Match 3 game ideas...
Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/Match 3 game ideas...
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| Hi all, so I sometimes scratch my head to make a match 3 game because that's something which can be done in realistic time. I know good graphics are a must have for such a game but beside that, what would you like to see in a match 3 like game? The reference might be Candy Crush Saga, where I'm amazed that such a (basically) simple game works so well and is fun indeed! |
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| Writing a reliable, playable Match 3 engine is not as easy as everybody thinks it is. Handling moving/falling tiles whilst allowing the player constant freedom to play further moves - even while a lot of the board is moving, is a complete nightmare. Anyway, that said - Candy Crush Saga has had tons of marketing - even to the extent of running TV ads in the UK (seriously, they do). However much money they're making from it, is only because they've already spent £millions promoting it. It is advertised everywhere, there is barely a day goes by where I don't see it advertised some place or other. |
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| I agree with G! One of the hardest things I had to overcome was keeping the gameplay flowing , it all depends on how you set things up and it can and should influence your design from the start. I think the best route to take is to ignore the art, design the game with basic art so that there is no real theme just work on making it work, making it flow and try and avoid blocks to the gameplay, nothing worse than forcing a player to sit and wait for all the tiles to stop before they can move again, I would also avoid covering the whole screen with FX, people like to scan the board all the time and if you cover it with particles they get in the way of that, so keep your FX quick and clean... Once you have a descent working game, coming up with the art and style and theme is a walk in the park, you can even theme the game more than once and sell them as different games, some people might like their match 3 games to look like a cartoon while others might like games that look real, a simple Ruskin lets you target those different audiences while not requiring a recode. This is a lot of the same stuff I had in mind when making mine and its the same things I will be doing when it comes time for me to port my old match 3 into monkey. Hope it helps. |
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| Thanks guys, I agree on that. Allowing the player to play further moves while other tiles are falling/collapsing is really nice and I was shocked a bit that Candy Crush Saga does NOT allow that... |
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| I'd agree with the comments warning against underestimating the effort in writing a match-3 engine. Sure, I can bang out Tetris in a couple of hours but a solid match-3 engine would be a couple of months worth of work. As a player of match-3 games I'd just suggest that I'd be attracted by some meta game that rewarded my match-3 skill. |
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| Yep, thanks for that. Interesting blog article about Candy Crush btw: https://medium.com/mobile-games/f89203a90c13 |
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| I don't think it would be that hard. In fact I'm pretty sure I could do it in a day. Most games that let you make matches while things are falling only let you swap things that will be in the same places when the fall is finished, and that is fairly trivial to implement. If you want to see the variety that is out these, go on a downloading spree in GameHouse's Match 3 section. |
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| here are 100 same games. why create again one? |
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| So with it being extremely difficult, nightmarish, to write a full featured Match3 Engine it may be better to ask those who have written one and had games successfully published with it to sell theirs. So, GfK, I'm willing to pay £200 or thereabouts for your Match3 Engine. I know you want to sell it to me, now, with my offer, it may be easy for me to either to a faster payment bank transfer or as you agree to maybe a postal order or cheque. Cheers! |
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| If you can make something that people want which is better than everything else which already exists then it's always worth it to create again. Making better things is the hard part. Making a match-3 isn't a magic thing. You have to do the hard and smart work first. |
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| Make an easily 'skinnable' match-3 game *system*, where a user can mod/provide/import/use custom themes. I've always wondered why this has not been done already (or has it?). I wrote a match-3 engine in Blitzmax a while ago and it's true there are some "gotchas", but nothing an experienced programmer such as yourself cannot handle given enough time and persistence. |
