My Christmas Competitors!

Hiya, seems the fighting is fierce on the frontlines of Christmas/Holiday-themed match-3s!

Check these out:

http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/jewelmatchwinterwo/index.html

http://www.bigfishgames.com/downloads/holidaygift/index.html

and compare to mine:

http://www.greyaliengames.com/holidaybonus.php

Winter Wonderland uses outdoor snowy scenes though they seem to involve houses, there's only 4 backgrounds though. It has a nice snowing effect going on and lovely classical guitar music. The game has a hammer with 3 levels of power up, snowballs (animated like mine) and a bomb. Also you have to remove ice tiles like mine, and it even has double thickness tiles (with snow on), like mine! It has weird horrible looking graphics for the chains on the locked pieces. Pretty similar in some details, but overall it has a different vibe.

Holiday Gift has indoor Christmas decorations type backgrounds, a gingerbread man that looks like a voodoo doll, and some very dodgy music imho. This game is hardly any different from previous incarnations. However it was released before mine, so I hope that people didn't get their "fill" of Christmas games before mine came out!


Of the two I'd say Winter Wonderland is better.

Last Christmas the makers of Holiday Gift made Best Gift which was pretty much the only other match-3 Christmas game I was competing against, if I recall correctly. There also weren't that many other Holiday games but there's quite a few this year all competing. We'll have to see how well my game get's on in comparison. Also on Big Fish Games and Reflexive I actually have both Xmas AND Holiday Bonus out at once which gives me a bit more coverage. Hopefully fans of one will consider the other.

Ever thought of doing a game that isn't match-3? As polished as they are, they all look the same and offer what I find to be dull and tired formulaic style of gameplay.

Grey Alien gets a mention in this month's Arsecast for Wizard of Oz:

www.arsecast.com

Holiday Gift is more complete, not only a match-3 game.

To me all three have different graphics style, Grey I think yours is more contemporary and easier to look at whereas the other two seem a little more traditional looking which, although perhaps `uglier`, might be more appealing to some people, but your particle effects seem to look better.

Given there are some similarities between them and yet some differences people will just decide what they want based on their personal preferences. To be expected. Some people will choose against your game not because it's bad but because they relate more to the others, even if they others are technically uninspired.

Ever thought of doing a game that isn't match-3? As polished as they are, they all look the same and offer what I find to be dull and tired formulaic style of gameplay.

Is there any programmer who doesn't dream about huge RPG's, shooters, arcades, etc.? It might very well be that customers don't .. :P

I really don't think the consumer gives a stuff about "gloss" and "polish". The only reasons I can see that any of these match-3 games need such "polish" is because the market is totally over-staturated with them and they lack any form of interesting game-play/game-mechanic. You can cover a turd with the best icing sugar (and sparkly sprinkles) known to man and I still ain't gonna eat it!

But Grey knows I hate match-3 :)

Well most market strategists will tell you to dominate one market before moving on to the next. I don't quite think Grey Alien has match 3 market dominance just yet.

of course, every day.

AngelDaniel: Yeah thanks, mine does have some cool bits of polish in it and you are right that personal preference will no doubt play a big part in what sells. I'm proud of what I did, I think it has a nice look and feel, and certainly the sales that I've made so far tell me that other people think the same as well.

Yep exactly, it's about what the customers want, not programming forum members :-)

I believe that is not true, and even it it were, the problem is that the protals won't sell your game *unless* it meets their level of gloss and polish. Right now also the portals want games with a "storyline" even if it's just tacked onto the game - for me this actually slows down the gameplay and moving from level to level.

Ho ho, well obviously that's a personal opinion. Some people love the match-3 mechanic (enough to make them top sellers) and it's much more interesting to them than A shoots B - another simple game mechanic which many find uninteresting. I happen to like both :-)

sonicfactory: Thanks for the link, listening now... (not sure I should in case it affects morale ;-)) Anyway what site's like this think is not my concern as the customers still vote with their wallets. Nice to have a mention though, must be getting somewhere! If you don't piss anyone off then you are not being noticed... haha it was pretty funny :-)

Still it would of course be interesting to have a peek at sales-figures of recently made retrostyle games.. I'd say such games become interesting as soon as the audience truly becomes a serious market.

