Chroma Coders — Fun Game Dev Club :)

Overview: MiniPlanet is a group of programs hooked together around a world, and players can complete jobs, run a store, gamble, chat, and spend their earnings on lovely furniture for a home of their own.  Apropos to the name of the app, I suppose, is the fact that there is no central game here.  There is a central world, and games for relating to it.

What’s Good:

Avatar Generation: Particularly for a game as social-heavy as this one, a good avatar generator is key, and this game has it.  Players can make themselves look mostly like themselves, or as different as they like, on a whim.

Costumes: Somewhat related to the advanced avatar generation is the fact that the player can buy special clothes and outfits to customize his own look.  Having the ability to purchase something that travels with you to all your social situations is much more compelling than having the items for the personalized location, at least early on.  That more compelling ability translates into an increased desire to play the various games and earn the in-game currency.

Slick Look: Unlike almost everyone else, the slick look of this app extends even into the store, so that the player doesn’t feel like he’s walking into a sleazy alley to buy his merchandise.  There are still just a few bugs with the graphics, but they’re largely negligible except to the hardcore gamer, and the hardcore gamer is clearly not this game’s target audience.

Varied Play: With a decent repertoire of underlying games, this game could take off by having a little something for everyone.  It’s almost there.

What’s Bad:

No Core Game: My first impression of this game is that it’s like Maplestory without the game.  It provides a cute chat experience, a forum for people to talk, and a few benefits for selling things or playing a gambling game intelligently.  But the game never says “This is the goal.”  I have no idea how I gain xp (I assume I do, because the game tells me I am level 1 of 25).

Invisible Benefits: Visibility is highly important for anything that can give a bonus of any kind to the player.  In the cafe games, you can see what’s on the stove.  In the farm games, you can see your crops.  In the adventure games, you can see the countdown to your next encounter or the next time your hp will recover.  In this game, you can only see your products when you take the time to go into your store, and then you can’t see anything else.

Loading Times: This may be unfair, but it’s still true: Because other games have set the bar for loading times so low, this game feels like it runs slowly because it has screens and areas that take an entire four seconds to load.  Gasp!  If possible, it would be better to put me into the space immediately and then add people in once I’m there.  Then I feel less as if I’m waiting.

Tiny Store: The clothing store should be obvious and easy to find, possibly its own main tab.

Getting Around: More generally, it’s tricky sometimes to get from place to place, which it shouldn’t be in such a simple game.  Movement should be very intuitive.

What I’d Add:

More Games: This one is a no-brainer.  As more of a game-world than a game, MiniPlanet benefits from having more games in it.  If the games are designed in different ways, there really can be a little something for everybody.  Right now there’s nothing for someone who wants to do battle, and (see games like ZOMG!) a game-world like this can definitely include that kind of game.

More Leaderboards: If there are many games to play, there can then be just as many categories in which players can excel.  More competition with players of similar interests (see: those who play the same kinds of games, in my game-world) encourages and facilitates the social aspect of the world.

Mixed Price Plans: The inclusion of items that can be bought using either real money or in-game money helps fight the impression that you are denying content to non-paying players.  The occasional “payer-only” item is good, because it increases the prestige of owning it.  Still, items that cost both types represent a prestige to the non-paying player that can make them more excited about your world.

Overview: In this game you grow crops in the jungle, chop down trees in the jungle, send animals to friends…you guessed it, in the jungle.  It’s a little buggy, not too terribly for something in beta, and doesn’t keep the player occupied for long, but my beef with this game is that it tries to bring together the zoo game’s “save an animal” mechanic and the farm game’s farming mechanics, but the whole thing feels really unnatural and stupid.

Premise Issues: According to the opening of the game, you’re lost in the jungle.  Why, then, is there a store?  Why are all your friends there?  And where did this baby come from (and why is your response automatically to give it to a friend instead of taking care of it yourself)?  Presumably, the game designers are hoping the player won’t ask any of these questions.  There are certainly no answers in the game.

Innovations: This game has a lot going on.  It is the first farming game I’ve seen with stamina points.  I’m not completely sure why they included them, since the player runs out of money and has to wait for his fields to grow well before he runs out of health.  The game does include things like scorpions which randomly appear.  The player can pick them up, losing health but gaining xp and money.  But they don’t appear often enough to run a player low on health, even at the start of the game.

