Occasional Gamer
What are hyper casual games and why are they so popular?
- Occasional Gamer Chair
- Occasional Gamer
- Occasional Gamer Vs
- Occasional Gamer Games
- Laptop For Occasional Gaming
With the rise of our pocket computers or ” Smart Phones” the term “casual games” has become more prevalent in our gaming lexicon.
E A gamer is a person who plays interactive games, especially video games, tabletop role-playing games, and skill-based card games, and who plays for usually long periods of time. Some gamers are competitive, meaning that they compete in some games for money. May 18, 2015 Occasional Gamer. Samantha Kastory May 18, 2015. Post navigation.
You have probably heard of a game called “Color Switch”, this was created by David Reichelt who was working a 9 to 5 job before he came up with the idea.
The basic premise is to guide you coloured ball through obstacles with the same colour, you have to match up the colour of your ball with the obstacle you are colliding with.
If you collide successfully with the right colour you will pass on through, if you collide with an opposing colour its game over.
This is a simple game play mechanic that is fun and addictive over time…
David had a simple idea of a game and used a piece of software called Build box to realise it. David was able to, by himself, quickly create a rough mock up of the game that was ready and playable in about a week.
Although he eventually found success with Color Switch it took him 40 other attempts before he found his hit idea.
If you are interested in Build box for creating your games then you can find out more about Buildbox and how to make your own hyper causal games
I think one of the earliest casual games, in terms of uncomplicated game play and a repetitive endless runner style environment, is probably Flappy Bird.
Flappy is a simple affair by which you tap the game screen at specific times to navigate some awkwardly placed piping (The green pipes were obviously ripped straight from Mario by the way!)
It was super successful mainly down to its combination of cute retro graphics, which appealed to both new and old players, and its ridiculously ruthless learning curve.
I didn’t’ know many people that could get through 30 pipes or more, perhaps the difficulty level was what made people come back to this game over and over again.
The creator of Flappy bird Dong Nguyen admitted feeling guilty about the success of Flappy birds and wasn’t used to all the media attention he had after its success.
“Despite Flappy Bird’s success, Nguyen said he wasn’t happy. “My life has not been as comfortable as I was before,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.” Dong Nguyen
Flappy Bird, like most casual games, involves simple game play mechanics, specifically, taping the screen at specific intervals too navigate some kind of peril.
Hyper casual games have this pattern of being addictive, fluid, but devilishly hard.
The hardcore players would play it over and over again where as conversely others would pick it up and play it for much smaller intervals.
Hyper casual games are very simple in their graphics style and the control system, most distilling the control functions down to just a simple finger tap.
This kind of simple style of game play, often just a tap on the screen, creates instant gratification and instant game play, anyone can pick it up and get to grips very easily.
The visuals are interesting and colourful enough to bolster the experience further.
HCG games shoot for a wide audience, often to maximise on ad clicks, and have pretty generic simple, but kinda beautiful, modular graphics.
This ambiguity ensures a graphics style that can’t be pinned down increasing its popularity with a wider demographic.
The Impossible Game is a fast addictive game that has very stylistic graphics that perfectly match the fast paced game play
It is about simple time based taping to navigate your rotating cube through the myriad of colourful levels.
Although it called the impossible game it is generally quite intuitive and can be masted once you get used to the simple times based jumps
Although this walks a fine line of being difficult and satisfying it rarely becomes frustrating.
Occasional Gamer Chair
The level design and changing colours create a pleasing and engaging experience.
Hyper casual games are about fluid game play and immersive visuals that you don’t really have to think too much about.
When people download a hyper casual game they don’t want some complicated story driven narrative, they want it to have minimal, if any, story line and an easy and consistent difficulty curve.
Making them too high concept might make playing them too confusing and overwhelming,
Remember this is a casual experience! Making them too difficult will also break the flow and cause people to stop playing.
Why would you want to play a game that you don’t have to think about?
Hyper casual games are more about a gentle cascade, a feeling of continuous motion that creates an almost semi-automated hypnotic experience, often only requiring minimal input from the player.
They can be quite rhythmic with their time based perils, which keep you playing almost to a beat, this can heighten the experience and make the game very satisfying to play.
Although people do list similarities between casual games and ones from the 8 bit and 16 bit era, they can be quite different beasts.
Occasional Gamer
Where as the older games were limited by the hardware of the time, a lot of mobile-centric games are simple by design.
Back in the day you could easily pick up a Nintendo or Sega game and get fully immersed in a world of cartoon style graphics and addictive game play.
Although these games have simple game play mechanics Like HCG what separates them is the difficulty and frustration of level design.
This frustration is the antithesis of what casual gaming is about, now days, in fact frustration is the enemy when creating this kind of game because it about continuous flow and about creating a fluid experience.
You definitely wouldn’t have got a game like cookie click on your Snes or Mega drive. Cookie clicker pretty much consisted of just tapping a cookie over and over again
The simplistic nature of cookie clicker meant you didn’t even have to look at your phone whilst playing, you could just blind tap the screen even if it was in your pocket
So you have these very simple addictive games that have ruled the top of the app charts.
They bring elements of the old style games including some graphics and simple game play mechanics.
They also include and over arching immersive casual experience that is seamless and almost infinite.
The company Voodoo is probably the most well known hyper casual game company’s around gaining them millions of downloads and also earning them hundred of millions in profit.
One of Voodoos most popular games is Hex Jump.
The aim of hex jump is to get the soft ball through the holes to the bottom of the level whilst dodging red or multicoloured hot spots that instantly kill you.
You control the 360 rotation of the spindle style platform that you have to navigate through
Turning the platform round at the right moments will allow you to guide your ball through spaces in between.
Move it right and you will drop through to safe ground, make a wrong move and you will die on the hazardous red platforms (Red equals bad)
This simple idea of controlling the platforms rotation rather than the player itself creates a very pleasing game play mechanic.
Quite often the successful Hyper casual games are 90% an idea and 10% a twist.
Occasional Gamer Vs
This is why so many popular games are very much a variation on a theme and are similar in fashion to old games of the past.
The trick is to give the game a 10% hook that makes it different enough to better increase its lasting appeal.
Occasional Gamer Games
If you are interested in creating the Hyper Casual Game– Follow my article on Creating your own Hyper Casual Game
You will be taken step-by-step through creating this simple game using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS, a popular framework for creating scale-able games.
Laptop For Occasional Gaming
When finished you will be able play the finished result in your browser.