My Aztec Kingdom for a Roman Rescue. Beating a Dead Horse while Clearing the Roads
Posted by admin on May 9, 2011 under Game Giants, New Games | 
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If there is one thing we don’t like about casual games it is the lack of innovation from casual game developers. If developers see that one of their games or one of another developer is a hit, they immediately run out to copy it. Sure they tweak the settings a bit, change the characters and wrap it in a thin storyline but for the most part the game-play itself is almost the same as the previous hit.
The older hit time management games got away with this and did not hurt the end user experience by making the game-play different enough for a player not to notice. Games like Diner Dash were different enough from Dairy Dash and Dairy Dash was different enough from Sally’s Salon. In Diner Dash you waited tables in a restaurant, Dairy Dash you planted crops and raised animals and in Sally’s Salon you cut hair and tended to the beauty needs of customers. Each game was unique in it’s own way. Times were better for developers then games were selling for $19.99 a pop, and there was no such thing as the iphone or the ipad. However, that is no excuse for the state of “road clearing” time management games today.
Today we see an endless flow of copies of the clear the road, build some buildings, gather some stuff. travel to the next level type of game typified by the My Kingdom for the Princess genre. After the great reception My Kingdom for the Princess received, an endless flow of copies have followed: Roads to Rome, My Kingdom for the Princess 2, Timebuilders Pyramid Rising, Aztec New Land Tribe and Rescue Team. From their titles you can tell the developers tried to set their game apart by changing the time period that the game is set in. The problem is the game-play in each of these games is exactly the same.
In the older Diner Dash you would seat customers in a diner, take their orders and deliver the food. This is a lot different from feeding chickens and goats, and planting and harvesting crops in Dairy Dash. In My Kingdom for a Princess and all the following games listed above, there is no such variety. In all the games you first start out by clearing the roads of debris or trees, then you gather food, you then build a resource generator (almost universally a sawmill) fix some bridges, maybe build a house or two and then advance to the next level.
We have one message for the developers of these games: STOP! We have seen enough. Try something new or innovative! For potential buyers, pick one from our list above that interests you play it, and never open your wallet again for this type of game! They are all the same.
