One of the commonly shared problems among these games is the poorly implemented controls.  Yes, I’m talking about virtual joysticks and directional pads in mobile games.  I’m not saying these controls err by default.  But they pose as uncouth solutions, the byproduct of a limited thinking that fails to adjust the essence of a genre to a new platform.

Mikey Shorts is a great example of how to do things right.  Apart from teaching a lesson in the proper implementation of mobile controls, it also offers lessons in the design adjustments required to port familiar console experiences to mobile.

Console platformers traditionally rely on the player’s interaction with a physical controller — the resulting feedback, created from the incremental manipulation of a controller, physically links and heightens the in-game feedback occurring on the screen.  It is this precise manipulation and timing — via a physical object — that elevates the core experience of a platformer.  For example, most of us have very physical and tactile memories associated with playing Super Mario World.  I remember twisting side-to-side with the false belief that this physical pretzeling would somehow create enough of a change to help me grab that extra life.

This physical aspect of playing a game isn’t exclusive or new to video games.  This has existed in everything from the tilting of the pinball machine, to the tactile feel resulting from the meticulous weight with which we move chess pieces on a board.

That’s why the majority of virtual joystick and directional pad implementations are so frustrating — they function under the pretense that simply tacking on such controls will magically create the physical feedback that is absent on a phone or a tablet.

Mikey Shorts simplifies the directional pad by removing the vertical axes.  This reduces the physical feedback required to communicate the nuance of multiple directions by 50%.  With this simplification to strictly horizontal movements, the player is given a clear physical demarcation between two directions.  That is a more digestible and tangible mobile game experience than the resulting rugburn on your thumb from multi-directional virtual joysticks.  The multiple axes of virtual joysticks require too much directional nuance without providing the requisite physical feedback.

I’ve seen this control scheme in earlier mobile games like Mos Speed Run and League of Evil.  What Mikey Shorts accomplishes, however, is to take that scheme and design a platforming game that feels native to the mobile platform.  These earlier games fail to address the larger design issue — the forcing of a precision-based console game experience onto the fluidity-based mobile platform.

A side-scrolling platforming or action game experience on the phone has to be designed for fluidity, rather than precision.  The limited real estate on mobile devices (excluding tablets here, of course) means that precision has to be enormously forgiving; and that allowing such breadth in the player’s input shifts the emphasis on the fluidity of the game’s experience.  Without access to this flow, players will have a frustrating experience with their inability to achieve the precision demanded by the game.

In other words, remove the gates and let the player experience the flow (in this case, running and jumping in a mobile game).

Mos Speed Run and League of Evil, like console platformers, are at heart precision-based games despite being on the phone — they want the player to master high precision skills to complete levels and advance.  And being able to do that largely depends on the interaction and feedback of a control scheme that isn’t native to the mobile platform.

Precision based platform games work on the console because there is a physical feedback that allows the player to measure their input on the screen.  The physical feedback of the controller allows for nuanced character movements, while the visual and aural feedback reinforce the result (and reward) of the player’s physical input via the controller.

That physical and nuanced input allows console game developers to build games that require impeccable precision and hand-eye coordination.  Such games (Mega Man, Super Mario, Ghosts ‘n Goblins) offer designs that demand precision and skills of such punishing order that the slightest mistake leads to punitive consequences.  Yet, we persist with the belief that yes we can because, damn it, I can physically do this with this controller in my hand.

The goal of a console platformer is level completion — in other words, to get the player to finish each level by completing precision and timing based challenges.  The player is given a set number of lives, or attempts, to fulfill this goal.  If the player wants to see more levels, if she wants to play more of the game, she must complete these challenges.  If you look at the design, every element exists to deny this completion from the player.  When you die, you have to start over from the beginning.  Enemies and obstacles will kill you, and they will respawn with every new attempt.