Any plans to act on those thoughts?

I'm with you Rob, I find them boring as hell and all 3 mentioned above look exactly the same to me. Played one, played them all afaik. Even the thought of developing such a game, which imho wouldn't be too taxing, would bore me to tears ;)

@ Grey, just curious - how many units do you realistically need to sell to break even?

Of course. To find out more read "Why I made a match-3-clone":

http://greyaliengames.wordpress.com/2006/07/24/why-i-made-a-match-3-clone/

oh and checkout my older stuff here:

http://www.greyaliengames.com/free.php

It's funny how just cos I've made a few match-3 games to kickstart my business, people think that I have no other ideas or creativity. I've been making games in one form or another for 23 years, mainly action games, and the first one that gone commercial is a match-3 game that's all, it's just a beginning, and a good one too.

sure, but you are not my target market. And they are clearly not the same based on the different sales figures for each and how people prefer one over another (or none at all :-))

hoho, Holiday Bonus is 18,000 lines of code. There are a lot of little not-obvious mechanics and bits of code that have to be carefully tested and made just right for a match-3 to work. My prototype took a few days but I soon discovered more complex things that needed to be added and the rest of the game took months. Don't forget all the particle effects, screen transistions, menus, options, profiles, etc. - the list is very long. People often say they could make a match-3, but I don't see a string of "easy to make" games on their sigs...

To be fair, you've made at least ... what, 4 or 5 now?

My experience from watching indie developers is that they get on the match-3 treadmill with aspirations of getting off one day and making the games they really want to make. It rarely happens however.

I still think Grey should release a Match 3 Gamee Framework.

I like Match 3 games and buy them whenever I have the cash to spare.

They're easy to get in to and easy to play. There's not 100 different setting to chose from or endless amounts of tutorials you have to read before you can play the game properly. It's just a matter of starting the game and playing it. This is what I think makes them appealing to people.

If anybody wants to know how to get started with coding a match 3 game, blitzmax has a demo of one in action that comes with the installation. It's a good base to start from.

Sure but that's not me, I *know* it, you don't - that's all. I've made 4 (one I was contracted to do). On my site there are 4 other demo games (action-based) + my framework AOTMG demo = 5. This figure should go up soon :-) ...

Amon: Might release a framework that when I'm 100% sure I want to move on (mind you mine is pretty convoluted though); I have a couple of offers to make yes *more* match-3s that I'm carefully considering. Yeah ,you are right that people like just picking them up and playing them, that's the beauty of casual games. They don't have to be mega in-depth, you just wanna have a quick (or long blast) and get on with it and it's not gonna tax you. I'm sorta put off playing Professor Fizzwizzle when I tired or drunk as it's so hard, whereas I can play solitaire or those BFG I spy games easily.

Grey,

I think we'll agree to disagree here, like I implied I prefer to write stuff that interests me, stimulates my brain in the process and I enjoy playing myself. Thanks for the insight into the development process. I'm far from being a noob and find it quite condescending tbh.



Why start a different xmas bonus related thread every day or two if you're not interested in our opinions? Do you only want match-3 lovers to respond?

Anywho, lets not fall out about it. Like I've said in the past, good luck to you!!

Stevie

Sorry if I turned this into an anti/pro match-3 thread. Personally I don't like them at all, but they seem to sell or so we're led to believe.

This however makes me wonder if as coders we're missing something, as to me the agreed formulas don't really make a great deal of sense.

1. You can code a game that you like, which 99.9% of the time everyone else hates.
2. You can write something which you think a Portal will like, and basically remove anything that requires any sort of skill or dedication on the part of the gamer.
3. Code a FPS or RPG, which takes 400 years, and will still look crap
4. Code a retro type game which only appeals to the computer geek that didn't pay for games in 1985, so fat chance they will now.

I refuse to believe that the only people that want to play games are "women aged 35-90 who like to play repetative suduko games for hours" as the casuals tell us all gamers are, or hardcore fps's that would rather play deathmatch than go out, or 30+ year olds that still warble on about manic miner.

I've decided that I'm aiming my next game at 43-48 year old transvestite nuns who like basketball, Procul Harum & Gary Barlow impersonations.

Forget a Match-3 framework, make a Match-3 construction kit.

