I poked a hamster and now I want to earn money by making games
It was 2024, game developers continued to release new, addictive mechanics and had already reached the point where they began sharing profits with players. Isn't this the future we deserve?
How to develop your own gameswhen you can't do anything, and how to make money from them, I already wrote, but the appearance of a new hit pushed me to continue the topic of “making money from games” in new realities. And in fact, after writing the previous materials, a lot has changed… My friends, about whom I wrote earlier, went into a more profitable business and began to make money on marketplaces, coffee shops were turned into bakeries, and instead of growing and selling tulips, they began to produce decorative stone from gypsum and that’s it this is in order to increase your income and diversify your profits. Someone has invested in crypto and changes cars every season, and with the advent of “hamsters”, everyone has already made a fortune and, of course, is thinking about how to repeat this successful idea and become the first to do it.
If you are trying to find sarcasm in the last paragraph, then I assure you that there is none, and many of my acquaintances and friends often turn to me for advice on creating games, and this frequency depends on the emergence of new means of making money and “hype” topics on the Internet. Remember NFTs? When everyone started talking about it, several of my friends seriously bought themselves a couple of masterpieces of digital art or domain names for a future startup. I think you already know about Bitcoin. Neural networks have replaced everything for us and this requires no explanation. But with the advent of the hamster clicker, in which you manage your crypto exchange, the world seems to have turned upside down.
Lyrics are lyrics and let's move closer to the point and forget about these “fluffy” creatures for a while, not forgetting to turn on the passive income function in the game while you dive into the topic of this material while distracting yourself from making money on your phone.
The fact is that I am a game designer and have been developing games for more than ten years. And when another toy, IT product or service “goes off” in the world, many turn to me for advice and seriously suggest that we start creating a clone or “killer” of the original hit as quickly as possible. People ask for advice on what the future game should be and, of course, how to make it faster and earn money. And if you missed previous publications and you are still interested in the opportunity to create your own game, then below I will share with you several new ideas for simple mechanics and even tutorials on how to create them.
And besides the ideas, I will give you a few more key, and in my opinion, the most important tips, and the first one is the simplest: subscribe to my channel on Telegram. There I have collected thousands of useful links for game developers and in it you can learn more about game creation, game design and monetization.
The second piece of advice is more important: just take it and start making a game! And this advice may seem very funny to you, since it can no longer be called “banal”, but it really is the most important… start making a game the same way you started “poking” a picture in a crypto game and you everything will work out!
The third and final tip will be at the end of this article and let's move on to specific ideas and mechanics for your future games.
Clickers, tappers and idle games
Since we started with hamsters, we will first consider one of the simplest mechanics for your future games – these will be clickers, which have existed for decades, still remain popular and even “shoot.”
There are many examples of such games, and if you haven’t heard of other sensational hits, here are a few of them:
Back in 2013, the game Cookie Clicker appeared, and all you had to do in this game was “click” on a cookie, get coins and improve your earnings parameters.
Even earlier, in 2010, Ian Bogost created the “tapalka” with stunning success. The game was published in the popular American social network. network and was called Cow Clicker. And here again the name speaks for itself, but the mechanics of the game were as simple as three kopecks. You had to “click” on the cow and could do this once a day. Sounds crazy? But the game was a success! And monetization was based on the fact that you could buy additional “clicks” for money or invite friends so that they would also “poke” your cow and thus the game would gain virality.
Later, Tap Titans appeared, a clone of another successful “clicker” game, Clicker Heroes, but the developers were able to find success only from the second part and the game mechanics were more complex and contained RPG elements. If the first one found success on mobile platforms, then the second and original game was popular on computers.
What is the success of such games, I think you can guess – they are addictive with their simplicity, endless animations and the ability to generate income through constantly growing numbers… even if only in the game. By earning coins, you can buy upgrades and this is another important and addictive mechanic that creates a feeling of progress and growth for you.
And in order not to be unfounded, I will tell you that even a child can develop such games and no special programming knowledge is required for this. And here are the tutorials that I promised: you can try your clicker in Unity is a popular engine or program (in simple words) for creating games. And if you love healthy food and open source engines, then here's an example for you Clicker on Godot and there is nothing complicated about it either.
Over the past ten years, many games have been released with “clicker”, “tapping” or idle mechanics, and over time they have developed and become more complex. They introduced new mechanics to keep players from getting bored, and the original mechanics leaned more towards resetting the player's progress for the sake of getting huge income multipliers or boiling down to you getting passive income. But using the examples of the most sensational game of this year, you can understand that a very simple “scheme” also works, in which you ask the player to click on the screen to receive future money.
Word puzzles
In the last section I gave examples of other people's success stories, but the next genre is based on more intriguing principles and includes all games in which you can form words in different ways and mechanics similar to a crossword puzzle.
I think you know a lot of word games and it’s hard for me to imagine a person who has not heard of the existence of such games and therefore, I will devote this section to numbers and analytics:
Wordscapes is the most popular word game on mobile devices and its lifetime revenues exceed $200,000,000, with hundreds of millions of installs. Isn't this an argument for considering similar games popular and interesting for players?
Newzoo Report 2023* – shows a very interesting fact that such games make money from advertising, and their gap in terms of monetization from games of other genres is very large. And if you consider that the way to make money from advertising in games is much simpler and cheaper than earning income from in-app, then developing games of this genre will be a good and most importantly “proven” choice for you.
*… the link is available only to owners of a private network connection.
To reduce all risks in the operation and development of a future game, it is better to focus on statistics and data and like the report above, I have seen many other reports that indicate that word puzzles will perform higher than similar and simple games that you you can do it.