Mikey Shorts doesn’t focus on level completion or precision — it focuses on the fluidity of moving through the levels.  This means that none of the enemies are harmful, but merely obstacles that slow you down; when you fall off a cliff, you start immediately where you were right before you fell; and the game is about how fast the player finishes the level instead of whether the player has the skills to complete the level.  You may require precision to get the three star rating, but the game remains enjoyable and never frustrating (unless you choose to pursue the perfect star rating).

In essence, Mikey Shorts refines the essence of the platforming genre for mobile by considering the platform’s demands and limitations.

Controls in general are tricky for mobile. Ports of traditional games like Metal Slug 3 have shown that certain concepts and certain games are never going to feel right without the presence and feedback that physical buttons provide.  Like Mikey Shorts,  you have to simplify and adjust the controls for the phone.

So for me, designing a mobile game, or taking any idea with mobile in mind, is largely determined by the fluidity of the experience. It is a way to find out how you, as a designer, can get out of the player’s way so that they can get to the experience and the fun immediately.  And to design a level of fluidity that gets the player to voluntarily invest a good amount of his or her time into your game.  How will the controls feel? Are the required player inputs reduced to native and common gestures for mobile? How can I minimize the need to introduce too many control elements?

Ultimately a lot of ideas and traditional game types on console just aren’t a fit for mobile — they need to be adjusted. The question shouldn’t be, “How do I get Zelda to work on my phone/tablet,” but rather, “How do I translate that experience to a mobile experience for the mobile audience?” The answer might be breaking down the game entirely and designing it from the grounds up, so that it fits natively within the demands and constraints of the mobile platform.

There are over 700,000 active apps in the apple app store. Out of those apps, 126,628 are games.  Last month alone, 1,257 games appeared in the app store, with an average of 97 games released per day.

The reality of the app store is that if you build it, they won’t always come.  

The app icon is a potential player’s initial encounter with your game in the app store.  Needless to say, your icon needs to be appealing (i.e. it has to appeal to the type of person you want playing your game).

We recently created the app icon for Super Nut Jump, which looks like this:

Like the Rocketeer!

I can tell you that we didn’t arrive at this icon right away.  It took many iterations to get us to this icon, and our initial icon actually looked like this:

The original app icon

We discovered a couple best practices through trial-and-error and we thought we’d share those with you today.  Hopefully these will be helpful to anyone looking to enter the crowded app store, and also save you some time!

1. Show, Don’t Tell

Don’t use words in your app icon.  The image and the title are separate streams… so don’t cross the streams! Besides, your game’s title is always displayed beneath the icon anyway, so having the title in your image is redundant.

2. Keep It Simple, Keep It Direct

57 x 57 pixel isn’t a lot of space.  The image has to project, in a clear and direct manner, the aroma of your game experience.  If your game is about jumping squids, then have a squid jumping in the air.  Don’t just put a squid strolling through a park.  There is no room for mystery–just say it like it is.

3. Stand Out From the Crowd

You want to pick bright, simple colors that stand out. Keep it to 1 or 2, and don’t try to make a fancy background. At 57×57, it will get muddy and make the image hard to read. Consider the emotion that your game conveys and incorporate that into your logo… red is good for action games, while blue is a calmer color suitable for less stressful games.

4. Meet Expectations

Whatever you do, make sure that your game is able to meet the expectations generated by your app icon.  It’s important to get the feel of the game through, but you shouldn’t oversell, and submit an icon that creates a false expectation about your game’s experience.  You don’t want to start the game experience with people feeling like they’ve been cheated into a purchase for an experience that doesn’t exist.

So, we set down as a team, as we always do, and made a priority list of things to change or improve the game based on the feedback. One of the biggest issues we wanted to resolve was implementing better communication of the game’s rules and mechanics. These are some of the changes and improvements we’ve made to SNJ.

1. Visual Consistency

We made everything look consistent in terms of the UI.  Now, all the buttons and indicators (such as the game timer, the pause button, and the sound-off button) at the top of the game screen have a unifying style, while remaining aesthetically consistent with the look of the game.

