A sort of "Law of Halves" applies to all decisions in game design. In other words, as you design your game, you need to assume that for every game mechanic you fail to teach well, you'll lose 50% of your players (or maybe 10% or 95%, depending on the mechanic and how motivated the player is to learn your game). In other words, if you want your game to appeal to vast numbers of people, it must be initially simple, with complexity introduced slowly, and taught well.
Let's start with simple. All successful mobile games share this trait. What does simplicity look like? In short, there's one thing the player needs to do. Angry Birds: pull a slingshot. Candy Crush: slide candies. Crossy Road: move the chicken. Cut the Rope: well, you get it. It isn't so much a learning curve as a learning squiggle.
Next, complexity is folded in slowly. In Angry Birds, you get different birds that need additional interaction, such as tapping the screen to make the yellow bird fly faster. Candy Crush has power-ups and special combos that you start to look for and make use of. And so on. New concepts are introduced one at a time, paced out gently so the player can master each one in isolation.
Last, complexity needs to be taught well. This is an area that some games struggle with. I remember the first time I played Angry Birds in 2009, and being very confused about how to use the birds that dropped eggs. The game uses pictograms to instruct you rather than words (a smart choice to reach an international audience), but I just didn't get what it was trying to teach me. I'm sure they've improved it since then.
I'll leave the subject of tutorial design aside for now, although I plan to write about in future in regards to Hangry Giants.
This idea of a Law of Halves was a huge influence in the design of Hangry Giants. The simple mechanic is that the player needs to match two lines of symbols. Anyone can understand that and you're given a few levels to master it. Then, the idea of trades is introduced. But, only single trades are allowed at first. I realized that trying to teach single trades and super trades at the same time was too much. So super trades come later. By Dream 9, the player has learned everything they need to know about the game. The only change in mechanics after that are new spells and new ways the giants can attack.
Hangry Giants is more complex than, say, Angry Birds. And I know that means my potential player base is smaller because of it. In the end, this was a concious choice. I was aware of the trade-offs, and I did my best to introduce complexity slowly and to teach it well by spacing out the tutorials and keeping the tone light. There's no way to tell if the best decisions were made. In the end, I got a game that I love and I have done my best to make it easy for others to love it too.
What more can you aim for?
Let's start with simple. All successful mobile games share this trait. What does simplicity look like? In short, there's one thing the player needs to do. Angry Birds: pull a slingshot. Candy Crush: slide candies. Crossy Road: move the chicken. Cut the Rope: well, you get it. It isn't so much a learning curve as a learning squiggle.
Next, complexity is folded in slowly. In Angry Birds, you get different birds that need additional interaction, such as tapping the screen to make the yellow bird fly faster. Candy Crush has power-ups and special combos that you start to look for and make use of. And so on. New concepts are introduced one at a time, paced out gently so the player can master each one in isolation.
Last, complexity needs to be taught well. This is an area that some games struggle with. I remember the first time I played Angry Birds in 2009, and being very confused about how to use the birds that dropped eggs. The game uses pictograms to instruct you rather than words (a smart choice to reach an international audience), but I just didn't get what it was trying to teach me. I'm sure they've improved it since then.
I'll leave the subject of tutorial design aside for now, although I plan to write about in future in regards to Hangry Giants.
This idea of a Law of Halves was a huge influence in the design of Hangry Giants. The simple mechanic is that the player needs to match two lines of symbols. Anyone can understand that and you're given a few levels to master it. Then, the idea of trades is introduced. But, only single trades are allowed at first. I realized that trying to teach single trades and super trades at the same time was too much. So super trades come later. By Dream 9, the player has learned everything they need to know about the game. The only change in mechanics after that are new spells and new ways the giants can attack.
Hangry Giants is more complex than, say, Angry Birds. And I know that means my potential player base is smaller because of it. In the end, this was a concious choice. I was aware of the trade-offs, and I did my best to introduce complexity slowly and to teach it well by spacing out the tutorials and keeping the tone light. There's no way to tell if the best decisions were made. In the end, I got a game that I love and I have done my best to make it easy for others to love it too.
What more can you aim for?