Bejeweled 2 opinions?

[Jack Norton]

Can someone expert in casual games explain me what's the difference from Bejeweled one and the new version? :)
Apart for more flashy graphics and cool effects, the gameplay seems about the same...! I don't understand how such a classic-gameplay game can sell nowadays with all the competition...
Maybe people are just happy to play the same game with different graphics? :D

[Wayward]

I never really took to the original Bejeweled, but the new version grabbed me straight away.

Gameplay-wise, Bejeweled 2 adds power gems (formed from lines of 4) and hypercubes (from lines of 5). The new game pieces change the strategy in subtle ways. It's worth going for these special gems as you get to keep them when you advance to the next level, and the hypercube is essentially an extra life.

Bejeweled 2 has also got more game modes including an action mode and a puzzle mode (with puzzles designed by Scott Kim).

Bejeweled 2 is the only indie game I've felt the need to buy in the last three years. I have a few friends who bought it too, and for many of them it's the only indie game they've ever bought.

My classic mode high-score is 4,215,448. It took 12h 23m. It only ended because I caught the flu.

Can't wait for Bejeweled 3!

[princec]

Waste of time and money developing it, I think. I can't see many who already has Bejewelled being enraptured enough to upgrade for a little more candy. Time will tell of course.

Cas :)

[Savant]

It sells because it's from PopCap, which is synonymous with Bejewelled. They aren't producing clones, they produce the original. They are the source.

Wayward already covered what's new in this version and, personally, I think they've done a great job with it. They've taken their old game, polished it up to a gleaming shine and gave it enough new features to justify calling it "2".

I played out my full hour trial on the day I downloaded it.

[Bmc]

Waste of time and money developing it, I think. I can't see many who already has Bejewelled being enraptured enough to upgrade for a little more candy. Time will tell of course.

Cas :)


I believe it's been in the RA top 10 for about a month and half now if not more. Definetly a waste of time and money on it's development.

[Andy]

I believe it's been in the RA top 10 for about a month and half now if not more. Definetly a waste of time and money on it's development.

I'd say if you are not from PopCap don't even to try to repeat it! - No way you get any attention of customers at all. Speaking about the subject itself - sure it works for PopCap guys.

[princec]

By "waste of time and money" what I'm getting at is - why did they bother with rewriting it and prettifying it when it sold perfectly brilliantly in its original incarnation? If they'd spent the money on promotion instead they could probably have achieved a far greater return on investment. Or another completely different game. What they've done is effectively destroyed their own product by competing with themselves. It's a bit like me spending $200k to write Alien Flux 2 which is bigger and better and cooler than Alien Flux 1 but which sells in exactly the same numbers - at the expense of the original! So the year I spent on Flux was totally wasted as it's obsolete.

Cas :)

[Andy]

By "waste of time and money" what I'm getting at is - why did they bother with rewriting it and prettifying it when it sold perfectly brilliantly in its original incarnation? If they'd spent the money on promotion instead they could probably have achieved a far greater return on investment. Or another completely different game. What they've done is effectively destroyed their own product by competing with themselves.


Wrong!!! - They just sold their BJ2 to their already existing probably 1 million of customers for the first BJ. Anybody can stand against 20 millions? :confused:

[Savant]

Exactly. A good percentage of the old customers are going to buy the new version, plus this gives them a good excuse to go on a whole new marketing push for the sequel. Definitely a smart move on their part.

They could have just added these features into the old game, sure, but that just looks like an upgrade and they couldn't charge full price for it.

PopCap knows what they're doing. :)

[papillon]

The extra shininess makes me hate myself *slightly* less when playing. My problem with the old one was mostly "PLEASE GAME JUST KILL ME ALREADY I WANT TO STOP...." (I'm very bad at leaving a game when I haven't 'lost' yet.) 2 seems to cut me off at a saner point so I don't want to burn it off the internet to avoid ever getting stuck there again.

Still would never pay for it, though. :)

[Andy]

Still would never pay for it, though. :)

That's the clue papillon - the same is here - so, we just can't get how they could grab another money from such update - but they are doing everything right from business side - at least because they are on top.

