Mini Friday — Sulake’s phone VW
(Visited 9894 times) Game talk
Oct 022007
I learned about Mini Friday from this Guardian article today, which is perhaps misleadingly titled “why Habbo held back on a mobile world.” Misleading because, well, they have 110,000 registered users in one already!
Habbo has held back launch of its own mobile product because of concerns over data costs and the quality of the user experience on mobiles, he said.
But it looks pretty good! Very much in keeping with the pixel graphics that Habbo uses. Looks like right now, it only works on specific Nokia phones.
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The Scruffs – Quality Hidden Object Game – 2007-10-3 – Juuso – Game ProducerMini Friday — Sulake’s phone VW – 2007-10-3 – Raph Xbox 360: Pink and Blue 360 Controllers Hit Today – 2007-10-3 – Brian Crecente
With mobile games like that, the graphics aren’t as important as the ability to pause/stop the game at any moment and easy controls. If I’m playing a game on my cellphone, then I’m probably in an environment where I’m likely to be interrupted or distracted at any moment. And when you combine big fingers with tiny buttons, a comfortable control scheme is greatly appreciated.
As for graphics, though, the outlines need to be bold and the colors separated in a cellphone game. The picture above does look good, but those blue shirts might not show so well against the blue-tile floor on cheaper phones.
Funny, it hadn’t occurred to me you didn’t know about the project. If you haven’t seen it by the time we see again I’ll demo it to you, there’s some nice small UI things there I love.
One of the reasons for only supporting Nokia is the fact that mobile development is still excruciatingly difficult. Dealing with the device-specific differences such as resolution differences takes so much effort it’s insane, and packing enough graphics to the limited memory space to have a compelling looking world is next to impossible. Limiting the app to Series 60 made the development much easier.