In Europe and the United States, Candy Crush Saga, known as the "gold-sucking machine", is now the king of Tile-matching games. According to Activision Blizzard's results for the second quarter of 2019, Candy Crush Saga developer King's revenue is $499 million!
The number of monthly active users of Candy Crush Saga games reached 258 million (data for the second quarter of 2019).
Both the game revenue and the number of monthly active users are far more than "Anipop"!
It's a bit counterintuitive that Tile-matching games can be so successful.
All the successful games we have seen rely on people competing with others and complex and stable social relationships in order to maintain a long life cycle and create high profits, while Tile-matching games are almost purely games in which players compete with computers, or games that compete with themselves.
As the saying goes, "it is better to be happy alone than to have fun" and "it is fun to fight with others". As we have said, PUBG or Arena of Valor, even at chess and board, it is only interesting for people to play mahjong. Why are Tile-matching games so different?
Apart from Tile-matching, have you ever seen any other category of games that can make money for so long purely by playing alone?
What is the unique charm of Tile-matching games?
What is a Tile-matching game?
Let's first explain the definition of Tile-matching game slightly: any game that can be eliminated by finding a regular combination on the screen is defined as Tile-matching.
The simplest of these is a game in which three squares of the same color can be eliminated by connecting them in a straight line. We specifically call it a "3-matching" game.
To play a Tile-matching game well, you generally need to compete with yourself in two abilities: one is the ability to react, and the other is the ability to solve puzzles.
Before the launch of Candy Crush Saga, most of the rules of Tile-matching games were timed. What is timed play?
As the name implies, it requires you to quickly find and exchange pieces that can Tile-matching in a limited time. The faster you operate, the more likely you are to get a high score. If you keep thinking and looking for where there are pieces that can Tile-matching, you will waste a lot of time, then your score will be low. Timing is about your ability to react.
For example, Tencent's "Craz3 Match" uses timing play.
You need to find a way to Tile-matching as many pieces as you can before you run out of time, so you can get a higher score, so hand manipulating speed is important, because too much thinking will prevent you from getting a high score.
With the launch of Candy Crush Saga in 2012, it pioneered step-by-step play for the first time.
What is step-by-step play?
In the step-by-step method, the number of step limits takes the place of time and becomes the most important resource. You need to meet the customs clearance conditions within the specified number of steps, such as how many red tiles and how many blue tiles you must consume within how many steps. Only then can you clear the customs. Every step you take will consume resources. If the strategy is not used properly, you may not be able to achieve the goal, resulting in the inability to clear the customs.
With every step you take, you need to stop and think about "how to take this step."
The sense of achievement in step-by-step Tile-matching games comes from the process of solving problems through deliberation. Compared with timed Tile-matching games, your ability to react is no longer important, but more important is your ability to solve puzzles.
So, what is the biggest difference between timed Tile-matching games and pedometric Tile-matching games?
It's just that the depth of the strategy is different.
In timed Tile-matching games, your main task is to find the goal, and then eliminate the goal, while in the timing Tile-matching game, you need to find the goal first, and then think about it, and then deal with it.
Timing brings you a sense of tension, an exciting feeling, but the length of a single stay will be relatively short, that is, the time left for you to think will be short.
pedometric play is more strategic, which requires you to think about every step of the game, no matter how long you want to think about it.
You are in the middle of playing today, you feel tired, you do not want to play, you can continue to play tomorrow.
So once again we see the charm of simplification: there are only two ability requirements, but one can still be removed, making the game more successful!
As I mentioned before, nearly 70% of Tile-matching players are women. Does this mean that women are better at solving puzzles than men?
So what is the reason why so many players like to play Tile-matching games, regardless of men, women and children?
What is the charm of Tile-matching games?
