What makes a successful browser game?

There are more and more browser games built to the market each day. Some of them becomes successful one, while some of them do not and disappear into dust. Actually what makes some of them successful and distinguish with the others?

There are several criteria to determine whether a browser game can be successful, namely:

1. Overall game idea
2. Graphics and game play
3. Game community
4. Ability to make a player come back at least twice each day
5. The way to make profit from the game

The first 2: overall game idea, graphics and game play are just too obvious.

A successful game must have a great idea. For the vast amount of browser games in the market, some of them are quite similar. There are large amount of Travian clones or OGame clones out there. To be a successful one, there must be some new and amazing idea to make itself a different and make the players think that they are playing a new game.

Of course, for the technology nowaday, the graphic is very important. No one will like to stay on with the game any longer if the graphic is poor and cannot convey enough of the game idea and feel.

Surely game play is a very important criteria too. Whether the game is easy to learn, the player is easy to grow, whether the interaction with the game world is smooth, inter-player interaction is interesting...etc. is very important for people to like the game. Game balance is the most important too. Whether in the game world, the weak one can ever be catch up with the strong players; whether new player have a chance to survive when all the experienced players had established their character/base. This is always one of the hardest part to maintain in a successful online game.

In the next few post, I will talk one by one about the other ingredient for a successful browser game, which are actually equally important, if not more, as game idea, graphic and game play.

Zorg Empire launched! O Game gone?

Zorg Empire, a new space online browser strategy game, was launched on 25 Januaray, 2009. I was excited to give a new try to this game, and surprisingly found that it has exactly the same interface with the famous online browser space game OGame, with a little bit improvement.

I had stopped playing OGame for a while, and I was surprise when I go to what is the previously the URL of OGame - http://www.ogame.com - that the domain name no longer belongs to the famous space game. Looks like the domain name is bought by some domain name selling business.

The new incarnation of OGame - Zorg Empire - now appear as a brand new game, with restarted players and new community. I will play it a while too, and will update you all with new experience and news of this game. Stay tuned!

Legacy of Holy Castle: Disaster...

On the 15th October, Wednesday, The Legacy of Holy Castle had made major change to the game during the maintenance period. Here are the changes as announced by the admin:

The adjustments of The Legacy of Holy Castle:

1. Occupancy. Currently the winner of the attack will get 75% gold and 25% food within 24 hours from the loser instead of 50% gold and 50% food.
2. Units. The price decreases greatly for level 3 units.
3. Hero's quest. The experience from adventure will increase greatly.The gold and wood from adventure will be canceled.
4. Battle experience. The experience from battle will be adjusted to avoid some improper behavior.

Most of these changes had made this once nice game impossible to play, especially the occupancy rule.

Once your castle is occupied, your gold production drop to 25% for a whole 24 hour period. You lose the ability to rebuild yourself and is not able to attack others to gain back what you lost. This had made the game a boring game during these 24 hours, and easily make the player lose interest. After 24 hours, it is quite probably you will be occupied again due to the inability to rebuild. A player being occupied the first time would sooner or later quit the game.

The Hero's quest rule had made the occupancy rule worse. As before the patch, you can gain gold by adventuring which compensate a bit on your lost in battle and occupancy. Now you had lose your another ability to gain resources.

The battle experience had dropped a lot, which make your hero even more difficult to grow. This would make late comers even harder to catch up with the already top player, which separate the strong and the weak apart more. Weaker players will always be a farm and has no chance to survive.

I am deeply disappointed with the change in this once great game. If these changes are not reverted for a week, I would probably say goodbye to Legacy of Holy Castle as well.

The Legacy of Holy Castle Guide: The Importance of Formation

Never under-estimate the importance of formation in The Legacy of Holy Castle. For the same number of units that can handled by your hero and the same number of defensive building you have, how you place your buildings and your units is the only factor that you win or lose a battle.

My castle was attacked everyday recently and it is a very good chance for me to experiment with several defensive formation.
I tend to rely quite a bit on the usage of defensive buildings, especially the self-detonating towers, as they can deal quite some amount of damage to enemy units. Putting the line of self-detonating towers right at the front has the advantage that they can destroy quite an amount of enemy units right at the beginner, weaken them so that they can deal less damage to our units. The disadvantage is that if the enemy knows your formation, he can produce weak units with amount 1 at the frontline to take the damage from the self-detonating tower, which can waste your self-detonating towers.

That's the reason why I put a line of elite hoplites the front to take down weak units first, and allow stronger units next taken down by the line of self-detonating towsers.

Next are the ramparts and the arrow towers. Putting arrow towers right behind the rampart as the ramparts are extra strong in defense. When the enemy units take several rounds to destroy your ramparts, they had already taken up quite an amount of damage from the arrow towers and the archers.

Putting hoplites and self-detonating towers around your hero is important, as whether your hero survives determine the win or lose of the battle. These are the last line of defense, so that any enemy units approaching your hero should be taken down by the body guards.

This formation has proven effective for some time. It had an disadvantage though, is if your enemy is patient enough to give you consecutive attacks, your defense building will finally all broken down, and he can finally occupy your castle...

Do you have any good formation to suggest? If so, feel free to leave a comment.

Nation States

Nations States is quite an interesting and special game, which can't find other games with the same genre on the market.

Nations States is a nation simulation game created by Max Barry and based loosely on his novel Jennifer Government. The game play is simple, you are the ruler of a country. Everyday there will be a political issue come up at your nation, and your prime ministers and advisors would have several argument over the issue. As a ruler, you need to make decision on the issue, based on your ideal and political standpoints. Your country will gradually evolves based on your political direction. There are several attributes that will evolves: ecomonics, civil right and political freedom.

There is no competition in this game, the country will never war against each other. It is only simulation. This game is quite relax and you need only login once per day for choosing your solution towards the political issue.

Here is my nation, if anyone of you is interested:
http://www.nationstates.net/riviatin

And here is the URL to the game:
http://www.nationstates.net/

FallenSword Beginner's Guide Part 6 - Killing the right monster

In FallenSword, if you want to optimize the experience gain, besides optimizing your usage of stamina, you need to make sure you are killing the right monsters.

For experience point gain by killing monsters, you get 120% experience point gain for killing a monster 1 level higher or above you; you get 100% experience point gain if you are killing a monster at the same level as you; you get 75% experience point gain for killing monster a level lower than you; and you get 50% experience point gain for killing monster 2 levels lower than you.

Therefore if you are at a map with several different monsters with different level, you need to always check the monster level by viewing them. If possible, always kill the monster at least the same level as you, and ignoring the monsters with level lower than you in the same space, unless the map is running out of monsters.

Browser-based games market becomes serious

A news from Forbes yesterday talks about several browser-based games are going to launch and funded by large business like Time Warner's and Dell. One of the famous title that was coming is the "Quake Life", which is a remake of the once top title "Quake III".

More and more development companies, even Google, is becoming aware that the browser-based game market is a flourishing one.

It looks like that we are going to have a bloom era of browser-based online gaming!

For a complete story, please visit the Forbes news here:
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/08/25/xbox-firefox-quake-tech-personal-cx_cm_0826firefox.html