This is the second post for #iDevBlogADay.
Bejewled is a very popular game on phones. It has a lot of variaties, one of the famous game on Android is called “Jewellust”, which is an Egyptian treasure hunt theme of this game. I developed a similar one on Android 2 years ago called “Same 2D“, which is essentially a timer based Bejewled. Despite praises from players saying it’s very addictive, this game didn’t fly.
What didn’t go well?
Going through player comments, I got 2 points for improvements: limited game levels, and too simple graphics.
First about graphics. Graphics/Animation is the key to games, and I admit that my photoshop skill is very limited. So this time I went out and hired a graphics designer. Theme is the first thing we need to decide on. As I said earlier, there’s a lot of Bejewled variaties out there, and we need to come out with a unique angle. Since my game has 4 types playing blocks, we landed on leveraging 4 suites of cards. To distinguish from poker games, we made it ancient mystery theme with a lot of card burning effects. We named this new game “Burning Cards“.
The following are the side by side comparisons of “Same 2D” and “Burning Cards” UI: first one is game menu page, second one is game playing page.
As you can see, “Burning Cards” UI is a lot more polished. Besides the graphics, I added more animations to the game to make it more lively, such as the animated fire at the bottom of menu page, or flip the cards into smiling faces or sad faces when winning or losing the game.
More on the animations. At the game over page, I used opengl to make it more fun. When game wins, fireworks will display on the screen; and if you touch the screen, a new fireworks will shoot at your fingertip.
Secondly, get players more engaged. Pretty graphics can attract players to download the game, but it’s really the game logic that keeps users playing. In “Same 2D” I had 2 game modes and for each mode I record a highest score. A timer is there to keep pressure on players which makes the game really interesting. But after player gets better and better, this game becomes more repetitive for them. So in “Burning Cards” I made revamped the game logic design:
- Break the game into 20+ levels, each with a different, more challenging objective.
- Added tools, special cards to the game to make it easier or harder to play.
- After cards are burnt, they collaps down or up based on different game level.
Another important addition to “Burning Cards” is introducing peer play games. I used bluetooth programming API to connect 2 phones in a game play. When one player burns more than 7 cards in a click, a whole new row of cards is instantly added to the opponent’s screen. There’s also new tools available to sabotage the opponent’s play. After I implemented this feature, I found myself wasting a lot more time on this game 
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