As part of my research I played a countless number of popular mobile games and really tried to analyse what made them great. I personally found that the simpler the controls were the more successful the gameplay felt. Games that required just a single touch of the screen such as Tiny Wings, Flappy Bird, Canabalt, and Mr Jump really caught my attention.
Even the simplistic visuals that many of these 2D games offered up were works of art in their own right. I was also astonished and inspired by the visual quality of some of the bigger budget titles such as Spider-Man Unlimited and Sonic Dash. Most of these games also had that ‘just one more go’ feel to them that kept me playing for huge periods at a time.
After completing my research I realised that not only did my game need to be simple and exciting but, with the visual bar in the mobile sector being so high, I was really going to have to push myself creatively and visually in order for the game to have any chance of standing out from the crowd. A very tall order for one man in a world where mobile games are now made by enormous teams of developers with massive resources and marketing spend behind them.
Game on!