Hi everyone! I’d like to tell you the story about the creation and release of our first game. I will tell you a little about our company’s background and the difficulties that we encountered during the development. I hope our story might be useful to you too.
It all started a few years ago when my brother built up a team of like-minded people who were eager to create, and this was then expressed in the creation of animation and computer graphics for various projects. The team eventually grew, as well as the number of orders from clients. Then there was a point when we decided to create our own game project. Thus, we began a long preparation process. Unfortunately, our existing knowledge base was not enough to start the project. New volunteers joined the team, the learning process started, and the project began to acquire its first outlines. The result was a prototype of Crocks Hunter, a 2D platformer.
The plot of the game was as follows: Crocodile-aliens arrive on Earth to steal the Moon from earthmen. The main characters of the game (a boy or a girl, depending on player’s choice) must go through six different locations (desert, jungle, lava, water world, ice jungle, and fairy forest), and catch — not kill, the game is absolutely violence-free and child-friendly — all the Crocodiles into boxes which are used sometimes for some puzzles, and then defeat the final boss. One of the graphics features of the game is that 3D character models were rendered into 2D to make more complex, natural and fancy animations and to keep the high quality of the overall picture, along with a light-weight installation file.
Initially, the project was planned to be released for mobile platforms, but as the development progressed, it was decided to release it for PC, and then for Nintendo Switch. This was due to several reasons. Firstly, mobile game publishers are into the free2play game model, for which platform games are not quite suitable, although we figured out how to monetize the game, and to draw the player’s interest to micro-transactions. Secondly, in order to enhance the visuals of the game with various effects, we would have to sacrifice the performance. Therefore, it was more interesting to release the game on PC and consoles but at a set price. One of the publishers suggested that we release an update with six levels and two bosses once a month. Thus, it would be possible to retain the player for a long time, but so far we have not tried this model. Although, who knows, maybe you will?
We temporarily froze the Crocks Hunter project but did not abandon it. We are writing new documentation, and designing new levels. We are open to cooperation with investors and publishers to make a global bestseller together.
Currently, we are working without an office, so the whole team works remotely. In order to complete the project and make it at a high level, we would need to gather all the team members in one place, and this requires funding. So we started looking for investors. Many publishers appreciated the great potential of the game but would invest in the project after it being fully fledged and ready for release. As it turned out, Russian investors are afraid of the gaming industry, and they are completely unready to invest in it. Perhaps, this is due to their not understanding the potential and the specifics of the industry. Many foreign investors simply don’t work with Russia. At some point in our search for investors, we were stumped. The team could no longer work on pure enthusiasm. Some team members quit. Some began to slow down the main process, saying that they’d prefer to take orders as before than “work for the fairies and unicorns”. But some determined team members still believed in the project and continued to create it. So this is how the PUSHINGAMES company was created.
Unfortunately, there is no “book for dummies” on how to achieve success from the beginning to end in video games industry. The information you may find on the Internet is very superficial. Therefore, look for according courses, literature, or even better, find some competent mentor who will guide you. Our mentor was a game designer Konstantin Savochkin
One evening, when we were discussing some details, we decided to create a little something to distract ourselves, and came up with the “Quick Week” project. The main goal of which was to create and release one mini-game within a week. It took a couple of days to write game design documents and calculate P & L. Meanwhile, our artists already made the first sketches and prototypes.
We really like the examples of the Nintendo and Marvel universes when the story of one character is woven into the story of another, thereby creating fascinating endless worlds. Maintaining the heritage of the “Crocks Hunter”, we chose the main character to be a crocodile. The result was Jumping Crock: Jellyfish Attack, an arcade retro jumper for mobile platforms, designed in the style of space comic books of the 80’s .
Download link on GooglePlay: Jumping Crock Jellyfish Attack
In total, we spent around $600 to create the game, excluding licenses and developer accounts. We spent most of the budget on localizing the game and its description in 12 languages, including Russian.
To do the translation job, we chose a small but very responsible team — Locnloader a pool of freelance video game translators with 8 years of experience and voice over actors collected in one place. They specialize in indie-games and such small teams as ours, and that affects the price in a good way. For a reasonable price, they did us translations within 2 days. Moreover, they helped us with the ASO description text and edited it to sound a little more adequate, which is sometimes hard when it comes to repeating many same keywords in one small text. What I personally liked is that their team manager had some understanding in game design (and even took a course in it), and a little in ASO. That’s what I call speaking the same language!