[Jack Norton]

Still would never pay for it, though. :)
Me neither. That was my original question: who is going to pay for this? :)
Even original buyers won't be much impressed by the extra "features" (if you can call those that way) I think.
Unless all 40 years old women are blind (since that's a women game... and don't tell me that isn't! :D)
And about "they invented the original"... hmm read the Iakibuk thread about that SNES game ;)

[Savant]

I think you guys would do well to reevaluate your opinion of puzzle games. They are NOT 'women games'. A know a lot of guys who play Bejewelled and love it.

[Evak]

actually there are quite a few differences. Maybe you ought to play it more :)

My wife bought it last week, and there are new combos and gameplay modes.

for instance 4 in a row creates knocks out 4 and leaves behind a sparkling coloured jewel. When you get the sparkling jewel matched up with the samne colour it explodes taking out the 8 jewels surrounding it.

This also has a chain reaction effect if there are more sparkle jewels within destruction radius.

If you get 5 in a row, you get a special jewel that can be matched with and colour adjacent to it, when activated every jewel on the board with that swapped colour is vapourized reshuffling the entire board. (nice thing is you can store them up for when you get stuck.

This adds a LOT to gameplay, and makes the game much more fun, plus it adds more opportunities for strategy. It's far more than just a visual upgrade and my wife thinks it was very good value for money.

I played it quite a bit too, and I'm not really a casual puzzle gamer, but found it one of the most enjoyable indie games I have played in a while. Stopped playing once I reached 157,000 in classic mode though, just takes too long. Maybe if my wife beats it though ;)

[Martoon]

In the 12 years that I've known my wife, I've tried from time to time to get her interested in a game - any game. I've never succeeded. She uses the computer all the time for productivity, but she doesn't "get" the idea of games. Why would you want to use a program that deliberately puts obstacles in your way?

It's become a sort of grail for me. I occasionally show her some new game demo, but nothing ever sticks.

Nothing, that is, until Bejewelled 2.

She took to this game like a true crack junkie. She'll play until her hand cramps up on the mouse, and then try to play left-handed. This has been going on for weeks. She says it's all about the power gems and hypercubes. She finds the rest of gem-swapping boring, but lives for the power gems and hypercubes. So yes, I think there is some definite value added in this new version.

And I finally have a wife who "gets" games. Now I'm trying to decide if this is a good thing.

[Jim Buck]

I thought the 2nd version was a great enhancement over the 1st. As others who have played the demo have pointed out, it's not just better graphics (that too, though), but the gameplay additions are very cool. I got a little addicted to the puzzle mode.

Though I wouldn't buy it either, those games are not the types of games I usually buy anyway. (Disclaimer: I did buy the 1st one, though, since it was a good deal at $9.95 a few years ago. :) )

[Andy]

Well. That's said. Anything esle you want to know Jack? :D

REM: I don't care about DOOM 3 or HL2 at all for example. And so what? - Peoples around are saying that these games have sold some number of copies. ;)

[Jack Norton]

Well. That's said. Anything esle you want to know Jack? :D

REM: I don't care about DOOM 3 or HL2 at all for example. And so what? - Peoples around are saying that these games have sold some number of copies. ;)
Of course wasn't referring to those games.
But for example to Spidweb games. I like RPG, I can't stand casual games. So there are very few options in shareware market for people like me. Jeff Vogel said that he made Geneforge 2 to pay her daughter university. Don't know exactly, but I bet that university in USA isn't very cheap.
So you can make money without making a casual game ;)

That said, it seems that Bejeweled 2 is very popular among the casual players (which are NOT only women, but 90% women). There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a statistic...!! :D

[Savant]

(which are NOT only women, but 90% women). There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a statistic...!!
A statistic pulled out of your backside but, yes, a statistic. So is, "90% of indie developers have the wrong idea about puzzles games and the associated market". :)

[Diodor Bitan]

That it is very hard to imagine or even observe the improvements between the two bejeweled versions should hint at the difficulty of actually creating the improvements that make a difference.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

These are some other new features I haven't seen mentioned above (sorry if some were already mentioned):

-new modes (puzzle, endless, etc.)
-new secrets (each major mode has an unlockable minor bonus mode associated with it.)
-new look and feel, complete with better graphics and more animation polish (including some 3d effects on computers that can handle it.)
-the game now runs at higher resolution, meaning more detail in full-screen mode, and more detail and a larger window in windowed mode. (you can still run at old resolution if you want, which down-scales the graphics on the fly.)

