"Mega Jump" game analysis

What is "Mega Jump"?

It's a game where a character keeps moving upward(y-axis) direction by collecting stars, while gravity towards opposite direction keeps pulling a character to the ground.
As long as you can keep collecting stars to bounce him up, you'll keep scoring.
As seen in the screen shot above, there are "boosts" you can collect to empower players for exciting actions.

When you look at the game components, it's incredibly few: it's got a moving player character, as well as stars(scoring objects), and obstacles you should avoid hitting.
It uses its physics engine wisely, by limiting the player's eye into one (y-axis) direction.
If you keep hitting the stars, it'll accelerate its velocity toward moving direction, resulting straightforward "Catharsis"(described in this pattern).
Also it's so easy to fail this upward moving combo. Just one wrong iPhone tilt would kill the character, resetting all stage points.
This instant excitement and stress in "Stress and Catharsis" is what makes this game addictive.
Because it's easy to restart and you can compare to see whether you have beat previous try, the game makes a player want to try again and again.

While this simple game is very pleasing to play, it's essentaially "beat the level" type of game.
So when a player thinks "I've done all the techniques this game requries", a player will quit playing this game.
That's the reason it has many "powerups", "boosts", trying to make players think it has whole lot more aspects to play.

This is a harder issue to solve, since it's pretty much the game core logic a player thinks he's played enough.
So you could say "the game has lived long enough, it's time to make other 'spinouts' using the same character".
Another try might be adding "real person interaction", such as introducing battle feature to the game.
This one is though something you should be careful of, because a player is really sensitive on level match system.
If another player's level is too high to compete, a player loses his motivation to compete. Providing a good match depends on player community size, which often is uncontrollable variable.
So, it should be more of "searching an answer from maniac players" question.
- Try looking for reasons why some players won't just quit playing, why they keep enjoying every tiny aspects of the game.
- And try to estimate what level or skill a player has to have in order to enjoy the game with that extent.
- Once you find out some of popular maniac way to enjoy the game, then you can add extra tutorial or extra game mode focused for that game play.