MoP: Quite the contrary, they got burned by the casual market, the "3 Cards" games didn't really give them much cash.
That's why they went to Kickstarter, before that the plan had been to fund the Tex game with the casual game money, but apparently they learned the hard way that, in spite of appearances, casual and adventure don't mix that well.
Direct quote from Aaron Conners, from around 2010 (oy, italics still don't work or am I dense?): After all that I wouldn't worry too much about them making their "swan song" too casual ;)
Well, that was comforting to read, thanks MoP!
I haven't followed their work (or anyone else's for that matter) in the casual games market. I always thought that it must be a viable one with these kind of games coming out all the time - and that's why I said "I assume".
When their Kickstarter campaign was live, I downloaded and tried the demo of one of the "3 Cards" games (don't remember anymore which one it was) and frankly, I did feel so repetitive and
framed it got predictable which got me bored; I lost all interest in less than half an hour and uninstalled it.
I sure hope that the Tesla Effect won't be their "swan song" now that they've returned to their roots.
The trailer looked very promising in general, so I'm not too worried.
ET3D: Either way I will probably enjoy it. I like adventure games but also HOGs (with a story), and I'm also a mobile gamer. So they'll probably do something I'll enjoy. Granted, too many HOG style puzzles would be a little grating, but there seems to be enough content to compensate for that.
I wish I could say the same for myself, I'm afraid I fall into the group that Aaron Conners described.