Z-axis in Chain Popper Games

The causal gaming genre is dominated by games that the industry calls "chain-poppers." These games include Luxor, Zuma Deluxe, Lotus Deluxe, Dynasty and Sweetopia. Each game adds something unique to the category. The basic mechanic is to fire a ball at a rapidly moving chain of balls. If the ball matches two or more balls of the same color you explode that part of the chain.

The major obstacle is time. The balls are constantly moving towards a "bad event." In Sweetopia its the collision of two powerful candies. My job is to prevent them from colliding by clearing the chain. See picture.

These games are pretty addictive. What makes them so is perhaps a nice risk/reward mechanice, or z-axis that is baked right into the core of the game. Let's take a look at each game.

Z-axis in Zuma Deluxe
The risk/reward tradeoff that brings out the z-axis in Zuma is the chaining feature. If I chain enough balls in Zuma I can fill up my Zuma meter and have all the balls pushed back, ultimately buying me more time. To do that I have to risk the time it would take to setup a string of matches. Play Zuma Deluxe >

Z-axis in Lotus Deluxe
This one could have been stronger. Essentually this is a chain matching game, not a pure "popper" in which you match the patterns of flowers. Lotus didn't have a reward meter that filled up. If you made a chain of matches you would get multiplier points. However the most risk reward scenario I faced was in look at this random flowers that would pop up. The flowers were subtely disruptve. Because you had to stop your scan of the chain to look at the surprise. As a reward, sometimes that surprise flower would help you with a match in your chain. Play Lotus Deluxe >

Z-axis in Dynasty
Dyansty is a chain matching game where the player flies as a dragon swapping balls in the chain with whatever is in its mouth. It is an innovation and it forces you to think differently. The risk reward tradeoff was the same as many of the afore mentioned games. You could set off this dragon events that could help you clear faster. Interesting disrupter in this game was the blue dragon that would set off a shower of coins. You could get caught up in the greed of collecting coins and miss your match. Another interesting innovation is a recovery reward. If you come close to losing and recover some ground, the game rewards you verbally and by pushing back your chain. It's an improvement over Zuma's near impossble recovery gameplay. And it possibly points to a way to acknowledge the player's prowess. I like the feature. Knowing me I would begin to risk near death to buy more time to setup a chain. That's an extreme Z-axis. Play Dynasty >

Z-axis in Sweetopia
Sweetopia like the others has a z-axis where you risk time to setup a better chain. However Sweetopia is different. Sweetopia's top innovative features are: teleporting, pinball, and varying size/distance of the balls. As well it has interesting disruptors like a canon that shoots items at the chain. Interestingly the most innovative feature, the pinball had a muted z-axis. The game gave you the abilty to bounce balls off walls. However if your aim was off, you suffered. If you succeeded, you could reach inaccesible parts of the chain at times. Usually the reward never outweighed the risk so you could play most of the game without using the walls. A way to deal wth that might have been through level design which trained you to use the walls, making targeting easier or aiming at a weakness in a candy canon. For the risky features that requre more skill, there should be a bigger payoff. Play Sweetopia >

Risk/reward scenarios add meaningful gameplay and are accentuated by interesting disruptors that make our play both a greedy delight and an adventure.