Game Digest #3: Homescapes + My home- Design dream+ Matchington Mansion (Part1)
There have been some delays with my Newsletter due to the whole craziness with my flight booking situation. Originally my flight back to China was in March but it has been cancelled multiple times up until June. The Civil Aviation Administration of China has strengthened its flight control from US to China since March and will continue to do so through October. Can you imagine one weekly flight per airline till the end of October, not to mention only five Chinese airlines are allowed to operate the international flights to China? I never imagined that buying a flight ticket back to China would become such a luxury. So I have been on all different flight booking platforms, studying all the routes through different countries going back to China. I believe I’m on my way to become a travel agent already! If there are any other jobs I’m qualified for, a travel agent is definitely now a viable backup career!
Coming back to gaming, I want to write about match3 hybrid games this week. Match3 hybrid is nothing new, but has been mainstream since Playrix first published Gardenscapes in 2016. A majority of the players are female, which is a growing player base with strong purchase power. Multiple other match3 hybrid games have been published over time and I picked three match3 hybrid games. These titles have been out for a while, but their growth is still steady and strong.
Homescapes (first published in September 2017, over 300 million downloads, revenue $881 million)
My home - Design dream (first published in August 2018, over 100 million downloads, revenue $32 million)
Matchington Mansion (first published in June 2017, over 100 million downloads, revenue $254 million)
Unified Downloads from 2017/7 - 2020/5
Unified DAU from 2017/7 - 2020/5
I have been playing these three games for a while now, and the longest one is Playrix Homescapes (been playing for three years now). These games are perfect to play especially during a long haul flight, when there is no internet connection but still allows you to feel connected with the game world. Match3 games are usually considered casual but the metagame in the game play makes it more midcore, like simulation or customization games. That may also explain why a majority of its revenue comes from IAP rather than ads.
Mechanics:
Core Gameplay
The core gameplay is still match3. There are three basic elements that exist in all match3 games: basic tiles, boosters and blockers.
The basic mechanics is to swap tiles to create matches and boosters to blow away the blockers. To pass through each level, the goals are to either collect a certain number of basic tiles, or special tiles like blockers.
As we can see from below, for all these games, each has 5 basic elements per level (My home has 6 basic elements but only 5 will be used each time). And from a more friendly UX/UI design perspective, both shapes and colors are distinct from each other. Nevertheless, the color will also match with its shape: like heart- red, leaf- green, star- yellow, etc.
There are three types of boosters based on where they show up: headstart boosters, basic boosters (from combinations in the game), and in-game boosters. The headstart boosters can only be added once while in-game boosters can be purchased and used multiple times in the middle of the game. From what we can see in the comparison table below, they are pretty much similar except for one thing. Both Homescapes and My home have boosters (like airplane or missile) which can fly to a random spot on the map to clear the tile while Matchington Mansion doesn’t have one. In Homescapes and My home, players can combine airplanes or missiles to fly to the harder-to-get corners. For Machinton Mansion, since there is no flight option, the map is designed to be more cohesive so it is easier to explode it from adjacent tiles.
The design mechanics are directly related to the game feel. Homescapes and My home focus players on solving puzzles while Matchington gives players more pleasure from explosive actions. I find playing that both Homescapes and My Home require more strategic planning while playing Matchington is more intuitive.
There is one special booster in My home which doesn’t exist in the other two, which is the power meter. It charges when there is a booster, and will set out a missile when it’s fully charged. This makes the game easier in general compared to the other two.
The detailed comparisons are as follows.
For the blockers part, the form above is not complete yet. In the beginning, a new form of blocker will show up after 4-5 levels. After certain levels, it will show up less frequently, like every 10 - 20 levels. For example, My home introduced 10 blockers in the first 25 levels, and after that new blocker shows up in level 35, 52, 62, 74, 84 and 96. The introduction of new blockers will pace the game progress and keep getting players to new challenges.
Though they are shown in different forms in games, there are some basic types that could be found in all match-3 games:
Simple blockers that could be moved and cleared by elements next to it.
Blockers that could not be moved around and cleared by elements next to it.
Blockers that could be moved and only cleared by explosive boosters.
Lead the blocker to the end of column to clear it.
Clear the elements in the tile to clear it
More complex ones like clear the blocker with the same color next to it or collect a certain amount of the same color tiles.
Advanced ones with a timer, so need to clear in certain steps otherwise the level is failed.
In each level, there might be different combinations of blockers. Here are some examples from My Home:
Wooden box, can, ceramic tiles
Ceramic tiles, balloon, rope
Wooden box, ceramic tiles, can
Carpet, honey spoon, rolled carpet
Cake, rope, rolled carpet
ceramic tiles, wooden box, honey spoon
Wooden box, pool tube, ceramic tiles
Cake, golden spoon, ice cube, energy bomb
Ice cube, carpet, pool tube
ceramic tiles, ice cube, wooden box, honey spoon
Pool tube, cake, wooden box, ice cube
Ceramic tiles, cake
Wooden box, carpet
Golden spoon, cake, ice cube, rope, power bomb
Ice cube, rope, power cube, carpet, balloon
Fluffy toy, wooden box, can, power bomb
Fluffy toy, wooden box, ceramic tiles
Though the example only demonstrates some combinations in My Home, I have observed the same pattern with the other two match3 hybrid games. There is a maximum of 4 blockers shown in one level, and one basic blocker could combine with another blocker in one tile (like wooden box + rope) to increase the difficulty to clear the tile.
Except for the complexity of blockers, the level progression could also be achieved by less combinations of available moves or starting number of moves. For example, level 534 from Homescapes, half of the maps are blocked in the beginning and there are only three combinations in the map.
Homescapes (Level 534)
My home - Design dream (Level 108)
Matchington Town (Level 609)