Design for a game - which do you like?

[avradu1984]

Hi guys,

I am planning to start working on a new game and I need to decide on the design I will go for.

I have two different games with different designs and concepts and I would like to know which design you like more and why.

Fireball:
FireballDesign.jpg

Jigsaw Puzzles Saga:
SagaDesign.jpg

Thanks in advance!

[mind]

You are being STUPID asking us for an opinion. We are a bunch of developers and NOT your target audience. You already have numbers. Just find similar games on Google Play and look at the total downloads. That is ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEED !!!!

ps: nothing personal.... I just once made the same mistake you are about to make

[avradu1984]

Total downloads don't usually reflect the quality of a game (graphics or gameplay). I've seen amazing games with high quality graphics having 10k downloads and I've seen really bad ones with millions of downloads. From my point of view marketing is the most crucial element for a game to get downloads, not the graphics, not the gameplay, not the logo.

I agree that developers are NOT my target audience but I don't have a way to contacting and getting opinions from my target audience. So I opened this thread to get insights about what other developers' think would be a good idea.

PS: No harm done, I respect your opinion.

[BaksaiApps]

I don't really know what you mean with design? Is it about the graphics or the gameplay concept? Independently of your answer, i think you are wrong by making us choose between 2 options which are bad (with all respect). As mind suggested, navigate through the GP store, take a look at the rankings in various countries, download and play games, review comments, etc and you will have an idea of what does it take to make a hit. Then another big challenge starts: to make it real ;-)

[MDesigns]

Good luck on this! Don't let the negativity bring you down.

[cscs]

I liked the first design, except for the part red+yellow, it maybe can be a little hard on the user eyes.


I agree with @BaksaiApps, take a look around at the charts, see Appannie for the category you want and try some apps, see how's the design, and try to make something similar. My first designs were pretty lame, but with effort they got better.

[BaksaiApps]

From my point of view marketing is the most crucial element for a game to get downloads, not the graphics, not the gameplay, not the logo.

You know, i have been thinking this way for a while but now i think is wrong. The most important aspect is the game itself, thats the product, thats what the player values. Besides, its not about the download count, its about how much the players play. With marketing you can get players but the game must be attractive enough to keep them playing.

My brother made a game in his free time, very simple but fun. He released the game without even telling anyone. He did not post it on any forum, nor made a promo video. He just spent randomly $250 on Facebook ads. Sounds like a recipe for disaster right? It happen that people really liked the game, and 2 months later, he got 300k downloads and made $17k and still counting.

So now we focus even more on making games that people like instead of try to find ways to sell a game people dont like.

[avradu1984]

You know, i have been thinking this way for a while but now i think is wrong. The most important aspect is the game itself, thats the product, thats what the player values. Besides, its not about the download count, its about how much the players play. With marketing you can get players but the game must be attractive enough to keep them playing.

My brother made a game in his free time, very simple but fun. He released the game without even telling anyone. He did not post it on any forum, nor made a promo video. He just spent randomly $250 on Facebook ads. Sounds like a recipe for disaster right? It happen that people really liked the game, and 2 months later, he got 300k downloads and made $17k and still counting.

So now we focus even more on making games that people like instead of try to find ways to sell a game people dont like.

I agree, creating a good game is very important but without good advertising it doesn't have a lot of chances to perform well. Stories like your brother's or like Construction City will always exist but chances are not too high without good marketing, even if you have a great product.

I released a series of 3 jigsaw puzzle games since I became a developer in March 2013. I did a lot of research, played most of the jigsaw puzzles from Google Play and I focused to develop the best possible jigsaw game of all. That is what I did and all my jigsaw games are far better than all the other's. However, I only have a bit over 50k installs for each of them compared to others jigsaw games that have 500k or more. Jigty Jigsaw Puzzles managed to get >1M downloads in the first 30 days so I was really frustrated that a game that is not as good as mine performed much better. The reason Jigty performed much better was because they had a big budget to spend on advertising and in about 2 weeks after release they were featured by Google.

I'm sure you've seen a lot of stupid games perform great in terms of installs. I've seen games with 100k or more after 1 week that were in the top charts from 40-50 countries but there wasn't anything cool in those games. Obviously they had a lot of bad ratings and the only explanation for the good ratings is that they paid for those, too.

My point is that you can't take for granted what you see on Google Play: ratings and installs can easily be manipulated if you have a high budget are you're not afraid to get banned. That's why I posted my question here because I would like honest opinions from people doing the same thing as I am: trying to improve my games in terms of playability and design.

I really love the designs of Ezjoy's games on Google Play: they are bright, colorful, attractive, childish, cartoon-like. That is what I tried to achieve (by myself - I am not a designer) in Jigsaw Puzzles Saga (2nd screenshot from the original post) and I wanted to get the opinion of people from this forum: to see if I am the only one thinking in that direction or the cartoon-like design is appealing for others as well.

[mind]

@avradu1984 my recomendation is the jigsaw puzzle saga. Take the candy crush methodology and replace match-3 with jigsaws ... keep everything else the same (FB invites, lockouts, etc). However CC monetizes on players paying for winning, so I am not sure how you will monetize jigsaws....

[Woody]

If you want me to choose design i prefer the second one. It's colorfull and it fits well into the game. Fireball don't look professional, and it looks like boring game! Just my opinion.