Popcap's New Games

[Midnight Synergy]

Anyone play Bejewelled 2 yet? I was curious to see what they'd do for a sequel. Not much new gameplay-wise, but I love the production values. The "warp tunnel" effect followed by scenes on eerily quiet beaches for some reason reminded me of "The Quiet Earth" or even "Planet of the Apes". I wonder how that kinda stuff will fly with the standard popcap audience?

[lakibuk]

Played it. Never liked the gameplay but the graphic and sound design is fantastic. You think the popcap audience could dislike the sci-fi theme of the game?
Another 3-in-a-row game i tried out yesterday was Magic Vines (http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/magicvines/) . I really liked it and could not stop playing until the 1-hour evaluation was over.

[svero]

I also liked the warp tunnel effect. I just wish it could be in a game with intersting gameplay. I've never liked bejeweled style play and probably never will. But as we know others do. Still I'd like to see popcap turn those production values over to something I'd like to play. For bejeweled it feels a little bit overdone.

[princec]

Still don't like it, and I have to say I'm not particularly impressed with the warp effect although the production of the entire game is second-to-none. It's up there with the interface in Doom3.

Cas :)

[tolik]

I would disagree with the production values.

Let's try to compare Bejeweled to some top-notch console puzzle game. Of course, casual market doesn't care about 2player functionality, but Bejeweled 2 increases replayability value with kind of story mode (endless mode) and a puzzle mode which every good console game does have.

I would say Bejeweled 2 production value has increased twice.

Now, let's see if we'll get some extra Puzzles for free (like GameHouse did with Super Collapse! 2).

[princec]

You really don't think the production values are utterly excellent?

Cas :)

[James C. Smith]

I thought the production values raised the bar for the rest of us. It looked great. The game play was same old same old. Puzzle mode was a nice addition but it is not nearly as fun as other match 3 games such as Jewel Quest and Magic Vines. But the thing that amazed me the most is the complexity shown to the user. If you are in the middle of the game, and you want to access a menu to (to do something simple like exit the game) you get the whole options screen with a dozen different buttons. It has everything from “return to main menu” to "enable hardware acceleration" and stuff in-between like sound sliders and full screen options. It seemed overwhelming and overly complicated to me. The main menu is also a little overwhelming but not nearly as bad as the in-game pause menu. The other thing that shocked me was the nearly 10 MB download size. There must be an awful lot of those background images.

Overall, I think it is an improvement over the original Bejeweled but not by a large margin.

[Anthony Flack]

Screenshots sure look pretty. I just can't bring myself to download and install it since I know it'll all end in Bejewelled.

I tried the web version, is the downloadable one much different?

[lakibuk]

Screenshots sure look pretty. I just can't bring myself to download and install it since I know it'll all end in Bejewelled.
Don't download it if you hate Bejewelled!
Magic Vines is funnier.

[Midnight Synergy]

You think the popcap audience could dislike the sci-fi theme of the game?


Maybe not disklike, but it is a lot more "techno" than any of their other games. No cute mascot character, for example.


The other thing that shocked me was the nearly 10 MB download size. There must be an awful lot of those background images.


Actually just 17 (you can see them in the images directory). I don't know either where all the space went.

BTW, images were all created with http://www.pandromeda.com/ - looks like an intresting software package. Anyone else ever work (or play) with it?

[tolik]

I was comparing previous production value of Bejeweled to the new production value of Bejeweled 2.
When you complete Bejeweled 2, you get a notice about "soon coming Bejeweled 3". No, I haven't completed the game, I looked at the strings in resources.

(going off-topic from PopCap)

My personal opinion - all of the current puzzle games don't have any real production value.

Why? It's the casual market.
You could release feature-empty but addictive game once, add couple of features and re-release it for the second time couple of years later. And all of that stuff instead of including all the possible features from the start.

There's no need for all these features.

Check console games. They are having a hard time because of the real lack of ideas. They were evolving for almost a decade. New Bust-A-Move game has 2 times lower production value than previous one except one small thing - online play. Puyo Pop Fever doesn't bring a lot, except re-touched gameplay. Where are new franchises?
Making a professional puzzle game is quite hard.

Most of the current casual puzzle games are themed clones of each other. Some of them don't bring anything new to the genre, some of them try to make quick money by taking the same game and adding the storyline or changing one feature (or adding some extra bonus, wow!), others are just plain clones targeted to the specific niche by using specific theme.

That's it.


There's still plenty of room for professional looking puzzles (EVEN CLONED ONES) with huge value.

Let's try to invent something.

*Inlay clone (heh, it's actually http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=797 clone)
Don't limit the game to a specific amount of layouts.
Use extendability like Flipwords and Ricochet - allow users to create their own layouts (ability to remix current layout) and upload them online.
Create an ability to "replay" game and submit it online... Some people might really appreciate how symmetrically you lay your figures (newest 3d layout clone already implemented this idea and gives bonuses).
Add online high scores.
Create extra layouts on a daily basis and make them available online.
May be even leagues? The players which created the best layouts and play on a daily basis. Feature them.
If the user base will be quite huge, add a forum and release a Deluxe version with VS abilities. Have you seen online games at ICQ?

Why clone already existing game without adding any gameplay features?
What can be done in Inlay genre? New cloned game is 3d, but why not use panorama photo images (and not dull Magic Inlay style), multi layered images, etc.

I call this a production value, and not "clown", sorry, "clone" production value.

This is just my personal opinion. I could be totally wrong (especially with all the online parts, somebody might blame me for the price of the traffic), but I don't like the current casual puzzle trend.

If somebody will really shake the market with a professional feature-complete game, all of the production values will HAVE to grow up.

The current trend is to add 2 features per year to existing genre.

I don't know if publishers will accept rapid production growth.

Newcomer company targeting casual market AND just a bit more mass and hardcore market will have to compete with GameHouse and PopCap. I've just tried to see what kind of tactics they might use.

[lexaloffle]

BTW, images were all created with http://www.pandromeda.com/ - looks like an intresting software package. Anyone else ever work (or play) with it?

I've played with Mojoworld a bit because I share my office with Pandromeda. It's an extremely flexible program, and it's possible to create all sorts of crazy landscapes using a nice modular terrain definition scheme. They've just put out version 3 which (among other things) makes it much easier to jump in and start creating good looking planets without having to understand all of the backgroud theory. You have to create an account to download the demo, but it's worth checking out if the background landscapes appeal to you.

A Bejeweled sequel is the last place I would have expected Mojo images to show up, but they seem to work ok. I tried the demo, and my impression was that it is a collection of highly polished parts which don't work together to produce anything special. Perhaps if it wasn't Bejeweled..