Going into my C++ Project, I need a supporting body of research into Hypercasual Games. I want to establish a theme between popular games in the early and late market as well as what the industry defines as a Hypercasual game. I go into a large deep dive here,
https://machinations.io/articles/what-are-hypercasual-games
Machinations suggests that Hypercasual games can be defined by three factors:
- Simple Gameplay
- Short Duration
- Social features
“The gameplay can be learned in seconds, doesn’t require tutorials or guides”
“Game is designed to be played in quick bursts with most lasting a few minutes”
“Leader boards, challenges and other ways for players to compete against each other”
Simple gameplay means that the games are also an accessibility aspect, not just for people who suffer physical disabilities who may struggle with complex / careful inputs but also language barriers, if tutorials are purely visual and game dialogue is kept to a minimum then the game can be accessible to more regions.
Hypercasual to me is a product of the mobile game market, mainly due to the touchscreen technology released starting with the Ipod and Iphones having such different user-input than other platforms. The main consumer platforms before the phone platform rose was PC and consoles with input through either keyboard (102 keys) & mouse (cursor movement and 1-5+ mouse buttons) or console controllers where newer controllers came with more buttons such as xbox 360(2005) with 17 total buttons and 2 analog sticks while older ones have less: Gamecube(2001) 12 buttons 2 sticks, Nintendo 64(1996) 13 buttons 1 analog, SNES(1991) 10 buttons.
Looking at most controllers between 1996-2The button format is typically 1-2 sets of rear buttons, 4 action buttons on the right face and 2 analog sticks with 1 for movement and 1 for character rotation.
I went to the ‘Retro Replay‘ arcade in castle mall which featured many golden age arcade machines with the earliest I found being Space Invaders(1978) to a lot more recent ones like ‘Dance Dance Revolution 5th mix'(1999) and Guitar Hero Arcade(2009). Majority of machines had standard input of a stick for directional input and action buttons, most had 1-2 but some went up to 6. Not to mention that arcade machines almost always featured high-scores which challenges the player to keep playing and master the game more to beat the high score.
The question coming to mind with these controller inputs is that if game controllers used to have few inputs to begin then did many of the early video games meet the criteria of hypercasual? Hypercasual is a newly defined genre in the industry from the past decade, 1970-2000 games were often limited by the processing power and storage of consoles as well so it also feels like games were simple by force and only the past 20 years have we started to be able to categorise games differently based on size and complexity.
The big difference Ipods and Iphones made is their touch screen inputs which introduced new ways to make inputs in games, namely tap, double-tap, hold+drag, swipe, as well as the rotation of the device, the natural hand motions are a lot easier to teach and learn rather than building an association between button presses and action so they’re more accessible, plus the direct hand contact with elements in-game makes it much more engaging. Touch screen technology didn’t begin with these 2 devices but they were widespread consumer products, with 1.39 million iphones sold in 2007. For comparison there were 70 million Xbox 360 consoles sold between 2005 and 2012 versus between 2007 and 2013 100 million ipods were sold.
Ipod touch was designed with entertainment in mind, its main purpose was to download and play music, videos and games with Wi-Fi connection. Many of the top grossing games early on in the app store were the first ones to successfully incorporate new input technology into their games:
The ease of input for the game made a lot of new genre of games popular,
- Clash of Clans was a good early strategy game as the player could rapidly deploy units in a tactile manor around forts and swiftly pan around to monitor the assaults.
- Cut the rope was a puzzle game about strategically cutting ropes attached to candy to feed a little monster, it built on it with more elements such as whoopie cushions to move the candy, bubbles which made it float, spiders that could eat the candy.
- Doodle Jump used the left-right tilt of the device to move the character as it automatically jumped up through the level.
- Fruit Ninja took swipes across the screen as input to cut fruit thrown across the screen.
- Angry Birds used the ‘drag motion’ on screen for the player to pull back a slingshot to aim and fire birds at structures, built upon with different birds to shoot and structures to demolish
Endless Runners became a popular genre with one format involved swiping left or right to make turns and avoid obstacles, or up to jump and down to slide – Temple Runner and Subway Surfers.
Simple games with one-touch inputs were successful aswell, people enjoyed games that provided a challenge that was easy to learn but hard to master.
- Jetpack Joyride had one input, touch screen to activate jetpack which lifted a character as he ran through an endless tunnel faster and faster, and this single input had to be measured and timed with quick reactions to avoid laser traps and collect coins,
- Flappy Bird was extremely simple where the single touch input would make a bird jump and it had to fly through holes in a series of walls.