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| here are 100 same games. why create again one? dragon, this is a good question and I'll try to give a (hopefully) good answer to it. Look, before making my first mobile game Blotty Pots I thought about making something special, very unique, challenging but easy to learn. I was (and actually still am) very excited about it and even game reviewers gave some very good reviews: http://www.theiphoneappreview.com/2012/01/blotty-pots-iphone-app-review/ When it comes to games for iOS, it often feels like there just aren’t any more roads to run: As if everything has already been done, and everything since that hypothetical point has been re-runs and rehashes. However, it’s games like Blotty Pots, by developer Cobblecrowd, that restore our faith in the platform, bringing along innovative gameplay with a simplistic twist. So well, the results in terms of downloads were devastating, even the free lite version! The main problem obviously was (beside the name) the fact, that users simply don't find it because it's hard to describe what to look for! After that I thought by myself, well why not copy something which already exists. So I did BattleShip an hell, it did sky rocket compared to my first one. In 2012 alone it made about $10,000 in revenue for the paid version. Even though it's not that much I consider this already a success. You don't have to invent anything new and unique. I guess best practice is to create something that is well known and add some unique new aspects to it! |
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| why should someone install your game, if he can play 10 other well designed match 3 games? Ok some users do not like IAP - or such aggressive money make games but here are again other free games, you can play without pay too much... Fact is, that all markets are overflooded with SHIT! Games that was created in 1 week or so... Bad GFX, sounds, menus, gamedesign, feeling... Your battleship is more original than other known games... (with hexagon style) your blotty game is nice, but the idea is also not new (by the way i planed game like this a time ago, but a bit different) Today, i work on a game, that was created before. It is a remake. I looked at market - here is 1 game from top-developer (500 k downloads) with nice but not perfect design (compared to other games from same developer). Here are some restictions, you must login or pay to play. Here are 3 other games with low/mid quality design. I think it is possible to create something great from old game ideas. Add fresh ideas, fresh gfx, fresh sounds and FUN! But is is very hard, if here already many good or better games than you create. Be original! |
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| When your working in such a saturated market and one as well developed as the gaming market is, it's almost impossible to create something new, in most cases it's been done before. People in general do not want something new, the whole gaming universe shows this, they want the same old shit they have played for years because its what they like, enjoy, and can understand. it takes either a shift in hardware or something truly unique to break out of this mold. So the question is not why remake the wheel, the question should be what colour paint should you use that will appeal to the most players, in terms of design Candy Crush is breaking no new ground, but what it does, it does really well, its graphics are spot on, its music is strong and does not get your nerves after a while and the carrot on a tick is firmly in place drawing the player along the levels, so nothing they have done is unique or new, it just looks nice, and plays smooth. People need to remove the burden they place on themselves of always trying to create unique games, its a near impossibility, I also feel it's something you cant force, those really epic and original game ideas tend to be eureka moments, they cant be forced, if they could AAA developers would be making unique games all the time and not your standard FPS. I honestly do not think we will see anything really original until we see a new shift in Hardware, looking on the horizon Oculus Rift has a lot of promise as it opens up the poss possibility for some truly unique games that are made for it. |
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| why should someone install your game, if he can play 10 other well designed match 3 games? Because it will be better. :P Well ok, I have some unique ideas as well. ;) |
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| So, GfK, I'm willing to pay £200 or thereabouts for your Match3 Engine. If you could band together with one or two others to up the cash a bit, I would be willing to write a match 3 engine to your specs, assuming Gfk isn't interested. |
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| So, GfK, I'm willing to pay £200 or thereabouts for your Match3 Engine. I know you want to sell it to me, now, with my offer, it may be easy for me to either to a faster payment bank transfer or as you agree to maybe a postal order or cheque. If you could band together with one or two others to up the cash a bit, I would be willing to write a match 3 engine to your specs, assuming Gfk isn't interested. Knock yourselves out!To say that I wouldn't sell my M3 engine at any price would be ridiculous, but I don't want to sell it right now, and even if I did, I'd only licence the use of it. Haven't even considered that until now but we'd probably be looking at five figures. |
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| I could do a basic match 3 engine for £200. By basic I mean it would have the gameplay functionality (and would come with a playable game based on the engine) but only placeholder graphics etc. i.e., you would have to provide your own graphics, sound effects and level design. Licence would be non-exclusive. If you're interested, email me - gerry@... - and let me know what sort of gameplay effects you are interested in (I wouldn't undertake to include every conceivable Match 3 variation, but I could incorporate particular options that you want). I can then draw up some specifications as to what I would deliver which you can look at before agreeing a deal. |
