Casual Gaming. Its a phrase often used nowadays. Casual games are usually simple games that are easy to pick up and play, and are often targetted for a mass audience (as compared to the more genre-specific console games, which often have many levels of gameplay and take a while to grasp). The successful Nintendo Wii is possibly the latest incarnation of casual gaming, taking natural movements and translating them into on-screen actions means that anyone with very little or no gaming experience can pick up the Wii Remote (Wiimote?) and play.
Nowadays, you can find casual games on the web all over the place. They’re embedded into blog posts, they’re created around product launches, and more recently they’ve been turned into Facebook applications. Non-gamers are stumbling upon these games and are becoming hooked, even after only a couple of plays.
Games like Scrabulous and Bubble Town have become viral on Facebook, with each new player inviting their friends to play. It is now commonplace to see numerous notifications on a Facebook News Feed telling you that your contacts are playing Word Twist or Desktop Tower Defence. And this is before taking into account the notifactions that Beacon, Facebook’s new messaging system that allows other sites to send items to the News Feed.
There are sites that house collections of casual games. Eyezmaze is the home to the excellent Grow series of games, authored by the enigmatic ON. Grow games require logic, patience and a certain degree of trial & error to complete. You have to select or activiate the components of each game in the correct order to achieve the correct outcome. Its easier to understand when you pla them! There are five “main” Grow games, plus some Nano Grow’s. It is also worthwhile checking out ONs other games, like the excellent Galve’s Adventure.
Casual Collective is a site created by two pioneers of the Tower Defense genre. Dave and Paul were responsible for individually creating Flash Element TD and Desktop TD respectively. Both games were huge successes, and the guys realised that casual gaming was a real phenonemon that wasn’t going anywhere. They joined forces and created Casual Collective. As well as versions of Flash Element TD and Desktop TD (both single and multiplayer), they’ve created other games in the same vain. The other appeal of the site is the ability to create user accounts so high scores can be registered and teams formed. Achieving high scores unlocks abilities in other games.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
0 Responses to “Casual Gaming - No Longer So Casual”
Leave a Reply