Inspirational (or just fun) games

General (non-technical) Off-Topic
#1

I’m becoming more and more annoyed with how difficult it is to actually find good content in the app store right now. The algorithms are focused on showcasing the games that make Google the most money and for some reason those seem to be the kinds of games that have a target audience of 12 year olds who just want pretty colours and unicorns. Not what I look for in a game myself.

So I figured it might be interesting to see what other Corona developers are playing in their spare time.

Please don’t just post your own games here, this isn’t a marketing thread. I want to see what you’re playing for inspiration, or just because it’s genuinely fun. I’m mostly interested in games that could realistically be replicated in Corona, so I’m pretty much only expecting 2D phone games rather than the likes of Witcher 3.

So, what are you hooked on at the moment?

I’ll start the list with Atomas ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sirnic.atomas ). It’s a simple idea but very well made, although the menu navigation is a bit unintuitive. I can’t imagine the monetisation method works though… It’s just an IAP that lets you clear half the board if you’re about to hit the end game, but I’ve never gotten to the end and thought “oh shucks, if only I could continue…”.

#2

There are four games on my phone that I haven’t deleted since I first bought an iPhone. Everything else I’ve gotten rid of at some point or another.

Games like Tiny Wings (one of the original classic hits for iOS), Monument Valley, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and SuperHexagon are artistic, enjoyable and fair (with your time and your money). Apart from those, I usually just try out the newest things on the app stores quick and then stick to playing PC games :stuck_out_tongue:

All of these four aforementioned games can be replicated in Corona, but being able to create one as good as them will take a lot of talent and effort.

#3

Richard,

Nice topic. That Atomas, does look well made. Simple design but a very good clean design, I have not played that one.

I don’t spend a lot of time playing the games, since I am so far behind my production goals and deadlines… but a few I did spend a little time playing were

‘My Bowling 3D’,

‘Banana Kong’  ( platform scroller )

I could get hooked on either of them.

#4

I generally can’t stand the F2P model (if the IAP is anything but a pay once activation of the game and/or to remove ads) so I typically try to find quality “premium” titles which is really hard as there’s no way to filter out crap that offers up to $99.99 IAP.

  • Game Dev Tycoon (the PC port) is pretty good but of course also many Kairosoft games and their GameDev Story which was the inspiration for GDTycoon.
  • I also enjoyed Pocket City quite a bit - it’s pretty easy but given it’s pay once it’s dev could focus on fun instead of tricking users into buying stopwatch shortcuts.
  • Layton’s Mystery Journey is also very good value for the money (as are the other available Layton games, but I’ve played those years ago on the NDS already).
  • As already mentioned, the Monument Valley games are great.
  • Project Highrise is probably great - played it on the PC so I have no direct experience wrt to the UI on mobiles.
  • I played the first two Lifeline games - great idea and fun if you want a game to play a few minutes every now and then.
  • 9th dawn RPG, initially doesn’t look that great but it’s gameloop somehow just works very well. Only played it once when I couldn’t sleep but then I kept playing through the whole night.
  • Rusty Lake Hotel - it’s a kind of Room Escape/HO Adventure alike game with a morbid style/setting and a relative unique look. I expect the other Rusty Lake games to be of a similar quality.
  • Linelight - hard to describe but it’s a kind of a skillbased puzzle game with a unique (to me) mechanic, great look and actually a huge amount of content/puzzles.
  • Framed - puzzle game in a comic style, you literally solve the puzzles by sorting the scenes in the correct order - again a great/unique idea
  • Leo’s Fortune - pretty old classic but with fantastic production values, even by todays standards.

That’s a few that came to my mind/are installed on my devices atm.

#5

Great suggestions, thanks. I probably won’t check everything out myself but hopefully this thread will become useful to us all for inspirational content =).

I think I’m over it now, but I was a little obsessed with tycoon clicker games for a while. Egg Inc ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.auxbrain.egginc ) is a really good one and built by a single indie dev. Codigames have a bunch of good ones too, but their monetisation model annoys me - very much requires that you sit through endless numbers of adverts to progress at a reasonable pace.

Lemmings ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sadpuppy.lemmings ) had me hooked for a while too. A brilliantly reconceptualised remake that actually works well for mobile without being too different to the original.

