The Coda Platform announced that games from their developers hit the top charts at the same time. These are two games in the top 5 of the past two weeks: Popular Girls from 24Play and Artist Life from VOG Games. Both projects were published by the Coda Platform.

These are games, part of an emerging genre of hyper-compact simulators, that focus on a continuous story divided into mini-games that keep good retention of players.

Artist Life – hit number one

It’s only been few weeks since Artist Life, developed by VOG Games, came out. And this is already the number one hit in the Google Play Store. It is also one of the most popular simulator games on the App Store.

This project is a hyper-compact simulator. You play as an artist aspiring to make a living by photography and painting. Clients visit your humble abode and assign you various tasks.

Ultimately, the game gives you a lot of choices. These choices sometimes happen every day, like what to watch on TV, and sometimes big ones, like selling your art or asking for more followers in social media. These decisions take you on a journey through the artist’s life.

Popular Girls – hit number two

Popular Girls, developed by 24 Play, was released in early October and reached number two in the App Store. This success shows just how much hyper-compact games are in demand.

Popular Girls takes you through a young girl’s high school days. You will be given a choice of who you will be friends with, how to get followers, and if you can become the most popular girl in school.

As the game progresses, you will make decisions broken down into puzzles and mini-games.

Making a hyper compact game

This style of play has a lot to do with the hyper-casual genre. However, the key to a good, fun hyper-compact game is variety. Instead of creating a single mechanic, you guide the player through many games instead. Where you usually have experience-destroying levels, you have a completely different mechanic in a hyper-compact game.

It is fresh for a player and keeps them engaged. But that also means you don’t have to come up with an elephant out of a fly. So you don’t have to come up with thousands of new ways to solve the puzzle; instead, you create new mechanics.

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