Super Stacker is a fun little game. It’s nothing revolutionary but it has a lot of fun little touches that make it an enjoyable coffee break game. One thing in particular, however, blew my mind today, and that is the developer’s solution for creating an ever-present mute button, but without needing to dedicate UI to the cause.

In Make The Smart Choices So That Your User Doesn’t Have To, I discussed a trumping rule to preferences in the Flash domain. As the comments on that article later showed, I’m not alone in hating the need for those ever present mute/sound buttons. As it turns out, there is an elegant solution that, with wide-adoption, could easily become the preferred paradigm for giving our players the ability to toggle music and sound effects.

The solution is simple. Use the right-click menu to give the player constant, quick access to muting. Here is what you see when you right click in Super Stacker:

Simple, elegant and always available, this offers a lot of advantages over the traditional ever-present mute buttons. It does have one significant disadvantage, though, and that is the burden of education. Because it is hidden, you have to educate the user that the right-click menu provides access to the muting functionality. This is not a difficult task, but it is worth noting. If all Flash games suddenly started doing this, we might actually create a new paradigm and get rid of those pesky, ever-present mute-button eyesores. That would be awesome.