20 Game Ideas You Should Steal

20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social and Mobile Games That You Should Steal
Stuart Dredge

Who am I?
Journalist since 1998 – new media, games, mobile
Blogger since 2005(ish) – gadgets, virtual worlds
Twitterer since 2007 – cats, babies, breakfast

What is Pocket Gamer?
Consumer mobile games site: J2ME, iPhone, N-Gage, Android
PocketGamer.biz – trade site for mobile games industry
Printed mags for operators, N-Gage and Zeemote
iPhone podcast

What’s all this about?
The session title is a big fat lie
50 ideas. You may want to steal 20 of them. Maybe.
iPhone, casual and social (but mostly iPhone)
Not all of these games are good

MATES

Restaurant City
Hire your friends as chefs, waiters, cleaners
Viral without feeling like you’re marketing to mates
Danger: your mum might get hooked

Tower Bloxx / Bumper Stars
See your friends’ scores while you’re beating them
Constant competitive carrot to keep playing
Back it up with a brag feature

Dr. Awesome
Taps into your address book to get friend names
You then get to ‘treat’ them
No privacy infringement / connectivity

Premier Football
Facebook football manager game with your friends
More notifications when you pick people
Gets around licensing issues

FaceFighter
iPhone boxing game from Ready 2 Rumble developers
Turn a photo into a fighter
Perfect for pub show-offs

Who’s Your Friend / Word Challenge
WYF: Facebook game – guess who your pixelly friend is
Ranks you against your friends at end of game
Word Challenge: mini-game
Danger: too many friends?

music

Audiosurf / Phase / Dance Fabulous
Use your MP3 collection as basis for rhythm game
Racing / Falling notes / Dance
Works for PC or iPhone/mobile
Danger: can you cope with Napalm Death?

The Sims DJ
iPod version of the game lets you DJ with your tunes
Lets you listen as well as play – solves issue of competition
Danger: Can your game cope with Nap...

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes
Square Enix’s tactics RPG uses songs as warriors (Barcode Battler mechanic)
Encourages gamers to delve deep into collections
Also promotes sharing and song-swapping

Pole Position Remix
Classic Pole Position, but billboards from album covers
Incidental to gameplay, but once noticed...
Danger: You don’t know what albums they’ve got

BUZZER! Music Quiz
iPhone game tests your knowledge of your library
Guess the intro / album / artwork / genre / artist
Two-player split screen

Sonifi
Official app for trance artist BT
Bluetooth mixing – one takes beats+bass and one takes melody+harmony
No actual game or scoring, but there could be...

Location

Underworld
iPhone dealing game – sweets, not hard drugs
Turns local map into list of dealing spots
Don’t need to actually run around them

JOYity
Android platform to make your own LBS challenges
Treasure hunts, tag, racing...
Gets around the problem of games only working in one city

Gowalla
Collecting game – icons, stamps, pins...
Only worked in certain cities at the start
BUT people could create their own landmarks

Seek’n’Spell
iPhone game that DOES make you run around
Collect letters and create words with them
Works with one friend
Not geeky (or not too geeky)

Foursquare
Not a game, but a social networking app
BUT wraps game-like elements around it – badges etc
Just go to your usual places and do your usual things

twitter

Star Defense
iPhone Tower Defense game with Twitter feature
Brag about your score with a tweet in-game
Check out other people’s and challenge them

Spymaster / SNODS / 140 Mafia
Not games that use Twitter, but Twitter games
Built around Twitter, and tweeting every action
Intrusive and annoying? Yes, but early days

TweetBricks
Yes, it’s Tetris with tweets
BUT those tweets belong to your friends (or you)
Twitter’s open API has potential for games
(Well, some games)

TweetCraft
Twitter plug-in for World of Warcraft
Contradicts previous point about fantasy worlds
Limited potential? Maybe

Connect

Anytime Pool
Pool game for Facebook, iPhone and mobile
Key thing: play across all of them seamlessly
Asynchronous turn-based gameplay works well for this

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09
Complete the mobile game, get bonus in the console game
Relied on EA login, but could be done with code
Reason for console gamers to bother with mobile

Prototype (trailer)
Viewers logged in with Facebook Connect
Pulls out profile data and friend photos
Shows what’s possible when you start with personal data

My Brute
Or, indeed, any mafia game on the iPhone
Friend codes with rewards – wolves’n’weapons
More viral-ness without feeling like marketing
Danger: pyramid scheme?

