From a useless hobby to a featured feature on Google Play
Hello! My name is Artem, I'm from a small game development studio in Nizhny Novgorod. For the first year in game development, our team has accumulated thoughts about various aspects of work and we have a desire to share them. Just want to indicate that all further conclusions to a person with experience may seem childish prattle and this is quite understandable. But for us, these theses, in due time, have become a discovery, which means that there is a chance that for someone who is just starting their journey in game dear they will become the same discovery and will help to avoid such mistakes.
“Why not make the game?”
In December 2016, one of our developers, Gleb, came up with this brilliant idea. He shared it with me and one of our comrades, Dima (we were all familiar with and for a long time). At that time, Gleb and I (later programmers) worked in a fairly large IT company, and Dima (hereafter the artist) worked as a designer somewhere in the state. service. We thought, in fact, why not? After all, we have three of the richest gaming experience, so we know exactly how it should be.
')
Actually, here is the conclusion â„–1: "You can not just take and make a cool game."
So, to think that if you’ve been gama all your life, then you know how to make games — this is about the same thing as thinking: “Since I’ve eaten food all my life, then I know exactly how to cook it.”
At the end of 2016, we began to choose the genre \ setting. The only thing on which we agreed initially - we are making a game for mobile platforms. A lot of concepts were invented, but in the end they started making a 2D platformer about a viking kid with cartoon graphics, as the most adequate and, in our opinion, just realizable.
Our artist began to throw "screenshots" of the game in Photoshop and urgently learn the basics of animation.
We chose Unity3D as the engine. Just like that, without any reason, simply because he was heard and had 2D mode.
So, conclusion number 2: "Any survey you have done is better than its absence."
The more you learn about what you have to plunge into later, the more productive your activity will be. Seriously, do not be lazy and spend a week on a thoughtful analysis of development tools. It would not be superfluous to see which genres / settings are currently in trend, if you do not have specific thoughts on this matter. It will save you nerves, time and resources.
We, as programmers starting to learn the engine, were greatly helped by this tutorial.
But the good video for Dragon Bones: one and two .
As soon as we decided on a set of tools, we began to attempt to sketch at least something that would look like a game.
At the beginning of our work, of course, there was not even a talk about any prototype, since no one had any idea what it was and why to do it.
And here the conclusion No. 3 was already in time: “Prototyping is cool!”
The sooner we would understand that we need to prototype our game, the more time and effort we would save. The presence of the prototype helps to immediately see what needs to be changed, and what can be left in terms of gameplay and allows you to determine the minimum set of resources for development (mechanics, animation, sprites, etc.). And most importantly - the prototype provides a foundation for development, which saves you from trying to move in all directions at once.
Following the month of our work in the evenings, we got this:
Initially, the project was conceived by us as a platformer with small levels of puzzles. But the longer we worked on the project, the less we liked this idea. We realized that it was rather difficult to come up with interesting mechanics for puzzles, and the tests themselves, in fact, turned out to be secondary and boring. At the same time, we were largely inspired by old games like Earthworm Jim, old Aladdin with shogi, Scocer Boy and the like. Therefore, we decided to go in the direction of time-tested mechanic and some hardcore.
Until April, the development was at a fairly measured pace. On April 23, we posted the first gameplay trailer on YouTube, and this step influenced our work absolutely unexpectedly. A couple of days later, one of our friends contacted us, expressed his deep interest in the project and announced his readiness to support us financially. Fucking magic!
We quickly furnished the office and began to work on the game in a different mode and more consciously. Astrologers have announced a five-day working week, naturally the increase in experience and errors has been doubled.
The first problem we encountered was that we needed an effective tool for team development, as well as some kind of protection from our curved hands. We used Skype for a couple of weeks as a file sharing service (yes, just like in that video) and every evening we made a backup of the project in a separate folder almost with our hands. It is clear that we could not endure this for a long time, and reluctantly it was decided to learn how to configure and use git in relation to Unity. Everything turned out to be extremely simple and was mastered and set up in a couple of days.
