The casual game market is exploding, which means it was high time for me to cover the industry segment in my “Trigger Happy” column that runs in the Georgia Straight.

Marc Saltzman can’t get enough of Plants vs. Zombies. Of all the games the Toronto-based video-game journalist could be playing, the one keeping him up at night is this Windows and Mac title, a so-called casual game that has players use plants to defend virtual homes from hordes of zombies.

I also work to define and categorize casual games.

The most popular casual titles are puzzle games, of which there are three primary subgenres: match three, hidden object, and time management.