I have summed up two key words for you:
A.”minimalist biological instinct"
B. "extreme fragment leisure".
When it comes to biological instincts, we all know that in prehistoric society, according to the division of labor, men had to go out hunting with weapons, and hunting meant that they needed to train all kinds of combat skills,
while women stayed at home to do some sorting work and deal with interpersonal relationships, such as sorting grains, weaving weaving, and so on.
After coming to the modern society, hunting is no longer necessary for men, and ordinary people do not need combat training, so how can these hunting fighting instincts that men have evolved over thousands of years be satisfied?
Sports is a common solution, but compared with video games, games are more intuitive for hunting simulation, whether chasing, aiming, or fighting, which can be perfectly presented through the game. it can bring men the pleasure of natural instinct, and the popular point is that “video games can stimulate male hormones."
This is also the reason why most of the video games on the market are action games and shooter games.
What about women?
In contrast to men, women's instincts are basically not suppressed in modern society, and they are much less interested in fierce competitive games than men, so few game developers will play games specifically for women. It seems that most traditional heavy games are not suitable for women.
But this is precisely a big misconception that is partial to the whole.
In modern society, it is ridiculous to look at gender differences in such a serious way of labeling. In fact, as long as we seriously study the deep human nature, we can easily find that "more human instincts are not fighting and competition. The desire to pursue cleanliness and cleanliness is more basic", because only a clean and tidy environment is in line with the rules, and compliance with the rules represents the controllability of the environment, can give us sense of security.
In ancient times, it also represented cleanliness and health, which even gave us a sense of beauty deeply rooted in human nature, so it's not just ocd patient that has this obsessive-compulsive disorder, it's in our underlying genes.
Maria Montessori, a famous Italian early childhood educator, once put forward the concept of "sensitive period for young children". She believes that there will be a total of six sensitive periods for young children at the age of 0-6, of which one of the most important and mysterious is the "sensitive period of order".
During this period, children will have a strong demand for the order of things, including the location of items, living habits and so on. Once these orders make children feel challenged, children will show strong unease, anxiety and even cry.
Tile-matching games, especially games like Candy Crush, where three or more squares of the same color can be eliminated together, is the simplest form of game that meets this instinctive need. Basically, you only need to know the color.
And all successful Tile-matching games are squares, neither triangles nor circles, and any other shape is not as simple as brightly colored squares, directly satisfying the lowest level of human nature.
This obsessive-compulsive disorder continues from childhood to adulthood, and many people, especially girls, have a desire to clean up when they see a dirty room.
What is the process of finishing?
Let's take tidying up a room as an example. first, you have to identify "what's in the room." then you need to make a plan in your mind, first put the similar items together, and then put them in a unified position. You can find that "many of these behaviors are repetitive operations." after placement, you will not only feel a sense of achievement when you look at the tidy room.
And your family may give you some rewards, both verbally and materially, when they come home and see such a tidy room.
In fact, this is basically similar to the process of playing a game of Tile-matching, especially the game of Tile-matching pedometer, where you will be given a goal at the beginning of each game. After the game starts, you need to identify which different kinds of pieces are on the screen and how they are placed, and then you need to think: which pieces should be moved first to Tile-matching more of the same kind of pieces.
The goal is to achieve the goal of the game with the least number of steps, so that you can get a higher score, and at the end of each game, if you achieve your goal, the game will give you some small rewards to make you more motivated to move on to the next game.
Even if you fail, there will be a voice of encouragement in the game to tell you not to lose heart, and then continue to challenge. If you fail many times, the game will even give you some free props to help you pass this level quickly.
Let's talk about fragment leisure.
This topic is a bit long, we have to start with devices, in fact, Tile-matching games have been around for a long time, I guess you have heard of Tetris?
The super classic game, once popular all over the world, is a typical Tile-matching game, which was produced in 1984.
Why is it that the classic game does not persist until now, but seems to have been interrupted for a period of time?
The reason for Tetris itself still lies in the game design. Although it is already a classic design of Tile-matching, it is still not minimalist and casual enough: in addition to the two core operations of rotation and fall, but also to solve puzzles in real time and consider the combination of various shapes, you still need to be quick and responsive.