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| I hadn't noticed this thread until now, but I've been working on a match-3 style game for a couple days and it's been a kick. Yes, it's full of surprises for sure! I too thought I could create the engine in about a day, and I guess, sitting down, morning until night, maaaayyyybbbeeee I could, but realistically, it's going to take some time, at least to make it awesome. (Plus, I have some fun features I'm putting in mine that I hadn't seen in other Match-3 games before, so hopefully it can find a little success.) Some areas I've found to be a surprise (and fun) challenge so far: - How to move around the board on a touch of a selected tile when one is already selected that doesn't have a move. - Usability situation that wasn't as simple as I thought. - How to handle incorrect move attempts - Searching the board for not just match-3's, but 4's, 5's and so on, in multiple directions. (Doing this before and after a swap is attempted, as well as while pieces are falling and players are still playing) - Animating the various touches, moves and tile removals - Animating the dropping of blocks so that you can keep playing while they drop. - Handling tiles being removed while others are already dropping, re-adjusting where the dropping tiles go if some are removed below it in the process. - Constantly making sure that there are no un-found matches while the action is happening. - Implementing the various game styles, from "endless/classic" to "timed" or "leveling" modes. - Making cool graphics :) EDIT: - AI needs to look over the initial board for matches, and have at least 1 match (depending on your AI) - Touch events. What do you do when they slide their finger? Slide it over an animating tile? Lift up the finger? etc. Coordinating any touch or click events and what the user expects the behavior to be can be a challenge as well. EDIT 2: - Tying in animations around multiple moves happening at the same time. - Adding the effects of bonus or special tiles on the overall board. - The glitter - like particle effects when tiles go away, or bonus effects, or just displaying the score when you get a piece. =================================== And there are many more that I'm not thinking of right now. So, if you're interested in a pretty fun programming puzzle, match-3 is definitely a good one to go after. I'm really enjoying the process. |
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| Some areas I've found to be a surprise (and fun) challenge so far: One important thing that you missed, is how to populate the board initially to make sure plenty of moves are available, BUT with no matches already made. If you just randomize it, there is a chance that there could be very few moves, and a tiny chance there could be none at all, or worse, a 'cascading' effect kicking off before the player even does anything. |
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| I use a really simple solution to that Gfk, it's the method I use in all my match 3 games(i say that like iv made a lot, only 2). I have what I call pre-matchs., they are a match that's one move out for example. 00X XX0 There are 10 of these in total as I recall, I then clean my board array, and drop in 5 or 6 of these randomly selected pre-matchs, filling all the rest of the emtpy spaces with random tiles, making sure not to make a match with the pre-matchs. It's a really simple way of ensuring the player has a number of possibly start points, as you progress in levels I simply reduce this number of initial pre-matches which gradually makes the start harder, I always ensure at least one pre-match regardless of level tho. well, not sure if anyone else does it like that, but that's how I do it, hope it helps. |
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| Seems a nice pragmatic approach. |
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| @Taiphoz - that's exactly how I did it! |
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| "populate the board initially to make sure plenty of moves are available, BUT with no matches already made" LOL, I was just coming back here to edit my post to make that point as well as I'm actually looking at that today. I basically go back through, see if I have any matches first, then "undo" them to create the first match, and if there aren't any, alter a random position on the board with a similar pattern: XXO ZYX This is definitely one of the more fun games I've worked on. |
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| Well benmc, I definitely look forward to your game as I love playing those and most out there are real crap - at least for Android. |
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| I could do a basic match 3 engine for £200. Can't compete with that. Looks like Gerry's your man. |
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| (sry, bit late to the thread). As an exercise, I recently had a go at a match-3 engine in monkey. As mentioned by others, its a *really* good workout for the old brain! ;) Fun too. You soon start writing ugly code if you're not careful, which is then hard to debug or add new features to. This is how far I got (its already ~650 lines of code): http://goodreactions.com/match3/MonkeyGame.html I hadnt even thought about avoiding matches when populating the board -- another one for the todo list... :P I'll prob make a basic match-3 game with it, but I also had an idea which mixed it with a totally different genre (not Puzzle Quest, but that kind of 'mash-up'), so that might be an area to consider for ideas. |
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| Timely.. I made a nice Match-3, last week. Puzzobomb Endless The rules are a little less standard, though. |
