作者：Michail Katkoff

King旗下游戏《Pet Rescue Saga》（以下简称PRS）无疑是款热门游戏。自今年2月份在Facebook上线以来，日活跃用户已超过600万，月活跃用户超过3000万，因此它在Facebook平台的DAU/MAU比例达19%。实际上，它已经是Facebook第三大游戏，仅比同样出自King之手的《Candy Crush Saga》（简称CCS）稍逊一筹。

如果你还不了解《Candy Crush Saga》这款游戏，不妨先看看这篇分析文章。

但在移动平台，这款游戏的境况就不同了。PRS于7月中旬登陆iOS平台，但在收益和活跃用户方面还没有达到CCS的高度。我将在本文分析制约PRS成为下一款CCS的6个关键因素。

pet rescue saga(from gameanalytics)

DAU-Since-Jan-2013-FB(from gameanalytics)

Ranking-Timeline-iOS(from gameanalytics)

1.缺乏策略元素

从定义来看，策略是一个用于实现长期或整体目标的行动计划。策略无疑是CCS如此具有吸引力的一大关键元素。

我在此所指的策略是，玩家如何拼凑出4到5颗糖果以便创造出特殊糖果引爆这个组合。在玩CCS的时候，你总能获得一种步骤计算之感——它来源于连线消除机制以及有限行动的组合。

而PRS这款游戏节奏更快，玩家可以点触游戏区域中的任何方格（一组最少2个方格），这就减少了玩家采取行动之前的考虑时间。由于减少了玩家的思考和计划时间，PRS中的战略环节也被因此被削弱了。

在我看来，解谜游戏最好使用含有计时器、快节奏的机制，例如《宝石迷阵闪电战》或《Diamond Dash》的做法。PRS中没有计时器，这就给玩家行动创造了一种随机感和控制感。

2.增加难度

在CCS中，难度会随着添加到关卡中的多种限制而增加，这包括关卡形状、计时器、限时行动以及不同形状的糖果锁。但从玩家角度来看，这款游戏就是让人创造糖果组合，并连线消除糖果。

PRS遵从了这种增加难度的路线，但是在我看来，它还是走偏了。PRS同CCS一样增加了炸弹和火箭等有益元素。但更改了匹配以及阻碍更多方格的玩法，以便玩家想出如何合理使用特定的添加元素。

prs_bombs(from gameanalytics)

3.令人困惑的故事

在我看来，休闲游戏的故事对其成功影响不大。如果游戏拥有一个良好的交待背景当然是好事，但多数时候在故事情节上大费心思并不会有收获。我们的玩家只想获得乐趣：他们想要一些良好的操作、清晰的目标，以及关于如何实现这些目标的策略。如果玩家只有5分钟时间玩游戏，还让他们探索游戏世界和故事情节，那就会令人大为反感。

PRS在故事方面并没有太过分——但其故事却令人困惑不已。游戏让玩家拯救小动物，那好，但要从谁手中拯救？这些小动物又将何去何从？这些小动物一开始是什么角色？为何游戏进程地图没有显示任何待拯救的小动物的迹象？这些动物为何是猪和海欧？

4.缺乏视听反馈

也许CCS中最令人愉悦的感觉就是当玩家终于创造了一个疯狂的糖果组合并令其爆炸，消除了多个序列和糖果的时候，系统中所呈现的图像和音频反馈。对休闲游戏玩家来说，大量吹牛反馈尤为重要，因为他们并不擅长玩游戏。这种玩法反馈可以令他们自我感觉良好，让他们觉得自己是真正的高手。

在PRS中即玩家完成了最大的组合，也无法获得令人愉悦的反馈。无论你是一指清除了两个还是20个方格，其画面和音频反馈都一成不变。该反馈并不会鼓励玩家努力去大量破坏糖果组合，因此并不会引导玩家掌握游戏。

我认为这些元素就相当于休闲游戏中的爆头技能。想想看，如果《使命召唤》没有了爆头及其所有的画面和音频反馈，玩家还会去执行这种操作吗？

divine(from gameanalytics)

5.图像质量不佳

我通常并不喜欢过多评论游戏图像，因为市场上总有不少以简单画面取胜的游戏，以及拥有精美绝伦的图像，但玩法十分糟糕的游戏。我认为富有吸引力的游戏机制和可靠的游戏经济的重要性甚于电影般高质量的图像。