But in fact, from the perspective of the whole Tile-matching category, the biggest reason for its lack of popularity lies in game devices: before touchscreen phones became popular, the main game devices were computers or professional game consoles, which were expensive and inconvenient to carry. Tetris even achieved the extreme 30 years ago, even with special and cheap portable game consoles, which sold very well.
However, compared with the later portable game consoles such as Gameboy and PSP, Tetris still lost the battle. After all, portable game consoles that can play more games are still more popular, but after all, the entire portable game console market is still relatively small. Why?
In the era when portable communication equipment is not yet popular, portable games are far from the rigid demand, so buy a game console and carry it with you.
It is impossible to spread to the public.
Later, in the era of functional phones, mobile phones have gradually become a rigid demand for everyone, and the behavior of playing games by the way has created a larger user base of games, especially leisure games!
But in the early functional machine era, all game consoles and mobile phones with game functions had to rely on buttons to control the game, which is not as intuitive as that directly controlled by the touch screen of the smartphone. Coupled with the small screen of the mobile phone, there are not enough colors to display. Tile-matching games require a lot of small squares and many colors.
By comparison, you will suddenly find that touching a smartphone with rigid requirements for a large color screen is like the ultimate device tailored to Tile-matching games.
Even the most extreme game design that meets the underlying needs of human beings may have to wait for decades before it can really become popular.
Before there is no electronic equipment, when there is no electronic equipment, we can play football, basketball, chess and card mahjong, but we can't play Tile-matching, until the 21st century!
Well, with smartphones, everything is finally ready, let's analyze next, why 3-matching games are the best fragment leisure design?
As we have just said, the rules of the 3-matching game have been simplified to the extreme. Anyone does not need a novice course at all, which is in line with the bottom of human nature. Even babies who can climb can play quickly.
Secondly, this kind of play just doesn't need to compete with others at all, just to satisfy one's own bottom desires, so it won't put any pressure on players like many competitive games, not even a monster who comes to attack you twice. After removing the time limit and the need for timely response, there will be even less pressure, you can start at any moment, you can also pause, you have countless time to think, you don't have to worry at all.
There is no punishment for losing, but there is a great pleasure when you win. People who have played Tetris all know that "the greatest pleasure comes from a square that has been saved for a long time, and finally waits for a vertical bar to eliminate 4 lines at a time." at most, there are two vertical bars in a row to eliminate 8 lines, right?
But the pleasure of 3-matching can be in the case of simply moving a square, because of luck, continue to start the chain Tile-matching, and even sometimes you just watch it disappear for dozens of seconds. How many other games in the world can achieve the level of pleasure that can be achieved by the high itself?.
And it will also make you feel under your control all the time. As long as you have a good grasp of the difficulty of level design, you will never feel that there is no challenge, nor will you feel that it is so difficult that it is hopeless. Even if you can't get through the hurdle, if you play a few more times, you will always be lucky to pass, and you will always have a chance to pass it.
From the point of view of game design, the 3-matching game is not only simple in rules, but also simple in design. It contains much less elements than other genre games. It only needs to combine several different colors of squares to play, but this seemingly simple thing has endless room for change. For example, you only need to design a variety of obstacle chess pieces with different functions.
Then put these obstacle pieces into this pile of squares, through different combinations of obstacle pieces, different positions, can make the whole game level have a new change, so as to keep you fresh to the game.
All your designs are done around these limited squares, unlike other categories of games, trying to design a new game is tantamount to making a new game, which makes 3-matching games probably the cheapest category to update content in game history, and this is why 3-matching games can keep new levels and extend their life cycle almost indefinitely.
Also, there is a rule in the game industry: "the most fun games are always born in the pursuit of a perfect balance of skill and randomness."