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| I am curious, what exactly is it that people think is so difficult about a Match 3 engine? You have the underlying match 3 game, you have visual effects like particles, you have to code for different maps, possibly game modes like time rush, etc. What else is so hard about it? All the above is basically almost boilerplate. I've coded a match3 engine. I didn't think it was hard. What am I missing? |
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| I also agree with Taiphoz about unique games. Uniqueness is dangerous for a number of reasons. It may be better to combine gameplay from several different proven models and come up with something fun from the synergy of known components. This is SO much easier than breaking new ground with both an engine and fun factor. Very risky if you ask me. I'm currently writing a platformer. It's brutally simple and brutally difficult. It breaks very little new ground, though there is some. I have lots more interesting ideas but they will have to wait. A big part of anything creative is writing things your audience would like to play. You can make the most creative game ever but if few people understand or play it, you have to ask yourself whether it was worth the effort when ultimately your success is measured in terms of how many smiles and laughs you get out of little kids. Little kids just want to see funny animals jumping around. The Match audience is somewhat different, shading into Cat Lady housewife territory, but they have certain esablished expectations and if you are making them happy that's worth the $2.99 and that is what it is all about at the end of the day. |
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| I've coded a match3 engine. I didn't think it was hard. What am I missing? I don't know. Let's see it. |
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| +1 |
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| +2.. |
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| I've coded a match3 engine. I didn't think it was hard. What am I missing? Gameplay I'm guessing :P |
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| +3.. |
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| GfK: I'd have to dig it out of an archive. I'm just wondering what specifically people think is so difficult about it. Is it that there's something specifically hard about match3 engines or is it that there is just a ton of "juicyness" separating an engine from a salable product? Cybergoth: You've written a rather full-featured match3. What exactly did you find so hard? Your game appears to be a very straightforward implementation of a concept so rehashed that it borders on boilerplate and I'm just curious why you found it so difficult. Was it actually hard for you or just time consuming? Polish certainly takes a great deal of effort. I'm not an expert on these games but it always seemed to me that what really separated the games Popcap made millions on and games like Candy Crush from the rest of the pack which are largely mediocre is an extreme degree of polish. |
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| Writing the engine was not hard, making it into a game that people want to spend money buying is, writing a basic engine for most genres is pretty straight forward, making that into a game is where the time and effort comes in. In a platform game running and jumping is the main mechanic, so you probably think every platform game is just a rehash, fps, you shoot stuff, car games you drive around, strategy games you create armies and so on. Until you actually sit down and write a full game (I've made around 6 or 7 over the years) you dont know how easy or hard it is, you just assume. |
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| I second the "making it into a full game is the problem" notion. In my games I typically have the core gameplay implemented in a couple of days, but there's always so much more outside of e.g. the actual matching mechanic. Tile size experiments, GUI elements, play modes, tutorials, dialogues, dynamic difficulty, skewed randomness to give a player the tiles he needs if he's been failing for a while, finding optimal moves, etc etc etc... But then again, I like spending way too much time on unnecessary polish that's in the diminishing returns area. |
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| Oh right, yah, that's true with everything. You spend three days on basic gameplay and then the menu system takes a week. I was just thinking there was some sort of subtle aspect to match3 coding that I wasn't seeing (the logic for making sure levels are solvable qualifies but that's just pattern matching.) And yes the "other stuff" can be pretty deceptive. That's why building up your framework is so important-- they say "don't make a framework, make a game" but then when it comes time for the next project you had better not need to reinvent the wheel. Once you have your own framework you're writing into a codebase that you are very familiar with and that solves a lot of those "other 90%" problems already. If I was going to write a match3 for sale I would build it with a mind for reskinning everything from the very start. Then I'd hire an artist and outsource music and I'd pump out a game every two weeks. It's always amusing to me when I see people who have never programmed before, a lot of times it's artists, and who think writing games is going to be easy. |