Conclusion number 4: "As soon as possible, start using the version control system"
Even if you work alone. Even if you are an artist, and it seems to you that these are technologies that are close to alien ones. I will not describe the advantages of the version control system in development, before me it made a great many truly reputable people. Let me just say that if it were not for git, we would have already died during development from nervous and moral exhaustion.
In May, a very important DevGAMM trip to Moscow took place. We gained new knowledge, participated in the show case and collected feedback from people from the industry. By this time, we had another artist - Lena. The work began to boil, fresh blood in the team benefited, we were able to improve the visual style.
After DevGAMM, a couple of pretty serious insights hit us.
Conclusion number 6: "Do not boil in their own juice"
Show the game as often as possible to people at different stages of development. In the course of work, the eye becomes blurred, thinking becomes kostenet, and as a result you stop noticing banal and obvious problems. And in the end, the games are made so that people play them. It would be nice to know what the end user thinks about the product.
Conclusion number 7: “We need to think about how to make money on the game and how to promote it. And the sooner, the better. ”
Of course, we thought that the game should bring money, but it was thought in the style of “Well, let's fix the advertisement, we will make some crystals, we will sell something for them. It works for everyone, and it will work for us. ” It turned out not. It turned out that making money from a game is a whole art, akin to black magic. There are a lot of scary terms like ASO, Retention, ARPPU, CPI, eCPM and a whole lot more. And, worst of all, you need to understand all this and be able to use it in order for your game to become commercially successful. Before going to the conference, we generally had no idea about this amazing and mysterious world of monetization and promotion of games.
Actually, we again strengthened our team with another programmer - Misha, as well as a guide to the world of marketing - Katya. As such, she had no experience in game development, so she had to wade through this whole hell from scratch, and alone.
By the way, here are a couple of articles, in case you encounter similar problems.
If you do not know where to start the promotion, but there is no money for it at all.
Discussion of the in-game economy, which will help to begin to understand what's what.
Now we continue to work on Kidarian Adventures, we have entered the beta testing stage and even got into the “Early access” section on Google Play.
In general, the most important conclusion we made in the year of work is
Conclusion number 8 "Game development is damn fun"
We are always ready to communicate and want to share experiences. We can talk about skeletal 2D-animation on the free analog Spine (we will try to prepare a tutorial on this topic, if you are interested), and on the results of our first Beta test.
“Why not make the game?”
In December 2016, one of our developers, Gleb, came up with this brilliant idea. He shared it with me and one of our comrades, Dima (we were all familiar with and for a long time). At that time, Gleb and I (later programmers) worked in a fairly large IT company, and Dima (hereafter the artist) worked as a designer somewhere in the state. service. We thought, in fact, why not? After all, we have three of the richest gaming experience, so we know exactly how it should be.
')
Actually, here is the conclusion â„–1: "You can not just take and make a cool game."
So, to think that if you’ve been gama all your life, then you know how to make games — this is about the same thing as thinking: “Since I’ve eaten food all my life, then I know exactly how to cook it.”
At the end of 2016, we began to choose the genre \ setting. The only thing on which we agreed initially - we are making a game for mobile platforms. A lot of concepts were invented, but in the end they started making a 2D platformer about a viking kid with cartoon graphics, as the most adequate and, in our opinion, just realizable.
Our artist began to throw "screenshots" of the game in Photoshop and urgently learn the basics of animation.
We chose Unity3D as the engine. Just like that, without any reason, simply because he was heard and had 2D mode.
So, conclusion number 2: "Any survey you have done is better than its absence."
The more you learn about what you have to plunge into later, the more productive your activity will be. Seriously, do not be lazy and spend a week on a thoughtful analysis of development tools. It would not be superfluous to see which genres / settings are currently in trend, if you do not have specific thoughts on this matter. It will save you nerves, time and resources.
We, as programmers starting to learn the engine, were greatly helped by this tutorial.
But the good video for Dragon Bones: one and two .
As soon as we decided on a set of tools, we began to attempt to sketch at least something that would look like a game.
At the beginning of our work, of course, there was not even a talk about any prototype, since no one had any idea what it was and why to do it.