The 3-matching category has a unique advantage on this point, that is, it can naturally provide you with this "virtual sense of control". It makes you seem to need some skills to play well, and to use your brains to solve puzzles. In fact, randomness is the most decisive, because you never know what color squares will fall after you eliminate these squares.
What's even more paradoxical is that this so-called randomness can also be controlled backstage, you don't know if it's really random, and you don't have a way to prove it with others, because everyone is different every time they play. so the real design skills of this category are hidden backstage.
Back to the topic of fragment leisure, the perfect match between 3-matching games and mobile phones is that it is suitable for fragmentation time: waiting for buses, going to the toilet, taking elevators, taking buses, waiting in line, or when you are upset, etc., with a few minutes of this kind of free time, it is impossible for you to do any work that requires concentration, any other form of entertainment, a slightly heavier game.
Watching a movie or TV series can not be completed in such a small fragment time, even read a serial online novel, can not finish a chapter, play a game of cards can not be finished, while 3- match, you can be relax to eliminate the last few games!
What's even more extreme is that most other mobile games need to be connected to the Internet, while the natural design of 3-matching does not require real-time networking, like many places where fragments you have free time, such as elevators and subways, where the signal is often not good, and what can you play without the Internet?
Your game scores in offline mode are saved on your phone, and then when your phone has a network, it uploads all your previous scores to the server, and you don't have to worry about them disappearing.
What other entertainment can compare with this?
Why didn't Candy Crush win the Chinese market but "Anipop" became the big winner of the 3-matching game?
"Anipop" can be said to be the preferred entertainment tool for Chinese women to pass the time.
According to the survey report released by big data:
There are a total of 170 million Tile-matching players in China, of whom 68.5% are female players, and more than twice as many female players as male gamers.
In China, many people's girlfriends, mothers and even grandmothers are loyal fans of Tile-matching games.
Happy Elements Limited, the developer of "Anipop", has been seeking to go public in recent years. According to their latest prospectus, Anipop's annual revenue in 2017 reached 1.458 billion yuan, contributing more than 60% of the company's revenue, with 870 million registered users and 120 million monthly active users.
Another interesting figure is that the top players recharge 650,000 yuan.
According to the selling price of props in "Anipop", 650000 RMB can buy almost 130000 game props!
"Anipop" has maintained a steady user popularity since its release in 2014, but we rarely see the news of "Anipop" in various trends searches on social media. Its popularity is far less than that of popular games like Travel Frog, but can you think of it?
It is such a game that does not seem to have much influence, but the number of monthly active users is higher than that of "Arena of Valor". In the "2019 Mobile Games Industry report" released by the data research institute App Annie, "Anipop" surpassed "Arena of Valor" to become the game with the largest number of monthly active users of mobile games in the Chinese market in 2018.
"Anipop" this game in all 3-matching games, why can be outstanding in invincible?
Here I also try to give a minimalist answer: because it captures China's sinking market.
What is a sinking market?
My relatively rough understanding is the broad masses of the people live non-first-tier cities and outside residents with higher levels of income and consumption.
This group has several obvious characteristics: it has a large number, accounting for the vast majority of China's population, and its disposable income is relatively small, but its willingness to spend on leisure and entertainment, especially its proportion to their disposable income, is not low. They often have more leisure time at their disposal.
Because of the nature of their life and work, they tend to use a higher proportion of mobile phones for entertainment, but the mobile phones they use tend to be more ordinary and have less memory.
In addition, their aesthetic is often more traditional, less innovative and unique, but they like to keep up with the first-tier cities, yearning for and pursuing a more fashionable and high-end life.
All kinds of Internet innovation in China often starts from first-tier cities, but in recent years, emerging super-large companies such as pinduoduo, Kuaishou or Qitoutiao have replaced more of the sinking market into people's main field of vision. It is no exaggeration to say: if you do business in China, you have to sink the market.
