mouse and keyboard simultaneously?

[Reanimated]

Hi,
Long time no see. Hope everyones doing well. Ive been looking into the casual gamer market and was wondering whether this is the same as those games you get on various websites. (generally flash games, such as those found at miniclip .com). In my game Im not sure whether it would be too much to ask if the user had to use the mouse and keyboard at the same time. A couple of games on the mentioned site seemed to do this, and to me its quite simple, but I am quite experienced with playing games so that might be the reason why. Any opinions on whether using the mouse (to aim and shoot) and keyboard (to move) would be too much for a casual gamer?
Thanks

[ggambett]

Probably. It works fine for Crimsonland but it also probably caters to a less casual audience. The general idea is that casual players don't even know or want to use the keyboard, so having them use it AND the mouse sounds like too much.

[James C. Smith]

It depends on your definition of "casual" game. Crimsonland sells some copies on Real Arcade, but it never sold well enough to make any top 10 lists on any big casual games web retailers like Real Arcade, Yahoo, MSN, Pogo, or Shockwave. But it does manage to find and audience and does extremely well in Reflexive Arcade. Of course, that could have something to do with Reflexive having the exclusive publishing rights for Crimsonland.

The point is, Crimsonland is an example of downloadable game that uses keyboard and mouse controls and manages to be successful. But most people would not call it a casual game and it has never done very well in places that most people would consider to be "casual games portals". It has done well in Reflexive Arcade because Reflexive works hard to find niche web sites and publications to affiliate the game.

[Ronkes]

If you really want to develop a game for the casual gamer, my answer would be: no, don't use both the mouse and the keyboard. I've written about this a couple of times on my blog: http://www.casualgamedesign.com/?cat=3.

I don't think a game where you need to aim and shoot - regardless of the controls - would be a good casual game anyway. Bullets and weapons don't sound very casual to me.

[Reanimated]

Thanks for the replies :) .Im hoping to aim more at the "retro" gamers as such, but not sure whether these would fall into the 'casual gamer' category or not. Reason being, retro games were quite simple compared to todays games, so I just wanted to bring games like earthworm jim back to life effectively.