Creating a successful game is an art that requires a keen understanding of player behaviour, design principles, and a careful balance between simplicity and engagement. This is a comprehensive guide to designing a casual mobile game that caters to a diverse range of players, especially those who may not be familiar with complex game mechanics.

This article delves into each step in detail. Furthermore, it presents critical questions for game designers to ponder, providing a deeper understanding of user motivations, business goals, and how to create a game that strikes a chord with its audience.

Start with asking the right questions

It’s very crucial to ask the chunky questions at the beginning of any design process, it’s also advised to keep an open questions document, in which you can list down all the queries/thoughts/ideas which you aren’t 100% sure about how they’re going to work. Its fine when few things are not making sense yet, but without asking right questions, you’ll never know about major leaks and gaps.

I’ve prepared some questions that I generally ask to myself or my team while starting with Brainstorming of a new game.

“Why will users play this game?”

It’s crucial to understand the motivation behind why users might choose to play your game. Are they looking for a short-term diversion, a way to connect with friends, a challenge, or a chance to win rewards? Understanding your target player motivations can help you create a game that meets their needs and keeps them coming back. As a designer, you should ask yourself:

• What emotional experience will the game provide (excitement, relaxation, competition)?
• How does my game stand out from similar games on the market?
• What kind of challenges and rewards will engage my players?

Ask “What we want from users who play this game?”

This question allows you to define the purpose of your game from a business perspective. It could be revenue generation, brand awareness, social impact, or a combination of these. By clearly defining what you want to achieve, you can make better design decisions that align with these goals. Some questions to consider are:

• What actions do I want players to take (make in-app purchases, share the game with friends, play regularly)?
• How will I measure success (number of downloads, player reviews, revenue)?
• What kind of relationship do I want to have with my players (short-term engagement, long-term loyalty)?

Other Brainstorming Questions

• What is the core gameplay loop? What will players be doing over and over again in the game?
• How can the game be made more accessible and inclusive for a wide range of players?
• How will the game handle player progression and rewards?

Step 2 : Nailing the Checklist ✅

Designing a game involves careful consideration of various factors, from understanding your target audience to designing user-friendly interfaces. To aid game designers in this intricate process.

I’ve compiled a comprehensive checklist that outlines each step in detail. It’ll serves as a roadmap for game design, guiding you through the essential stages from conceptualisation to final polish. This checklist will ensure that every aspect of your game is thoughtfully crafted, offering a seamless and enjoyable experience for your players.

Game Overview

• ✅ Game Concept: What is the Intro — Core gameplay — Outro of the game.
• ✅ Genre: Mention genre of the game so the team can do a broader moodboard sessions while following the core gameplay rules, eg Board games/Casual/1P shooter
• ✅ Platform: Curate list of all the platforms you might launch the game, Android /iOS/windows

Target Audience

• ✅ Demographics: Understand the proficiency and familiarity of your Target audience with game mechanics/language and general behaviour/lifestyle.

Research

• ✅ Competitor Analysis: Review existing games, focusing on their complexity, gameplay & mechanics, hooks, delights. Learn from their strengths and weaknesses.
• ✅ Player Personas: Empathise with your users to create a detailed persona and also do a quantitate analysis to get both zoom in-out view.
• Players who are new to digital gaming, prefer simple mechanics, and understand local languages/ behaviours/ mechanics.

Game Mechanics

• ✅ Gameplay: Structure your gameplay, Intro — Core Gameplay — Outro
  For casual games, you can bucket the gameplay aspects into chance & skill. Chance aspect improve fun/hope element of the game while skill factor helps in adaptability and re-play behaviours.

Project Timeline

• ✅ Set Milestones: It’s important to deliver quality and it’s equally important to deliver in-time. Getting milestones ready at start helps team working backwards on strategies. In timeline, define key project milestones such as concept approval, UX & UI done, prototype development, alpha and beta testing, final product release

User Interface & User Experience

• ✅ UX Design: Here you stitch your complete happy case gameplay, solve for major gaps and can have longest discussions regarding your open points document. This could be a wireframe stage or low-fidality mocks.
• ✅ Moodboard: Create multiple buckets filled with best inspirations, not only for assets & UI but for UX aswell. Assets could progressively improve but directionally things should match the mood and emotions you want to impart in the players of your game.
• ✅ UI Design: In general use minimalist design with large, clear icons and buttons, widely recognised symbols and visuals instead of text where possible. Use colors and graphics that resonate with core aesthetics and a language system(if any). It’s important to balance your UI and move user’s attention to the most important aspects of the game.
• ✅ Ensure Accessibility: Use high contrast colors and large text sizes to aid players with poor vision. Use simple, clear local language instructions where necessary.
• ✅ User Distraction: Like, the game should automatically pause if the player gets a call or notification and give the option to resume when they return.
• ✅ Functionality: Keep options and features to a minimum. To start with only include ‘Play’, ‘Rules’, and ‘Quit’ buttons in the main menu.
• ✅ Simplicity: Avoid clutter and ensure the majority of focus is on core gameplay. Toughest part will be to keep the game simple yet fun & repeatable.
• ✅ Navigation: Simple navigation with back buttons and home buttons prominently displayed.
• ✅ UI Location: Place interactive elements where they are easily reachable for right-handed users, keeping in mind the average finger size.
• ✅ Feedback: Provide subtle animations or color changes to signify that a button has been pressed or a move has been made. Let’s not forget haptics aswell.
• ✅ Pop-up Windows: Use sparingly, and only to show critical information like ‘Game Over’ or ‘You Win’ or other unavoidable error states.

Art & Graphics

• ✅ Game Assets & Animations: Make list of all assets & animations that you will be needing for the GTM. Very trivial point but most tend to forget this and later such issues tighten the pipelines

Sound & Music

• ✅ Sound Effects: Include simple sounds checklist for actions happening in the game, like UI transitions, actions & Aha moments.
• ✅ Music: Light, non-distracting background music that adds to the overall ambiance.

Monetisation Strategy

• ✅ Business Model: You might not need it today, but it’s essential to discuss and keep scope for any future plans of making money out of your game. You can pen down some high level ideas like : Free to play with optional in-app purchases for customisable avatars/skins/ad revenue/passes/pay and win.

Marketing Strategy

• ✅ Logo design : Keeping Logo and name of the game with what you can sell is much more progressive to work with than choosing something complicated and then bending marketing around it. Try to keep the names/logo design which can stick with the users.
• ✅ Marketing/In-app assets : It’s equally important to focus on the game creatives/videos/content that goes into the market and In-app marketing. They should showcase the best gameplay/emotions/rewards(in any) in the familiar design language