I recently did an analysis of apps for my android class. I looked at two video games on the Google Play! store: Fruit Ninja and Temple Run 2. Here are some excerpts from that assignment.
Fruit Ninja is a video game where the main objective is to slash fruits in half for points. The fruits get thrown into the air and fall before the player’s screen. The player must slash the fruit before they leave the screen without hitting any bombs. Slashing is controlled through a swiping touch motion. This kind of game control is a lot of fun to use and unique to touch devices. Slashing different fruits can provide power-ups, and there are multiple game modes. There is also a Kinect version which melds the Kinect controls masterfully.
Gameplay may be seen as simple. There is only one type of player input (swipe). This makes the game repetitive. The different game modes helps counteract the repetition, but the different modes share the same set of controls. It would be nice to have different controls between modes as well.
Temple Run 2 is a 2.5D video game that involves progressing through a continuous dungeon. Gameplay for Temple Run 2 is similar to running on a treadmill. The player runs automatically along a path, and they control choosing direction (left, right, jump, duck). The directional controls are input through swipes in the corresponding direction. Examples include balancing a mine cart and jumping over logs.
The simple gameplay can get repetitive. While there are a lot of gameplay mechanics, the level is more or less the same on every playthrough. There aren’t multiple game modes like in Fruit Ninja.Through these analyses, I learned a couple things to make good mobile apps great. Mobile has unique player input, and that needs to be exploited. Mobile games need to be written for mobile controls (no buttons! swiping is awesome!). I also learned that multiple game modes can be simple to implement, but help increase the lifetime of a game. Simple gameplay, while usually unwanted in the AAA console games market, is doable in the mobile world. However, you need to implement good variety and exciting player feedback to correctly take advantage of this. Mobile games is a unique genre which I hope to learn and share more!