And here the conclusion No. 3 was already in time: “Prototyping is cool!”
The sooner we would understand that we need to prototype our game, the more time and effort we would save. The presence of the prototype helps to immediately see what needs to be changed, and what can be left in terms of gameplay and allows you to determine the minimum set of resources for development (mechanics, animation, sprites, etc.). And most importantly - the prototype provides a foundation for development, which saves you from trying to move in all directions at once.
Following the month of our work in the evenings, we got this:
Initially, the project was conceived by us as a platformer with small levels of puzzles. But the longer we worked on the project, the less we liked this idea. We realized that it was rather difficult to come up with interesting mechanics for puzzles, and the tests themselves, in fact, turned out to be secondary and boring. At the same time, we were largely inspired by old games like Earthworm Jim, old Aladdin with shogi, Scocer Boy and the like. Therefore, we decided to go in the direction of time-tested mechanic and some hardcore.
Until April, the development was at a fairly measured pace. On April 23, we posted the first gameplay trailer on YouTube, and this step influenced our work absolutely unexpectedly. A couple of days later, one of our friends contacted us, expressed his deep interest in the project and announced his readiness to support us financially. Fucking magic!
We quickly furnished the office and began to work on the game in a different mode and more consciously. Astrologers have announced a five-day working week, naturally the increase in experience and errors has been doubled.
The first problem we encountered was that we needed an effective tool for team development, as well as some kind of protection from our curved hands. We used Skype for a couple of weeks as a file sharing service (yes, just like in that video) and every evening we made a backup of the project in a separate folder almost with our hands. It is clear that we could not endure this for a long time, and reluctantly it was decided to learn how to configure and use git in relation to Unity. Everything turned out to be extremely simple and was mastered and set up in a couple of days.
Conclusion number 4: "As soon as possible, start using the version control system"
Even if you work alone. Even if you are an artist, and it seems to you that these are technologies that are close to alien ones. I will not describe the advantages of the version control system in development, before me it made a great many truly reputable people. Let me just say that if it were not for git, we would have already died during development from nervous and moral exhaustion.
In May, a very important DevGAMM trip to Moscow took place. We gained new knowledge, participated in the show case and collected feedback from people from the industry. By this time, we had another artist - Lena. The work began to boil, fresh blood in the team benefited, we were able to improve the visual style.
After DevGAMM, a couple of pretty serious insights hit us.
Conclusion number 6: "Do not boil in their own juice"
Show the game as often as possible to people at different stages of development. In the course of work, the eye becomes blurred, thinking becomes kostenet, and as a result you stop noticing banal and obvious problems. And in the end, the games are made so that people play them. It would be nice to know what the end user thinks about the product.
Conclusion number 7: “We need to think about how to make money on the game and how to promote it. And the sooner, the better. ”
Of course, we thought that the game should bring money, but it was thought in the style of “Well, let's fix the advertisement, we will make some crystals, we will sell something for them. It works for everyone, and it will work for us. ” It turned out not. It turned out that making money from a game is a whole art, akin to black magic. There are a lot of scary terms like ASO, Retention, ARPPU, CPI, eCPM and a whole lot more. And, worst of all, you need to understand all this and be able to use it in order for your game to become commercially successful. Before going to the conference, we generally had no idea about this amazing and mysterious world of monetization and promotion of games.
Actually, we again strengthened our team with another programmer - Misha, as well as a guide to the world of marketing - Katya. As such, she had no experience in game development, so she had to wade through this whole hell from scratch, and alone.
By the way, here are a couple of articles, in case you encounter similar problems.
If you do not know where to start the promotion, but there is no money for it at all.
Discussion of the in-game economy, which will help to begin to understand what's what.
Now we continue to work on Kidarian Adventures, we have entered the beta testing stage and even got into the “Early access” section on Google Play.
In general, the most important conclusion we made in the year of work is
Conclusion number 8 "Game development is damn fun"
We are always ready to communicate and want to share experiences. We can talk about skeletal 2D-animation on the free analog Spine (we will try to prepare a tutorial on this topic, if you are interested), and on the results of our first Beta test.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/339670/
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