20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social and Mobile Games That You Should Steal discusses 20 innovative casual, social and mobile games that leverage different platforms and mechanics in interesting ways such as using a player's music library or location in gameplay, integrating social networks, or combining multiple genres. The document provides examples of games that use viral social sharing of scores, asynchronous multiplayer, photo integration, augmented reality, and episodic monetization among other novel approaches. It cautions that some innovations may introduce privacy, licensing, or gameplay issues that would need addressing for successful implementation.

1. 20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social and Mobile Games That You Should Steal Stuart Dredge

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. MATES

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

7. 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

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

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

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

11. 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?

12. music

13. 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?

14. 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...

15. 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

16. 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

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

18. 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...

19. Location

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

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

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

23. 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)

24. 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

25. twitter

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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)

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

30. Connect

31. 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

32. 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

33. 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

34. 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?

35. 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

36. 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

37. VIDEO

38. 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.

39. 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

40. 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

41. Rethinks

42. 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

43. 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)

44. 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

45. 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?

46. 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

47. Mash-ups

48. 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?

49. 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

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

51. 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

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

53. 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

54. 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

55. And before you ask...

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

57. Pet Society Poo Golden Poo Rainbow Poo Expect the unexpected

58. 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?

59. 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

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

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

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

63. 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

64. Enviro-Bear 2010

65. Cheers! Me: sdredge@gmail.com Pocket Gamer: spanner@pocketgamer.co.uk PocketGamer.biz: jon@pocketgamer.co.uk Quick plug: www.iphonegamesbulletin.com