Hello!
Each week I’ll be sending out a mail that highlights a particular game. I’ll explain how it works, how it makes money, and why it’s particularly important right now. Feel free to pass it on, to tell me to stop emailing you, or to suggest particular games or genres that you’d like to know more about.
This week’s game is Diamond Dash. You can play it on Facebook, iOS, and soon Android. 4.1m people played Diamond Dash today, and 20.2m played it in the last 30 days. It was created by Wooga, a Berlin-based company founded in 2009. Wooga is unusual among non-North American game developers because it has had massive, sustained success on Facebook – it is currently the 4th biggest games developer in terms of monthly players.
How does it work?
60 seconds to clear as many diamonds as possible! When you click on a group of three or more diamonds of the same colour, they disappear and new ones cascade into their place. You earn points by clearing diamonds. The points determine your position on a leaderboard made up of Facebook friends who are also playing the game, and in a global weekly tournament. If you clear a large number of diamonds quickly you earn bonus points and special powers, like a shiny blue diamond that trashes all the others in the same column.
How does it make money?
Diamond Dash makes money by selling gold bars. Gold bars can be used to buy magic powers or extra lives.
Magic powers are useful because they give you boosts that help to increase your score.
Extra lives are useful because you use up a life every time you play a game. They use the energy mechanic that is common to many casual games: your lives will replenish if you wait long enough, but if you don’t want to wait you’ll be tempted to buy gold bars.
Why is this game particularly interesting?
Diamond Dash is the Game of the Week because Wooga just announced that they will be creating an optimised version for iPhone 5. It will be adapted to the enlarged screen and will integrate iOS6’s Facebook features.
The new iPhone’s screen size could be a tricky issue for developers. Pre-iPhone 5 games will still work just fine, but they won’t take advantage of the extra space. Many will have built games with a fixed width, and one of the biggest challenges of bringing games to Android is the wide variety of screen sizes. The smartest solution to date is to build games in which the positioning of the various buttons, graphics, and so on is relative instead of fixed, so that they can resize according to the screen size, with no need to build a new version of the game every time a new device launches.
Give Diamond Dash a shot, and let me know what you think of it. I am quite bad at this game, but if you want to compete you can add me on Facebook and bring it on.
Enjoy!
Todd
P.S. Give me a shout if you’d like me to send you the previous Game of the Week emails – on Amazing Alex, Candy Crush Saga, Living Classics, Plants vs. Zombies, Triple Town, Matching With Friends, and Slotomania.