We are very proud of the music in our arcade in particular. We love rock! There is 8-bit Space Rock music in the game. It was written by a wonderful musician, composer, and our cousin Yevgeny Protopopov. The music takes you back to the past, especially if you played Battle Toads and Tanks as a child.
Since we created the project with our own money, the payment to our specialists for the work done was extremely symbolic and incommensurable with the level of their professionalism. Therefore we are immensely grateful to our team and believe that without them we wouldn’t succeed.
In order for the project to be successful, it is very important for the team to have a Team Lead, who could drive this train, per aspera ad astra. In our team, that would be my brother Nikita.
Many companies could have achieved well-deserved success, but they never reached it, stopping halfway through. The history of the company with the fruit on the logo is the lodestar for us on how to do things.
Of course, you always want to do something unique and ambitious like Crash Bandicoot. You might want to make the game more complex by adding many different features and mechanics, but it’s better not to do so. Make it easy! The process of creativity absorbs you. You always want to add something else, when almost everything is ready. It’s best to concentrate on the main idea and actually bring it to life, and after the release, just make an update. By making game updates after the release, you maintain players’ interest and make your app appear at the top of the search results in application stores. In the long-term development of your project, it’s very important to take a detached view. Do beta and alpha testing. Of course, this is a bit like parent-teacher nights at school, when they scold your beloved child, and it can be painful, but it will be good for you.
We made our game free-to-play. We were looking for ads SDK for a long time, and we stopped at the companies:
● Appodeal
● AdMod
As the saying goes, “Creativity is great, but sometimes hunger takes over”. The most important thing is to remember who we are doing this for. We believe that a player should stay immersed in the game as long as possible, without being disturbed by ads in the heat of the moment. And of course, you can’t go without them at all. Use all available services of GooglePlay and AppStore, in-app ads, Achievements, and Leaderboards.
After we published our game in stores, the hardest part began — promotion. Promoting the project itself is also very important. You can create a masterpiece, but in order for it to become a bestseller, you got to try your best. How can you do it when there is no budget? To accumulate link mass, you can write articles in the media and various forums. But as practice has shown, there is nothing better than word of mouth. Bloggers, YouTube and streamers are such goodwill ambassadors. Each of them makes game reviews in their particular style. Find the one you like and persuade them to do a review for free. However, you are unlikely to have luck on this one (we haven’t). Russian bloggers ask for two to three times more money than their foreign counterparts, by the way.
Before releasing your game, create your info channels and use cross-references between them. It works! We use:
● Facebook
● Twitter
● Youtube
● Instagram
● Yunoia
● Bridget Loker
● Telegram channels and chats.
Now let’s get to the final part — working with app stores and how we published our game.
Google — everything is quick and easy. The main thing is to make an agreement with your conscience and not to sign Coppa.
AppStore —an application is being checked for a long time. It feels like an eternity. But in fact, it takes a week for them to check it, despite them saying 24 to 48 hours.
Amazon — quick and easy.
AppScater — as soon as you publish on the main stores, you can start invading Greater China. Appscater is there to help you.
So it goes.
P.S.
Once again I want to say thank you to my team. And please, don’t forget to try and play our game
The author of this article and chief marketing officer, one of the brothers, Artem Pushin.
Love your journey from starting to till today. Thanks for your post. :good:
Сongratulations on the release! I would like to read about promotion steps, if you did any, except social networks cross-references..
Love it!
Related
Hi guys,
I don't know 'bout you, but any game I've ever played seemed to be interesting at first and kept me playing it until I completed the storyline (or beat 'some' of the levels of an arcade) and then I gradually lost my interest in it.
So far the best (for me) was LFS and TC:Elite (your opinion may vary, of course), they kept me going for years. I was wondering what was the reason of that and I came to the conclusion it must have been because of the true multiplayer nature.
Furthermore, back in the old days (Amiga, C64) the simplest games gave the most fun.
I was looking for something similar on Android. Drag racing is very good, Air Control is great. But are simple and addictive, but none of them really offered 'true' multiplayer. By this I mean playing with (or against) someone sitting next to you. I also tried the 'high budget pro games' like Asphalt from Gameloft, but i played it for like 15 minutes and never touched it again. Somehow it failed to attract me.
I wanted something that is simple, something I can play with my friends, that won't become boring after some hours of play just because I can beat the 'bots and something, that remains to be challenging.
