In India, mobile gaming is king. Be it through mobile-optimised gaming websites or mobile gaming apps, if anyone wants to play, you can all but guarantee that they’ll turn to their smartphones.
All over the world, mobile gaming has become huge, but it’s rarely seen as such a primary form of gaming as it is in India. However, mobile gaming is still a grossly clustered field wherever you go.
App stores and the multitude of mobile sites that offer games are stuffed with titles. So, given that most people decide on a game based on their small preview tiles, description and a bit of free gameplay, one could assume that the animation style and aesthetics would play a major role in player retention.
Here, we’ll be examining some of the most popular games in India to see how important animation and look is to mobile gamers in the country – if at all.
Candy Crush’s booming colors
If there’s one word that best describes Candy Crush Saga, it’s “color.” Everything about the now-classic mobile puzzle game is bright colors, flashing lights, and satisfying reward noises. The mobile game is freemium gaming at its finest and it’s all down to its animations and use of vibrant colors.
Candy Crush is one of the most popular games in India, clocking in a mighty 4.4 out of 5.0 rating from 22.3 million reviews. In this case, animation has been crucial to the game’s popularity. Bright colors and explosions of colors for positive feedback are parts of the huge appeal of the Candy Crush game, which Forbes India notes is still very popular, seven years in.
More about themes and access
With any mobile gaming platform, coloration and animations will play their part in a game being clicked on, but in iGaming – casino gaming that’s hosted by online platforms – it tends to be the themes and increased access to free gaming that makes the biggest impact. On casino sites such as ComeOn casino, themes play a larger role than animations, with the likes of Cricket Star climbing to the top of the popularity charts. However, one could claim that the vehicles for said themes are the animation and graphics (in addition to the sound and gameplay), so the importance of animation should not be understated here either.
PUBG Mobile embraced more casual graphics
Mobile gaming rules India, and so the biggest mobile game in India is the biggest overall game in India: PUBG Mobile. The undisputed king of India gaming, PUBG Mobile even managed to shrug off the highly-anticipated big-name release of Call of Duty: Mobile this year, with PUBG Mobile still standing strong atop the game charts.
PUBG began as a PC game. One of the pioneers of this wave of battle royale-themed games, PUBG used a much more realistic style of graphics and animation than its main competitor, Fortnite. But to adjust to the mobile platform as well as appeal to the, generally, more casual player base, for PUBG Mobile, the developers infused more colors and artsy effects, making the game arguably much easier on the eye. This was a smart play for PUBG Mobile; this shift in animation style has certainly helped PUBG Mobile to maintain its fun/casual gaming appeal as well as stand out from the realistic graphics of CoD Mobile and other such titles.
Animation, graphics, and art style will always help to influence players to tap on a mobile game and download it, but sometimes it’s the other aspects that lead to player retention, such as the game’s theme and the gameplay itself – and India’s mobile gamers prove this.
