Wooga's Sebastian Kriese says inflate your player's ego. Don't crush it

gross we all want to create games to reach millions of players obviously but unfortunately we are not alone we right now estimate that there are around 1,000 new mobile games are being released every single week which makes it extremely difficult to stand out that said the market is hits It's hits driven and we try to create hits to create games that reach the top of the leaderboards if you look into the current top growthing charts this is like an export from App any right now you can see like clearly that the top 50 Games capture the majority of the App Store revenue and if you want to create a game that is profitable on a long run you better reach the top 100 or even a higher position otherwise it will be extremely challenging to keep it up and running for a long time if you look into puzzle games right

now there are a couple of puzzle games obviously in the top leaderboards and the top grossing charts um they have all one specific thing in common that is that all of these games are commercially successful and on the other hand they are all free to play um today I want to talk about three learnings and I want to give you three takeaways um that we've experienced in the past about things that we've learned after working on a couple of puzzle games and I want to share these things to to enable you to develop a puzzle game that is casually attractive to a lot of players if you look into a potential move into a potential next move of a puzzle game for example you look at a candy crushed screen you usually have like different choices and different jams you can swap we categorize that on a specific scale um to talk about like choices player have like after every

single turn on the one hand side you have games where you have like a limited amount of choices in the game you only have one or two choices that you can take per turn and on the other hand side you have maybe 20 or more choices um to to put that into perspective with games um you see on the one hand side very simple slot machines the only choice you have press the spin button or not um it goes further with like more complic at slot machines where you have to put like a betting a bet on a specific row um but the choices are limited on the other hand side the Other Extreme is probably a chess game where you have like more than 20 choices for a potential move that you could take and you also have to take into account the next move that you are planning to to make after this move so there is a lot of strategy involved and you have to take into account a row of choices to to be successful in this game if you look into the current free

toplay games that are somehow um that are successful like Candy Crush or like Jelly Splash one of our games um you see that they are usually in the middle what does it mean in numbers what are we trying to achieve when we balance a specific game in our puzzle games um we aim for three to seven possible moves per turn so whenever user has a turn in a puzzle game and they look at the screen we try to achieve that they have like three to seven specific moves that they can take at the same time when you look at the screen to do your decision for the next move you can obviously also see like one potential best move you don't have to think ahead you don't have to think like what other moves you want to take in the next rounds there's one specific move that is the best in Jelly Splash it would be for example find the longest row and Candy crushes find the biggest group you can always find like a

best move for the very next turn without thinking too far ahead and to keep the game casual this is my takeaway number one that I wanted to give you today like keep the game casual make sure that it doesn't involve too much strategy um let the use a not plan too far ahead keep it casual when we now look into two different puzzle games again on the one hand side it's like a Sliding Puzzle game on the on the other hand side you see Jolly spash you could also see Candy Crush on this side um what are the differences in these puzzle games this is first of all in the sliding game you have one solution um this means like whenever you complete this level this solution would work for every player when I complete the level I can tell my mom exactly what she has to do to solve this specific

level which makes it fun in the very beginning when I play this game and I reach this moment when I finally solve this puzzle it feels extremely great but when I play this game through all the levels and I maybe reach level 100 I can't complete it anymore the game makes me feel stupid because I can solve the level and the only reason for this kind of game why I can solve the level is must be because I'm stupid because the game obviously always teached me in the early levels there's one solution how I can reach this goal but as soon as I reach like a very complicated level it just means I'm stupid in free toplay games that's emotion you never want to give a player never make them feel stupid in the game to achieve that you can look into the current free-to-play puzzle games to achieve that what make they different they add Randomness to the games and that means there isn't just one way of doing that even if I finish level 20 in Candy Crush even if I record

it with you and put it on YouTube that doesn't mean that you can take the same moves you cannot like follow my path to solve um the same level I can play the same level over and over again and there's always like a different way to finishing to finish the level or to lose it so keep that in mind never make the player feel stupid at Randomness make sure that they have like a ray out that they don't feel stupid about the game um I would call it balance difficulty so work on the different levels take this into account and then uh make it like a full experience of game without making them feel stupid last but not least and tying into the randomness as one and extremely important game design element that we realize especially with producing JY Splash and other successful titles that is extremely important for us but also for our players and this is

luck for us luck is becoming more and more an important element even in puzzle games where you wouldn't expect that so let get let me give you four examples where we think luck is really cool in puzzle games so first of all when you lose a game when you lose a specific level and there is luck involved and they feel that there is luck involved I can always blame the computer it's never my fault that I lost the game it's always the game is stupid it's never me that is stupid because I was just unlucky and that's why I couldn't solve this level because like the elements didn't fall the way I wanted to um but it's definitely the game's fault it's not my fault I did everything right luck also achieves the completely opposite whenever I finish a level when I beat this stupid level 2 200 in Candy Crush then it makes me feel great because I achieved that I only solved

this level because I I did these great moves I had a great strategy although there is luck involved it's still like for a player they still feel great whenever they solve the level so they're extremely happy about that in addition to to to these two emotions luck also helps you to Pace the players in your free toplay game on the one hand side it makes you slow down very experienced players imagine you have this puzzle game like I showed earlier the puzzle game and someone is extremely clever in solving this puzzle game then he probably consumes all your levels all your content in just two days and then he's like played completely through it and you can't do anything about that you must add more content that he can consume more content when the game involves some luck components in a puzzle game it helps you to slow down these players because sometimes they are just unlucky and they can't solve this

level and then again it also helps like the other players like the players who are not very good in the game because even if you don't know how to develop a specific strategy and how to finish a specific level sometimes you are extremely lucky and then sometimes some crazy things are happening in the game and you suddenly solve this game you probably all know this moment for example in in Candy Crush let's say you have one move left your goal is to get this jelly to what to remove this candy on the on the top right um but the only last move that you can take is down here so you have to swipe uh these gems and there's no other way that uh no other option no other choice you can take in this specific turn but what happens then is like you do this they explode and suddenly like there's another group appearing over there and

they explode and you feel extremely happy hey how did I do that they explode and then more gems are falling down and the candies you see like there's a bigger group of candies probably popping up on this side they explode as well and they release like this super bomb and then the super bomb explodes and everything is like exploding suddenly because I created this huge chain reaction and suddenly when the dust settles you see like you win this is is the feeling you want to give your players make them feel great when solving your puzzle games balance the difficulty and add more luck these are like the three takeaways that I wanted to give you today and that you should consider whenever you are working on a on a puzzle games growing a puzzle game is extremely complicated and this is one of the reasons why we introduced our publishing initiative like around a year ago we believe that Indie Games deserve a huge

audience and that's why we are happy to support you in reaching that goal whenever you are interested in learning more about our publishing program just feel free to talk to me that's said