2. Communicating the game

• We now have bomb indicators so that people can anticipate where the bombs will drop.
• The bombs no longer destroy the trampoline when it hits the squirrels. This way, it will be easier for people to discover the ability to bounce bombs back into the sky.
• We made the timer more prominent, and also added touches (like making it pulse during the last ten seconds) to increase the player’s awareness of the remaining game time.
• We added more prominent and different effects for when the squirrel lands on the trampoline, and when the squirrel lands on another squirrel. We hope that this will teach the player that there is a difference between the to landing areas, and that they should try to land on the trampoline for maximum effect.

We think these changes and improvements have already made Super Nut Jump a better and more fun game to play. Hopefully, you’ll like the changes, too!

New   Old

We had a chance to test Super Nut Jump (SNJ), and we are going to list some interesting observations we made about the game. Next week, we’ll talk about what we’re doing to address those issues.

1. People Love the Art

When a grown man tells you that the squirrels look “adorable,” you know you’re onto something.  We’ve always been proud of the way the game looks, and we were happy to get such a positive response about the quality of our art.

2. The Game Skews Female

This one surprised us — SNJ saw the best reactions from pre-teen and teenage girls.  The girls who we watched play (from ages 5 – 15) were a lot more forgiving on the gameplay, and more focused on the overall aesthetic.  Their play sessions, on average, were longer than the boys, and a majority of them would return to play the game again.  The boys, on the other hand, were more focused on the high score performance, and would generally leave after one session (we suspect that the game doesn’t convey a strong competitive element).

3. Mobile Controls

The controls led to confusion, because users tried to flick or tap the screen, and didn’t immediately think about dragging the trampoline. Some would even resort to flicking the jumping squirrel with their fingers.  This occurred after the players either couldn’t get a desired result from the correct controls, or still could not understand the controls even after reading the tutorial screen.

4. We Need a Better Tutorial Screen

Most people, regardless of age and gender, did read our control tutorial screen.  However, some users would immediately resort to tapping the screen to move the trampoline, even after reading the tutorial screen.  Something is not being communicated correctly.

5. Bombs are Bad – AKA What Your Visuals Tell the Player

We initially had the bombs as harmful drops to add a challenge to the game.  But because of balancing issues, the bombs were never challenging — they either appeared in a location that didn’t threaten the player, or dropped in the same location at the same time as the squirrel (and therefore would lead to unavoidable instant death).  That led us to change the bombs into a beneficial weapon for the player.  If the bomb landed on the trampoline then users could bounce it up to blow up the nuts; but if the bombs landed on the squirrels then the trampoline would blow up.

We failed to communicate that change.  First, the bombs looked like bombs, so people would automatically avoid them. Second, the squirrels blew up if they were hit by the bombs, so that feedback reinforced the perception that bombs must be avoided at all cost.

6. Get to the fun as fast as you can

It took new players generally ten to fifteen seconds to reach the first row of nuts.  We plan on making it easier to get into the action by letting them bounce higher earlier.

While this event is always a fun (but grueling) experience, there’s a lot more to Gamescape than showing up with your game on a laptop. Gamescape is a free marketing and user testing opportunity (like all conventions and consumer events), and those things are crucial for indie studios to make their games a success. Here are some lessons I learned that helped Pure Bang Games make the most out of Gamescape.

1. Create a Demo

There is nothing more awkward than asking a player to stop playing, and nothing more discouraging than someone playing the entire game in front of an audience. Remember, this is a preview, not the show.

Having a demo also allows you to test specific parts of a game. What is it that you’re looking to find out about your game? That question will make it easier to figure out which aspects of the game to demo. Last year, we tested My Pet Rock‘s tutorial to see if players actually learned how to play the game, and if players left the game before completing the tutorial. Using that feedback, we were able to significantly improve the game’s retention by making adjustments to the tutorial.

2. Prepare a Pitch

You should prepare a five second pitch that you can tell to every person who comes to your booth. This isn’t complicated — don’t tell a story, just tell them what the game is about.