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| The worst part for me is the non fun stuff such as menus, dialogs, profiles I tend to do them last, but this time around I am doing them FIRST so all I have to concentrate on is the fun stuff, I think it may help with the procrastinating you tend to find near the end of a project when you think "meh I've still got to write the menus and options screen" The reskinning thing is partly what I am doing with Disharmony Blocks II, I already have the mechanics, menus, options screen from the first game so this time around I can concentrate on improving the gameplay, art, sound and levels, it feels like you are starting a game with 50% of it done which is a nice morale boost. |
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| Outsourced music AND art, and you can still only achieve a two-week deadline!?! Lazy!!!!!! ;) Yeah, the engines aren't the hard part. What's tricky is all the surrounding gubbins. That's why part one of my "Framework" deals exclusively with "all the gubbins". A menu system, a scoreboard, badge awards, control schemes. A heck of a lot of that is taken up by my framework, so each week I need only "write a game", and.. Bingo, there be that! I still need to do all the art, sound, Titlescreen gfx, logo and other bits and pieces, but at least I don't have to deal with a ruddy nasty "quit menu" or "Redefinable keys" or god forbid "what happens when the player clicks the Window's X button" stuff. That's all in there, ready to go. And, boy, am I glad it is!! |
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| See, marketing has to fit in that two weeks too :) As stated above that's the real reason for the success of Candy Crush. I think it's a real good idea to do menus first. I used to try to be clever with all that stuff but my current system has a very brute force approach, since you only have to write things like option screens once, you may as well make it simple and bulletproof and forget about it. You can really waste a lot of time messing about with GUI code. I actually found it interesting enough that it was turning into a distraction. |
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| Urgh.. GUIs.. I have three REALLY nice game ideas/half-completed games in my projects folder, which I am 100% purposely avoiding because all three of them need me to work on GUIs and Menus and all of that stuff. Nasty horrible elements that I just plain don't have any time for. And, yeah, Marketing. That definitely takes a back seat. Having to spend 3 hours, every Tuesday, posting each game to a multitude of forums and things is bad enough. Not sure I can be bothered to do anything more than that. |
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| I think the take away point here is 'all things are relative'. The technically minded, possibly with a few releases under their belts won't find it difficult, but we have patrons of all levels of experience active on this site. |
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| Zoqfotpik said: "It's always amusing to me when I see people who have never programmed before, a lot of times it's artists, and who think writing games is going to be easy." I suspect that people with the opposite attitude may actually be more common. Everyone can draw a little, but not everyone can program, so art gets underestimated by programmers. Agree with what people say about menus and options etc. I find I get paralysed doing these things, not because they are difficult, but because there are so many different ways you could do them, and it's hard to choose. By contrast, if you have a difficult programming problem, it may take a bit of puzzling over how to do what you need to do, but when it's done it's done, and you can move on to the next thing. |
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| I see artists all the time posting on various forums wanting to make games. On the other hand I suspect that very few of these guys actually do end up making games :) There are indeed far more games out there with terrible programmer art. On the other other hand it's possible to make quite passable art by taking an engineer's approach to art study and practice. You may not end up painting the Mona Lisa but let's face it, most game art out there is commercial art at best. |
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| BTW, does someone knows good links to people who do nice (and payable!) 2d arts for stuff like match-3-games. And how much does is usually cost? |
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| Not sure. Never looked. I do all my own art, and you DEFINITELY can't tell!!! |
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| I have done some art for a few developers here, but time is kinda tight at the moment , what sort of work or style would you be looking for ? |
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| For a match-3 game. ;) Well still have to finish some other stuff so this isn't something very urgent but it should be very polished. ;) I have some nice ideas to put in which I haven't seen yet but again, I'm just curious how much this would cost, even though I prefer revenue share... |
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| you can grab my e-mail from my profile here, or my site, when ever your near to working on the project let me know, if I have the time we can work something out. |
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| That would be very nice as I love your artworks! :) BTW: It would use fruits as well. lol But first of all I'd mostly finish it using dummy graphics. |
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| You've got mail! |
