This Sunday my game company, Skotos Tech, released its third mobile game for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad: Reiner Knizia’s Kingdoms. It follows on the heels of our previous releases, Reiner Knizia’s High Society and Reiner Knizia’s Money. All told, I’ve spent some goodly portion of my last year’s work on these three games (and the MobileEuroGame toolkit I’ve been creating, which is making it easier and easier to create new games as I go along). Along the way I’ve learned some useful lessons about choosing which games to adapt to mobile devices, and I’ve decided to talk about that this week.
For me, it’s a contrast between Reiner Knizia’s Kingdoms and Reiner Knizia’s Money — both of which I play obsessively myself — and Reiner Knizia’s High Society — which I think has as good of Artificial Intelligence and User Interface as any of our games and which I think plays well, but which doesn’t quite generate the same spark for continuous play for myself.
Five Points for Great Mobile Games
Why? Here are my best guesses at five elements that make for great mobile gaming:
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