The difference between eastern and western games of the "three in a row" genre

Our team recently prepared graphics for the Canadian game developer of the " three in a row " genre. A few days ago the game came out. I was so glad that I immediately shared this news with all of my close friends. I myself live in China.

One girl said: "But the characters are not cute at all." Then I asked her to evaluate 天天 消除, the game "three in a row" from the Chinese developer Tencent.
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“Are these characters cute?”

"Yes Yes!"

Then I explained to her that the character design in our game is suitable for a western audience, and the Korean style is more attractive for Asian women.

One glance is enough to see a clear difference between games made in the East and in the West. Let's compare a few of the most popular "three in a row" clones from Eastern and Western civilizations and look at their differences.

I am sure you are familiar with the popular western games of the genre: Candy Crush, Cookie Jam, Gummy Drop. For comparison, I first present to you the two most popular games "three in a row" in the Chinese market, made by Chinese developers.


This is 天天 爱 消除 (I love Daily Match, here I will call it Daily), created by the mobile giant Tencent.


And this is 开心 消 消 乐 (Happy Match, let's call it Happy), the developer is Happy Elements

In essence, they are the same.

Both in Asia and in the West, the games, no matter how different they are in appearance, are completely the same with gameplay, social interaction and monetization. They have the same rules: combining three or four elements, destroying jellies, using similar devices and spending real money on the purchase of “reinforcements”. Only the mechanisms of these games are configured differently for different markets.

General visual style

If you take any game, then looking at its graphic component you can already approximately guess what it is made in the USA, Russia or in Eastern Europe. In each region, artists have their own unique style. For example, look at Candy Crush, it’s really western, right?



And if we take a look at Daily and Happy, then they do not look quite Chinese. They are more like the work of Korean developers. Chinese girls are in love with Korean style: fashion, makeup, graphics and animation, whatever. Therefore, this style is well suited for this market.

More characters

Usually in puzzle games of western developers there are very few characters. For example, in Cookie Jam! there is only a cook-panda and gingerbread man.



And in Daily and Happy a whole bunch of characters, here they are on the main screen. The Chinese like a more lively style of the game, so when they localized the Cookie Jam for China, many characters were added to it. Such a design is attractive for the market.

Differences in the subject

In the West in the genre of "three in a row" sweets dominate: desserts, sweets, fruits.



But not a single reputable Chinese developer has dropped to goodies in games. Of course, in the App Store there is a lot of this, but it is either cheap crafts, or clones of other games.

The main theme of the two Chinese games can be described as "The Adventure of cute animals in the fantasy world."



In Western games of the "three in a row" genre, game figures usually have a very simple design and carefully crafted graphics. Almost all of them look like pastries, fruits, or jewels.



And in two Chinese and a whole group of Korean games "three in a row" game figures are the faces of cute animals.



Both types of design have their advantages. It seems to me that in terms of gameplay and balance of graphics, simple forms of elements are better.

Simple cards

In the Western market, we see competition in the luxury of card design.



Daily and Happy used a more pragmatic approach to card design. For example, in Happy a card endlessly climbs Jack’s beanstalk and it uses the same piece of graphics in a loop.



Although our team is constantly doing casual games, I just can not figure out this phenomenon: why do Western developers invest so much in the design of maps? The level selection map is unimportant in the gameplay and serves only for the social function ( translator's note: it shows how far your friends went on the game on Facebook ). If you know the answer, please write it in the comments!

Connect to social networks

In the West, most games ask you to log in via Facebook. In China, the most popular social networks are QQ, Wechat, Weibo.

Many western games have decently translated Chinese versions. But in most of them the blue letter f remains unchanged. Such games are mostly unsuccessful, because they have no social function: Facebook is blocked in China. I'm surprised that for many years some developers have ignored this fact.



Proper localization should be more thorough. For example, in the Chinese version of Cookie Jam, the f button is replaced with the login button for NetEase's own social network.

Music

Orchestral music is commonly used in popular Western games of the "three in a row" genre, and electronic is used in Chinese games.

Vote

If you played Candy Crush, you will not forget the bass voice, pronouncing “Sweet”. In Cookie Jam, the voice is about the same. In two Chinese games, a clear girlish voice speaks simple English words such as “Ready”, “Go”.