3. Let People Play Your Game

After you’ve given your pitch, let people player your game. And whatever you do, leave them alone! I mean it — don’t tell them how to play your game. The whole purpose of demoing the game is to see how people learn and play your game. You are not going to be in every living room telling people how to play — that’s the game’s job! .

4. Let People Remember You

Give out t-shirts, or any type of merchandise that people are willing to take home with them.  T-shirts are usually the best option, since people love free t-shirts (unless the fabric feels like sandpaper), and it’s free advertising for you whenever they wear your t-shirts.

Other MMOs that I’ve played tend to create a hostile environment through the way the game’s content is designed and delivered. For example, players can get really territorial over boss kills—players sometimes camp out at the boss’ spawn point for days, and threaten to report other players who “cut in line.”  Then there are MMOs like Final Fantasy XI that force players to play together. The only reason I partied with strangers was because soloing became so outrageously ineffective after level 10. I think that sort of forced player interaction feels dated and arbitrary.

Unlike those MMOs, Guild Wars 2 PvE feels like one giant party. Never have I felt such an immense feeling of community in an MMO. You never need to worry about someone stealing your monster kill (and the full credit) at the last second—now, if someone runs up and kills the monster you’re fighting, both players will get full credit for the kill. This includes any “phat lootz” the monster may have been carrying. I was excited to see other players, and even stopped to help a few people that didn’t even share a quest with me.

That sense of community and collaboration is really well reflected in how the players no longer have to compete for resources. In some MMOs I played, high level players roamed around noobville and trolled all the little nooblets by killing all the monsters needed to complete low level quests. Arena Net solved this problem by level capping areas. What this means is that high level players now have their levels scaled down in certain areas, so as to match the skill level of lower level players. For example, if I am level 10, and I enter an area that’s level capped at 5, then my skills will scale down to match the level 5 challenges and monsters within that area. This has resulted in high level players helping out low level players, instead of destroying and consuming all the resources in the area.  So, if a friend of mine gets the game two months after release, I can still play with him in the low level areas without disrupting other players’ experiences. I can even continue to get experience!

These changes have made me a cooperative player in every way. When I played, I revived every downed player that I came across, because that’s just what you do (though getting experience for doing so definitely helps). Taking down a boss with 30 other players was immensely fun, and we never had to form a party or discuss tactics. People just showed up and everyone had a part to play. I always felt like I was contributing, whether I was dealing damage, healing other players, or running around reviving the downed players. The location specific quests (more on quests next week) allowed me to always count on nearby players to help me out.

The lesson here is that if you want your players to play together, then make them want to play together. You have to understand how to direct your players through your content in the context of a multiplayer environment. If you connect every aspect of your game in a logical and cohesive manner, and create an environment where players can benefit by playing together, then players will want to stay longer in your game and experience everything you have to offer.

This may seem like an obvious thing to do but it is very easy to get caught up in your “brilliant” ideas. Every decision that you make, no matter what you do, impacts the player; and it is the job of every game developer to make sure these decisions enhance the player’s experience. Removing obstacles and barriers that impede the experience is a challenging, yet rewarding process. Despite best efforts to catch them ahead of time many obstacles aren’t found until play testing, which is one of the reasons play testing is so very important.

Play testing is always an important part of our development process, but the most effective case was our first Facebook game, My Pet Rock. We mainly collected data on how players played the game through metrics tracking. We also got the chance to watch hundreds of people play the game live during the Artscape festival held in Baltimore, MD. At the festival, we collected incredibly valuable in-person feedback from our players, both through what they told us and by just watching them play.

The most important change we made to My Pet Rock was in the tutorial. We created the tutorial to help people learn how to play the game, but we learned that the very thing we made to help players was acting as a barrier for many. In general, our tutorial was too long and had far too many words. This last part was especially important considering My Pet Rock had just as large a following internationally as it did in the US. We dramatically increased the amount of players that finished the tutorial by removing large chunks of the tutorial, streamlining what we considered essential, and removing as much text as possible. As a result we also saw a dramatic increase in our retention.

