reset with the mouse-driven menu.

Sound and Music

Avoid generic sounds from Flashkit or the opening door sound from the original Doom, it’s better to have no sounds than bad/annoying sounds. Sounds effects should be mandatory for certain games situations: shooting a gun, billiard balls colliding and bubbles popping.

As the market expands casual games are a great way to promote indie music. This benefits both the developer and the artist. For the right game this can work, for example I’ll be Lightning. Not the greatest game, yet still a fun experiment and it resulted in exposure for the artist. I expect to see a lot more indie and big name artists using the casual games market for promotion in the future.

Whatever you decide to do, always have an option to disable sound effects and/or music. There’s nothing worse than a 30 second techno loop playing over the Rush I was enjoying.

Loading …

Reducing loading time and intros is even more important now that a lot of developers are using MochiAds. If a player watched a 10 second ad the last thing they want to do is see 3 game logos. This also applies for a lot of instructions/story line/tutorials which should always have an option to skip. There are exceptions depending on the game genre. Escape the Room games such as Submachine 5 are targeted to an older, more patient crowd. If it’s a new shooter, get the player into the game as soon as possible. Between loading and logos it takes about 30 seconds to play Zwingo, a great game, but not worth waiting that long for.

Requiring registration to play is a bad idea. Even a “Play as a guest” immediately turns people off. If you are trying to build up a registered user-base, require it for high scores or level sharing, not gameplay.

I’ve also noticed a disturbing trend of 10 meg Flash game files recently. If the game is superb, such as Portal or Sonny, then this is acceptable; if a game is terrible to begin with it’s only going to make the experience that much worse.

Learning Curve

Two recent games, Tarnation and Shape-a-licious, had novel gameplay concepts that weren’t readily apparent how to play. Instead of a separate tutorial choice on the menu, they used the first few levels as the tutorial. This is a good idea since players don’t feel like they have to invest any time before jumping right into the game. Casual gamers are impatient and will rate your game low if they can’t figure it out quickly. Include good instructions and control documentation and have them accessible for reference at any point during play.

Humour

If all else fails make your game funny. If you don’t have the money or talent for top-notch production value or even any coding ability, humour is always free. I never made it past chapter 2 of Actionscript for Dummies, but two of my games, Buried Alive and Sim Web 2.0 Company, have over 3 million plays combined. Other examples of humour in Flash games include Fancy Pants Adventure, Unfair Platformer, Stickicide, Impossible Quiz and Don’t Click Stick. Casual gamers are a clever bunch, and lame sex euphemisms like Naughty Gym Class and Putt It In are not enough to compensate for a mediocre game.

Goals

If you want people to keep playing your game they will need goals. Like mice in a maze we want to be rewarded for our efforts, even if that reward is only a piece of cheese or Level 3 turret upgrade. There are three main types of incentives in games:

1. High scores. Winterbells was a huge hit Christmas 2006 because of it’s addictive nature and competitive sharing of high scores. Dolphin Olympics is another good example of a game based around obtaining a high score. Also consider adding rank as well as score, such as “Newb Defender” or “Expert Mouse Clicker,” they are another great motivator.
2. Levels and Ranks. Tower Defence was an enourmous hit and spawned dozens of clones. Getting more money, tower upgrades and the next level kept players killing wave after wave of creeps. A side effect of this was every Internet forum had a Tower Defence strategy thread. If your game has tactical depth, multiple strategies or requires a walkthrough, expect a lot of free promotion from viral marketing.
3. Upgrades. Age of War kept players striving for the next level of technology. You start out with cavemen and crude rock weapons but given enough time can end up with laser shooting Mechs.

Level Creation and Sharing

Casual gamers are expecting more from games and allowing the user to create their own worlds is a great way to satisfy that demand. When making Free Rider 1 and 2 we expanded on the Line Rider premise of user content by adding the ability to copy and paste a unique level code. The codes were spread on forums, Facebook profiles, comments and fan sites and the game was a huge self-promoting success. In addition custom level creation increases the replayability and life-span of any game.

Distribution

The final step is getting your game out there. The best promotion for any game is the free kind, so concentrate on a quality product and the game will distribute itself. Flash Game Sponsorship has extensively covered the subject of how to monetize your game, and I will have to explore ad revenue and licensing further in another article. My experience with MochiAds has been positive. I used a combination of Mochiads and non-exclusive licensing for Free Rider 2, but what you choose greatly depends on the individual game and what your goals are. To get started I recommend submitting your games to Kongregate, Armor Games, New Grounds, Hall Pass, Addicting Games and OML.

Final Thoughts

I hope I’ve managed to give you at least a few ideas for your next Flash game. Ultimately there is no single definable element that makes a game fun and addictive, however, there are many pitfalls you can avoid along the way. If all else fails check out my Flash Game Generator. Castle of the Naked Ninjas 2097 and Canadian Hero RPG have to be classics right?

Did I miss anything? What do you think makes a successful flash game? Feel free to leave comment or question. I look forward to reading your feedback.