What should an arcade puzzle be like to enjoy success?

What do Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Where’s my Water, Starcraft and Mario have in common, or why didn’t Amazing Alex and Pudding Monsters go?

Angry Birds and Cut the Rope are very popular projects that can be safely called arcade puzzles.

By arcade puzzles, we mean games in which the user not only has to solve a simple riddle (where to send a bird so that it causes the most damage, how to collect all the stars with candy, and so on), but also complete the required either at a certain point in time or in a short period of time.

Angry BirdsSimply put, the main task of the user in such games is not to think of a solution (it usually lies on the surface), but to be able to fulfill it. 

For example, in Angry Birds, the player needs to understand that in order to destroy pigs, it is necessary to hit the load-bearing crossbar and calculate the desired trajectory by trial and error, and then be able to launch the bird along it, pulling the slingshot properly, and guess the right moment to activate one or another feathered ability.

In Cut The Rope, the essence is the same, although the gameplay is radically different. The main thing in the game is to cut the lace on which the Nyama candy is hanging in time. 

Cut the RopeThis is the whole thrill – the player sees the solution to the problem almost instantly, but it should be difficult for him to implement it without the required skill.

Because of the user-friendly interface, responsive management, it seems to him that he is about to solve the problem, but it may take five, ten minutes or even twenty … and three stars have not yet been collected. 

This idea was suggested to us by the wonderful Joe Danger project, in which this approach is postulated as openly as possible. There are no riddles in it at all, the tasks are clear, but it can be problematic to fulfill them, despite the apparent simplicity.

 Joe DangerAnd, yes, due to the fact that many developers took Angry Birds for a puzzle, an incident arose.

The fact is that the puzzle user does not really like, more precisely, the same games differ in the mobile market with a low level of user retention, short sessions and, accordingly, low revenue. 

The topic about the fact that the hits that have already become mobile classics, in fact, are more arcade games, even their authors in Rovio and ZeptoLab did not “see through”. Both Amazing Alex and Pudding Monsters are honest puzzles. Both projects were launched with fanfare, both were executed at the highest level, but did not receive such wide distribution (here, of course, you can also write off everything for a completely different time, a different situation on the market).   

Amazing AlexThe quintessence of Super Mario’s success is the same as that of Angry Birds: there is a clear task that is difficult to complete and even more difficult to complete it as well as possible by collecting all the coins or stars. 

This is, if you want, a secret to the castle. And, yes, that’s what the authors of Starcraft meant when they said that it’s easy to learn how to play their game, but it’s difficult to become a master in it. 

There should be no artificial barriers, the player should not be distracted by an inconvenient interface or complex riddles, he should not think how exactly to use the tools given to him, the main difficulty for him should be the implementation of his plans. 

Remember the Crocodile Swampy – what is the main catch? Carefully draw a trench with your finger on a small smartphone screen!