admin 
30, August |
A recent series of games that have become very popular are the games of the 10 gnomes series(10 Gnomes 7 features at left). This game series is a series of find the objects hidden on the map. In this case, find the 10 small gnomes hidden in a given environment. There are 8 games in this series and I have no doubt that more will be made due to their success. |
Even though these games are well-made and fairly fun to play, I still do not get the series’ runaway success. There isn’t too much differentiating them from most ’search the map and find objects” type games, yet they have done so much better than average. It could be because it was made into a 8-game series with each game being in a different environment. Since each game was pretty good, the popularity just spread from there. The style of the environment may have also contributed to the success of the series as a whole as most of the environments have a throwback feel of an old black and white photograph. I can’t explain why, but this kind of environment appeals to me a lot more than most.
There are some other things about the series too that make it a little better than most point and clicks. There are more click-able areas on the map where you can enlarge to find gnomes. There are also some hidden areas which you can find and some that you must find to find gnomes. I’ve heard from some people that they just like to explore the environment. I’ve also heard from some that the environments have more than 10 gnomes and the real challenge is to find them all. However, I still think that the major draw is that it is an ongoing series and if a player comes in at the 5th game, he’ll want to try the first four as well. Every game being suitable for casual play also boosts this game’s popularity a lot.
If there’s anything a flash developer can learn from 10 Gnomes is that when you’ve got a decent game, don’t change a winning formula, just change the background and tweak the game-play a little and you can keep producing many winning games based entirely around the first game.
In case your looking for a walk-through the episode 7, one can be found Here