My firstborn game child: Mau-Mau (part 1)
Before I tell you anything about what I learned about producing voice games, I need to introduce you to Mau-Mau. It’s the first voice game that I developed, the one I invested the most time in (about 130 hours over two months), the one I learned the most about game design from… And by far my most successful one.
I’ll tell you just how successful it is in the next days (there are two special occasions in the game’s life coming along this week), right here I want to focus on telling you the basics about the game’s mechanics, as well as its background and audience.
So, what exactly is Mau-Mau?
It’s the German version of Crazy Eights, or the grown-up version of Uno — Or if neither of that means anything to you: It’s a multi-player shedding-type card game, meaning that the aim of the game is to be the first to discard all the cards from your hand, using matching rules and special power cards.
Depending on how you count, it has about 8 rules (I’ll go into details of the game mechanics in another article) and is accordingly easy to learn. Combined with the fact that it is pretty deterministic and hardly requires any strategy, maths or psychology (compared to Poker, Skat or Rummy) it makes a beginner-friendly and positive gaming experience.
Can you guess its main audience in Germany? Right, absolutely not the card game enthusiasts at a Friday night in a smokey bar, but children, families and the elderly. Given this background, Mau-Mau is loaded with positive associations for most Germans, giving its Alexa Skill a huge boost on discoverability.
This has probably given you quite an idea about the audience I I tailored this game for: The generations who grew up playing card games. My assumption is that the generations born after ~1990 already had smartphones and other entertainment electronics that competed with card games as a way to kill time and get gaming-type gratification. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s reasonable to assume that the openness toward new technology diminishes after ~60, which renders my main target group in their mid-fourties. However, I have a special place for the elderly in my heart, and deeply hope that somewhere out there, a couple of grandmas and grandpas in their retirement homes have a bit of a good time with Mau-Mau!
Now that you know the basics about Mau-Mau, what do you want to read about next?