Oh I may have found the simplest gameplay ever with my match-1 game

> and basically remove anything that requires any sort of skill or dedication on the part of the gamer.


Not to be rude, but isn't that nearly the definition of a casual game?

I think Match 3 (or more) games are okay. It's really kind of a spinoff from Tetris and the whole idea of making rows that match in a certain way, just it's somewhat simplified to single rectangular blocks that don't need to be rotated. Then it's a matter of making it be a `swap the placement` game rather than an action-based `have to guide it into place` game. Takes the dynamic of having to steer the blocks and position them out of the equasion and leaves the player with the basic concept of getting groups so that some of them disappear and your score goes up. Kind of a tetris without the tet. I'm sure some people obviously like it because it matches the kind of *thought system* that they have in day to day life. Swapping those blocks around and getting them to match up is not much different to moving physical objects around in the `real world`. Someone who has that kind of `objective` viewpoint is going to relate to a game that doesn't oppose their sense of reality.

You know, there's a lot of people out there, the casual gamers, who I think buy these kind of games not because it's the kind of games they are `into` but because they don't really have as much literacy about games and don't really relate to an `in depth` complicated action-based game. They don't consider themselves `gamers` or `programmers` and would just like to touch the surface of the game world to pass some time in a fun way, inbetween knitting and doing the dishes and the vacuuming. So then because they are not so literate or so sophisticated, they really don't care to demand that the game meet high standards or criteria, or be a particular *type* of game. If you didn't have casual match 3 games maybe someone would come up with another kind of game, which could really be any kind of game, so long as it meets their need to keep it simple and casual and something they can easily pick up and put down like doing a crossword puzzle. I think people are under the impression that match 3 games = the only genre that casual gamers are interested in, whereas I think it is genre independent and just the approach and simple `functionalism` of the game that they are going for. Probably these casual gamers also are not so inclined to get into the fantasy world of a game and want it to relate to their `real` life, hence something like Holiday Bonus being appealing. These gamers have a different way of looking at the game and why they spend time playing it, than someone wanting to get into Zelda or a death spree FPS. There is a market and an audience so obviously it's good sense for Grey to make this kind of a game for that kind of an audience. It's not going to please everyone cus we all have our subjective viewpoints.

Stick with the Match-3's. They're obviously making you money, you're obviously getting better and better at it. Bear in mind that some of the people urging you to do something different ( none of the people on this thread, of course ) would just like to see you fall flat on your face, and you always run a risk of that happening when you do something new.

Well don't imply, be more specific. I've no way to tell if you are a flaming noob (plenty of them around) or someone with some experience (less common). Sorry if my comments offended you.

This isn't true, and exaggerating won't help your point (but yeah let's not fall out). I made this post as I found it interesting about the increase in Holiday Games and is the market getting too crowded etc. Holiday-based match-3s is a good example of this. I also assumed it might start a conversation, which is fine. But there's conversation and flaming match-3s (and their authors), which is pretty old hat. It seems that quite a few people on this forum don't want to hear about making make a game in the real world, they want to just dream instead - OK fair enough (I like dreaming too, then turning it into reality).

Rob Buckley: Yep those 4 points seem to be the norm. I sorta picked number 2 to get me started i.e learn some skills and about the market and make a bit of money.

SimonH: Someone once made a great joke site about that not too long ago...

Dynaman: Actually lots of casual games are easy to start with but if you *buy* (OMG) them, they normally get harder towards the end and take lots more skill/dedication. A good match-3 player is *way* better than a noob, same with card games, I spy games, diner dash games, zuma games, breakout, whatever.

Gabriel: Yeah, naturally part of me "fears" new stuff, but I have to go there eventually. It's likely I'll start with something small again and build skill in that game-type before I fanfare a main title like Holiday Bonus.

never answered this earlier. Depends on where I sell them. My site = 100 or portals about 250 to 500 (depending on the portal). Seeing as it's on my site and tons of portals, I hope to achieve this (in fact I probably already have). To put things in perspective, Xmas Bonus sold over 250 copies last year (+ more this year) and it was on 3 portals and wasn't as "polished looking". Some (many) games sell 0 or like 10 or 50 copies or something, so I'm doing OK. When I get sales in 4 figures, then I'll have made a good achievement.

