Casually Reminded
April 2nd, 2007, By Duncan Gough
Now that every seems to have gone completely (casual) games and social software crazy, given that Sony announced the PS3 Home virtual apartment and the main realisation of the recent GDC is that the Web, for games, is going to huge (/the web waves back, hi games industry!).
On top of that, we’ve got portabable gaming, episodic gaming, emotive gaming, passive gaming, user-generated gaming and story-driven gaming, all of which sound highly, eminently, *casual*.
Now, before we start labelling the Xbox a casual games platform (not ubiquitous enough), and even before we do the same with the PS3 (too expensive for casual, too expensive for the mainstream, even), here’s what a ‘proper’ casual games look and play like:
 Cave of Despair Help Dr Carter beat the Lava and swing his way to safety. |
| Play this free game now!! |
Via MiniClip, who gave up being YouTube before YouTube was invented.
Core game design elements to note:
* One button, in fact, one action, a mouse button click, is all that’s required to play. It requires no aiming skills, little in the way of reaction or twitch skills, and nothing in the way of learning a new ‘action’. The rules of play are exceedingly simple and pretty much already known. Escape, swing, go faster.
* Easy to pick up, hard to master – the hallmark of casual games. The ‘one more try’ test. Everyone is going to get bored on this game, eventually, but whilst you’re hooked and whilst the game feels new and challenging, the rules of the game permit you to rattle through a number of attempts in next to no time.
* Seamless – not a lot of people pick up on this but the game tutorial and game play are seamlessly integrated. One click to start a game, one click to confirm you’re seen the instructions, and that’s it, the game has started. There’s no loading screen, no scene-setting, no *wait between plays*. The title screen tells you everything you need to know. Escape, now!
One comment
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[...] Cave of Despair is the perfect one-button Casual Game that I wrote about in 2007. On my annual trip to MiniClip I discovered a sequal. So here’s Wheels of Salvation and I’m pleased to report that it’s more of the same: [...]
January 17th, 2009 at 2:21 pm. Permalink.