Ideating with 20% novelty in Hypercasual games (2022)

Coming up with unique hypercasual concepts is getting harder and harder as loads of games are piling up in the stores. But that doesn't and shouldn't stop us. While ideation, two terms are very important.

1. Familiarity
2. Novelty

A good idea has the right combination of the two. The player must be familiar with the concept of the game, but it should not be too familiar. Generally, about 80% familiarity and a 20% novelty can bring a good result. When looking at the game, the user needs to be able to understand the general rules of the game, but there should be some novel element on top of that which seals the deal. Most of the time, the novel element does not have to be something that has never been seen before. It can be a mechanics that is novel with respect to the familiar mechanics. By novelty, I never mean something absolutely novel. It just has to be novel enough compared to the familiar mechanic. Nothing is absolutely novel. Like the writer, Jonathan Lethem said

When people call something “original,” nine out of ten times they just don't know the references or the original sources involved

Let's think about the multiplier mechanics for a minute. The familiar element here is that you need to increase your entities by going through the best option. But on top chart games, we can also see the novel elements.

In Crowd Masters, the novel element is the mixture of the multiplier with the crowd mechanics from Crowd City.

In Money Rush, the novel element is the mixture of the multiplier with the merge mechanics of the coins (smaller coins merge to be a bigger coin)

In Mob Control, the multiplier is mixed with a strategy war aspect

and in Couple Shuffle, the multiplier is mixed with the resource swapping between characters.

There are a lot of examples spread out in the charts similar to this one. It's all about finding a unique way to present an existing trending mechanic.

The combination of the novelty and the familiarity must go together. The novel part should add to the familiar part so that the sum of the two is bigger than the two combined. Again going back to the above-mentioned games, in each game, the novel mechanic makes the multiplier mechanic better. It adds a new dimension and it makes sense. You can't just slap a mechanic on top of each other. The 2 must bond together and agree with each other.

In Crowd Masters and Mob Control, you multiply troops to win battles. Yes, it makes sense. Troops want to grow bigger to win. The sum of the mechanics of multiplying and the mechanics increasing entities are working together to tell a story

In Money Rush and Couple Shuffle, you basically increase money by multiplying. The combined mechanics are working together to tell a common story.

You can bring the novel aspect from many different sources starting from top chart games to movies, cartoons, etc. But according to Jean-Luc Godard

“It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”