Cursor*10: Cool addicting flash game
3 January 2008
Filed under Fun, Internet, Marketing
What you see above is the title screen for a flash game called Cursor*10. Made by Yoshio Ishii, you click on the stairs to take you to the next level. In the first few levels you can easily find the set of stairs, but in successive levels it gets hard and takes more time to reveal the icon.
Here’s where the cool part comes in. You have ten “cursors” or lives and you can cooperate with yourself to go higher. Whatsa?? When you play your second, third, et cetera cursors, you see all of the previous attempts ghosted against your current progress. In the instance where you must click a box 99 times to reveal the stairs you if you were clicking the box on your previous attempt, you can team up and click on this attempt and your efforts are doubled! In some instances a previous attempt can hold down a button to show the stairs and your current attempt can move on.
Pretty cool! I made it to the 14th level before I ran out of attempts. Check it out for yourself.
By the way, this is what’s considered a viral game. Much like many of Ferry Halim’s works of genius (and art!), this game is simple, addictive, novel, and it is amazingly easy to lose and start playing again. These are the types of games that attract hundreds of thousands of players, keep people coming back every day, and encourage sharing amongst friends.
To take this in another, marketing direction. These are the types of casual games that marketing & interactive agencies should be pushing and selling to their clients as branded properties. Clients have a tendency to want to make things over-complex and stuff branding, up-selling, and depth at the expense of a successful project, and it’s our job to convince them to go the other way. Simplicity sells. Really.
