(To be honest, I don’t really know the other of the parts of making a game, it’s just in some random order that I did).
During our previous Module, we learned about how to set up a business, including writing a Company Prospectus (that was tough), and one of the things included in it is not just simply a competitive analysis of other games, but a competitive analysis of another company.
If I were to do a comparative analysis of another company for this game, I’d probably go for Simogo. Simogo is a two person outfit composed of Simon Flesser (Sim) and Gordon Magnus “Gordon” Gardebäck (Go), while O is for “och” which is the Swedish word for “and”.
It just amazes me how a small team can create things that are so beautiful and out of the box. It also gives me hope, in a way, that maybe I can to (at least try).
So I just finished playing “Year Walk” (yah, it’s funny how it’s the last one that I played). First of all, it’s beautiful (okay, all of their games are beautiful). And the navigation is different, you move forward and backward to enter different scenes, through these arrow points. But you also swipe left and right to navigate more of the scene. Okay, it’s a little hard to explain.
And for some of the puzzles, you need to drag things, or slide things away.
It makes use of gestures that are native to mobile phones, and it just felt natural.
A YouTuber summarizes the game quite well.
And both “The Sailor’s Dream” and “Device 6” also experiment with different ways of navigation.
In “The Sailor’s Dream”, you slide left and right to explore different islands, and then slide down to enter the island.
There are little scenes, puzzles and stories in each of the islands. Sometimes, you need to rotate your phone to read a story. Each scene is pretty stand alone. The story is non-linear, you can choose to explore it however you want.
In a way, it feels less like a game, more like an atmospheric toy.
Then there’s “Device 6”.
This feels more like a novel that will have you rotating your phone constantly as you navigate by swiping from one “scene” to another.
And the puzzles are embedded in the novel.
I think what I’m trying to say is that these games demonstrated that you don’t need to follow conventions in terms of controls and navigation. You can experiment and try something different. Something that is actually more intuitive for mobile devices.
Oh also, each game is quite distinct in terms of art style and themes even though they all came form the same company.
Also they are all premium games, and did pretty well in the Appstore, so maybe, although niche, there is a market for these kinds of unique experiences.
Michelle Chen 