Laserbrain

Laserbrain has many of the external indicia of a casual downloadable title, including an 'adventure' mode and a 'puzzle' mode, a wholly irrelevant story bolted onto gameplay with which it meshes in no logical way, and straightforward and intuitive UI. What makes it of interest to us, however, are not the ways in which it is like a typical casual downloadable, but the ways in which it is wholly unsuited to that market.

Around the periphery of the screen are four 'turrets' of different color; you select one by clicking on it, then aim with the mouse and fire with LMB. At screen center is your objective, which can sometimes be destroyed with a single hit, and sometimes has little colored circles around the periphery; you must hit it with the correspondingly colored turrets. Lines rotate around the target, sometimes solid, sometimes opening gaps; and there are 'defenders' rotating within the lines that, when hit, change the behavior of the defending lines, typically opening larger gaps. Some defenders, too, need to be hit by specific colored bullets. Also, bullets can ricochet within a line, and you both earn increased score with multiple ricochets leading to a hit, and sometimes need to use ricochets to reach a target.

In other words, is partly a game of timing, partly a game of aiming, and partly a game of pattern recognition: achieving a sense of when timing permits you to achieve an objective, anticipating the next opening, and solving the puzzle.

Why is this wholly unsuited for the casual market? For two main reasons: The game is difficult, and the casual market depends on "lean back" play, games that you can traverse with minimal skill while still engaged to a modest degree. Second, it is requires thought; games like Bejewelled or Diner Dash or the innumerable hidden object games are built around low levels of mental challenge, though they may provide a score boost for thoughtful play.

For two less key reasons, also: Laserbrain's irrelevant story is some hugger mugger about eliminating viruses from the core, which is a very nerdy fantasy and not likely to appeal to the casual game demographic. And last, it is a shooting game -- not a violent one, to be sure, but dependent on a mechanic that is associated with the hardcore.

From our perspective, this makes it interesting; it's a puzzle game with novel mechanics and requires a bit of player skill. And it helps that the ambient score, combined with the slowly-moving, mutating imagery of the game creates a sense of peacefulness a bit at odds with the tension of planning and executing your shots. These things make it suited for Play This Thing's audience -- which, unfortunately for the developers, is tiny by comparison to, say, Bigfish's.

But good luck with it.