The story of the creation and launch of a fun mobile game about breaking bottles on the head
My good friend APPrioriGames recently released his first mobile game. He has no relation to our educational program, nevertheless, in our blog “ Management of game projects ” we decided to post his story of indie development. The history of the various "rakes", which the developers who released their first game, with the culmination in the form of a very unusual reject from the side of the stor. Which fortunately they managed to overcome. Here is the game BottleBattle itself . And the story under the cut.
The idea of the game was born completely spontaneously, at that moment when we thought about special software for bars, but after a long analysis and miscalculation of the project, they became convinced that the project was unreasonable and eventually abandoned it. At the same time, many original and partly absurd ideas for the game came to mind, and we decided to switch to their implementation. From this day, and began our journey to geymdev and there was such a small studio called APPriori Games.
The first difficult task we faced was the search for a designer and programmer who could implement it. We shallowed work with studios and freelancers right away, as the goal was to create our own creative team of our studio. After a month of searching, we managed to find great guys who shared our enthusiasm and creativity, which greatly facilitated the game development process. After all, it is no secret to anyone that a team of like-minded people can realize a truly worthwhile, thoughtful and high-quality project. And to maintain motivation at a high level all the time, we pay them under the contract in stages.
')
As for the organizational moment, we have registered LLC. No problems, made in about 2 weeks. We opened a current account in Sberbank.
From the very beginning, we decided to calculate the financial model in order to understand the size of investments and the terms in which they will pay off. To do this, we invited to our team a financier from Ernst & Young, who calculated everything for us, and we backed up our work with a financial model. However, only a few months later, when we actively immersed in the study of game dev, we realized that our model, although literate from the point of view of the classical business, but because of inexperience, we did not take into account the important indicators that are peculiar to the gaming industry. Attach this document will not, because it is not necessary to publish such. Editor's note: Recently, we held a private master-class on business planning in game devs at VSHBI, information from which will help to make a business plan that takes into account the specifics of business in the gaming industry. Subscribe to our blog to read it when we publish a summary
The original idea, which, as mentioned earlier, was born spontaneously during a tumultuous and merry feast, was simply breaking bottles against my head for a while. But this is not enough for people to become interested in playing it. As a result, the initial version of the game was as follows: the player broke various bottles at a time and for each broken bottle at the end of the round were added coins that the player could spend on things and locations.
At an early stage, I wanted to try as many variations of the mechanics of the game as possible, as well as play with different effects. To develop the game, we chose Apple's native SpriteKit engine. Why? Because our programmer knows exactly this engine. For us, it would certainly be better to write on a cross-platform engine.
Free-to-play. Also decided to introduce advertising: banners, videos and rewards for the video. Selected for this Appodeal.
The first step was to develop our character, we coped with it quickly. In view of the bloated ego of one of our team members, our character was supposed to be like him, which, in fact, our designer managed to achieve. We stopped at this initial wish. But we want to note that all the characters in our game are fictional and all coincidences are random :-)
Since we have a team of fairly creative guys, we wanted to make the game as diverse, bright and slightly absurd as possible, but at the same time not going far from reality. Therefore, we used a fairly wide range of real-life glass containers, provided this list to our designer with a reference to a photo on the Internet. The designer drew them similar, but of course we added a bit of creativity to their names, changing the names in order not to violate copyrights.
We decided to make the locations of our game according to the principle from cheap to chic. As our hero climbs the career ladder, the first level was a stall on the street, and at the last decided to add a little absurdity.
After the development of the prototype, we realized that we get a not very interesting game, because it is too simple. By this time we were actively studying the available resources and materials on game design. A neuromarketologist joined our team as a consultant. He helped us not only to improve the design, but also found several solutions that gave our game meaning and motivation for the player. Thus, in the middle of the development process, we decided to add dangerous bottles that the player should notice and throw out with a swipe, but if we didn’t notice, the player would lose either the time of the round, or points scored, or the round would end. We made 3 variations of dangerous bottles: a spiked bottle, a Molotov cocktail, and a poisonous bottle.
An article on this topic from Habr , which we inspired, came to our aid very quickly in time . Actually, the thought of George Feng, who once said in his speech: “The tutorial should be clear even to your mother,” and became fundamental in working out the tutorial.
In any game there should be a goal, but it is very important that it is clear for the player. He must understand why and why he is doing this or that action. We initially missed this moment. Then, having played the prototype, we asked ourselves a simple question: “Why should I break bottles with my head?”. And then we realized that we urgently need to come up with a legend, why the hero of our game has to beat the bottle against the head. One could simply say that this is for fun. But I wanted drama.
As a result, we presented our heroes to the players as a person in a terrible life situation - he owes a very serious person, and if he doesn’t pay it off, then the chances of living on his worthless life are reduced to zero, for he will be finished off. To his happiness, the great and omnipotent Don Bunny came to the rescue, who is a bit crazy, a fetishist, and a strange peasant in general, but nevertheless he is ready to pay our hero for bringing him bottoms from bottles in various bars. rotten city. The plot with an absurd development, as we love!