The most common mistake made by many entrepreneurs living in first-tier cities is to regard themselves as the representative of ordinary consumers in China, seek innovation and differences in their product design, and revel in their own loftiness. Don't you know that doing so has just lost the market of the broadest masses of the people in China!
"Anipop" in product design, a deep grasp of the characteristics of the sinking market, its installation package is very small, even if you download with mobile traffic, you will not be distressed by the flow fee, and it is convenient to start and play quickly.
They also made a very good fit with many Android phones of various brands, especially those configured by the poor, and never easily occupied more memory, and even talked about a lot of preinstallation. As soon as people bought the phone and opened it, its icon was put there, giving full play to the minimalist and casual characteristics of 3-matching games. No matter how popular Arena of Valor is, it can't compete with 3-matching 's very low demand for mobile phone configuration.
And the difficulty that it doesn't need to learn at all.
Arena of Valor made a very successful reference to the primary school textbooks in IP, took the heroes in the fairy tales familiar to the general public to sink to the extreme, and achieved great success.
When we carefully study "Anipop": first of all, we see that its painting style does not look completely traditional Chinese style, in fact, there is a little Korean style!
Why use Korean style to fight China's sinking market?
This is just wonderful, because Korean style has been popular in the whole Chinese market for at least 20 years, whether it is Korean fashion, cosmetics, TV dramas, star variety, cartoon animation, games, and a large number of Korean things. it has won the favor of a whole generation of young Chinese women, even for the sinking market users, there is enough awareness, and has been labeled as more fresh, lovely and fashionable.
"Anipop" in product design, a deep grasp of the characteristics of the sinking market, its installation package is small, even if you download with mobile traffic, you will not be distressed by the flow fee, and it is convenient to start and play quickly.
They also made a good fit with many Android phones of various brands, especially those configured by the poor, and never easily occupied more memory, and even talked about a lot of preinstallation. As soon as people bought the phone and opened it, its icon was put there, giving full play to the minimalist and casual characteristics of 3-matching games. No matter how popular Arena of Valor is, it can't compete with 3-matching 's low demand for mobile phone configuration.
And the difficulty that it doesn't need to learn at all.
Arena of Valor made a successful reference to the primary school textbooks in IP, took the heroes in the fairy tales familiar to the general public to sink to the extreme, and achieved great success.
When we carefully study "Anipop": first of all, we see that its artist style does not look completely traditional Chinese style, in fact, there is a little Korean style!
Why use Korean style to fight China's sinking market?
This is just wonderful, because Korean style has been popular in the whole Chinese market for at least 20 years, whether it is Korean fashion, cosmetics, TV dramas, star variety, cartoon animation, games, and a large number of Korean things. it has won the favor of a whole generation of young Chinese women, even for the sinking market users, there is enough awareness, and has been labeled as more fresh, lovely and fashionable.
In addition, a careful analysis of the characteristics of Korean painting style, we are most likely to find the key word is "colorful", which is precisely the bottom requirement of the 3-matching game, it is easy to distinguish between colors!
So "Anipop" uses this Korean style to kill two birds with one stone, not only meets the basic needs of the game, but also meets the fashion pursuit of users.
The theme of "Anipop" is even better. It does not use the color box of traditional 3-matching games, but a variety of cute animal images. These chicks, ducks and puppies are even familiar with 2-or 3-year-old children to 70-or 80-year-old rural aunts. Is there anything more approachable than this theme?!
Anipop's efforts in the social direction are also remarkable.
As we said earlier, this is a special category of play that can be played all the time without networking or competition between people, but I'm not saying that social magic is useless in this category.
Tile-matching games can also make use of social networking. First, you can log in using various social media accounts, and then use the "physical strength" limit, the most critical resource in the game, to drive social interaction. When you fight the checkpoint, you have to consume a physical value for each failure. When you run out of physical strength, you can choose to wait for a certain amount of time to slowly recover, or you can directly use the currency in the game to buy it. At this time, you can choose to wait for a certain amount of time to recover, or you can directly use the currency in the game to buy it.
