Game Design Secrets

What Works Best in Web Games

First, starting with what works best on the web…

Demographic-Specific Genres

Colin Cupp of Mochi Media says, “Genres tend to map to specific audience types. For example, match-3 puzzles, such as Jade Monkey, tend to be really popular among women; the dress-up genre is popular with younger girls; and shooter/action genres, such as SAS: Zombie Assault 3, Raze 2, and so on, are very popular among teenage males.” See Figure 2-4.

Figure 2-4: SAS: Zombie Assault 3

“With that being said,” says Cupp, “changing themes of games can often change the audience. An example of this is Bio Gems—a fighting or combat element is added to a match-3 puzzle, making it more attractive to teenage males compared to the typical match-3 game.” (See “Hybrid Genre or ‘Twist’ Games” for more information.)

Tower Defense, Launcher, and (on Kongregate) High-Budget Games

Greg McClanahan of Kongregate says, “Tower defense and launcher games are especially popular right now.” See Figure 2-5.

For Kongregate’s top-rated games, go to www.kongregate.com/games?sort=rating.

“If you sort Kongregate by rating, you’ll see these two types dominating by a degree disproportionate to how many of them we have on the site.”

Figure 2-5: Kingdom Rush, an extremely popular tower defense game on Kongregate

“I’m not entirely sure why this is,” says McClanahan. “It could be that the genres lend ...