Driven by this 'selfish' need, let me introduce the game I've been working on the past couple of months. By now you can guess it's gonna be very simple, but multiplayer game. It's called Curve Mania.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ratcash.games.curvemania
In this game you have to prove you're the smartest 'droid' by surviving all the other players in a limited arena. Develop your driving skills, apply tactics, join forces! Whoever is 'The last man standing', wins!
There are, unfortunately, some drawbacks having a multiplayer-only game:
1. you can't play this game alone. There are no bots. Two players is the minimum, three is recommended for fun and 7 is the ultimate challenge, where you can create alliances against against the current leader, etc.
2. you need a working WIFI network. Because of latency restrictions, local network multiplayer is the only option. Will see later if 3G is possible.
Most important thing last. The game is free for up to 3 players, and you'll have to spend some cents if you'll willing to play with 4+ players. I opted for this mainly because:
1. I wanted to develop it, mainly for myself, but then again, did not want to keep it only for myself.
2. Three players should be enough to try/play/experience the game and cause you lots of fun.
3. I did not want to ruin the game with ads (to at least get a small return on my time and efforts)... So if you think this game caused you fun and is worth some cents, you can buy one of the advanced features. This will show me your 'gratitude' and allow you to have even more fun. I hope this is a fair deal.
If you feel like this game is worth (at least) trying, please head over to Android Market. I'd appreciate your honest ratings and posting your impressions either here, or directly on the market. Bugs reports (if any), contributions and feature requests rather here or to the support email address so we can communicate.
Happy gaming!
A new bugfixed version is uploaded.
What it is: Kicktrade is a free virtual multiplayer stock market, where you take on the role of an investor who buys and sells shares of the football teams currently participating in the Euro Cup event. Imagine the teams being like the companies on a real market and you compete against other players trying to make the most virtual money out of their development during the competition. Think of it like betting, but in a different way... although be aware that you neither pay or win any real money!
What's the idea behind it: The game is targeted to be casual with simple user interaction (you should be able to start playing immediately even without registering anywhere) but developing a high addiction factor, which can lead to micro management and wanting to understand the mechanics behind the system - but this is not required to play. The development of the prices should in the end reflect the expectations of the players in their teams and their real performance during the matches.
How the market works: The "companies" that you can trade start into the market with a price reflecting their FIFA ranking. You can take their development on the market or the matches into account to make a decision to buy and sell their stock. There is a bank that constantly buys and sells shares from and to you. The prices to buy and sell start above their current value to buy and below their current value to sell. However, those bank offers are adjusted in periods, so you will have to make a decision to buy or sell before someone else does - but also not too quickly because you then might waste money. Once a transaction has been made, the price of the company is adjusted to the transaction price (taking the trade volume into account) and the new buy and sell prices are calculated (and the cycle begins again).
Installation: I attached the game to this post (as the forum does not allow me to post any links yet). Since you are all privacy aware: You will have to accept 3 permissions to be able to play the game:
INTERNET : obviously to connect to the game server to fetch game data and send your actions.
WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE : to store cache data on your SD card. For example the icons of the teams in the market. All data can be wiped in the preference menu.
READ_PHONE_STATE : to read the IMEI of your phone for authentication with the game server. No other information will be taken from your phone. This is required to prevent players from creating multiple accounts.
The development: This project has been implemented by one person alone (me) during free time as a learning project and is still in a testing phase. It is to my knowledge now bug free so I decided to enter the phase where more testers create more dynamics. This will allow me to tweak the game mechanics under more realistic circumstances. It is my first Android project, so any suggestions or comments are very welcome! (For example, if the required permissions prevent you from considering installing it and why)
The future of Kicktrade: The idea is to make more versions of the game to run during the longer running competition of several leagues in different countries. The Euro Cup is a perfect testing ground before release on leagues as it is a lot shorter with matches nearly every day. Until the end of the event I would like to have perfected the game mechanics and only afterwards I would like improve the UI and the code.
Keep up to date: You can follow the news on twitter @kicktradegame as well as on Facebook, or you can google for 'kicktrade' to find my blog called NeoZenCortexis among the first results. When there is a new version of the client available, you will see an update button on the main menu of the game. It is not always required to update but highly recommended (if you see an access denied message it could mean you should consider updating). At some point in the future, the game will also be uploaded to Google Play and get its own website but my free time is limited at the moment, so I will take it step by step.