If you don't want to spend money and don't want to wait, you can find friends on the social platform to give it away for free, but your friends have to enter the game before they can give you physical strength, this is the standard fission promotion!
In addition, the game map will also show the current clearance of each of your friends in real time, and a ranking will pop up every time you pass a game. It will rank your friends' highest score for playing this game and your highest score. If your score exceeds that of some friends, you can also send a boastful message to their social media, telling them that your score has exceeded them.
If you are stuck in a certain level and can't get through, you can also call your friends to help you through the social platform. This is taking advantage of social pressure. The word we often use is called Peer Pressure.
In the real world, you may not earn as much as her, and you may not have as many bags as her, but in "Anipop" you can play better than her and get higher scores, so that you can get a sense of achievement that is difficult to get in the real world. Although the pleasure of showing off is also a kind of low-level human nature, the design of the game is to make use of your showing-off behavior and the psychology of comparing acquaintances, which can not only promote the spread of the game.
It can also improve the retention of the game.
There is a characteristic of China's social environment: the proportion of social strangers in first-tier cities is on the high side, and although the population density is high, people are farther away from each other. You may not know the name of your next-door neighbor after living in a flat for several years. People who know each other are often either family members or classmates and colleagues, while there are more acquaintances in the sinking market, and there are fewer people in each town and village.
Everyone in the neighborhood in the street knows that they will play mahjong together when they have nothing to do, and there are many more opportunities to meet offline.
For example, you may not know: almost every city or town has its own local chess and card APP. Many locals play cards on it, but there are rules for them to play, that is, they only play with acquaintances. If you are a stranger, you may not be able to match a player at all!
Word-of-mouth recommendations between acquaintances and moderate competitive pressure are the most important core factors for social interaction to play a role in the game, which is also the key point for users to fission.
In the sinking market, the recommendation effect of acquaintances is far greater than any advertising effect, which also makes "Anipop" the ultimate success in the sinking market.
Where did Candy Crush Saga lose?
So, Candy Crush Saga succeeded earlier in Europe and the United States, and until now it is more popular than "Anipop". Why hasn't it become popular in China?
In fact, whether it is "Anipop" or Candy Crush Saga, no matter how they gameplays, socialize, or commercialize, they are essentially the same. They have almost the same Tile-matching rules, level settings, prop payment model, social functions, and so on. Take off the packaging outside, and the game design itself is not different.
The biggest difference between the two games is in the outer packaging of the game.
The candy package itself is obviously unconformable in China, far less than cute little animals.
However, it is no accident that this theme is popular in Europe and America, where sugar culture has been deeply rooted in their underlying code for many years.
Because sugar cane, which can extract sugar, can only be grown in the subtropics and tropics, sugar was rare and even represented a symbol of power and status until the great navigation era in Europe.
Later, when Columbus discovered the American continent, the British brought the planting industry to America as well as the sugar culture. Americans' love of sweet food was influenced by the British.
Now in the western food menu, the last dish must be dessert, which is also handed down from the custom of the court aristocracy to show their noble status when eating.
The custom of children of ordinary people knocking on door to door on Halloween and asking for candy "treat or trick" has something to do with it. Although they may not be able to eat it if you put it in his mouth, candy has long become a symbol of good things and happy life in European and American culture.
So now you understand that Candy Crush Saga was developed by Sweden, a traditional European country, and then gradually spread throughout Europe and the United States is even more reasonable.
Naturally, you can understand why this theme is not suitable in China, right?
This is a good case: it shows that sometimes a game that has been completely proven to be successful can also be because the choice of a theme alone completely determines the success of people in a certain country and region.
There are still many such cases in the game industry. When farm games were popular a few years ago, a company created an Arab-style farm, which was the first to enter the Middle East market and achieved great success.
