Just a thought about arcade games vs. puzzle games

i know that once you get all 60(+-) level of a puzzle
game finished, youve fulfilled the game potential

but when it comes to arcade games, the replayability
value expands to replaying the game via better score,
better time, enjoying more since your game control
improved over the last course and re-enjoying the game
different versatile levels (i can even find myself playing
quests over and over again for that matter).

but unlike puzzle games, i see that a common level takes
about 5-10 mins to do. if you calculate that, you see that
in a normal arcade game you have no more than 20-30
levels (And thats from examining commertial games like
Sonic, Rayman, Frogger II, Id's Commander Keen ect.)

what intrigues me, is that when you do the math,
you see that it all sums up to 2.5 - 5 hours of gameplay,
which is weird coz there is no argument that all arcade
games above were more than addictive and replayable
for hours.

Same thing from examining Ploing. i finished the attached levels in 5 mins each. i'm quite sure it has the same amount of levels
or even double, and i'm sure it has a replayable value (thought
about buying it myself)

But, what makes a game with accumulative 5 or even 10
hours worthwhile? i'm writing an arcade game myself and
intrigued by the fact that a 5-10 hrs game have such a long
lifespan?

There are some things you can do to spice up puzzle games and make them more replayable. My recently release game Miko & Molly is one example. Many levels have multiple solutions (some intentionally, some on accident). The game times how long it takes you to complete a level and records it. You can then try to find other solutions (or slight variations on your solution) that will give you a faster time. I then added a feature called the Miko & Molly All Stars, which allows you to upload your best times for each level to the web site. The web site records the 3 highest scores for each level. Players can compete against each other to find the fastest solutions. This gives the levels a good deal of replay value.

As far as the total time to win the game, I've never timed it (I probably should have thought of asking some of my beta testers to do that), but I suspect there are probably 15-30 hours of play there for an average person. When you consider things like expansion packs, you can increase this time considerable. Making more levels for a game is a minimal investment in time (compared to the original development process). Once a player decides they like the game enough to shell out $15-$25 for 30 levels, you should be able to easily sell them on spending another $5-$10 on 30 more levels. In such a case, don't think of the buyer shelling out $X for Y hours of play. Think of it as investing in Y hours plus the option to purchase more hours of play if they still like it when they are finished.

I believe arcade games have an advantage in replayability because of the idea that players can still lose in the game.

For example, Contra, even though somebody masters the game they would want to play it again just because they can still die. It's the concept of reflexes that drives the player's entertainment in these types of games.

For level-based puzzle games, once a person completes the game, it's done. The logic to complete the levels stays in the player's mind and its not possible to lose the game anymore. The only exception is when the puzzle game includes action elements such as fitnik(spiders), stockboy(pigs), and pharaoh's curse(mummies).

Keep in mind that generally the first 5-10 levels in a game (i.e. the demo version) are the simplest and easiest levels. For instance, you could go through the whole 5-level Dweep demo in perhaps 30-60 minutes. But some of the later levels will take you that long to solve just one level.

Pharaohs' Curse has a 10-level demo. It took me about 70-80 minutes to beat all the demo levels the first time through. But there are later levels in the game with many different chambers, and those can give you an hour of head-scratching by themselves.

Also, consider the addition of a built-in level editor, which many of our games include. One of the reasons we added these forums is to allow players to post and share their own custom levels, thus further extending the lifespan of such games. More than half of the levels in Dweep Gold were created by players.

For many of our puzzle games, you are looking at more than 50 hours of gameplay. Fitznik is one of our smaller games with 63 levels, but that one took me several days to solve every level. The longer a player plays a game, the more chance they'll talk about it with friends, family, and co-workers.

Originally posted by Chandler
I believe arcade games have an advantage in replayability because of the idea that players can still lose in the game.

For example, Contra, even though somebody masters the game they would want to play it again just because they can still die. It's the concept of reflexes that drives the player's entertainment in these types of games.


Actually, you never know... When in college I used to play Contra a lot with a friend in the dorms. We got so good at the game that we could play together all the way through and never die.

NES Adventure Island was another game I got really good at to the point that I could play w/o dying for the most part. In fact, take a look at the Adventure Island Entry on this page:
http://www.twingalaxies.com/NES.html

But I do see your point. Arcade games and puzzle games each have a different type of appeal.

Adventure Island

613,320 Steve Pavlina

Holy Smokes Steve, that's one hell of a run.

Some of those records are crazy, look at this one ...

Martin Bedard, who hails from Canada, has claimed the top spot in both lines and duration with an eye-popping 64,795 lines...yes, that is sixty four THOUSAND lines...which took him a grand total of approx 12:57.36...and yes, that's twelve HOURS !! And for those interested in statistics, that is a highly respectable 83.39 lines/minute maintained throughout.

Wow, Go Canadians =)

*sigh* it's nice to see I wasn't the only one wasting my time with the Contra series. I sent a few polaroids to Nintendo Power after looping through Super C several times. Konami definately had the right recipe for replayability. :rolleyes:

I see now that i forgot one important aspect of the
arcade game which make it different from puzzle:

The risk element.

Each time you play an arcade level, you risk your
character allowing it to die(?). You can call it a rush
or the adrenalin factor.

to be more specific, to "solve" an arcade game each
time you need to apply the right movements in the
right time.

remember the old galaga? (you can use the Strayfire
or brainwave example)
you may remember the order of the approaching ships,
but each time you play, even if you know their route,
theres a 99% propability you will "solve" it in another
approach while still giving you the rush of "my ship almost
exploded"

Replayability is definatly an important aspect of any game. Some games are designed for replayability like Arcade games.

Others are not, like quest games.

Some games, mostly multi-player games, can have almost infinate replayability.

In my game Dreamstars I tried to increase the replayability by making each game unique.

Dreamstars is a simple arcade game loosly based on the old Asteroids game but allows the users to build their ships from random parts. This makes the users ships unique each time they play the game. It also tries to make each level random, in that a greater or lesser amount of asteroids enter the playing field (terrain) and each catagory of enemies is weighted and the number of each type that will appear on any level is totally random up to the difficulty value of the level. Then each enemy is give a unique AI that is based on randomly assigned attributes (that are adjusted for level difficulty).

I can't say for certain it has worked because I havn't recieved enough feedback from players. What I can say is that I didn't ever really grow tired of Dreamstars despite having to play test it hundereds of times to make sure the balance was right :)

And I still play it even after it's been released!

Jai Shaw