Developing games for Facebook and mobile gives us a unique chance to roll out changes, sometimes very drastic ones, quickly in response to user feedback. Listening to the feedback of your players is one of the most important parts of development. You shouldn’t literally do everything your players ask of you, but if you pay attention you can understand the underlying message of what they’re telling you. Once you have that understanding, you can address the problems players have in a creative and efficient way.

Arena Net has done a tremendous job in listening to the feedback of their players. I was so happy to see how much effort they put into streamlining the process of providing them with feedback. Not only can players send bug reports, but they can also complete simple questionnaires at the end of quests to tell Arena Net how much fun they had, or how much impact players think they had on the game world through a particular quest. It is this level of care that makes me feel like I have a say in shaping the game, and it makes me excited to beta test Guild Wars 2.

As part of the final push, we received an awesome theme song from Jim at Welch Compositions.

It’s always hard to articulate the song that’s playing in your head, and to allow that communication to lead the other person to the path that you’re on. In this case, it was equally hard to tell Jim what we wanted in terms of the main theme for Super Nut Jump. And our directions to Jim couldn’t have been vaguer than gems like, “Somewhere between Angry Birds and Circus,” or “Like Angry Birds, but with a wamer, more foresty sound.”

In retrospect, I should have said, “We want a main theme track that expresses the premise’s silliness, but that also reflects the arcade game inspiration of Circus, and the verdant and bucolic backdrop of Super Nut Jump.”

But Jim, like the pro that he is, somehow took our directions, read our minds, and delivered a track that hit on all the points we wanted from a main theme! We’re really happy with the song, and we’re sharing it today so you can get an early glimpse of Super Nut Jump‘s music.

Enjoy!

Super Nut Jump (Main Theme) by Pure Bang Games

Jim works at FUNimation as a composer and sound designer, so there’s a good chance that you’ve heard his work at some point if you’re into anime.

Or how about that trailer for Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker?

Make sure to visit Jim’s website and Facebook page to check out more of his work!

Atari Circus

By today’s standards, Circus is a very simple game. Similar to Breakout, your goal is to pop 3 rows of balloons by bouncing clowns off a seesaw. If you clear a row, you get bonus points, a fun sound effect, and a new row. The goal of the game is to get as high of a score as you can.

One thing to note is that my mom is very competitive, and Circus was her favorite game. We would play this and other games every night and she never went easy on me. Of course, over time I got better at the game and kicked her butt! One could say the apprentice became the master I think that this sort of high score chasing is perfect for mobile, where you don’t always have a ton of time, but want to engage in quick burst games. Hopefully, others will agree.

We gave ourselves 2 months to make a playable game, and another 2 months to make it fun and polished. Will Gallagher handled the art, Drew Nicolo the programming, and Yuzun and I helped with design. This is Drew’s first programming credit, as he is our Technical Artist… I drafted him to this project after I played a Galaga clone he had made to demo our new tech.

Old Circus Concept

During development, we struggled with the Circus theme, especially the clowns. It was nostalgic, but didn’t really excite us. Will created a Circus bear character to replace the clowns and make the game cuter. I thought they looked a little like chipmunks. Thinking about chipmunks, led to the idea that Squirrel’s trying to grab nuts would be a lot more fun… and Super Nut Jump was born.

Super Nut Jump

Along the way, we replaced the seesaw with a trampoline, added bombs falling from the sky, and a timer so that it is more “blitzy”. The biggest change came when we decided to make it vertical instead of horizontal. This was done for two reasons, we wanted the squirrel to jump higher and stay in the air longer, and we discovered that sweeping your finger across a wide screen led to “finger drag”. The drag was causing a couple problems: 1.) the longer you went without taking your finger off the screen, the more it pulled at your skin, slowing your movement and making it uncomfortable 2.) taking your finger off the screen and putting it back would cause the trampoline to jump to the new finger position. Making the game vertical solves those problems.

We’re going to submit the Flash version of this game to game portals and the mobile version to publishers. I am looking forward to seeing the feedback that we get and will let you all know when and where it is released.