Most casual games are rubbish

Codemasters Online’s vice president David Solari has hit out at the number of developers rushing out casual games after signing a deal to bring a range of Mumbo Jumbo titles to retail.

The deal kicks off with ten new games set for release on April 25th on the Funsta label – and the new line-up will boast the kind of quality not seen in the majority of current casual titles on the market, said Solari.

These kinds of games have done fantastically well in retailers like Wal-Mart and we thought it would be a great chance to do the same in Europe. At the end of the day it has to be the right products and the right quality – and Mumbo Jumbo has a range of very, very strong casual titles”.

The Codemasters Online vice president was also critical of most of the casual titles currently on the market: 

Everybody seems to think making a casual games is easy and a lot of people have jumped on that bandwagon. But there’s a real skill to it – you can’t just take a programmer from Gears of War and tell him to make another Luxor.”

I think for every good casual game out there there’s probably ten not very good casual games and obviously we want to be involved in the ones that are good.”

The full Funsta line-up for the PC includes Luxor 2, 7 Wonders II, Poker Superstars II, Slingo Quest and Gemsweeper, retailing for 9.99 each.

The Funsta range will be for consoles too, with LUXOR Pharoah’s Challenge, 7 Wonders of the Ancient World and Platypus all available on the PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS and Wii. The Funsta games set for consoles will be available for 19.99 each.