Casual game players have given my game 5 stars and great reviews, jaded industry pros (and arcade game/retro fans) have not liked it of course.

Angeldaniel: Yes the other thing that people like about match-3s like mine is "tidying up", as a friend's mum, who loves my games, put it. You have to remove all the tiles and that is where your sense of accomplishment comes from, rather than the act of matching (which is also pleasant when the sounds and visuals are rewarding).

Also as more and more people get on the Internet, the casual game market will grow as the paper-based gamers (crossword, wordsearch, sudoku) find out about downloadable games whereas the 30 year-old retro gamers market won't get much bigger because they are already all on the Internet...think about that. That's why I make casual games - because I've chosen it to be my job. If it was still a hobby I'd make action games all the way. I hope to combine both at some point but currently the answer eludes me.

Sorry to go OT but you continue to irritate for some reason. Here is my current project to be specific ..

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=61487#699753

Unfortunately I have a full time job so can't put as much effort into it as I would like but it's getting there.

I'll stick with what I do and you stick with your match 3's, no doubt making loads of money while your at it ;)

I honestly promise never to express my opinions in your match 3 related threads in future. Pretty please let that be the end of it :))

Stevie

Ah yes I've seen that, seems pretty cool. Based on that, I expect you could make a match-3 game ;-) Now to turn it into a full game or is that not your aim?

If I turned up in your thread and said making Physics games is boring and I could do it easily, and I had no links in my sig and you didn't know who I was (I could be a 12 year old or a Physics Professor who makes FPS engines) - you might be a little peeved. Just my side of things so you can understand. For some reason match-3s get up some people's noses (and so do I evidently) and make them say stuff that's maybe not so cool...I don't mind anyone expressing their opinions if it's constructive and not destructive, how else can I learn? I had a full-time job making business software for 9 years and gave it up to do this, so it's close to my heart.

Good point.

I think there's another interesting point to be made here aswell. Grey Aliens boring formularic repetitous drivel actually improves each generation, while the industries boring repetitous formularic drivel (like say Prince of Persia, but really, just pick any franchise) gets significantly worse each generation.

Holiday Bonus is clearly the best match 3 game I've played (which argueably doesn't say much, since I've only tried Tetris Attack, Bejewled, the bilge pump in Puzzle Pirates and Christmas Bonus before). I think that's kind of an acheivement all on it's own tho', and if he only needs to sell 500 copies to break even, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Thanks FD for you support (kinda)! All hands to the bilge pumps.

Some people have the luxury of making whatever they want. Other people have chosen to use what they make to feed their family.

In that context, making stuff that's more likely to sell sounds like a responsible choice. There'll be time enough for one's dream MMORPG once the Match-3 millions are in the bank.

Full kudos to Grey. No matter what he's done, a finished Match-3 beats an incomplete Anything Else any day of the week.

I'd personally rather sit in the corner with a pencil in my eye than see another Match-3 game, but if there's money to be made in them, Grey is more than worthy to share the spoils. Holiday Bonus (the political correctness of the name makes me hurl) is a superbly polished asset and Grey should (and undoubtedly is) proud.

And yes, the arsecast is LOL funny.

LineOf7s: nail on head re: feed family. Yeah an American distributor suggested I change the name from Xmas Bonus 2, however there are lots of other "Holiday Blah" games and Xmas was more original. Perhaps I should have called it Santa's Sack haha.

I like the look of the first to a certain degree but i also wouldn't play it, instead i wish more this could be an adventure...

Look, if all you’re interested in is making a little money and Match-3, write an 'adult' variant. It’s that simple…

Why making a game at all if you want to make money? Why not making real adult content then?!

@taumel:

Exactly.

Do you guys not think the porn industry could be pretty competitive too and that's why more and more crazy porn is coming out these days (so I've heard)? Porn games are less common than movies so perhaps a better market. But how would I tell the inlaws about Boner Bonus?

I've only played two porn games on the Amiga so far. One was a Strip Poker and the other one was a puzzle game with the usual unhide the background if you're successful - can't remember the name right now.

Anyway does there exist a good Strip Poker which makes use of what computers are able to do nowadays?

