Debriefing: Nibblers

In the wake of the release of Angry Birds 2 and information about mass cuts in Rovio, the release of the matchbook from this publisher went unnoticed. This is the third three-in-a-row from Rovio (the publishing division of the Finnish company previously produced Juice Cubes and Jolly Jam).

I play a lot of matches, and I have formed a certain pattern by which I evaluate games of this genre. I bring it to the attention of App2Top readers.

Heroes

In matchtrishki it is difficult to find good characters who will constantly be with the player on the playing field, who will help and cheer him up.

To date, Disney has turned out the best characters (the Free Fall series, which includes Frozen Free Fall, Maleficent Free Fall and Cinderella Free Fall).

Rovio went their own way: they made cool monster antagonists and built gameplay and level design around them. The positive characters, acting according to the plot to the opponents of local evil spirits, became bonuses on the playing field.

Design

The level design, as a rule, is a combination of traditional tasks (to cut the chips of the same color, to break the cells) and the mandatory destruction of monster obstacles.

This is a significant difference from most other games in which obstacles are only a level design element that makes it difficult for the player to complete the task, but is not required to be solved (destroyed).

Personally, I don’t really like levels in matchtrishki in which tasks of different types are mixed, but, firstly, now it’s a trend, and, secondly, in Nibblers it doesn’t annoy.

In the game, of course, there is far more than one type of monsters. Most of them can only be killed with a bonus (unlike most matchtrish, where obstacles are destroyed by making combinations next to them).

Bonuses, as usual, appear on the field when making combinations match-4, 5, LT. On the one hand, this makes the gameplay more difficult, since the player has to constantly look for bonus combinations on the field. But, on the other hand, this is compensated by a small number of colors on the levels and, as a result, large cascades of automatches.

Obstacles in the game form “steps”, and monsters can move through different levels. This is connected with a serious, in my opinion, problem in the gameplay.

In the screenshot just below, the snakes move along the jelly, inside of which there are chips (jelly here is just one of the types of obstacles).

It is clear that, as in most other games in the three-in-a-row genre, the only difference between an immobilized (captured by something, in this case – jelly) chip is that the player cannot move it. Otherwise, its properties are preserved.

In other words, if the adjacent chips of the same color as it are lined up in a single row with it, a reeling occurs, during which, as a rule, the obstacle (here – jelly, in other games, as a rule, ice appears) disappears.

The problem is that the monster moving through the jelly covers the chip inside the jelly.

For example, the screenshot does not show that there is a rosehip berry under the upper right snake, which can be pulled out to lower the snake down, but the player does not see it in any way! Because of this situation, I almost quit playing the game! Fortunately, there are few levels with such a design in the game.

In the game (at least in the first 50 of its levels) there are no “on time” levels at all, all levels have a limit on the number of moves. This is rather a plus than a minus, since it is well known that the target audience of games in the genre of three-in-a-row does not like such levels.

Innovations

The first thing that catches your eye is the projection of the field. We are talking about a conditional isometric projection: visually, the upper cells are farther from the player than the lower ones.

I’ve never seen one like this before.

Together with a well-chosen background, this “lands” the playing field well. However, a 9×9 field with such a projection and such fields makes it very difficult to play on devices with a relatively small screen. For example, it is not very convenient to match on the iPhone 5, to put it mildly.

Apparently, this is a conscious choice: the developers focused on tablets and phones with large screens.

In the screenshot below, the fields from Candy Crush Saga and Nibblers are on the same scale. The Nibblers field is noticeably smaller.

Another innovation was the following moment: with a series of combinations occurring in the case of a successful move, a bonus strip begins to gain.

The main condition for receiving the bonus is the number of Facebook friends playing the game. The more friends you have, the fewer combinations you need to get to achieve the bonus.

A cool idea, but the condition for getting a bonus is poorly explained in the game.

For example, I had moves with a large cascade of balls, there were moves in which I scored a large number of points, but the bonus was never filled, which caused irritation until I realized why everything depends.

There are two ways to bring this moment to mind.

If the game “decides” in advance how many points the player will score in the case of any perfect match within the course, then the dialogue with the bonus should be displayed only if the player is guaranteed to receive a bonus (we solve the problem with the negative perception of the feature).

An alternative solution is to give the opportunity to replenish the band by sending an invitation to friends.

Also, in the offline game mode, the game in this place offers to connect to Facebook, although it would be logical to take into account the already known number of friends playing.

Monetization

There are no paywalls in the game. Absolutely! They are replaced by boss battles at the end of each stage. Given the above-mentioned 4-month period of the softlonch, this suggests that the developers decided that the concept of paywalls does not justify itself, reducing retention.

Everything is standard in the store. 1 type of currency. There are no special offers in the game.

The cost of +5 moves at the end of the level is $0.9, which is similar to the cost of additional moves at the end of the level in the King and Seriously games.

There are very few boosters in the game: there are only 2 options – “break 1 cell” and “break the area of 3×3 cells”.

Boosters are not filled with time, but are only bought with in-game currency.

I wonder if the developers tried experimenting with different boosters during the soft launch, or was this approach originally intended?

Ads in the game can only be viewed in one place: when restarting a level after losing, you can get a random free booster on the field for watching it. It is strange that this cannot be done before losing, because in this case the income from it would be an order of magnitude more!

Retention

There are no features that work on hold.

That is, there are no daily tasks, as well as analogues of the wheel of fortune. In general, there is nothing that would motivate the player to enter the game more often!

Together with the lack of special offers in the store, this suggests that the project could have been released to the world not according to its indicators, but “just like that”, no bet is placed on it, and it will continue to exist on autopilot. I will be very glad to make a mistake in this!

Which of this game will I take into my project?

I’ll try how such a projection of the playing field will look. The rest of the moments for me turned out to be from the series “what else should I pay attention to when polishing a project”.

I hope we will see how this project will develop in the future!