One of the trends I see in mobile game design comes from the hyper-casual wave of games: games that you can break.
It helps the game get viral, players feel smart and it’s clever. Especially in multiplayer games, it works great!
One may feel that designers made bad work, but it’s not always the case. Often there are surprising discoveries in the process!
Can your game be broken by the Players? If not, can you make some mechanics less controlled to open up to that possibility?
Yesterday I have finished watching a great Netflix show called “From Scratch”. Very suggested to anyone reading.
One of the topic of the series is death, still a romantic/casual audience may appreciate this kind of series.
Think in casual snackable games. What about creating some narrative to make the people reflect on existential topics?
Will that work?
Those topics are not comfy, but something very powerful may please our love for great stories.
Every so often I ask myself: what am I doing and why? It’s something that comes in handy, makes me put things into perspective and sometimes leads me to swerve on the path of my life.
I went to an event last week where I met a lot of friends and also alumni. It is amazing the amount of talented people that exists in the video game industry. Every time I go to these events I am surprised. Since the fashion of the home office began, unfortunately I am less in contact with so many people. There are very few people who, like me, decide to share the little they know online.
On the other hand, there are many people with exceptional talent who do their work in silence. They will not be known, they work for big companies very often diluting themselves in the mass but making millions to the corporations that are so lucky to have them in their ranks. Or they’ve been working on their own independent game, maybe for years. I really admire this resilience, even though I can’t help but notice the enormous risk of doing so.
However, life is one, and therefore I always ask myself: what am I doing? Probably the answer is: the right things to find my way.