Firstly can I say I really hope Holiday Bonus sells a million copies, I really do.
1. Because I'm a nice person and like to see a fellow coder do well.
2. Because anyone who'd willingly spend $19.95 on a match-3 game would probably only spend the money on something else suitably rubbish like a Westlife CD.
3. Because perhaps it would give a talented coder the belief to come up with something worthwhile and fresh.
4. Because I might not end up seeing another blatent advert masquerading as a thread about the differences between Yom Kippur Bonus and other jewish holiday match-3 games.
5. Because perhaps nobody will comment that a piece of tat which has taken two weeks to design and code is infinitly more worthy than the game I'm still lovingly putting gameplay into.

'Boner Bonus' – LOL.

BTW, Grey, I think you’ve done a great job, not just in finishing a commercial project, but in ‘rolling with the punches’ too. For that alone you have my respect.

It's only 'infinitely more worthy' until your game is completed. :o)

Rob: You appear to have gotten rude. (say you're pretty new round here aren't you?)

Sorry you feel that way, it was not supposed to be an advert, I thought the subject matter (i.e. tons of Holiday games and casual games competing) might be genuinely interesting to others.

Yawn, OK I'll be sure to evaluate your game when it's ready. FYI I worked over 200 hours in 3 weeks (it was bitchin') to convert Oz into HB (this excludes artistx2 and musician time) and Oz took well over 500 hours, so I hope your game has over 6 man months of "loving" put into it.

Just call me Rocky ;-)

Tuamel: You remember Sam Fox Stip Poker on the C64, it was soooo pixelly haha. I quite like poker, so maybe that's a possibility. Or Strip Solitaire (damn loads of free ones, could be tricky to compete: http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=%22strip+solitaire%22&spell=1) Also the portals would never sell it so it would have to be self-marketed.

Well, I played all 3 games and Holiday Gift seemed to be more challenging than the other two. I thought the graphics were done well for all the games.


Perhaps you had your display setting at 640x480? He looked just fine to me :)


Unfortunately for your game, Holiday Gift was an editors top pick and appeared on the main page for a few days. I don't believe you got that kind of exposure.

Timing is everything :)

Good Luck!

Yeah it'a bummer (tell me about it!), they make some games editors pick (like OZ) and not others, but they still might make mine a pick yet (they did last year with Xmas Bonus), also there is still a newsletter to come :-) (well I haven't received it yet, maybe others have...)

Nah it was normal 800x600 but the mouth and the way it moed was plain freaky haha :-D

I don't like match 3 games to be honest but I know a fair few people who do, not enough shotting and explosions for me :o). I've never attempted to make a match 3, probably never will either. I always like to make stuff that *I* like LOL everyone else seems to hate it tho. Making match 3 games seems to be a good idea if you want to make money. Imagine how long it would take to finish an RPG game like Final Fantasy or something by yourself...

What bothers me about Match-3's is that they're just so overdone. I totally understand wanting to make a game that appeals to the casual market - I tend to play casual or casual'ish games when I actually take time away from my hobbies to play games. The thing is, there are so many possible game mechanics that would appeal to the casual market - and yet all we see are the few most popular paradigms re-hashed time and time again.

The big money-makers in the casual market are the ones who introduce a totally new mechanic in a nice, polished product (and the quickest parasites, unfortunately.) I'd like to see more casual games with unique game mechanics; of course that won't happen because typically the guys making the next Diner-Dash or Match-3 game are looking for a relatively low-risk opportunity to make some money.

It's a saturated market, but there's no denying these games can be extremely popular. My mum loves these games - she has a PDA and can sit there for hours at a time playing.

Merry 50th Christmas Post!

My Christmas Competitors! I know you have enthusiasm for your games and success - and good for you. But that thread title made me cringe, so I can understand the critisism - everybody producing commercial stuff has competition - why are you special?

Shouldn't have posted this one Jake - best kept to yourself because it gives an arrogant feel on the my this and my that - I know it wasn't intentional because you don't seem the arrogant type.

The stuff you post about new releases and the helpful stuff about shareware advice based on your own experiences are great - just try and curb your enthusiasm a little and think before posting.

Thanks for the advice Steve.

That's ok - don't want you getting linched about these parts. ;-)

How about that platform game? :-)