Racing vs. Strategy vs. Puzzle

During the past several weeks I made intense play tests of the two games - Rebel Racing and Frozen City. I love both genres (racing and strategy) but for me personally it was a bit unusual to spend so many hours playing those games because I’m usually into puzzle games. Saying that - I designed my first mechanical puzzle when I was 8 years old and that puzzle is still in the stores. For the past 8+ years I actively design puzzle games, co-run PuzzleMove company and work with some cool game studios like Rovio, Zynga or Outplay to name a few.

So, both games (Rebel Racing and Frozen City) are top games in their genres. They could be easily seen as the best examples on the market if you want to race cool cars or build economies. Without doubt it took a while to build each game, polish graphics and develop all connections to make them as engaging as they are now.

Here is the catch - why are such games still trailing much behind the Puzzle genre? I’m pretty biased to “puzzles” for sure, but last week I specifically tried to understand what’s the issue with such games and why they can’t reach top10 in the App Store.

In Rebel Racing I own 7 cars, reached level 42 and have $1M+ on account. Pretty good, yeah. To understand it better - to get a new car it takes a good period of time to race many competitions and tracks. And here is the issue - in order to race new tracks and explore new places I must get a new 8th car, which is a paid option. My freemium experience stopped immediately. For sure I can race existing tracks using my current cars, which I did many times, but it’s very repetitive and boring already for me…

In Frozen City I’m on the 7th city now - I have 1K+ diamonds and unlocked 19 heroes (5 left to unlock). Main fun of the game are events - special 3-days challenge in a new place with new elements, and all is a competition between players. And here is the issue - I have played several events already and the current event is the same as the first time. What?! And my engagement with the game sharply went down. Main parts of the game progression (main cities) are ok, but they aren’t so fun and dynamic as events and the main progression doesn’t have a competition component.

That’s about Racing and Strategy games. What about Puzzle games? Today you may find 2 puzzle games in the top10 free games chart. Moreover and more importantly is that there are always several puzzle games in the top10 charts for the past 10+ years. Actually since 2009 when the App Store started. Why?

Content. One-word answer. High quality, new, regularly and constantly.

1. Quality: team of dozens of designers, artists, devs etc. is working daily to ensure best quality or new puzzles and features.
2. New: original and fun puzzles along with mechanics and features is the biggest single engaging component of the puzzle game.
3. Regularly: new content is usually live each week or each second week in top puzzle games.
4. Constantly: biggest puzzle games exist on the market for 5+ years with constant growth of their content. Some games today have 10+ thousands puzzles.

That’s 4 main rules of a hyper successful puzzle game today.

BTW you may find this magic key “Content” in public reports from the puzzle studios which proves dominance of the Puzzle genre today to for many years to come.