-Hiro_Antagonist

[princec]

So I'm still asking... if you had already completely gone wobbly over Bejewelled 1 and bought it... would you really buy V2.0?

I don't think anyone here who's not actually bought the first one is actually qualified to reply though :/

I can see that 2.0 in its own right is a perfectly excellent game and should sell just as well as 1.0. The point I'm making is: will they make enough 1.0->2.0 conversions to have made the whole exercise worthwhile, or could they have done something a bit more adventurous and created a brand new game and made more money, or could they have thrown the money into simply promoting V1.0 and made even more sales of the original game with absolutely no technical risk or development expense?

Cas :)

[Jack Norton]

A statistic pulled out of your backside but, yes, a statistic. So is, "90% of indie developers have the wrong idea about puzzles games and the associated market". :)
HOW DARE YOU!!! Don't underestimate the knowledge of my backside! :D

just some links I found:
http://news.gamewinners.com/index.php/news/107/

quote from site:
Adult women now make up a larger percentage of the on-line gaming population than boys aged 6 to 17, according to a survey released last year by the Entertainment Software Association, a U.S. games-industry analyst. Most experts agree that young men still make up the vast majority of hard-core gamers plugged into home PlayStations. Women, they say, tend to play more traditional games like backgammon and solitaire, and usually on-line. But they're obsessive about it. In fact, women over 40 spend more time playing on-line than adult men or teens, according to a new survey of casual on-line game players released last month by AOL (American Online) Games.

http://www.gamesfirst.com/articles/monica/womenwant/womenwant.htm
quote:
I was especially interested by some of the statistics they had gathered which show that women are a smaller percentage of game players (28% console gamers, 38% PC) and yet are a much greater percent of the game buying populace (55% PC, 46% console).
and again:
The IDSA followed up by showing that 62% of the people who have been playing games for less than a year are women. This, they feel, is "concrete evidence that more and more women are being drawn to games."

This will teach you to respect my backside statistics!!! :cool:

[Savant]

I think it was time to refresh the SKU, no matter how you look at it. Bejewelled is done as a marketable product (not done as a saleable product, just as a marketable one) - everyone has seen or heard about it. It's definitely on the downward slide of the product awareness bell curve (meaning, the majority of consumers are aware). There's really nothing new to be accomplished there by throwing more marketing money at it.

Creating a new product/sequel was the smart move.

[Bmc]

Bejeweled 2 differs from Bejeweled 1 as much as Jewel Quest, Big Kahuna, and Mad Caps does. All of those games take the concept of BJ1 and expand on it by adding at least a couple new and unique features ... and that's pretty much all it takes to make a game "new" in the eyes of a lot of casual gamers(at least for the moment although I think that is starting to change).

I mean even straight up Bejeweled clones have made it onto the RA top 10 in the past year. Ice Breaker is one that comes to mind. It didn't last long but then it didn't really offer anything new ... but the point is people bought it and alot of those people probably own Bejeweled.

[Jack Norton]

I think that Big Kahuna and Jewel Quest are better than Bejeweled 2 (from my NON casual gamer point of view). At least they offer more variety :p

[Bmc]

i would agree with you. i only said they expanded upon the original concept not that they where inferior or anything. I loved JQ when it came out and I loved BKR even more.

[James C. Smith]

I was in the home stretch of Big Kahuna Reef development when I saw a link to Bejeweled 2. I thought, “oh no! They figured it out. They are going to make BKR irrelevant”. I saw the opening screen and said, “shi+ this looks good”. Then I played Bejeweled 2 and let out a big sigh of relief. Nothing to fear here. It is better than Bejeweled with lots of new features. I especially appreciate puzzle mode (that was one of my favorite features of Tetris Attack). But overall, Bejeweled 2 looks to me like more of the same. It didn’t see a great reward system or anything to break the monotony. It is a good game and I am sure it is a great revenue generator, but I don’t think it threatens sales of Big Kahuna or Jewel Quest.

