Puzzle Games: They Should Be Solvable
I like games. I don't spend huge amounts of time playing them, but I like them, both physical and computerized. One genre I'm particularly fond of is the puzzle game, and I've come across some real gems for iOS over the years. But this post isn't about those good experiences. Instead, as is so often the case, I'm only speaking up because of bad experiences. You're welcome.
Probably the most important thing that makes puzzle games work is the hope of solving them. That should be really, painfully obvious to even the densest of game developers. No matter how clever your concept, how fun the gameplay, how slick the design, how smooth or intuitive the controls, if the puzzle can't be solved, there's no point in trying. Isn't that immediately apparent from considering anything from tangrams to those little interlocking ring thingies? The thing that keeps people going at it for hours is that they know, no matter how impossible it seems, that there is a way to succeed.
Well, not anymore. I frequently try out new puzzle games on my iPhone. I'm cheap, so I only try the free ones, but anyone can tell you that there are lots of really good games for free these days. One that I recently tried was called Bubble Witch Saga 2.
Yeah, I know it's not a name that immediately jumps out to your average 30-something 21st century male, but I have lots of daughters, so give me a break. No gender stereotyping in this post.
In the game, you're given the task of shooting colored bubbles to make matches and achieve various goals. It might be clearing the board, it might be releasing cute little animals trapped inside the bubbles, or it might be freeing a similarly trapped ghost.
The gameplay is pretty fun, and new types of obstacles come up often enough that things don't really get boring. In fact, some levels are pretty tough, even assuming you get the right color bubbles to win.
Which brings me to my complaint. Probably about 70% of the time, you don't get the right bubbles to win. I mean, with the bubbles you're given by the game, there is literally no possibility of passing the level. It's an exercise in futility. For example, you might be tasked with clearing the top of the board, and be facing an impenetrable blockade of red and yellow bubbles. You have a limit of 14 shots in which to achieve your goal, and the game gives you absolutely zero yellow or red bubbles. So, for 14 turns in a row, you get a bubble that you have no use for except to build a thicker barrier between you and your goal.
As obnoxious as this is, I could deal with it if you could play unlimited times - there would eventually be a try on which you could win. But this game also has the relatively new and extremely irritating mechanic I like to call real-time regeneration. In other words, you have a limited number of lives, and every time you fail a level, you lose one. This is fine in concept, but the problem is that once you lose a life, it takes thirty minutes of real-time to get it back. This would also be fine, except that it often happens that within your five allotted lives, you are never given a legitimate chance to beat the level.
So you spend your five lives trying to beat a single level and fail each time, not because you lacked skill or insight, but because succeeding is impossible. The game itself literally stops you from doing it. Then you have to wait at least thirty minutes to try again, probably a few hours since you're not really eager to subject yourself to this abuse again until you have multiple attempts built up. In the grand scheme, it's no big deal. Like I said, I don't play games that often. But when I do, I prefer not to have a pointless experience.
This is completely contrary to what my dad always used to tell me about our old Nintendo games growing up. If I couldn't make the jumps fast enough on Super Mario Brothers, it wasn't that "the game won't let me," I just needed more practice. Well, Dad would have been wrong about this game.
Eventually you will get the right bubbles to win, but it takes way longer than it should. Until then, you're playing the game with the wrong pieces. It's a transparent attempt to get people to spend money on in-app purchases, which consist of special power-ups that allow you to get around problems by blasting through them or clearing mismatched colors. You pay $0.99 for a single special bubble. So if you spent money for every time you encountered one of these problems, you could end up paying literally hundreds of dollars just to play a silly matching game.
This isn't the only game like this. There are many. I don't have a problem with IAPs or the "freemium" model as a concept. But if you're going to offer the game for free, it should be playable for free. IAPs that make the game easier are fine. But the model used by Bubble Witch and so many games like it creates such a frustrating experience for users, that you feel really taken advantage of by the time you figure out what's happening.
I haven't been foolish enough to spend so much as a penny on power-ups for this game. I don't care about it enough, and I refuse on principle to succumb to this kind of scheme. But apparently it annoys me enough to write about it. This sort of thing would never work with a board game, a card game, or really anything but a computer game, because if those games didn't allow you to achieve the goals they set for you it would be seen as a malfunction or a fundamental design flaw. The game wouldn't be worth playing at all, and would probably never even be sold.
