Before we had Guitar Hero and Rock Band in the US, there was already an established genre of rhythm games, largely made and played in Asia. They centered around hitting … Continue reading. Games , Hardware , Mobile January 6, The annual Consumer Electronics Show is happening right now in Vegas, and I spent a few minutes today looking at all the latest hardware and gadgetry developments which are supposed to define consumer technology in There look to be … Continue reading 1. Review: Death by Video Game.
Games , Reading September 30, Video games, as an expressive medium, has always inspired other forms of media. Much has changed in the past four years, but one constant in my life has been a humble game by the name of Bejeweled 3. Bejeweled is the poster child for a genre of casual games that revolve around shifting colored blocks to match three or more of them in a line.
It's a mashup of the geometric puzzles of Tetris and the cartoony exuberance of Candy Crush Saga. I say all of this about a gem-matching game; a colorful, flamboyant gem-matching game with clinking sound effects and kaleidoscopic explosions and squeaking butterflies. Underneath the vibrant visuals and exuberant explosions, there is an extraordinarily intelligent game engine that strikes the perfect balance, both challenging experienced players and welcoming new ones.
There are no difficulty settings, and the only limit to how far you can go in a game of Bejeweled is your own endurance and skill. The untimed Butterflies and Poker modes require a nicely laid-back mix of foresight and luck, while the frenetic Lightning and Ice Storm provide substantively and tactically diverse takes on the classic task of busting gems before time runs out.
Bejeweled endures. Probably the biggest reason why I keep coming back to Bejeweled is its immediacy. Even the delightfully thoughtful new Civilization title, Beyond Earth , suffers from a need for repetitive micromanagement and excessive loading times when things start to get interesting late in the game.
Casual games like Bejeweled are also much easier to combine with some other activity. A puzzle game like Bejeweled or Tetris has randomly generated "levels", usually with a slow progression in difficulty. That alone can make a game interesting. Trying to get as far as possible, getting a "lucky streak" or scoring the most points.
One thing that's really important is that the gameplay feels right. Controls should be simple and intuitive, graphics and sound should support and enrich the gameplay. Clearing a level or scoring multiple points with one move should look and sound great, so that the player gets some sort of audiovisual reward.
It's a bit different with puzzle games that have pre-defined levels like physics-puzzles or games like " Slice it " or " Trainyard ". The main goal there is to beat the game , eg. Additional replay-value can be added by adding better scores for fast or "flawless" solving of the puzzle. Another important factor is progression. Either by trying to beat your own scores or scores from other players in a leaderboard. Once you mastered a game and you have the feeling that you can't get better, you'll most likely also lose interest in it.
The most addictive puzzle-game I've played recently is probably Puzzle Quest. It combines a Bejeweled-type of game with a fantasy story and RPG elements. Not only the puzzle-solving is addictive, you also want to progress in the story and "level-up" your character From a game developers point of view, I would say the most important thing in creating an addictive and fun game is to prototype early!
And iterate your ideas, tweaking gameplay in the beginning stages of development, not the end. That way, if you find that the game is not fun and addictive, then you could chuck it away, and not worry too much about wasted resource. Also user testing and hallway testing is important. According to research published in open access journal PLOS ONE by Adam Chie-Ming Oei and Michael Patterson of Nanyang Technological University-Singapore, playing video games for an hour each day can improve subsequent performance on cognitive tasks that use similar mental processes to those required in a specific game.
The researchers had non-gamer participants play five different games on their smartphones for an hour a day, five days of the week, for one month. Each participant was assigned one game with different styles of gameplay, from the typical action games to pattern-recognition challenges like Bejeweled, a popular Android smartphone game which has similar rules and objectives to Dots.
After one month, researchers found that participants showed significant improvement in the type of cognitive skills required for their specific game: players who were assigned the action game had improved their capacity to track multiple objects in a short span of time, while spatial memory and pattern-recognition game players improved their performance on visual search tasks. Playing casual games like Dots and Bejeweled are the cognitive equivalent of working out a single muscle: you strengthen a very specific skill without necessarily improving your overall mental dexterity.
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