Hi all, after I've been in the game developing world for a year and a half, I had gotten various experiences especially from C2. Being an explorer gamer, I saw thousands & thousands of games, but I learned that games that only who attracts and wow us make us play it & download it. There are 8 elements for a professionally made game that will blow players mind & make them play it for the longest time possible. Read carefully. Note: the elements are ordered randomly, they are not ordered on their importance.
The 8 Elements
New Concepts
The most important element is to have a game with new concepts, if you imitated a game or used the same idea of an already published game, the players will not care for it. It should involve new ideas and concepts. To know more about it, follow this link: How to make a successful game
Pro Graphics
Players are attracted to a beautiful well designed graphics, let us take “Cut the rope” for an instance. It cuteness & well design graphics attracted me to install it. Professionally made graphics with lighting effects and shadowing make it irresistible to play. To see what I’m saying download it from here: Cut the rope - Chrome store or if you’re in an android device download from here: Cut the rope - Android. You must know that one element can’t make the game the best. You need all the elements to make professional game.
Music & Sound
Music & sound are important element for games. All professional games made by large gaming companies use music & sound. If you are a sound designer or you know one that can help, that would be great. New creative songs & sounds will attract the players. Angry Birds, Subway surf, Zombie tsunami, etc… are games with music that stuck in the head ,easily memorized and funny, in one word: catchy. Taking sounds from online websites is not wrong, but the key to a new catchy song is make one by yourself. Who don’t know any of the angry bird songs?! They are catchy!
Scoring System
Do you know why you play subway surf and temple run? You play it because you want to get higher score that’s why. Scoring system shows the challenging spirit of the player and his patience to get his goal. Adding a scoring system for a game is the best thing you could ever do, take chicken invaders for an instance. The main idea of it that the chicken had invaded the earth in the future & you, the hero, need to save earth from this invasion. You have three lives and there are 10 different waves. When you finish those waves, you go to another system with the same 10 waves but a little bit harder. The reason why you replay those same waves is just because you want to beat your old high score. If you can make multiplayer games that mean the value of the scoring system get higher. The player would then see his high score and his friend’s high score which lead to compete with each other for higher score. That would also make your game playable for longer time.
Power-ups & Stores
The fifth element here is power-ups and stores. Players like to get power-ups so they can win the game more easily but what they mostly like is stores. Stores, or shops, are what the player seeks. He wants to buy items to make the game on his style or he like to get the unattainable. Let’s say in jet-pack joyride there are an amazing power-up that works as coin magnet. That is the unattainable that what I’m talking about, the player would possibly be extremely excited to get coins for the power-ups which lead to make him play the game for longer time. Player wants to get always new stuff so they don’t get bored.
Achievements
Achievements are a very important element for professional long term game. The players like to feel that they achieved something and the best thing if they got rewarded. Give the player some different achievements to do. I’ll tell you an incident happened to me. I’m working on a game that is similar to Pou, the virtual alien pet, but of course with new concepts. To see that a copy of Pou is not made (Read the first heading and follow the link for more info about getting new concepts), I searched on Google for games similar to it, and then I saw Mou. Mou is free version of Pou for Windows phone 8. I saw he copied everything from it; same game, different graphics. I read the reviews down there and I saw positive reviews as well as negative reviews, but lots of reviews said Pou is better and that Mou needs achievements. If the creator of Mou putted some achievements for the game, he would get more positive reviews about his game. To see the reviews follow this link: Mou Reviews.
Banners &Icons & Screenshots
As you search through an app store, you saw a very cool well designed banner, so your curiosity leads you to open the game to know its description. Here we are talking about marketing. A well designed banner should attract numerous players to see your game. Find a graphic designer to design your banner, but if you are feeling creative design it on your own, but remember every app store has default sizes of banners, so check the app store for the banners sizes. Icons also affect player opinion and screenshots too.
Descriptions
A well made description attract players to download your game. The description should include only the main ideas of your game, or sometimes making a story would attract them too. You should make plots or points that make a player excited to play it. You should also use “the game features:” sentence before you put plots.
Here’s an example of a description:
There was a hungry shark called Big Lenny. Fish amounts are decreasing everyday from the sea, Big Lenny need new places to find fish before they all disappear! The game features:
• Eat 12 kinds of fish and small sharks.
• Play 26 levels as the game get harder.
• Avoid bombs and trash from human community.
• Collect as many fish as you can in the Ultimate frenzy mode.
• Play 5 mini-games to get extra coins!
These plots or points are only one sentence each but it explains a lot. Hope you found it useful.