So stop it, game developers. If you want our money, make the game itself worth paying for. Don't bait us with the words "free to play," then threaten us with a negative experience if we refuse to pay.
Probably the most important thing that makes puzzle games work is the hope of solving them. That should be really, painfully obvious to even the densest of game developers. No matter how clever your concept, how fun the gameplay, how slick the design, how smooth or intuitive the controls, if the puzzle can't be solved, there's no point in trying. Isn't that immediately apparent from considering anything from tangrams to those little interlocking ring thingies? The thing that keeps people going at it for hours is that they know, no matter how impossible it seems, that there is a way to succeed.
Well, not anymore. I frequently try out new puzzle games on my iPhone. I'm cheap, so I only try the free ones, but anyone can tell you that there are lots of really good games for free these days. One that I recently tried was called Bubble Witch Saga 2.
Yeah, I know it's not a name that immediately jumps out to your average 30-something 21st century male, but I have lots of daughters, so give me a break. No gender stereotyping in this post.
The gameplay is pretty fun, and new types of obstacles come up often enough that things don't really get boring. In fact, some levels are pretty tough, even assuming you get the right color bubbles to win.
Which brings me to my complaint. Probably about 70% of the time, you don't get the right bubbles to win. I mean, with the bubbles you're given by the game, there is literally no possibility of passing the level. It's an exercise in futility. For example, you might be tasked with clearing the top of the board, and be facing an impenetrable blockade of red and yellow bubbles. You have a limit of 14 shots in which to achieve your goal, and the game gives you absolutely zero yellow or red bubbles. So, for 14 turns in a row, you get a bubble that you have no use for except to build a thicker barrier between you and your goal.
As obnoxious as this is, I could deal with it if you could play unlimited times - there would eventually be a try on which you could win. But this game also has the relatively new and extremely irritating mechanic I like to call real-time regeneration. In other words, you have a limited number of lives, and every time you fail a level, you lose one. This is fine in concept, but the problem is that once you lose a life, it takes thirty minutes of real-time to get it back. This would also be fine, except that it often happens that within your five allotted lives, you are never given a legitimate chance to beat the level.
So you spend your five lives trying to beat a single level and fail each time, not because you lacked skill or insight, but because succeeding is impossible. The game itself literally stops you from doing it. Then you have to wait at least thirty minutes to try again, probably a few hours since you're not really eager to subject yourself to this abuse again until you have multiple attempts built up. In the grand scheme, it's no big deal. Like I said, I don't play games that often. But when I do, I prefer not to have a pointless experience.
This is completely contrary to what my dad always used to tell me about our old Nintendo games growing up. If I couldn't make the jumps fast enough on Super Mario Brothers, it wasn't that "the game won't let me," I just needed more practice. Well, Dad would have been wrong about this game.
Eventually you will get the right bubbles to win, but it takes way longer than it should. Until then, you're playing the game with the wrong pieces. It's a transparent attempt to get people to spend money on in-app purchases, which consist of special power-ups that allow you to get around problems by blasting through them or clearing mismatched colors. You pay $0.99 for a single special bubble. So if you spent money for every time you encountered one of these problems, you could end up paying literally hundreds of dollars just to play a silly matching game.
This isn't the only game like this. There are many. I don't have a problem with IAPs or the "freemium" model as a concept. But if you're going to offer the game for free, it should be playable for free. IAPs that make the game easier are fine. But the model used by Bubble Witch and so many games like it creates such a frustrating experience for users, that you feel really taken advantage of by the time you figure out what's happening.
I haven't been foolish enough to spend so much as a penny on power-ups for this game. I don't care about it enough, and I refuse on principle to succumb to this kind of scheme. But apparently it annoys me enough to write about it. This sort of thing would never work with a board game, a card game, or really anything but a computer game, because if those games didn't allow you to achieve the goals they set for you it would be seen as a malfunction or a fundamental design flaw. The game wouldn't be worth playing at all, and would probably never even be sold.
So stop it, game developers. If you want our money, make the game itself worth paying for. Don't bait us with the words "free to play," then threaten us with a negative experience if we refuse to pay.
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