Acquaintance with one game today led me to the question: is it possible to successfully “mislead” the target audience by offering her a non-standard (for the audience) product in a wrapper familiar to her? In other words, will the hardcore setting, for example, allow the corresponding users to put up with casual gameplay and vice versa? As for the selection, today we have Dead Shell and Juice Jam.
Dead Shell
I found the project quite by chance in the “wilds” of GamesJam Kanobu. He is, against the background of recent conversations with Mail.Ru Games and Alis Games about the role of the setting, and led me to a question that I put in the lead. However, the gameplay project itself correlates with the style chosen by the developers.
Dead Shell from Herocraft is an eight-bit “bagel” in a universe very similar to the world of Doom. The authors position the latter as the dignity of their project, which from a legal point of view may well turn out to them.
In terms of gameplay, the project is very close to the beloved edition of Dungelot, adjusted for fewer conventions and more mechanics. Instead of levels divided into an equal number of squares, in Dead Shell the player is met with full-fledged mazes, and each room is displayed in a separate window and can hide far more than one opponent.
The battle, however, takes place according to a long-familiar pattern: when tapping on an enemy, not only his health is deducted, but also our health. But there was a place for tactics in Dead Shell. Firstly, it is possible to change weapons during combat. Secondly, the player always knows which blow he will receive and which one he will strike. Thirdly, monsters react differently to each type of weapon. All this allows you to tap on monsters “wisely”.
Despite the fact that I really liked the project, I didn’t get the impression that it was ready.
The game has somewhere between 500 and 1000 downloads, but already a decent number of reviews. Mostly positive.
Juice Jam
SGN has released a game in the genre of “three-in-a-row”, which can be forgiven for a fanatical nine-by-eight-square playing field for four-inch smartphones.
A small digression about the cells. The fact is that smartphones have not always been big. Moreover, not all smartphones are like that today. In addition, not all users have small fingers and sharp eyes.
My point is that the playing field, which is larger than the size of seven by seven cells, and even more so the size of eight by eight cells, turns into pain on four-inch screens.
I understand that everyone loves Candy Crush, in which the field size is nine by nine cells, but let’s remember that the King game came from Facebook, from desktops. For the British, who wanted to make the game cross-platform, such a measure was forced (otherwise, they would have had to reduce the field on the desktop, which, of course, no one would have done).
Against this background, I sincerely do not understand why everyone should repeat such moments for King today (that is, if the game is in a social network that gives the project a constant supply of traffic, it makes sense, but most of the social version does not have)?
Anyway, in Juice Jam, the field is also large – eight by nine cells. But this game can be forgiven for one simple thing. The game is very nice.
The goal of each mission in the game is to give the animals juice by collecting berries three-in-a-row. In this regard, the game can be compared with Cake Mania, which was deprived of a stopwatch and the need to run from plate to plate. As soon as enough fruit is collected, the animal greedily drinks the juice, smiles and leaves.
This alone improves the mood.
The finale of the missions is also wonderful: the main character jumps out, starts dancing, and an inscription appears at the bottom, like “You are a juice Zeus!”.
In general, if the project itself is quite an ordinary match-3, then in terms of product it is an exceptional project that gives a great mood.
The project’s ratings in the Russian App Store, despite the Apple feature, are still few. And they are mixed.