There’s also wood, which is used to make fire.  Fire allows you to play even when it’s dark out.  The inclusion of a mechanic where the player has to use resources just to keep playing seems like a bad fit for the casual market, especially if the game counts “darkness” by the player’s actual location; many players play only after dark.

The game also includes a save button, which in my mind is less an innovation and more of a step back in time.  Other games are saving constantly.  This one apparently doesn’t save unless you tell it to.

I honestly like the idea of integrating games that limit some actions by your physical stamina and others by your funds, but right now this game doesn’t have the mix right, and frankly I think they should be separate features of a single game world.  That is, if you are going to make a game with both health and cash as limiters, you shouldn’t have them limiting the same activities.  Have the player able to spend health to go exploring, or cash to build up his local farm area.

Virality: This game uses essentially every viral aspect I’ve seen on Facebook, all at once.  It asks you to post each time you level, frequently has animals (or babies, apparently) show up in your patch of jungle which you then send to friends, also has you find “endangered” species of plants and tells you to “save” them by sending them to friends (again, the reason you can’t plant them yourself eludes me), and has a point leader-board for you and your friends so that you can compare virtual net worth at a glance.  While each of these techniques is solid and proven, this game currently has the “animals and plants to send to friends” happen too often; I feel bothered rather than philanthropic.

One idea is to have the frequency of found animals/plants scale with the number of friends you have playing the game.  If I have twelve friends and get about four gifts to give out in ten minutes of gameplay, I still feel like the gifts are rare.  If I have only two friends and get four gifts to give, I feel like my friends are somehow getting a better deal than I am.  Scaling the frequency isn’t that realistic, from a game-world perspective, but it is likely to give each player about the number of gifts they want to give out.

Clever Feature: The animals you buy make an animal noise when you click them.  Thus, a goose isn’t just something to grow from hatchling to adult and then sell; it’s a piece of visual (and auditory) interest for your plot of land.

Monetization: Like most farm games (and make no mistake, Jungle Extreme is a farm game), this game does a good job of pointing you to their Paypal and credit card receivers when you click on something you want to buy and don’t have the money.  They also have many items mixed into their regular fare that can only be bought using “credits,” which is money that can’t be earned in-game.  They start you with enough credits to buy one or two of their special items, a very savvy business practice for promoting addictive behavior.

They have also affiliated with several groups (such as Netflix), so that players can take trial offers of other products rather than spending cash directly.

I believe the idea behind the inclusion of stamina is that they can earn extra money if people are spending credits on stamina-recovery items.  If that’s the plan, they definitely need to make stamina run out more quickly.  Right now, I just can’t see myself ever running out of the stuff.

Overview: The game Happy Island is a “building farm” game.  The player places buildings, and they produce revenue that can be harvested regularly.  The money spent counts toward the player’s level, and at higher levels certain items are unlocked.  As a twist, this game bases the income of the buildings on the decorations and general attractiveness of the island, making the oft-overlooked artistic touches into an integral part of the core product.

Features:

Animation: The island from the beginning is swarming with tourists, and as the player adds attractions and shops it only gets more lively.  The feeling of being in a place teeming with life can be very appealing, particularly to the casual gamer (who may be playing in a drab office).

Gifts: A staple for games of this kind, Happy Island would be much worse off if it did not include a way for players to send gifts to one another, essentially reminding each other through Facebook to play the game.

Direct Interaction: I’m not sure that it does anything but activate an animation, but the fact that I can interact with the tourist characters who are walking around my island (even if it’s only to make them buy drinks) definitely increases my engagement and interest in the game.  Other games with sprites who wander around should take note!

Landscape: In this game there is much more of a sense of being in a place than one gets from most farming or city-building games.  The simple addition of drawn landscape makes the area feel more lifelike.  On the other hand, it also makes for several places that look terrible to build structures, producing a sort of aesthetic limit on usable land.  While much of the area is technically usable, well…if it looks dumb, most players won’t want to do it.

Upgrades: Making use of the more durable nature of the buildings as the player’s income source, this game includes a button to upgrade most buildings to higher levels and make them larger, more attractive, and more profitable.  Even the rickety dock can be upgraded.  Also, note the integration of this game’s monetization: you can instantly upgrade your buildings by spending actual money.