尽管如此，我还是觉得有必要点评一下PRS的图像。首先，该游戏地图看起来相当糟糕。其地图看似主题公园的地图，但却让人极为困惑，在我看来甚至有点恐怖。其次，那些小动物看起来一点也不可爱。即使让它们长着大大的脑袋，大大的眼睛，总感觉还是缺点灵气。第三，图像分辨率很差，让这款游戏在iPad上看起来十分丑陋。

pet-rescue-saga_5_map-overview(from gameanalytics)

6.没有付费继续游戏的机制

盈利与留存率密切相关。玩家游戏时间越长，就越可能在游戏中花钱。但光有留存率是不够的。你还得为玩家创造花钱的需求，你要创造能将免费用户转化为付费玩家的瞬间。

在CCS中，玩家每次在关卡中失败时，就可以花0.99美元获得再试一次的机会。PRS使用了相同的付费继续游戏的机制，但其运用方法却并不适合该游戏。这是因为在多数情况下，玩家没有足够的方格创造组合时，这些额外的机会就派不上用场了。所以这两款游戏的主要区别就在于PRS玩家在关卡中失败就必须重新开始，而CCS玩家却可以花钱继续玩。

pay 2 continue(from gameanalytics)

总结：过于关注盈利机制

不难想象要跟随《Candy Crush Saga》这种热门游戏的步伐究竟有多困难，我认为PRS背后的开发者已经付出了极大的心血，它是一款有趣的Facebook和King网站上的热门游戏。但同时，我也感受到了其开发团队面临的压力。你可以看到游戏一开始就引导玩家如何通过特定关卡，并一直提供升级条选项。对我来说，这是一种不健康的收益竞争，该游戏团队集中关注的是实现盈利目标，而非用户留存目标。他们忽略了核心问题，只是简单复制CCS机制，但却并未确定这些机制是否适合这款游戏，这令人感觉RPS希望在盈利性上打败CCS，但在趣味上却远逊于后者。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why Pet Rescue Saga isn’t the next Candy Crush Saga

Michail Katkoff

King’s Pet Rescue Saga (PRS) is without a doubt a hit game. On Facebook alone it has had over 6M daily players since February and it has over 30M monthly players – thus boasting a healthy 19% DAU/MAU rate on the platform. In fact, it’s the third biggest title on Facebook, falling just a bit short of its kingpin cousin Candy Crush Saga (CCS).

In case you’re not familiar with Candy Crush Saga, the GameAnalytics blog features an analysis of the game: Beating Candy Crush Saga.
Pet Rescue Saga DAU Since Jan 2013

Pet Rescue Saga has been a true hit on Facebook (source: metricsmonk)

Yet, on mobile, the situation looks different. PRS was launched on iOS in mid-June and hasn’t even nearly reached the heights of CCS’s success in terms of revenue and active players. In this post I will go through the six key elements which are holding Pet Rescue Saga back from becoming the next Candy Crush Saga.

Pet Rescue Saga has broken into top 50 grossing, which is a great accomplishment. Yet the growth speed of revenue is slower than with Candy Crush Saga, which reached top 50 grossing in a matter of days (source: Metrics Monk)

Pet Rescue Saga has broken into top 50 grossing, which is a great accomplishment. Yet the revenue growth speed is lower than with Candy Crush Saga, which reached top 50 grossing in a matter of days (source: metricsmonk)

1. Lack of strategy

By definition, strategy is as a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim (Oxford Dictionaries). And strategy is without a doubt what makes CCS so compelling.

By strategy I mean how players strive to make combinations of four or five candies so to create the special candies, which cause massive destruction. When playing CCS you constantly feel that every move counts – a feeling caused by the combination of match-three mechanics and a limited number of moves.

In PRS on the other hand, the pace is a lot faster. Players can tap almost any tiles on the field (minimum of 2 tiles in a row), which reduces the thinking involved before making a move. By reducing the amount of thinking and planning for good moves, PRS also downplays the strategic part of the game.

In my opinion, a fast pace mechanic works well in a puzzle game if combined with a timer, like in e.g.Diamond Dash or Bejeweled Blitz. The lack of the timer in PRS just creates a feeling of randomness and lack of control of your moves.

2. Increased Difficulty

In CCS, difficulty is increased by the various limitations that are added to the levels: level shapes, timers, limited moves, and different types of candy locks. Yet from the players’ perspective, the game is pretty much all about creating those combination candies that clear lines and rows of tiles with one single blow.

PRS follows the exact same route for increasing difficulty but, in my opinion, it does it partly wrong. PRS strays from the golden path of CCS by adding benefiting elements such as bombs and rockets. They change the gameplay from trying to match and brake as many tiles as possible to figuring out how to properly use a specific added element that actually isn’t part of the core game.

