It’s never easy to develop a mobile gaming app that matches the needs of today’s audience. As technology advances and market trends shift, mobile game development companies are continuously on their toes to keep up with the pace. The pandemic caused a huge surge in demand for mobile game applications globally and the gaming industry saw tremendous growth. Let’s go over some encouraging figures from Statista that echo with the trend:
- In 2021, revenue from mobile games is expected to reach US$109,658 million.
- Revenue is estimated to grow at a 10.02 percent annual rate (CAGR 2021-2025), resulting in a market volume of US$160,639 million by 2025.
- By 2025, the number of users in the mobile games market is estimated to reach 2,220.8 million.
- In 2021, user penetration will be 23.9 percent, with 28.5 percent projected by 2025.
User-centric development is the key to a great game app design. Your solution must pay special attention to the noise of the market and provide an exciting and fascinating game to a wide range of players.
Why is Game Design so Important to the Success of a Game?
Success can take many forms and be measured in a variety of ways, but for top game creators, a successful mobile video game means money. Names like Honor of Kings or PUBG would be at the top of the success list in this regard.
It isn’t just the art of creating a character, designing the game’s interiors, or coding all of the game’s concepts that entail a captivating game design. It extends to creating a captivating plot, game rules, physics, interaction prompts, and characters. Cuphead- Don’t Deal with the Devil (2017) became exceedingly popular although it was 2D in design just because of its unique boss levels, jazzy music, and nostalgic art style.
The Top Design Concepts for a Successful Mobile Game
While visualization and scripting are necessary for delivering outstanding game concepts, they are only tools that serve the larger design concept. So, let’s have a look at some of the most fundamental principles of game design.
- Cognitive Flow
Mobile game app development relies heavily on the psychological concept of Cognitive flow. It links a person’s skill set and task difficulty, which when combined results in various cognitive and emotional states. People become bored when their ability level is great yet the assignment is too simple. People become perturbed when their abilities are insufficient to perform a difficult task. The trick is to find the sweet spot where the game users get so immersed that the time flies away while playing the game.
Include the following characteristics in the game to achieve the perfect cognitive flow:
- Provide specific objectives and regulations that are easy to follow.
- Require acts that are within a person’s control (those that fall into their capabilities area).
- Have timely, relevant, and clear performance feedback.
- Reduce superfluous distractions to improve a person’s attention.
- Complexity & Simplicity Go hand in hand
The complexity and simplicity in game design directly arise from the cognitive flow outlined above when developing a mobile game for Android and iOS. As previously said, if a game is too easy or too difficult for a player, they will abandon it, and you will lose your audience.
To create the ideal game, you must:
- Recognize your target market: Investigate market research to gain a better understanding of your target audience’s age, education, language, and interests, among other things.
- Adapt to the circumstances: The period for mobile games is about 4-5 minutes. In comparison to their console counterparts, mobile games must have considerably simpler and shorter immediate targets and easy to follow plotlines
- Add vertical intricacy to the mix: Offer skilled players a series of levels to complete to keep them engaged in the game. Engage more capable players through more global game goals that run throughout the game but evolve with each completed level, while retaining and converting visitors through basic on-level activities and goals.
- Concentrate on a Single Functional Domain
While mobile games might be complicated in terms of levels and overall goals, they must keep things simple inside a particular functional domain to keep players interested. For instance, if you’re making a time management game, avoid an intricate layout that hinders quick clicking. When a task requires more than one ability at the same time, the entire game is at risk of conversion loss.
In the mobile game design, every item, feature, stage, game, and genre has predetermined purposes, shapes, looks, and functionalities. It’s critical to keep them consistent if you want to win the game. The Diner game, for instance, would have timed service and people coming in to order food. A bubble shooter game would include aiming to shoot and rows that would disappear once the line was completed.
Gamer reasoning and engagement are triggered by familiarity. When a person initially starts a game, they have a general notion of how it works.
- Consistent Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is a basic concept: if you want someone to repeat an action, reward them for doing so. It’s one of the most basic psychological principles, and it’s employed a lot in mobile game apps development. Daily benefits for launching a game, completing a task on a regular basis, doing a feedback survey, or watching an ad — all of these essentially free prizes encourage players to return to the game.
- Assistance & Tutorials
Consider the assistance and support materials that each player will have access to while creating a game app. You have the option to initiate the tutorial at the beginning. When the game starts, a player is given direction in the form of arrows and some supporting text. Another way to go is dry runs throughout the game. Top game app developers understand that many players learn better in a secure environment where their game progress is not jeopardized. As a result, there are several trial-run levels, goals, chores, and mini-games sprinkled throughout the game. If you don’t know if your audience prefers self-study or assisted learning, special buttons with “information,” “help,” or “read more” are a great answer as on-demand assistance.
Read More: Best Gaming Background
Conclusion
We at RV Technologies, understand that a good game design contributes to two-thirds of the commercially successful gaming apps that consumers will fall head over heels for.
Our designers, developers, and UI specialists are focused on two things: game success and client satisfaction. All of the aforementioned elements of effective mobile game design are at the heart of our game development process. We design game apps for the most popular mobile devices, models, platforms, and operating systems.