Improvements:

Terrain Control: The old game Populace allowed the player to raise or lower land to produce more space on which to build.  If players can terraform their island to make space for their hotels, the feeling of varied terrain stays but the two-bladed problem of terrain ugliness/limited space goes away.

The Basics: There are a few simple bug fixes that I trust will go away as the creators create new iterations of the game.  The largest is what I’d call the Towel Tower, in which several of the tourist sprites all decide to sit in the same place and sun themselves.  Right now, the game allows it and they all pile up, producing an ugly purple mess (Note: Some variable towel colors would be good, too).  Tourists should be designed to avoid other tourists where they’re lying down, so that this doesn’t happen.

More Interactions: The interactions the player can have with the little tourist sprites are definitely part of what help set this game apart from the pack.  Even if there’s only one “do something” button per tourist, the game designers should definitely add in more funny things the player can make the tourists do.

Overview: This is simply a twist on an existing formula: the highly successful farm game template. Players gain experience by performing various farming actions, and each new level of experience unlocks more plants to plant. The player also sells the plants he harvests, gaining money to spend on seeds and decorations for his island.

Features:

Customizable Avatar: The ability to make a character look the way you like is important for a game like this. While the basic cartoony design is required, players have a decent selection of different looks (Just over 7.5 million character portraits are possible)

Visiting Bonus: To help keep the player coming back, the game gives gifts at regular intervals. For instance, I got a tomato seed for logging in, and the game promises that I’ll receive other gifts if I log in each day.

Watering: A variation on the basic harvest mechanic, the inclusion of watering means that even players who plant things that only need to be harvested a few days from now will still have to come back to take care of their gardens within the next 24-48 hours.

Bugs: A random event that can earn the player some xp, this feature is presumably the reason the player needs to harvest his crops quickly and gives reason to check in at regular intervals even if the crop isn’t ready yet.

Random Gifts: Sometimes the game simply gives items out for completing basic tasks. By rewarding every layer of gameplay (but only a small portion of the time, and only at random) the game maintains interest in its simpler aspects and helps keep them from becoming too boring.

Close View: This game lets you zoom in pretty close to your avatar, which increases the value of the avatar building program and strengthens the feeling of being there on your own island. That feeling of being there is a selling point for any game of this kind, so features to strengthen the impression are invaluable.

Improvements:

Fishing: A hugely appealing mini-game in several giant MMOs, fishing seems a natural fit for the island theme. It would give the player more to click, more to sell, and generally more to do, and would provide the game designers with more methods of giving random gifts.

Lottery Mechanic: The game includes a lot of “calling the Tiki Gods” as part of their lingo, and could easily include an option to ask the Tiki Gods for a bonus gift every 8 hours or so. Sometimes you’d receive a gift, sometimes you’d get nothing, and sometimes they’d release bugs on your crops. But while there’s currently random gifts from the machine, there’s an extra level of engagement when the player actually requests those gifts. Also, if the lottery cost money, it could help control in-game inflation.

Party: A mechanic I haven’t seen in any games of this kind that could be successful here is to permit the buying of items to throw a party with your friends. It would bring in their avatars, everyone would dance around, there could be drinks and fireworks, and at the end it sends a gift to all of your friends and a notification that you had their character at your party. There could even be “party animal” achievements.

Justin, from Game Layers, talks about their new Facebook Game Dictator Wars

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.chromacoders.org/agdc-dictator-wars-interview-podcast-final.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Hey folks,

Every semester we work on a new experimental game project.

In this case, the game is called “Whatever Quest”…this will be an public-service project…with the goal of making a free game that everyone in the world can use.

Wikipedia is a great way to find information on any topic in the world. But…what happens when you want to find/access any experience in the world. Wikis/web pages aren’t perfect for that…but games are perfect for that…the goal of “Whatever Quest” is to “game-ify” all of the experiences in the world.

For example, if someone wants to go through the experience of training for a marathon, they would be able to go on here and find quests that they can join to help them train for a marathon.

This project is much more experimental and novel than the original space-shooter project…so let’s see how this works out.

You can check out the game here…
http://apps.facebook.com/whateverquest/

Post feedback below

Blake talks about building hit social games on Facebook like Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.chromacoders.org/agdc-blake-zombies-vampires-interview.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Read More