Disclaimer:The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent all of iPGN’s staff. Dave is a little unstable and this may upset some developers. Read on if you dare! Remember this is just an opinion, and overall I’m just looking out for the iPhone gaming community.
Alright, here we stand, just a few months after the iPhone’s 2.0 software launched, and we have something like 10 billion games on the app store. (An exaggeration, I am aware.) The thing is, too many of these games are indistinguishable from one another, because there are so many of the same damn game with a different name. So, developers, please read my list of the most over done game types, and maybe, oh I don’t know, make something original… please?!?
Aright, these are not in order or anything, this is just some of the types that are overdone, and why they are so overdone.
- Tower Defense games – There are more of these on the app store than you can shake a stick at, and most of them suck. There are some really good ones, of course, because if there are twenty thousand of anything, some of them have to be at least passable, right? However, passable or not I just done want to stop little monsters from attacking my base anymore, in fact, I may just let them get to my base and destroy it. Maybe in the process all tower defence games will be destroyed in the process. One can only hope.
- Match some amount of something games – How many variations of Bejeweled can there possibly be? Honestly, I feel like I have matched so many gems and various other objects in the short life of iPhone gaming that I could make a swimming pool of jewels. However, that being said, anyone who listens to our podcast (shameless plug) will know that I love PuzzleQuest, and even though that’s a match 3 game, it’s still awesome, and it’s an innovative take on a played out genre, so if you want to make a match type of game, do something to make it cool. (Aurora Fieint and Samurai Puzzle Battle are pretty cool, too.) If you are just going to re-skin Bejewelled, don’t bother, because no one cares.
- Pool, Poker, Bowling and Various indoor “sports” – Yes, I gave Midnight Pool something like a 4.5, and it’s a great game. Live Poker is awesome, getting to play poker online with other people is sweet. However, that doesn’t mean that I need 300 different variations of these same games. There are some gems in there, but it’s just too much. One game in each of these is cool, and I understand that the developers are hoping that their game will become the one that I choose, but the fact of the matter is most of them are crap, and I don’t want to play them. I’m also grouping bored games in the category like checkers and chess and all of that. Don’t want them, so kindly stop putting them out and make me something good.
- Sudoku – I don’t feel I need to say too much here, but there is an insane amount of Sudoku games, and since it’s hard to screw up Sudoku, they are all decent. It creates a great deal of consumer confusion, because how is someone supposed to know what games are decent. (No don’t say user reviews, they are not a very good source and generally are pretty useless.) Most critics aren’t going to touch a Sudoku game either because it’s not worth the time. So I think the moral of the story is to stop making Sudoku, and we will all be a lot happier.
- Hunting and Fishing – Somehow, iHunt sells like a million games a week, and I don’t understand why, it’s so bad. I’m getting sick of seeing games where I have have to shoot deer or catch fish. The ones that are out there lack the depth to be compelling enough to make me want to play anyway. If you want to make a fishing game, make it a game, not just a fishing simulator. Put some kind of online leaderboards in there and make it something worth coming back to for more than five minutes, or better yet, just make another kind of game that’s actually fun.
- Marble Games – How many labyrinth games can exist on one platform. This is one game type that I don’t even find fun in small quantities. Some of these I’m like yea they are fun, but just played out, these are not fun to begin with, so the fact that there are so many is just mind boggling to me. Even polished ones like Super Monkey Ball aren’t fun, just because the phone has tilts doesn’t mean I want to play a stupid table top marble game. So please, spare us all.
Bad Games – I’m going to generalize here and say that bad games are very overdone on the iPhone. I mean come on, do people play their games before they release them. It’s insane to me how someone can see some of these games and think, “wow, I made a really good thing here.” The second game I ever reviews on the iPhone was a 0.5. A 0.5, seriously, how could you put out something that bad and have your name attached to it, and be proud of what you have made. A lot of the more major publications think of iPhone gaming as joke, and with like 10 million games on the app store that are complete garbage I can see why. Do developers want the iPhone to become like Nintendo platforms, where nothing but shovel-ware garbage comes out for it, because that seems to be the road we are going down.
I feel that rather than bash the things that I don’t like, how about I give some ideas for developers for some under done game’s that could work well on the iPhone. First, a good RTS or turn based strategy games. Since both of these are played with a mouse and keyboard it would be pretty easy to make these work on an iPhone. On rail shooters are a good fit for the iPhone as well, games moves for you, and you tap enemies to shoot them, sounds easy enough, and it would more than likely be pretty fun. Platformers are another great fit. Rolando and Trace gave us a taste of a how a good platformer can be done, and I’d love to see some more come out.
Allow me to sum up, in 3 words, make good games.
