Gaming has been an important part of our lives. The game industry is fast-growing at the moment. More game developers are creating big hits and accelerating the growth of the game industry as we speak. Although many gaming platforms have a part in this growth, the biggest part of that growth belongs to mobile gaming. That is because, mobile gaming is the easiest modern gaming to develop today. The biggest reason for that is the hypercasual games.
Hypercasual Games That We Know
If you haven’t heard of hypercasual games, you are probably unaware of the fact that you played them at some point in your life. What if I mention the likes of Pong, Flappy Bird, and Pac-Man? Those are hypercasual games. You played or heard these games at least once in your life so it is safe to say the “hypercasual” term is not new to the game industry. However, the “hypercasual” name doesn’t exist in both App-Store and Google Play. Hypercasual games can be found in the Arcade category. It makes sense, though, because arcade games inspired the hypercasual games that we play today, after all.
The likeness between hypercasual games and arcade games is undeniable. When video games joined our life, people were excited to experience video games because they were very simple to learn and play. The gameplay mechanic was either “Tap To Shoot” or “Tap To Swipe”. Old arcade games did not depend upon any serious skill set to enjoy the gameplay. More fresh games like Flappy Bird also did not depend upon too much intelligence. Attention is all you needed to make progress in these games. Does it sound familiar?
Color Bump 3D is a game published by Good Job Games. You just have to swipe our ball left and right and avoid the obstacles that have a different color than our ball. In Fun Race 3D, published by Good Job Games, you have to tap and hold so your character can run across platforms. You need to stop holding your finger when obstacles on the way and wait for the right moment to go across. In Mr.Bullet, published by Lion Studios, you just have to tap to the desired spot on your screen, so you can shoot your enemies that waiting to be killed. These games are the proof we need to realize that hypercasual games do have the same simplicity of arcade games.
Hypercasual games are very simple to play. They only contain one gameplay mechanic. It can be a “Tap To Shoot” mechanic, which you tap to shoot someone or something and that’s all to it, or it can be a “Tap And Hold” mechanic, which you tap to screen and hold your finger so you can do something in the game and that is all you need to do to make progress. You can learn the gameplay mechanic quickly, so you can play repeatedly and progressively without having any trouble with the gameplay itself.
Gameplay Progress In Hyper-Casual Games
Hypercasual games don’t have much progress when it comes to their gameplay mechanics because they only have one. The game environment and your surroundings in that environment can change when the game progresses. For example, Johnny Trigger has one of the best gameplays amongst hypercasual games. The gameplay mechanic is “Tap to Shoot”. The character moves across the platforms and slow-motion happens when we are about to face our enemies. We have to tap to screen, so we can shoot our enemies when the slow-motion starts. When the game progresses, we will play in different environments and meet with interesting surroundings like rocket shooting devices. You can shoot those devices, and they can fire rockets in the direction that they are looking at so you can have an alternative way of killing your enemies but those devices can also kill you if you are in the way of rockets.
Gameplay can have some interesting elements inside of it. Those elements can shape the gameplay into something more exciting, and they can extend the lifetime of that hypercasual game.
How do we feel about it?
Let us agree to the fact that gaming is a good way to escape from reality. When we play games, we like a bit of rewarding and appreciation from them. Hypercasual games aimed to do that. When you pass a level and make certain progress in hypercasual games, the celebration that happens on the game can feel pretty good. The games will reward you in their terms. They will use their interface to make sure the desired feelings are well sent to the player. The power of advertisements can help you to earn better rewards or multiply the existing ones. Those games will do their best to make sure you have a satisfactory gameplay experience in general.
Frustration is not an option for a hypercasual game. Considering that the competition is hard recently, frustrating games can be forgotten easily. There are so many alternatives that players can find and play. They need to focus on having a rewarding and gentle approach to its audience. This is also key importance that many hypercasual games pay attention to. That was not necessary when the likes of Pong or Flappy Bird first appeared in the industry. In order to be more appealing for casual players, games need to be even easier so they can be very addictive. When you add an appealing user interface to a hyper-casual game, the game becomes a perfect thing for spending some time on the bus.
It is safe to say that hypercasual games should make the player feel good and they should not challenge the player too much. Gameplay that includes many frustrations won’t be a good advertisement for casual players.
As much as hypercasual games are easy to play, those games are uneasy to make. Design is an essential part of making a hyper-casual game because hyper-casual games are short-lived with comparison to other mobile games due to their simplicity. This is where the design part plays an important role when creating hyper-casual games.
Playing the hypercasual games from powerful publishers like Voodoo and Say Games will make you understand the idea behind hypercasual games. KetchApp is also another publisher that specialized in hypercasual games so inspecting their games can be a good choice, too.