#6

Ah Lemmings, what a great game it was back then … may I ask what the IAP are used for?

Without installing it I really fear what they’ve done the the game and balance just reading that there’s a 99.99€ IAP available which, to me, in a sane world makes no sense at all.

#7

I tend to have a very low patience level when it comes to gaming these days.  I currently only have 3 games on my iPhone.

  • It’s Not Rocket Science - by our very own @GrahamRanson.  Incredibly simple game with only one control.  Exactly the kind of game that I like.  
  • Word Chums - A rip off of Words With Friends.  I only play it against my wife, and if I’m honest It’s starting to p me off a bit as they seem to have increased the rate that adverts now appear.
  • Sudoku - Not sure who it’s by as I don’t have my phone with me, but it’s free with no adverts.

There have been lots of other games that I’ve installed, played a few times and then uninstalled.   

#8

It’s been a while since I played it now, but I think the IAP’s in Lemmings were just for eggs. Basically you earn points playing the levels and can spend those points on eggs, which you hatch into collectable Lemmings. They serve no real purpose but I guess some people just have more money than sense and are willing to pay large sums for a few extra sprites!

Definitely worth a download anyway. I’m not usually a fan of new dev teams taking on an original brand and remastering it, but honestly they’ve nailed turning Lemmings into a mobile game.

#9

This could be a bad thing to admit here, but about the only thing I’m playing these days is Fortnite on a PS4. I occasionally fire up Sphere Games Studio’s “Merge City” (a Corona app!) on my iPad. We’ve started playing a little D&D 5e on the table top recently as well.

My life is so busy, I don’t know which way is up. I’ve had to create a personal Kanban board at home… No time to play. One of the biggest issues, getting back to Richard’s OP is it takes too much time to find anything to play in the mobile world. 

I was thinking about trying to make an idle clicker, and I downloaded probably a dozen examples and felt they were all pretty bad (SGS’s Merge City is quite good btw!).

Maybe I should refocus on Unicorns and pretty colors…

Rob

#10

Haha, brilliantly honest. There’s definitely a very fine line though as a developer between wasting your time on a game and actually playing something as part of the career. I mean, if none of us spent any time at all playing other developers games, what the hell would we end up producing?

#11

I’m from a different era than most people here and it definitely jades my idea about what is good and what isn’t. I grew up in an era of text games played on the school’s mainframe or machines that sucked quarters out of your pocket. Two of my favorites were Tempest which had spinning wheel/dial for a controller and bad things radiated out of the center and you had to blast them before they got to the edge. The other was Missile Command which was played with a trackball and 3 buttons. Pop the Lock was a great mobile game. And as sad as my other comments Candy Crush Saga was a big time consumer too. I’m not that ancient (in my mind at least). Still Fortnite fits my current gaming style. Drop in, play for 15 min, maybe complete a challenge. Epic does a good job of keeping it fresh without an involved storyline that I have to try and remember. This week they are even doing a cross-over with Borderlands. An area of the map has been done in cel shading and with buildings and objects in that art style complete with Claptrap! And I think that art style rocks. Still it’s not conducive to helping conceive that next killer mobile title!

#12

Let’s be brutally honest. :smiley:

It doesn’t really matter what games someone plays as long as they are enjoying it.

#13

I remember Tempest. We had it on the MSX or Spectrum or something… not sure now, but either way it was after the arcade machine era. I’m a tad too young for that myself but often feel I’d have been more at home growing up in that period. Those early programmers became my role models and as a procedural coder who likes to build things my way instead of using existing frameworks, I’d have thrived being among those early innovators.

Instead I live in a time where AAA studios would only be interested in me as a tool developer, and it’d be the game ‘programmers’ using my tools that take all the credit. Sad.

That’s why I like Corona though. It’s perfectly reminiscent of those procedural days, coding with nothing more than a keyboard and a basic instruction set, but it’s not actually that basic and restrictive. The simulator, the built in graphic libraries, the cross platform compiling, etc - all of the modern day goodness without losing that proper traditional programming methodology. Brilliant.

#14

There are four games on my phone that I haven’t deleted since I first bought an iPhone. Everything else I’ve gotten rid of at some point or another.