But I still understand why they would make it. I think Savant said it best when he said it refreshes the SKU. It makes the Bejeweled brand stay competitive with the other games out there. Not even necessarily the other puzzle games. Just brining the production values of the game up to date with other downloadable games was important. There are new customers finding casual games for the first time every day. Many people never played Bejeweled. If they first play Pizza Frenzy and then play Bejeweled 1 they are going to think Bejeweled looks primitive. Bejeweled 2 makes the Bejeweled brand be competitive with the current state of the downloadable casual games industry. And it may also sell several hundred thousand units to some of the people who purchased the original.

[Jack Norton]

So is correct to say that another clone of Bejeweled, with very high production value (great gfx, sounds, musics) could still sell well in the casual market? I though there was enough of those, but seems that you can just change the graphics and vary the gameplay a bit and you can sell a lot !

(that is not easy to small developer like me, but to people with lot of money like popcap can be easily done)

I don't really understand this casual market. When you think that some people complain that Pro Evolution soccer 4 is too similar to the 3 (in "normal" retail market) while it has much more differences with other soccer games than those "bejeweled clones" (even if I think that some like Kahuna are much better than the "original") :confused:

[Savant]

Well, you have to remember that PopCap owns the "Bejewelled" name. They created it and they are the ones the public associates with it. So if THEY release a new Bejewelled, it's big news to people. If someone else had done Bejewelled 2 and released it under a different name, I don't think it would do nearly as well. It would suffer the fate of all clones - a few days on the hundreds of "What's New" pages around the web and then a quick trip into obscurity.

[Bmc]

i don't think an exact clone of bejeweled would sell nowadays if all that was different was the gfx. I doubt it would even get into the beta stage at a site like RA ... But as an example there is game in real's beta right now called Barnyard Invasion that is gaining some heat on the RA Beta Test forums. It's basically a Bejeweled clone, but it has several unique features.

1)A theme that hasn't been done to death(think Egypt, Aztec, Jungle).
2)The victory condition differs from Bejeweled(it's the same as in Zoo Keeper for Nintendo DS). You need to make a certain number of matches of different animal groups.
3)Instead of swapping 2 different pieces, you slide a whole row or column.
4) You can move as many spaces horizontally or vertically as you want on every move.
5) Pieces don't return their last position if no match is made.

[James C. Smith]

3)Instead of swapping 2 different pieces, you slide a whole row or column.
4) You can move as many spaces horizontally or vertically as you want on every move.
5) Pieces don't return their last position if no match is made.

That sounds surprising similar to a prototype I made. You could drag rows or columns with the mouse and all the pieces would slide back and forth and wrap around to the other edge. The problem I has was I couldn’t figure out how to make it fun. I tried all different permeations of tweaking variables such as the size of the board, the number of type of things to match, and how many in a row you had to match. No matter what I did it was just too easy and boring. They must have found the magic. It is probably in the vicrory condition. Or maybe my game was only boring to me and other players would have liked it.

[Raptisoft]

Well well well, this is pretty similar to the game I'm finishing up now.

Couple weeks, and I'll announce.

[Jack Norton]

That sounds surprising similar to a prototype I made.
The fact is that when you have game based on such simple elements is very easy (and unavoidable) to come out with similar results.
My game Spin Around (http://www.winterwolves.com/pc_mac_games2.htm) is similar to that idea. Fun thing is that the puzzle mode has some levels identical to Bejeweled 2 (and I made my game before them).
This means nothing of course, since as I said, is very easy to come out with similar (if not identical) results when you base you game only on few rules...! :cool:

[Hiro_Antagonist]

Haha... the sliding row/column game is I think a mechanic that has sprung up many times simultaniously.

I had a prototype I'd made years ago, and then made a more polished gameplay seed demo about 3 months ago using a much better graphics engine.

Recently I showed it to some people who said they had another product in development that was very similar.

Now you guys are pointing out yet more propducts that even more games ahve almost exactly the same core mechanic.

Maybe there's just only so many match 3 variations in the world, and all of us discovered one of the few remaining ones at roughly the same time?

-Hiro_Antagonist