Games Business

Monument Valley

This is a simple yet engaging game that deserves to be on top of the list. The player needs to manipulate the view, connect the disconnected paths of the world and discover new levels of the game. Beautiful colours and graphics as well.

PewDiePie: Legend of the Brofist

PewDiePie, the super popular Youtuber has put his name on a successful iOS game. Similar to many classic games, the Legend of the Brofist features PewDiePie himself in the main character, running and jumping, defeating enemies in his not-so-benevolent 2D universe.

Lumino City

Lumino City is a nice game, it has 3D graphics and an interesting mission. The game’s “tap and see” interaction is the key to revealing the path through the Lumino City and to solving the game’s puzzles.

The Trace

This is a top detective game, and the main feature is to solve puzzles. The players must solve the mystery of a murder by connecting the bits of information gathered.

Alto’s Adventure

Alto’s Adventure graphics are similar to Monument Valley and it’s an endless runner type of game. Being one of the best game in the genre, it features nice landscapes and cool tricks and combos to increase the overall speed.

Don’t Starve

Very good game and fun to play, Don’t Starve is a premium game. For only £3.09, you get to kill basically anything to survive, collect food, build shelter, all in a wild setting and without anything to cling on except the survival instinct.
Marvel Avengers Academy

This is a free android game that allows users to play as their favorite Marvel heroes and help them become stronger in order to defeat Hydra.
Slither

Very similar to Snake this game puts the player in a real battle to survive. It’s an addictive game that is fun to play for children and adults alike.
Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go has been such a phenomenon since its launch date this year. Ever since, it made people come together, go outside and have lots of fun by capturing their favorite Pokemon or collecting them.
Shadow Fight 2:

Is a free-to-play, offline classic game. It’s a one-on-one super fun fighting game that has many features, including cool weapons and moves.

I’ve been really interested in what has come to be known as the “casual games” industry.
I guess the games industry as a whole breaks down into professional games and casual games.
Professional games are those things you see on the XBox, Playstation, or PC/Mac that are created by big companies with huge teams, take literally years to produce with budgets in the multi-millions, and will cost you $40-50 or more. Halo, Gears of War, WoW, etc. People who play these obviously invest a lot of time in them, and most have an on-line component, which allows communities to build up around them.
Then there are “casual games”. This is a bit more vague. Casual games still have schedules of up to a year, decent size teams and budgets of 6-7 figures. They can still cost up to $20-30. While usually a lot simpler than professional games, they are becoming more and more involved. I think many of the games on the Nintendo DS for example, would be categorized as casual games, as well as the iPod games, most cellphone games, and the XBox Live Arcade games. Casual games are often released on a download, try-buy basis. Popcap games is a notable publisher (think Zuma). The funny thing is that casual game players can be just as committed to their games as other so-called professional games, at least in terms of hours spent playing.
I think there is a whole other category below casual games though. I think of it as “Ultra Casual Games”. This is Desktop Tower Defense (and any number of clones), Line Rider, those penguin / yeti games, and of course Gravity Pods. 🙂
Ultra Casual Games are often done in Adobe Flash, embedded in a web page. You navigate to a page and start playing. They are almost always free and often ad supported. Generally no multi-user support. They are often produced by a lone developer/designer, on a budget of whatever it costs for monthly hosting fees, and a schedule of anywhere from a week to a month or two. Ultra Casual Game users may also spend just as much time playing their favorite web-based game as other casual games, but I think you’d find a lot of office workers popping open a browser to catch a few minutes of play here and there throughout the day, rather than a dedicated two hours after work, like they might do with their console game.
Obviously under these conditions, a lot of crap is going to be produced. And when I say a lot, I mean a LOT. And when I say crap, I mean CRAP! On the other hand, you are going to see some real gems, and they will rise to the top. Without all the overhead and red tape required to get a company to take a game seriously, some creative developer with a great idea can bang out his game and become famous over night. Take Line Rider for example. You think any company would have invested in that? “A game where you draw lines and a guy rides a sled on them? And there’s no goal? No concept of winning or losing? Hmm… yeah, we’ll get back to you.” But the guy who made it put it up on DeviantArt, it got a cult following and it got snatched up by inXile and will soon be on Nintendo Wii AND the DS. I only hope they don’t ruin it by enforcing some traditional game rules.
I’m not sure if I’d call ultra casual games and industry. But for those who are creating them, they are a great way to make some extra money and perhaps get noticed. And the “extra money” is not necessarily trivial. It can easily amount to thousands of dollars per month in ad revenue for a popular game. There are also portals such as NewGrounds and others, who will license Flash-based games for varying rates, generally in the hundreds of dollars. It’s going to be interesting to see where this goes in the coming years. It’s been said that the casual game industry is poised to become one of the most serious business sectors in 2008. I think ultra casual gaming will transform into something serious as well.