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| @zoqof..whatever: If I was going to write a match3 for sale I would build it with a mind for reskinning everything from the very start. Then I'd hire an artist and outsource music and I'd pump out a game every two weeks. This has just proven to me how little you actually know about games development. "pumping out a [new match three] game every two weeks" (same game, different graphics), is stupid. Nobody will buy something that is JUST a match three game. There has to be an underlying plot of some kind, level select screens, front-end, intro/outro, sub-games, different power-ups, awards... it goes on. If you think people are that stupid that you can sell them the same game over and over, with different graphics but absolutely nothing else different, then go and try it. It's a brilliant way to get yourself a reputation as a crook. |
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| Gotta agree with GfK on this one. It would be much better to release one game and then have all the different skins/themes for sale seperately (IAP/upgrades etc) and let people choose what look they want. |
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| Hi all, I just came across a quite "different" idea how to combine these jewels to make them collapse and I'm very curious what you think about that idea! I would like to do more chain reactions. In the classic match-3-scheme you just combine 3 and they collapse, you combine 4 and you get some "special" jewel, combine 5 and you get something more special and so on. An idea would be to differ from that. So 3 jewels together won't collapse immediately. If you add a fourth one it starts to "react" a bit (shown as pulsating), if you add a fifth and more it starts to become instable. So it's more a matter of time. The more jewels of the same kind are together the more unstable this block becomes till it collapses by itself. You can always collapse a block by tipping on it (like in Diamond Dash or Collapse). So the goal would be to combine as much of the same jewels as possible until they collapse due to their mass. It's more like a nuclear reaction where you just add and add till you get the critical mass. Don't know if that is clear? I mean that way you have some "time pressure" to build up large blocks. Look, 3 jewels together would be stable, 4 would take for instance 8 seconds to collapse, 5 jewels 6 seconds, 6 jewels 4 seconds and so on. The larger you get it the more points you get!... |
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| That could work, but would require playtesting of course. It could slow the game down too much, since the player cant open up areas very quickly. e.g. you normally do a few basic matches and then suddenly get a bigger combo/match. Plus it might be hard to set up the matches, esp at the top of the screen. I think the delay time would need to be short, or for these to be special tiles, rather than apply to everything (a bit like removing ice/stone tiles). You've also got to communicate this to the player. I do recall playing a match3 ages ago which had some delay mechanic allowing you a short time to add to the current match before it collapsed (may have been Magic Match Adventures, but it was a long time ago...) |
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| Best way to find out if something like that works.. Code it. Hop to it! |
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| some inspirations: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appxplore.alienhive |
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| Thanks dragon, that's quite a nice game even though I think it's a bit too complex and not that easy to grasp in the beginning. |
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| This has just proven to me how little you actually know about games development. GFK: You've just proven to me what poor social skills you have. It seems to be a really common problem here, I wonder why that is. But then you are the expert on reskins so I have to defer to your game development expertise. Come on. You've put out a few extremely substandard, lackluster rehashes of games that have been around for decades, in two cases before computers were even developed. You're selling Solitaire-- not one but two versions of the same game, reskinned-- and you're accusing me of being a crook for putting out clones? Remember, I'm not actually doing it. You are. Perhaps a bit of projection going on there. How much time did you put into that? Oh, so it's got a crime theme. That must have taken you a great deal of design effort. It really shows in the end product! Remember, I didn't say I was going to do that. I said if I did do what you were doing, that is what I would do. I would outsource the art and music (but to halfway competent creatives) and I would modularize the "big differences" in gameplay as much as possible. You're the one actually doing it. Your entire impressive catalog is reskins of games that someone else thought of. Games that have been repackaged and resold literally thousands of times. How's that working out for you? |
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| Digging through ideas another one came to my mind which I want to discuss. How about using the sensors of the mobile device as another input? I mean consider a collapse type game where you collapse blocks of equal colors on a quadratic field. Now you can rotate your device (from portrait to landscape) and all blocks just react to this new gravity location and fall down to the new "bottom" which was the side before. How would you like that? Could it be fun to include device rotation as another "input"? |
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| For me games using device rotation are never fun, due to slow response and tired wrists. But maybe they can work for some people! |
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