In the early days of the App Store, endless randomized games were unbelievably popular. In a way, they were a reaction to the market’s demand for more content and longer play times. This was a difficult thing to offer, particularly at the typical 99 cent price point, when you’re creating all that content by hand… But, if you build a bunch of level assets, and come up with an algorithm to stitch them all together in a vaguely reasonable fashion, your game effectively has unlimited content. Games like Canabalt ($2.99) were early standouts in this arena, but the drawback of randomized games is it felt like it was difficult to get better at them because they weren’t as much about mastering any particular level as much as doing well just primarily involved your ability to react to whatever set piece was being thrown at you. Leap Day (Free) was the first mass market, super popular game that cracked this problem. Instead of levels that were randomized every time you played, all players were given the exact same randomized level to play each day. This not only gave you the opportunity to learn the level and actively improve on the day’s challenge, but it also spurred a ton of social interaction as players could talk about how they beat particularly difficult segments of the daily level. It’s a super clever innovation, and one I feel like I almost always appreciate in new games that implement it.

This is definitely the case with Noodlec...