For more immersion in the game, we made the narration of the story in the form of a chat, so that the player could imagine that he really had problems.
For our game we made localization in 14 languages: Russian, English, German, French, Spanish, Malay, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, Arabic. We have many friends who knew these languages. Therefore, we transferred most of it for free by these very friends. Chinese and Korean have been translating native speakers. We paid only for Malay, Japanese and Finnish. But we have little translation, the general text turned out to be on page A4.
Raffle prizes for consumer motivation - this is a frequent advertising move in various areas of business. Thinking how this can be implemented in the game, we decided to hide 3 Easter eggs in our game. According to the competition, the first player to find them all will receive an iPhone 7 as a gift straight from apple.ru . Implemented it as follows - after the player finds all the Easter eggs, a random code is generated on the server. This code is shown to the player and immediately given the opportunity to send it to our email address. To participate in the competition, the player must join our group and make a repost of the competition. The course is designed for a viral effect, but if it does, time will tell. So far, just started.
The most interesting and unexpected for us was to face a serious problem at the very end of development - when loading the game in the App Store. We were refused three times in the publication of the game, referring to paragraph 1.4.5 Physical Harm ! Apple redzhektil and sent us our same screenshots - such as it is unhealthy, maybe they think that in the game it is necessary to beat an iPhone on the head, imagining that this is a bottle. Some local publications even wrote about this situation. For us, this Apple decision was a shock, because before starting development we studied the rules and made sure that our game complies with them, not to mention the fact that the App Store has thousands of games much tougher about harming the game character. And once rejected, two were rejected, sent to the third check and we don’t even know what to think, because if we are not allowed in because our character cannot harm himself with a bottle, then our whole concept collapses and needs urgently coming up with something else and re-programming it all.
We have already changed the screenshots for the App Store, added the initial headdress for our hero, added a warning before the game so that people would not repeat it. And they poured our game from our corporate account. And lo and behold, they missed us! Here it is our game , we will be glad to your estimates and comments in the store.
Such is the interesting story from novice developers. The path to launch the game is thorny. But when the eyes are burning, the difficult work on creating the game for 12 hours a day without days off is just a joy. The guys went through the first step and started, now it's up to the operation. Let's see how it will turn out :)
Well, it will be possible to meet with the heroes of history and talk personally on May 17 at VSBI at a virtual reality conference , where APPrioriGames will also drop in as visitors. For all readers of Habr, we decided to make a 20% discount on a ticket. When registering, use the code "habr" in the "from where you learned about the event." And if you have more than 20 karma, then I will give you a ticket, write for this in a personal.
The birth of an idea
The idea of the game was born completely spontaneously, at that moment when we thought about special software for bars, but after a long analysis and miscalculation of the project, they became convinced that the project was unreasonable and eventually abandoned it. At the same time, many original and partly absurd ideas for the game came to mind, and we decided to switch to their implementation. From this day, and began our journey to geymdev and there was such a small studio called APPriori Games.
Work begins
The first difficult task we faced was the search for a designer and programmer who could implement it. We shallowed work with studios and freelancers right away, as the goal was to create our own creative team of our studio. After a month of searching, we managed to find great guys who shared our enthusiasm and creativity, which greatly facilitated the game development process. After all, it is no secret to anyone that a team of like-minded people can realize a truly worthwhile, thoughtful and high-quality project. And to maintain motivation at a high level all the time, we pay them under the contract in stages.
')
As for the organizational moment, we have registered LLC. No problems, made in about 2 weeks. We opened a current account in Sberbank.
Business plan
From the very beginning, we decided to calculate the financial model in order to understand the size of investments and the terms in which they will pay off. To do this, we invited to our team a financier from Ernst & Young, who calculated everything for us, and we backed up our work with a financial model. However, only a few months later, when we actively immersed in the study of game dev, we realized that our model, although literate from the point of view of the classical business, but because of inexperience, we did not take into account the important indicators that are peculiar to the gaming industry. Attach this document will not, because it is not necessary to publish such. Editor's note: Recently, we held a private master-class on business planning in game devs at VSHBI, information from which will help to make a business plan that takes into account the specifics of business in the gaming industry. Subscribe to our blog to read it when we publish a summary
Prototype
The original idea, which, as mentioned earlier, was born spontaneously during a tumultuous and merry feast, was simply breaking bottles against my head for a while. But this is not enough for people to become interested in playing it. As a result, the initial version of the game was as follows: the player broke various bottles at a time and for each broken bottle at the end of the round were added coins that the player could spend on things and locations.
At an early stage, I wanted to try as many variations of the mechanics of the game as possible, as well as play with different effects. To develop the game, we chose Apple's native SpriteKit engine. Why? Because our programmer knows exactly this engine. For us, it would certainly be better to write on a cross-platform engine.
Monetization
Free-to-play. Also decided to introduce advertising: banners, videos and rewards for the video. Selected for this Appodeal.