A popular word in our game industry is called "skin change", which refers to this phenomenon: the core method of play remains the same, the soup remains the same, the subject matter is changed, and the target market and target user group can achieve a relatively high success rate.
But the reason why I say it is a popular word, because it is not a trade secret at all, and the majority of game companies have long been tired of using this trick, so now many players actually do not like the products that are simply made quickly and shoddy by "changing skin". The same core play, for different user groups, can also design and produce boutique games.
What will happen to Tile-matching games in the future?
This category is likely to be the longest-lived category in the history of video games.
In the visible future, basically in terms of equipment and control, it will be difficult to make any transformative innovation. It must be the most suitable game mode with portable, small and medium-sized screens and the best touch operation. It is difficult to have more innovative categories that can be surpassed from the basic.
From the practice of industry development in recent years, there is a small trend that may be worthy of attention: "Tile-matching+X".
It is on top of the core game of Tile-matching, plus one or more other core games, which are combined to produce new chemical reactions and even brand-new effects.
This is also one of the biggest development trends in the entire game industry in recent years, because when electronic game hardware devices first appeared, new types of electronic games were invented like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. Electronic games have been developed for 4 or 50 years, and most of the most popular types of games have been basically stereotyped.
The birth of new types of games such as PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS and MOBA, which have emerged recently, like what we have mentioned, has been completely outside the predictable range. We do not know how many years a new gameplay will appear, nor do we know where it will appear. If we want to find a relatively robust innovation model in this industry, combination splicing is obviously one of the most frequently used.
Just like the "skin swap" we just talked about, you can imagine how many game companies have tried to add how many games to Tile-matching, some adding RPG elements, some adding card elements, Tetris even electronic sports versions, and some people specializing in real money games with 3-matching games!
But so far we have seen that the best way to do the "Tile-matching+X" model is a Russian company called Playrix, whose games, such as Gardenscapes and Homescapes, are at the top of the list of mobile games in Europe and the United States all the year round.
Since its launch in 2016, Gardenscapes has topped the Apple Store bestseller list in 64 countries.
You should know that Tile-matching games generally rely on a large user base to ensure high income, because its average user payment is actually very low, but because the payment is not high, generally can only rely on word-of-mouth publicity and natural traffic, it is difficult to have the money to advertise to buy users.
And what miracle did Gardenscapes do?
It makes the user payment rate and average payment amount 6 to 8 times that of other 3-matching games!
As a result, it has become almost the only Tile-matching game in the industry that can go to the market to buy advertisements and grab traffic, just like other heavy games.
What did they do right to add to 3-matching?
To put it simply, they have added the core game of "business construction". To put it more bluntly, what they do is "Tile-matching+ tidying up the room" or "Tile-matching+ taking care of the garden".
Take Gardenscapes as an example, the background setting of the game is as follows:
You need to play the role of a landlord who owns a villa. There is an abandoned garden in front of the villa. You will have a British housekeeper who will arrange to help you repair and expand the abandoned garden. In the process of building the garden, you will meet all kinds of people, and strange things will happen. You need to constantly use the traditional 3-matching game to collect stars. If you do not have enough stars.
You will not be able to repair the garden and promote the development of the story. Looking at the messy environment, you will instinctively generate more motivation to continue to play the Tile-matching level. When you see your garden being built more and more beautifully, your sense of achievement will arise spontaneously.
To put it bluntly, this game is a combination of your two underlying natures, Tile-matching and finishing, which are close to human instincts, and add up to produce an effect of 1+1 greater than 2.
In particular, with the help of this addition, Gardenscapes cleverly excavates the sense of immersion that the Tile-matching game itself does not have, and all kinds of characters and stories that happen to each other in the game can bring you into the game.
Following the idea of Gardenscapes, I believe that there will be more successful "Tile-matching+x" modes in Tile-matching games in the future. For example, whether we can add elements such as keeping a pet, cooking, falling in love, changing clothes, and so on, there is too much space to try to explore.