Here one more examplewhich shows that Retention* for games with words will be higher and this is another confirmation that it’s worth taking a closer look at them.
*… this metric shows the percentage of users who return to your game and the higher it is, the better.
Well, I won’t hide the fact that I myself make money from games of this genre (click to see) and found that it was much simpler and confirmed everything I saw in the reports. I'm not particularly good at programming, but I was able to create the game shown in the link above without any problems or help, and it took me about a month (considering that I spent a couple of hours in the evenings and weekends).
In my opinion, the “magical” component of the success of such games is that they are time-tested and contain very simple, understandable and familiar principles and belong to the “classic” games. And if you don’t like the idea of creating a game with words, then you can consider other games from this “classic” category: mahjong, solitaire, backgammon, dominoes, quizzes, etc….
Shapes, colors and blocks
Games from this conventional genre are more difficult to develop, but they should not be overlooked, since they are also incredibly popular, and doing something “unpopular” carries big risks!
We won’t stop here for a long time and many of the games should be familiar to you. This includes: Tetris, three in a row, blocks and everything that uses shapes painted in a few of the simplest colors in the basic mechanics, as in the picture above.
And to understand that not only mere “mortals” dream of creating popular games and clone everything that “flies” to the top in order to make money, here are examples of large corporations:
PlayStudios, which is known for the cult game “Tetris,” recently copied the successful game “Block Blast” and was not at all shy about doing it. But even more amusing is the fact that the modern hit about blocks is advertised more and better than the well-known Tetris and its advertising is often shown in PlayStudios games and overlaps search queries for Tetris and the clone game.
The New York Times often copies well-known mechanics in its “game” application, but Wordle was more respectful and simply bought it from the developers for a seven-figure sum.
Well, you have identified hundreds of Homescapes or Minecraft clones without me – they appeared both from large companies and from indie developers and individuals.
The only and last thing worth knowing about the games from this section is that they require originality and large budgets for promotion, and if you decide to create such games, then think ten (or better yet twenty) times before you start developing them !
Hypercasual and simple
This section is a slight continuation of the previous one, but contains examples of games from simpler genres, which are usually called “hyper-casual”.
Most likely, you are also familiar with similar games and you may have seen them in advertising and they contain very simple mechanics. For example: coloring a picture by numbers, analyzing figures by unscrewing bolts, or drawing hidden parts in a picture. There are many clones of similar games coming out, and the main thing for them is that they have a very distinct and unique part. Those. if you're making a clone of a 2D paint-by-numbers game (in a world where there are no other clones), then make your game in 3D and change its visual style as much as you can.
Take a closer look at these games if it’s difficult for you to make Tetris or Match-3, but please don’t forget to find very original and unusual mechanics, which will also help you advance.
Simulators
In fact, this genre is somewhat similar to clickers and they are its simplified mechanics, but if you want to make the game more serious than a banal “tapper”, then you should take a closer look at simulators of various mechanics from life.
The main goal of simulators is to recreate something in a game and do it with maximum accuracy. It could be a simulator of a supermarket, hospital or construction and anything else that comes to your mind. One of the advantages is that when creating a simulator, you can draw on a favorite topic, area of expertise, or even a business you have and create, for example, a coffee shop simulator. Or you can stand out from the rest and make a simulator with crazy mechanics that will miraculously go viral on social networks, like these few examples:
Octodad: Dadliest Catch is a life simulator of a humanoid octopus in which you have to control each of its tentacles in a very physical world. Just watch YouTube videos of this game if you haven't to see how much fun it can be. And this category includes simulators of goats, wolves and other animals, which have collected millions of views and installations.
Farming Simulator is simply a masterpiece and a game that can truly relax you and take you away from the hustle and bustle of the city. At the same time, at the beginning of development the game remained unnoticed, but over time it gained success and similar games also include a simulator of a truck driver, bus driver or parking attendant.
Car Mechanic Simulator and House Flipper are excellent indicators that the target audience in games is not limited to simple mechanics like “three in a row” and games can be complex and “routine” and are well received by different players.
There are thousands (if not millions) of simulators in the world with different mechanics and when creating such games, the only thing you should do is not limit yourself in your fantasies and ideas!
… oh, how many simulators were created on Windows Forms at one time. You should have seen…
Visual novels
And if you have a writing streak in you or have always dreamed of writing a book or short story, then pay attention to the genre, which is gaining popularity recently as tools and technologies develop.
Many developers are looking at games of this genre for one very simple reason, and I think that you understand it – the development of neural networks. Mathematical models have developed so much recently that they can draw you hundreds of different graphics for a game, just like Kandinsky did for each image of this material. And the neural network is not limited to graphics; together with the “picture”, the program can write you a text on the topic of your choice and edit it perfectly.
There are many examples of games created by a neural network, but here are two of my favorites:
AI Dungeon – was probably one of the first who made a splash when they started talking about neural networks and perfectly embodied their work in his game.
And this is great case about “Japonori” and “Chizhov Studio”, which increased sales by 153% using a neural network and a quest on VKontakte.
What's in the end?
If you read the article to the end, then I am incredibly pleased… because you spent your time usefully and at least didn’t “tap” on this hamster a little, and thank you so much for that!
As you understand yourself, the choice of the future game depends only on you and I advise you not to look for easy ways, but to do what you like and not give up on it, even because of small failures. Try, continue and everything will work out!
Write in the comments what games you would advise novice developers to create, what genres you like and ask any questions! And if you want to learn more about game development and constantly receive useful links, then subscribe to my Telegram channel!
See you later…
