Former Hitman devs creating 'high end' casual games

by Jason Dobson { Jan 2nd 2008 at 8:51AM }

Casual games are not everyone's cup of tea, as evidenced by our controversial inclusion of PopCap puzzler Peggle among Joystiq's top ten titles of 2007. There's no denying, however, that these often bite-sized diversions are as popular as they are addictive, reason enough why many startup studios -- such as newly formed The Game Equation -- swing that way. The Denmark-based studio, established by a pair of programmers who worked on the Hitman franchise in a previous life, aims to develop for the "high end of the casual games industry" with titles that remind them of what it was like playing games when they were youngsters. That's sweet, but what exactly does that mean?

The company has pair of puzzle games available already named Deep Blue Sea and Constellations, though at first glance there certainly doesn't appear to be anything particularly evolved about either of these efforts, entertaining as they may be. What is interesting is that in creating the match-3 puzzler Deep Blue Sea, the studio brought on an honest to goodness film and theatre composer, Rasmus Hartvig, to create the game's music, though given the dev's experience with Hitman, a series known for its dramatic scores, The Game Equation's aural emphasis is not wholly unexpected. That's all well and good, and we like good music as much as anyone, but the studio will need to pull out some considerably bigger tricks before we buy into its incongruous idea of high end casual games.

Tags: casual, Constellations, deep blue sea, DeepBlueSea, Hitman, IO Interactive, IoInteractive, the game equation, TheGameEquation

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Brian Meidell @ Jan 2nd 2008 10:36AM

To be fair, I said the high end was within our reach, not that we had actually reached it.
We'll continue to reach for the high end, even if it takes us a few tries.

Thanks for the coverage.

samfish @ Jan 2nd 2008 10:51AM

Oh, that's good news, I think. It's about time people started treating seriously more casual styled games.

Trev @ Jan 2nd 2008 11:24AM

I would like to see casual games get put to a higher standard. They're almost by definition made as cheaply as possible, but that doesn't mean they need to become really poorly developed. Then again, I wouldn't want to pay $40 for Chain Factor, and just because you got Danny Elfman to score the next Zooma game doesn't make it more or better than it would have been without it.

I think companies would do best by looking for "indie" games and providing the unique ideas from those with better budgets and tools. Flow and Everyday Shooter are good examples. Sure, there's a free version of flow, but for my $4, I got it in HD with a ton more "characters" (or whatever you want to call them) to play as and each of them is different. Each level in E.S. has a different combo mechanic, a different song and a different art-style. Thank you Johnathan Mak.

Portal, as much as some would fellate Valve for it, was made by a college student and purchased, and look how that turned out. Ok, not exactly casual, but amazing regardless.

tl;dr version: Higher quality casual games would be good, but it would be best used by making them unique and interesting, instead of just expensive.

Trev @ Jan 2nd 2008 11:40AM

On re-reading, I guess purchased isn't the best way to describe it. Valve basically just hired the people that made a prior game with a similar mechanic. Really poking at technicalities here though. If you hire people to make something under your companies name, can you really say you made it?

You know what? Fuck it. Portal is awesome and still goes with the "find indie games and produce them with more than someone's lunch money."