Leaf Trombone World Stage
Not the game (although playing a virtual trombone is kinda cool...)
But the X-Factor style judging over the network
Also UGC aspect of composing songs for others

NobyNoby Boy
Strange but marvellous PS3 download game
Stretch NobyNoby Boy as far as you can
Cumulative global total to reach GIRL and unlock new levels for the game

VIDEO

Spore Creature Creator
Let people Make Stuff, then Show That Stuff Off
Even if it’s penises
It’s machinima for the masses! Or something.

Real Racing
iPhone racing game with own Cloudcell community
Auto-uploads replays of best laps to YouTube
Web 2.0 equivalent of ‘let’s see that again!’ moment

Poker Face – Don’t Miss a Beat
Using YouTube interactivity for Lady GaGa (and other UMG artists)
Very simple, but neat
Early days for these kinds of games – can fit in with wider ideas

Rethinks

Scrabble Plus
Casual take on Scrabble with more solo modes
Scrabble Golf, Scrabble Battle and Scrabble Wizard
Putting, power-ups and categories make the game fresh

Tetris Pop
Turned Tetris into three-minute mini-games
Different rules/formats, but kept true to core gameplay
(Yes, I did use this one at Develop last year)

Pac-Man Remastered
Bluetooth multiplayer where you play as the ghosts
Why not make this a solo mode too?
Anti Pacman – online Flash game does this too

UEFA Euro 2008
Rethinking trad football game controls for new players
Sliding bars rather than feverish key presses
Still a game of skill, but in a different way
Danger: dumbing down?

Bejeweled Blitz
Bejeweled on Facebook with one-minute games
Same mechanic with one crucial difference
(Okay, chess got there first)
Followed up with Zuma Web Connect this week

Mash-ups

Puzzle Quest / Aurora Feint
Mapping one genre (RPG) onto another (match-three puzzle)
Build depth around casual core gameplay – or do you?
Why map RPG onto puzzle and not other way around?

Chocolate Shop Frenzy
Diner Dash meets Bejeweled
But when there’s lots of Diner Dash meets Diner Dash games...
Two genres familiar to same audience

Samurai Puzzle Battle
Puzzle game meets strategy game meets action game
Similar benefits / concerns to Puzzle Quest
Rave reviews shows freshness of genre-splicing

Bejeweled / Peggle in WoW
Add-On for WoW with two popular casual games
Takes advantage of need to kill time while waiting for friends
Tradeskill ramps up with skills / roll for loot

Stuff that’s interesting but won’t fit into an easily definable one-word category

Car Jack Streets
Top-down GTA-style game for iPhone (and now DSi)
Time is the key – make $50,000 every real-life week
Push notifications could enhance this feature
Danger: players drop out

Spore Origins
iPhone version of Spore that uses the camera
Design your perfect Spore in a way that suits the platform
Camera-enabled feature, NOT a camera-focused game

And before you ask...

iSamurai Bluetooth
Two-player sword-fights with your iPhone
This year’s iPint/PhoneSaber
Difference: putting a game structure around the novelty

Pet Society
Poo
Golden Poo
Rainbow Poo
Expect the unexpected

SurrounDEAD
iPhone shooter that uses the compass (on 3GS)
Takes a non-gaming feature and uses it for a game
Novelty – would YOU play it in public?

Galaxy On Fire 2
Space adventure/shooter with whizzy 3D graphics
Free distribution model – freeplay and then pay
Step further – used pirate sites to get the game out there

YoVille
Virtual world / game on Facebook
Partnership with SPCA in San Francisco – virtual cats and dogs in return for donations
$20k in five weeks

WordFu
Boggle with attitude – dice and letters/words
Martial arts sounds whenever you make a word
Comes into its own with two players

Flight Control / DrawRace
Not direct control over object, but instead draw its path
(PES on Wii – similar idea)
FC = juggling, DR = feel

Pocket God
The 99-cent game that’s trailblazed episodic content for the iPhone
Weekly updates
Selling 18k copies a day at its peak – despite (or because) updates were free

Enviro-Bear 2010

Cheers!
Me: sdredge@gmail.com
Pocket Gamer: spanner@pocketgamer.co.uk
PocketGamer.biz: jon@pocketgamer.co.uk
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