Games like Tiny Wings (one of the original classic hits for iOS), Monument Valley, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP and SuperHexagon are artistic, enjoyable and fair (with your time and your money). Apart from those, I usually just try out the newest things on the app stores quick and then stick to playing PC games :stuck_out_tongue:

All of these four aforementioned games can be replicated in Corona, but being able to create one as good as them will take a lot of talent and effort.

#15

Richard,

Nice topic. That Atomas, does look well made. Simple design but a very good clean design, I have not played that one.

I don’t spend a lot of time playing the games, since I am so far behind my production goals and deadlines… but a few I did spend a little time playing were

‘My Bowling 3D’,

‘Banana Kong’  ( platform scroller )

I could get hooked on either of them.

#16

I generally can’t stand the F2P model (if the IAP is anything but a pay once activation of the game and/or to remove ads) so I typically try to find quality “premium” titles which is really hard as there’s no way to filter out crap that offers up to $99.99 IAP.

  • Game Dev Tycoon (the PC port) is pretty good but of course also many Kairosoft games and their GameDev Story which was the inspiration for GDTycoon.
  • I also enjoyed Pocket City quite a bit - it’s pretty easy but given it’s pay once it’s dev could focus on fun instead of tricking users into buying stopwatch shortcuts.
  • Layton’s Mystery Journey is also very good value for the money (as are the other available Layton games, but I’ve played those years ago on the NDS already).
  • As already mentioned, the Monument Valley games are great.
  • Project Highrise is probably great - played it on the PC so I have no direct experience wrt to the UI on mobiles.
  • I played the first two Lifeline games - great idea and fun if you want a game to play a few minutes every now and then.
  • 9th dawn RPG, initially doesn’t look that great but it’s gameloop somehow just works very well. Only played it once when I couldn’t sleep but then I kept playing through the whole night.
  • Rusty Lake Hotel - it’s a kind of Room Escape/HO Adventure alike game with a morbid style/setting and a relative unique look. I expect the other Rusty Lake games to be of a similar quality.
  • Linelight - hard to describe but it’s a kind of a skillbased puzzle game with a unique (to me) mechanic, great look and actually a huge amount of content/puzzles.
  • Framed - puzzle game in a comic style, you literally solve the puzzles by sorting the scenes in the correct order - again a great/unique idea
  • Leo’s Fortune - pretty old classic but with fantastic production values, even by todays standards.

That’s a few that came to my mind/are installed on my devices atm.

#17

Great suggestions, thanks. I probably won’t check everything out myself but hopefully this thread will become useful to us all for inspirational content =).

I think I’m over it now, but I was a little obsessed with tycoon clicker games for a while. Egg Inc ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.auxbrain.egginc ) is a really good one and built by a single indie dev. Codigames have a bunch of good ones too, but their monetisation model annoys me - very much requires that you sit through endless numbers of adverts to progress at a reasonable pace.

Lemmings ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sadpuppy.lemmings ) had me hooked for a while too. A brilliantly reconceptualised remake that actually works well for mobile without being too different to the original.

#18

Ah Lemmings, what a great game it was back then … may I ask what the IAP are used for?

Without installing it I really fear what they’ve done the the game and balance just reading that there’s a 99.99€ IAP available which, to me, in a sane world makes no sense at all.

#19

I tend to have a very low patience level when it comes to gaming these days.  I currently only have 3 games on my iPhone.

  • It’s Not Rocket Science - by our very own @GrahamRanson.  Incredibly simple game with only one control.  Exactly the kind of game that I like.  
  • Word Chums - A rip off of Words With Friends.  I only play it against my wife, and if I’m honest It’s starting to p me off a bit as they seem to have increased the rate that adverts now appear.
  • Sudoku - Not sure who it’s by as I don’t have my phone with me, but it’s free with no adverts.

There have been lots of other games that I’ve installed, played a few times and then uninstalled.   

#20

It’s been a while since I played it now, but I think the IAP’s in Lemmings were just for eggs. Basically you earn points playing the levels and can spend those points on eggs, which you hatch into collectable Lemmings. They serve no real purpose but I guess some people just have more money than sense and are willing to pay large sums for a few extra sprites!

Definitely worth a download anyway. I’m not usually a fan of new dev teams taking on an original brand and remastering it, but honestly they’ve nailed turning Lemmings into a mobile game.