What makes a high-Quality browser game?

Whether it is an original game made for web gaming, or one of the many fantastic games ported to our web platform, we take special care to work directly with developers to ensure their game hits all the important marks that define a best-in-class web gaming experience. What are the signs of a top quality browser game? Here’s the tl;dr: 

• Web-first Design
• Polished Presentation
• Originality and Uniqueness
• Inclusive Content

Browser-first Design

When designing for a browser, it’s worth remembering the various ways in which web games are played. Part of web gaming’s strength lies in its ability to be played by players of all ages, on all manner of devices: from horizontal desktop browsers in aspect ratio 16:9 and tablets to mobile devices in portrait. The first consideration for designing a high-quality game is a simple one: is my game’s resolution optimised to be played on a range of devices? If yes, you’re on to a strong start!

More so than any other gaming platform, browser gaming is designed around ‘instant play’. With so much choice for web games, it is crucial that waiting is kept to an absolute minimum, otherwise players are very likely to churn and play a different title. When a player clicks on your game, it needs to be optimised to load as fast as possible so that players can engage with the core gameplay as quickly as possible. Players haven’t downloaded or paid for anything, so they are not committed yet when they start playing your game. They are testing the waters, which makes the first few seconds of gameplay critical for earning their full interest.

When Stickman Hook was first added to Poki, it had a WebGL port that was 40MB and had a median loading time of 29.5 seconds. This resulted in a 50% conversion to play, meaning half of all players that clicked the thumbnail actually stayed to play; for the other half, the loading time was too long and they didn't wait for it. When Madbox made a new build in HTML5, they managed to bring the file size to 6MB instead, which brought the median loading time down to 3.7 seconds, resulting in the conversion to play going up to 72%! so the game got 22% more plays thanks to optimising the load times and making the game instant play. 

A good example of this in practice is Drive Mad by Fancade. The game immediately starts up and the action is directly in the centre of the screen, so regardless of aspect ratio it's clear to the player where they need to focus. The input method is intuitive: click/touch on the right to go right, and left to go left. Transparent arrows make this immediately clear. The first few levels are specifically designed to tell the player how the gameplay loop works, so when difficult levels arrive later the player already understands what to do and how to do it. We encourage creativity and freedom in game design, but our recommendation is that your core gameplay loops should be optimised for short player sessions. 

This philosophy also extends to monetizing your games. Poki uses mostly non-intrusive adverts in the form of Rewarded Videos, where players earn rewards for choosing to engage with the video; rewards often take the form of extra lives, customisation options and in-game currency (on a game-by-game basis). Adverts that force themselves on the player are likely to frustrate and cause the player to drop a game. 

Polished Presentation

In web gaming, capturing the player's attention is vital. While the first few seconds of gameplay may decide whether a player churns or not, a game with unpolished visuals will likely not have them click on the game at all. We’ve found that games with high visual cohesion are often a marker for a high-quality web game. Pleasant animations are also nice, but they aren’t a requirement. Rather, developers should focus on satisfying visual effects that make each click of the mouse feel good. Jump Only does a great job of this, using effects like a light trail behind the character when the sprite jumps, and debris left behind at each jump, to provide a sense of polish and satisfaction with each movement.

When it comes to art style, we’ve seen that games with bright and colorful 2D or 3D object assets tend to garner more average plays and longer term success. Games with muted color palettes, pixel art or dark colours have a harder time standing out. Consistency in the visuals is also important, ensuring everything in the game follows the same rendering style and aesthetics.

A high-quality presentation goes further than visual and audio excellence, with User Experience (UX) being hugely important too. Browser games require an easy-to-use User Interface (UI) and simple controls, with big, readable UI that presents clearly on mobile as well as desktop, and can be interacted with through keyboard or mouse or touch. Doing playtests and watching how the players interact with the game via the video recordings generated by our playtest tool can also be extremely valuable to understanding the power of clear UX. It makes the difference between testing the actual gameplay vs. testing if players understand what they have to do.

Originality & Uniqueness 

It’s no secret that the games market is saturated, although on web it's not quite as bad as on traditional platforms. To help make your browser game stand out, Poki encourages its developers to create experiences that offer fresh gameplay, or provide a creative twist on familiar mechanics. High-quality web games demonstrate a clear differentiation from others in its genre. This is especially true for trend inspired games. Implementing trends like Italian brainrot can be powerful, but they should enhance the gameplay, not just be a visual addition, to have lasting success.

Sprint League started out with a game mode based on making your character faster, but overtime the developer evolved the concept and made the game more unique, simply by adding lots of different game modes inspired by trends that made sense for his core ‘increase speed’ mechanic.
 

Diva Hair Salon was created because the developer Happylander Ltd. wanted to appeal to the trending dress-up game genre. The strength of their previous titles came from the game physics, so he thought “how can I make a physics game that’s interesting in the dress-up genre?” He played to his strengths in a creative way while following the trends at the time, and the result was a popular and fun title that was unique on Poki.

Inclusive Content 

The last quality to look for when making a polished browser game is the content of the game itself. At Poki, we highly encourage game developers to choose themes that appeal to players of all ages and backgrounds, so that games can be enjoyed by the widest possible audience. Making your title approachable and easy-to-play is important because that’s what players are looking for, but it doesn’t need to be easy to the extent that it becomes dull. A game is at its best when it is welcoming to first time players but has enough depth to offer something new for returning and experienced players. Retro Bowl by New Star Games is a great example, with a very deep gameplay loop but the core game itself is easy to play and a great simplification of American Football mechanics. In-depth games like Retro Bowl are just as important to Poki’s audience as quick and accessible games like SnapStyle Dress-up are. 

If you’re a developer looking to bring your game to browsers, reach out to us today, and we can help you on the journey to making a high-quality browser game!