Bombs and wide selection of power ups add to the complexity pretty early on in the game.

Bombs and wide selection of power ups add to

the complexity pretty early on in the game.

3. Confusing Story

In my opinion, the storyline of casual games play very little role in the success of that game. Sure it’s nice to have a background or a purpose to the game, but most of the time working on a storyline doesn’t pay off. Our players just want to have some fun: they want some good old action, clear goals, and a bit of thinking on how to reach those goals. Taking the time to discover the game’s world and storyline is simply a turn-off when you only have about 5 minutes to play a game.

PRS doesn’t go overboard with the story – I mean there hardly is one. But there’s just enough story to make it all quite confusing. Players are supposed to rescue pets. Okay. But from whom? Where do the rescued pets go? Whose are the pets in the first place? Why does the progress map have nothing to do with rescuing pets? Why are the pets pigs and seagulls? I mean who has a seagull as a pet!?! You get my point…

4. Lack of visual and audio feeback

Probably the most satisfying feeling in CCS is when players manage to create a crazy combination of candies and make them pop, clearing away several rows and lines of candies. The graphical and audio feedback that follows these combinations is simply over the top. That massive fanfare of feedback is also particularly important for our casual gamers, as they aren’t traditionally good at playing games. With this kind of gameplay feedback we can make them feel good about themselves – we can make them feel like true masters.

The visual and audio feedback in Candy Crush Saga makes even the most inexperienced player feel good about themselves.

The visual and audio feedback in Candy Crush Saga makes even the most inexperienced player feel good about themselves.

In PRS even the biggest combinations don’t feel satisfying. Whether you clear two or twenty tiles with one touch, the feedback from the game is exactly the same in terms of graphics and audio. The feedback doesn’t encourage the players to go for the combinations of massive destruction and thus the game doesn’t guide players towards mastering the game.

In my opinion, overkills are like headshots for casual games. Think about Call of Duty without headshots and all the awesome graphical and audio feedback players get from executing them. Exactly…

5. Poor Graphics

I usually don’t like to comment much on the graphics of games as there are plenty of phenomenal games with very simple graphics and plenty of horrible games with stunning graphics. I’m just a big believer in engaging game mechanics and solid game economies over cinematic visuals.

Having said that, I still have to comment on the graphics of PRS.  First of all, the game map looks quite bad. The map seems to be inspired by the maps of theme parks, yet the result is confusing and in my opinion even a bit creepy. Second, the pets don’t really look cute at all. Even with the big heads and big eyes there’s just something off about them. Third, the poor resolution of the graphics makes the game look simply ugly on the big bright screen of an iPad.

The progress map in Pet Rescue Saga is pretty poorly done.

6. No Pay-to-Continue Mechanics

Monetization is mainly about retention. The longer players play, the more likely they’ll invest some money into the game. Yet retention isn’t enough. You also have to create demand for players to spend money, and you need to create moments where players are truly encouraged to convert from a free user to a paying one.

Pay-to-continue mechanics are perfected in Candy Crush Saga.

In CCS the conversion moments occur each time players fail a level and they are offered the possibility to pay $0.99 for a few extra moves. It’s the same game mechanics that we got used to at the arcades. Remember Tekken, Time Cop and Virtual Fighert? The big counter ticking from 10 to 0 and the hurry you had to drop an additional token to continue the game.

PRS uses the same pay-to-continue mechanic as CCS but it just doesn’t suit the game as well. This is simply because additional moves are of no use in most of the cases when a player doesn’t have enough tiles to make combinations. So the major difference in monetization between these two titles is the fact that in PRS players fail the level and have to restart while in CCS when players fail the level they can simply pay to continue.

Conclusion: Too much focus on monetization

I can only imagine how hard it is to follow in the footsteps of a major hit like Candy Crush Saga and in my honest opinion the guys and gals behind Pet Rescue Saga have made an awesome job. It’s a fun game and clearly a hit on Facebook and King’s own portal.

Yet at the same time, I feel that the pressure from the benchmark title has gotten to the team. You can see that the game pushes power ups to players by teaching them on specific levels early on and by having the power up bar option constantly available. To me this is a sign of an unhealthy revenue competition, where game teams concentrate on beating revenue targets instead of the much more important retention targets. I feel that by concentrating on monetization, they’ve lost the focus and simply copied the mechanics from CCS without actually making sure that they fit the game. It feels as if Pet Rescue Saga wants to beat Candy Crash Saga in monetization, but not in fun factor.（source：gameanalytics）