Character
The first step was to develop our character, we coped with it quickly. In view of the bloated ego of one of our team members, our character was supposed to be like him, which, in fact, our designer managed to achieve. We stopped at this initial wish. But we want to note that all the characters in our game are fictional and all coincidences are random :-)
Bottles
Since we have a team of fairly creative guys, we wanted to make the game as diverse, bright and slightly absurd as possible, but at the same time not going far from reality. Therefore, we used a fairly wide range of real-life glass containers, provided this list to our designer with a reference to a photo on the Internet. The designer drew them similar, but of course we added a bit of creativity to their names, changing the names in order not to violate copyrights.
Menu and end of round screen
Locations
We decided to make the locations of our game according to the principle from cheap to chic. As our hero climbs the career ladder, the first level was a stall on the street, and at the last decided to add a little absurdity.
Shop things
Game currency store
Prototype revision
After the development of the prototype, we realized that we get a not very interesting game, because it is too simple. By this time we were actively studying the available resources and materials on game design. A neuromarketologist joined our team as a consultant. He helped us not only to improve the design, but also found several solutions that gave our game meaning and motivation for the player. Thus, in the middle of the development process, we decided to add dangerous bottles that the player should notice and throw out with a swipe, but if we didn’t notice, the player would lose either the time of the round, or points scored, or the round would end. We made 3 variations of dangerous bottles: a spiked bottle, a Molotov cocktail, and a poisonous bottle.
Tutorial
An article on this topic from Habr , which we inspired, came to our aid very quickly in time . Actually, the thought of George Feng, who once said in his speech: “The tutorial should be clear even to your mother,” and became fundamental in working out the tutorial.
Bring the essence
In any game there should be a goal, but it is very important that it is clear for the player. He must understand why and why he is doing this or that action. We initially missed this moment. Then, having played the prototype, we asked ourselves a simple question: “Why should I break bottles with my head?”. And then we realized that we urgently need to come up with a legend, why the hero of our game has to beat the bottle against the head. One could simply say that this is for fun. But I wanted drama.
As a result, we presented our heroes to the players as a person in a terrible life situation - he owes a very serious person, and if he doesn’t pay it off, then the chances of living on his worthless life are reduced to zero, for he will be finished off. To his happiness, the great and omnipotent Don Bunny came to the rescue, who is a bit crazy, a fetishist, and a strange peasant in general, but nevertheless he is ready to pay our hero for bringing him bottoms from bottles in various bars. rotten city. The plot with an absurd development, as we love!
For more immersion in the game, we made the narration of the story in the form of a chat, so that the player could imagine that he really had problems.
Icon
Localization
For our game we made localization in 14 languages: Russian, English, German, French, Spanish, Malay, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, Arabic. We have many friends who knew these languages. Therefore, we transferred most of it for free by these very friends. Chinese and Korean have been translating native speakers. We paid only for Malay, Japanese and Finnish. But we have little translation, the general text turned out to be on page A4.
Unusual marketing ploy
Raffle prizes for consumer motivation - this is a frequent advertising move in various areas of business. Thinking how this can be implemented in the game, we decided to hide 3 Easter eggs in our game. According to the competition, the first player to find them all will receive an iPhone 7 as a gift straight from apple.ru . Implemented it as follows - after the player finds all the Easter eggs, a random code is generated on the server. This code is shown to the player and immediately given the opportunity to send it to our email address. To participate in the competition, the player must join our group and make a repost of the competition. The course is designed for a viral effect, but if it does, time will tell. So far, just started.
Problems
The most interesting and unexpected for us was to face a serious problem at the very end of development - when loading the game in the App Store. We were refused three times in the publication of the game, referring to paragraph 1.4.5 Physical Harm ! Apple redzhektil and sent us our same screenshots - such as it is unhealthy, maybe they think that in the game it is necessary to beat an iPhone on the head, imagining that this is a bottle. Some local publications even wrote about this situation. For us, this Apple decision was a shock, because before starting development we studied the rules and made sure that our game complies with them, not to mention the fact that the App Store has thousands of games much tougher about harming the game character. And once rejected, two were rejected, sent to the third check and we don’t even know what to think, because if we are not allowed in because our character cannot harm himself with a bottle, then our whole concept collapses and needs urgently coming up with something else and re-programming it all.
We have already changed the screenshots for the App Store, added the initial headdress for our hero, added a warning before the game so that people would not repeat it. And they poured our game from our corporate account. And lo and behold, they missed us! Here it is our game , we will be glad to your estimates and comments in the store.
Such is the interesting story from novice developers. The path to launch the game is thorny. But when the eyes are burning, the difficult work on creating the game for 12 hours a day without days off is just a joy. The guys went through the first step and started, now it's up to the operation. Let's see how it will turn out :)
Well, it will be possible to meet with the heroes of history and talk personally on May 17 at VSBI at a virtual reality conference , where APPrioriGames will also drop in as visitors. For all readers of Habr, we decided to make a 20% discount on a ticket. When registering, use the code "habr" in the "from where you learned about the event." And if you have more than 20 karma, then I will give you a ticket, write for this in a personal.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/327192/
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