What’s the deal with iMessage games? With iOS 10, developers are now creating games that are directly integrated with iMessage. This seamless, inherently social play style is viral by nature with built-in engagement and retention mechanics. If you’re not already building for the iMessage App Store, it’s a channel to watch. In this post we’re going to start by outlining the technical setup for such a game. We’ll then explore how you can make the most of this relative new kid on the block, with comments from some thought-leaders to help answer the question: what makes a great game for iMessage? Click here to skip the technical part. [bctt tweet=”iMessage Apps ✉? Create, Design & Release a Successful iMessage Game! #imessage #app #gamedev” username=”GameAnalytics”] How to create an iMessage game iMessage Apps allow users to engage with your content without having...

Andy Sum began making games as little more than a hobby more than a decade and a half ago. Sum, who has been one of the leading forces behind two of the biggest mobile hits of the last two years – Crossy Road and relatively new kid on the block Shooty Skies – spent years developing titles for his own entertainment and didn’t actually release his first game commercially until 2009. “My first release was called Faerie Solitaire for the guys at Big Fish Games,” opened Sum, who sat down to talk to us at GameAnalytics about his career to date. “You could say it wasn’t the type of game I’d play myself, but it’s done well. You can still play it today, actually.” Faerie Solitaire didn’t actually fire the starting pistol on his career, however, with Sum – who...

We have a strong tendency to judge a book by its cover. It takes but a split-second for our opinion of a website or any visual design to be tainted, positively or negatively. Coming up with both an appealing art direction and some efficient UX design is no easy task. When someone discovers your game, their first experience is shaped by your art. They likely see a picture of it first, be it from a screenshot, a video, or your game in action. So if you ever wondered why studios bother spending big money on polished art, now you know. But what are we talking about exactly? Resonant visuals are more than just detailed graphics. They have to be both beautiful and meaningful to players. In practice, your game’s aesthetics encompass both the principles of design and your overall art style....

At the start of a project, everything has yet to be done. There are loads of tasks at hand, and it is hard to tackle them in the right order. As a game designer, our job involves some writing. Often a lot of writing. The large, almighty Game Design Document is a myth. I am talking here of a hypothetical file that would contain every bit of information there is to know about a game. For larger teams, they are too many elements to record and keep track of to have them all compiled in a single document. And sections of a GDD are relevant but to a small portion of the development team. Documents are less than ideal when it comes to assembling coherent networks of information. But we still have to write a lot in the pre-production phase of a game....

We make games for others to enjoy. We want to reach the largest amounts of players possible within our target group. There are many decisions we can take in our design process to improve the feel of our game. We can invest time on the core mechanics, the aesthetics, and the sound design. All that is of great importance. We want our games to keep the players in a mental state of flow as much as possible. Our games should try their best to keep the player immersed in its world. In other words, our role as designers is to provide a good user experience. That is the field of UX design. It is all about making our creations usable, enjoyable and accessible. Those 3 components of UX design are deeply linked to one another. Your game will hardly be pleasant if its UI is...

There are a few ways we can go about improving our understanding of game design. We can read books, articles, watch talks… We can also analyze games! In this article, I want to explore with you an efficient analysis process, for learning purposes. It is about exploring games with a creator’s eye. For scholars or game analysts, a better source of information on game research would be the website Game Studies. When I study a game or one of its components, my goal is to better understand how it works. I want to know how it was built and why it was made that way. In other word, I’m looking to get a sense of the intention of its authors. A secondary objective is to sharpen my observation skills, to practice critical thinking. The goal of an analysis is not...

So you’ve made a great core game. The mechanics are rock solid, the first time user flow feels great and people can understand how to play, but somehow your game doesn’t feel quite right. Since gamers first began interacting with controllers, designers have struggled to make experiences feel better, this adaptation of your games feel is often referred to as a game’s juiciness.   What is juicing all about?   Game Juice is a pretty wide yet specific concept. As the term suggests, juicing is about taking a game that works and adding layers of satisfaction to improve game feel. Satisfaction is created by the senses, every visual and auditory input has the ability to make something that is virtual work in a way that is more believable.  It’s not the art of realism, but more the art of illusion that leads a...

Your game’s intro can make or break its retention. Nathan Lovato offers tips on how to get your players through the intro and make sure they stay long enough to get a taste of the best your game has to offer.

In many RPGs you reach a point when battles are neither novel nor challenging, when you’re just going through the motions for gold or experienceーalso known as grinding. It can kill any momentum the game had going, and it turns play into work. The problem is that grinding is hard to avoid in the standard RPG formula where each battle pushes you closer to the big “level up.” You’re inherently rewarded for grinding, and sometimes forced to by sudden jumps in difficulty. Many classic RPGs have explored alternatives here, tooーlet’s see how they handled “leveling up.” LIMITED NUMBER OF ENEMIES This is the most simple solution- you can’t grind if there aren’t any more enemies! This is used by many Strategy RPGs (Fire Emblem, Front Mission, etc.) that they are divided into stages with a set numbers of enemies. This...

Joseph Kim details the compulsion loop concept, expands it with his own interpretation, and describes the potential future opportunity leveraging this concept.

Mid-core games are casual games designed for adult males with a gaming background, who have a steady income but who simply don’t have time to play anymore now that they are older. Michail Katkoff explains how to strike the perfect balance between complexity and simplicity in order to hook mid-core gamers.

In this latest post, Michail Katkoff delves deeper into the realm of freemium and walks you through the process of assessing the profitability of switching an existing game from paid to freemium.