Let's just put this on the table, the most successful games were never the most original ones. They can be innovative, but never original. They might be new in that medium, but were borrowed from others. So my argument is not about how original the idea is but can you present it differently? Where is the innovation?
Let me explain this with 4 games: Bejeweled, Candy Crush, Dots and TwoDots.
Origin of this genre can be called Bejeweled, unless I'm not aware of any other older version of the game. Simple mechanics, match 3 and we are set. Most might call it perfection, but few saw opportunity. The core mechanics of the game is perfect. But if you dig deep, you might find few flaws. One of them being, sense of progress. The biggest problem with Bejeweled was that the 1st play, or 1000th, played exactly the same. There was never a sense of new challenging gameplay mechanics. Mastery of one core mechanics was all you needed, and then you had to rely on randomness of the jewel placement to provide you with any form of challenge.
King saw this problem and that led to Candy crush. It's main selling point was the evolving gameplay mechanics. First they introduce a new game mechanics, then they let you get used to it, then a twist and lastly the mastery. Keep in mind that this genre defining feature was in no way original but borrowed from Super Mario Galaxy.
Candy crush also made the idea of visual progression system famous. You see where you were, and you know where you want to go and how many levels are on the way. Again, Mario did that already.
Dots was also an interesting idea. It didn't exactly copied candy crush or Bejeweled, but was kind of original. When we were young we played this game on paper with friends. The idea is, you make a square out of four same colored dots and that could remove all the dots with same color. You can however, connect 2, or more, dots for those dots to vanish. So kind of match making game like Bejeweled or candy crush, but that's not why I used Dots as the example. Dots is a game of match making that had very arcade-ish approach to it initially. You have a set time and you have to match as much as possible. No levels, just game modes. Bejeweled stage cleared. Now they had to figure out the gameplay evolution. This let to the concept of candy crush, level progression.
TwoDots was the answer. Now they had level design and with every level solution, a new mechanics was brought in. With the introduction of level progression, now the already solid game mechanics has become a mammoth game. You have levels afters levels, with after every few set of levels, a new twist is introduced. This makes the both challenging and intriguingly fun to play .
Game designing is a process of dissecting an idea. A game, to a player, is how does it feel or is it fun? Players don't have to see what goes behind it. However, for a game designer, they have to ask questions like why is it fun? What design decisions make it work so well and what design decisions will make it better. This is the key difference between Bejeweled clones and Candy Crush. While people were trying to copy Bejeweled, King dissected the Bejeweled gameplay. They figured out why the game is fun. They figured out what is missing in an already fun and almost perfect gameplay. Thereby, figured out the better version of the game.
Let me explain this with 4 games: Bejeweled, Candy Crush, Dots and TwoDots.
Origin of this genre can be called Bejeweled, unless I'm not aware of any other older version of the game. Simple mechanics, match 3 and we are set. Most might call it perfection, but few saw opportunity. The core mechanics of the game is perfect. But if you dig deep, you might find few flaws. One of them being, sense of progress. The biggest problem with Bejeweled was that the 1st play, or 1000th, played exactly the same. There was never a sense of new challenging gameplay mechanics. Mastery of one core mechanics was all you needed, and then you had to rely on randomness of the jewel placement to provide you with any form of challenge.
King saw this problem and that led to Candy crush. It's main selling point was the evolving gameplay mechanics. First they introduce a new game mechanics, then they let you get used to it, then a twist and lastly the mastery. Keep in mind that this genre defining feature was in no way original but borrowed from Super Mario Galaxy.
Candy crush also made the idea of visual progression system famous. You see where you were, and you know where you want to go and how many levels are on the way. Again, Mario did that already.
Dots was also an interesting idea. It didn't exactly copied candy crush or Bejeweled, but was kind of original. When we were young we played this game on paper with friends. The idea is, you make a square out of four same colored dots and that could remove all the dots with same color. You can however, connect 2, or more, dots for those dots to vanish. So kind of match making game like Bejeweled or candy crush, but that's not why I used Dots as the example. Dots is a game of match making that had very arcade-ish approach to it initially. You have a set time and you have to match as much as possible. No levels, just game modes. Bejeweled stage cleared. Now they had to figure out the gameplay evolution. This let to the concept of candy crush, level progression.
TwoDots was the answer. Now they had level design and with every level solution, a new mechanics was brought in. With the introduction of level progression, now the already solid game mechanics has become a mammoth game. You have levels afters levels, with after every few set of levels, a new twist is introduced. This makes the both challenging and intriguingly fun to play .
Game designing is a process of dissecting an idea. A game, to a player, is how does it feel or is it fun? Players don't have to see what goes behind it. However, for a game designer, they have to ask questions like why is it fun? What design decisions make it work so well and what design decisions will make it better. This is the key difference between Bejeweled clones and Candy Crush. While people were trying to copy Bejeweled, King dissected the Bejeweled gameplay. They figured out why the game is fun. They figured out what is missing in an already fun and almost perfect gameplay. Thereby, figured out the better version of the game.
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