- Crossy Road featured simple directional movement with swipe motions, the player is rushed to navigate through a hectic level of busy roads and moving rivers with logs whilst a camera pans through the level – if the player falls into the river, gets hit by a vehicle or falls out of the level bounds they lose.
Even a lot of games that existed before, as PC games and physical concepts, are successful on touchscreen devices as ports/mobile recreations, 8 Ball Pool and various Air Hockey releases have emerged but Roblox Mobile, Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty and Genshin Impact reached top grossing – they weren’t originally designed for the mobile market touchscreen devices but despite this they still have generated billions in revenue on app stores. A lot of these games were designed to take an input for rotation, another for movement and half a dozen action inputs (they display transparent buttons of a controller on the screen and take input though that, touch input in certain spots to register certain inputs.
I don’t think hypercasual games work as well on PC as incomparison the dynamic of touchscreen is much more engaging often needing 2 hands to hold the device, where as on PC it is unlikely hypercasual games will use both keyboard and mouse for input. There is slight easy of use aswell where it takes seconds to pull out your phone, open the app and start a game compared to console or PC where it is location limited, takes time to turn on especially depending on device age and specifications. It’s possible the perfect formulas of games that found success on PC succeed on mobile from their ease of access and ease of use.
I think the mobile phone market for games did hypercasual the best through the innovative applications of touch-screen controls for input in games.
I can see some inspirations that mobile games may have taken from older generation games, Cross Road is a modern day Frogger, if a game concept already existed but only existed on other platforms then what reasons stand for it not to be made? Many mobiles games were extremely simple in terms of mechanics and visuals, the ‘fail-fast’ formula was extremely important here for companies to rapidly make and test ideas before it sticks well with playtest groups (Rovio had made 100 small games before they struck gold with Angry Birds).
Looking back, early touchscreen mobile phones had good processing power and battery life for supporting mobile games all of these games seem quite simple in terms of graphics, it’s possible mobile games kept their scope quite small not just for the fail-fast formula but also simply because it had to run well on early mobile devices aswell.
Around 2015, the hypercasual scene looked quite different thanks to KetchApp who were rapidly releasing a lot of games which were graphically and mechanically very simple but got more difficult overtime
Very few hypercasual PC games come to mind but the ones that do are really good. Leaderboards are often a feature overlooked in a fair share of games though users still find ways to compete via speedrunning.
>Downwell is a very simple game, you fall down a bottomless well with a single action input to shoot your weapon downwards,
>One Finger Death Punch is a classic favourite example of mine, a beat em’ up game by Silver Dollar Games released 2013, it’s a very visual intensive hyper-active game and it’s highly rated with 98% of all 12,396 reviews being positive. You have two inputs, left and right click/button to either attack to your left or right, simple but it gets intense with how many enemies are thrown at you especially with special enemies and bosses which require a series of alternating hits to eliminate. Gameplay is simple, can be played in short bursts and scoring is applied.
This investigation touched upon a range of different aspects regarding hypercasual:
- The pattern of simple gameplay, short duration, social features is very applicable to many games in the mobile games market especially early 2007-2010 but still applicable to many games today.
- The rise of hypercasual genre can be attributed to the launch of the Apple’s Iphone and Ipod touch in (2007) and its touchscreen technology revolutionising the way games are played, both in the way we engage with them and the increased access through everyone owning phones having access to games.
- Lots of early mobile game ideas were based around new inputs possible through touchscreen, what they had to offer was completely new. To stand out you either have to offer something completely new or do something similar to everyone else but a twist to stand out.
- Many modern era games are based almost entirely on existing concepts where the modern era game follows a similar gameplay loop to the inspiration or it may just feature similar mechanics and concepts but deliver a new experience as a whole. (Such as Crossy Road’s parallels with Frogger).
- Lots of similar aspects exist between gold age arcade gaming to modern games, simple inputs, high scores,
- Overall, many of the top selling games follow simple ideas, their gameplay loop may be extremely similar to any other but their execution of it may be just different enough that is achieves a different kind of fun. So, many successful games are simple but not all simple games are successful, you have to find the fun through MVPs.
Crossy Road is quite like an endless version of Frogger, though many differences can still be drawn (much more enemy hazard variety in Frogger as the player scores more, versus Crossy road which has trains and varying level generation tied into difficulty with lots of safe spots early on but few later in the level.
?Many PC games and popular IPs have been successful with ports onto the mobile market with its touchscreen inputs, but can mobile games be ported onto the PC platform with the same effect?