How can you help: Most importantly, try the game yourself and/or invite your friends to play. I especially require feedback on the game mechanics at this stage of development and this requires a more dynamic market - although any other suggestion or comment is very appreciated as well. I have tested the game so far on Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy S II, Google Nexus and a couple of HTC devices but none of them has hardware keyboards, so I expect some trouble there. Feel free to comment if you encounter any strange behavior with those. Also other than hi-res displays have not been tested.
Thanks: I would like thank all the people at XDA Developers and StackOverflow for the many hints I researched while learning how to work with android phones and ultimately even make my own app! Keep it up!!
I would be very happy if you help me test my game! For any questions or suggestions, contact me on twitter @kicktradegame, facebook or my blog (search for 'kicktrade'). Thank you very much in advance!!
Nice. .Vl try it out. ..
<3 I love football <3
Cool! Let me know if you need any help or advice... I really appreciate all feedback and I hope you enjoy!!
I had to slow down price development during the night (CET) until we have some more players from outside of europe... otherwise some of the teams dropped too far.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA
Kicktrade v0.25 released
Let's experiment a little. There was one thing in the game mechanics I was not very happy with: If you buy a share that not many people hold and nobody else is going to buy, your profit should be very small. But if your trade starts a trend on the market - let's say you buy and several other investors follow your example, you should get the best prices in average. Same thing with selling: if a lot of people hold a stock and you are the first to sell, you should get better prices than those who decide to sell last. I hope to bring more fluctuation on the market and make your decision depending on the trend you expect to see in the future. Of course this will most likely work best with more players, but let's give it a try now anyway, shall we?
One side effect of this will also be that teams which already went out of the competition and not many people are likely to be interested in are a great risk to buy, because the sell price will only increase if players follow your example. Otherwise the price might even go down, as the buy price is considerably lower now.
Further modifications in this version:
Fixed a bug: when you sell your complete depot of a share, you were still counted as an investor. This will be adjusted with the next trade on each team (only then, because those numbers are only calculated when trading).
Number of investors are now displayed (this information is important to you so you can make a decision with the changes above)
Switched position of the tabs "Depot" and "History", which increased performance (the history loads slower than the depot because it contains more entries and will now only be pre-loaded once you switch one tab to the depot).
The history now shows the last 100 trade entries when entering the tab. You can load more (if available) by scrolling all the way down.
The history graph shows the same amount of items that are in the list. Which means it will show up to 100 past trades now (before it was 20). If you scroll down the list of items before and more items are loaded, the graph will display them as well.
Performance has been increased on all list views.
Please comment on the changes, no matter if you feel they make the game better, worse or not very different at all... Thanks and let's see how the market develops now with so many teams out of the competition.
About me:
Hello!
My name is Ilya.
And I apologize in advance for my bad English.
I am the creator, programmer and designer in my small studio: Thevisioline
Throughout my life I have been helping many people: from simple advice, to great actions. I always liked to help people. But, for obvious reasons, I can not help anyone who addresses me. But one day I had an idea: almost everyone has smartphones, so why not help a large number of people with this help at the same time?
I had knowledge in programming and founded a studio to create applications on the phone - it was not a problem. But what is the studio without its own product? At this point, I decided to approach this topic from the other side: a mixture of the game and the application in one small game. So my studio appeared, and with it my first project: Endless Food.
Game description:
Every day for two months I worked on Endless Food. And even now, five months after the release of the game, work continues on it.
Let me tell you more about my game: Endless Food is a mixture of game and application. The main task was to make a game that would be useful and interesting.
So what can Endless Food help people? Can it, for example, give a second life or give immortality?
It certainly can not give immortality, but in emergency situations it can help, and often, it can save a life for you or someone around you. My first creation is able to train people in such necessary skills as Reaction. Incidentally, the game helps you to think through your moves in advance and make a decision instantly.
When you first start the game does not give you a path by which you can develop the necessary skills. It is just a tool for gaining knowledge. The game gives you only an opportunity, but how you use it, start playing and improving your skills, or you'll delete, you decide only yourself.
The user who just started the game, first of all sees how the hamburger tries to escape from the fork, moving on the plates. In appearance, mindless occupation, but do not rush to make hasty conclusions. To score more than 20 points at the very beginning will be problematic enough and only by training the necessary skills, the player will begin to correctly evaluate all his actions and possibilities, and only after that the user will be able to gain more and more points. But, despite the first successes, in order to develop these skills at the proper level, it is necessary to play this game for at least 15 minutes a day for 2-3 weeks. After this period, the player will restore these vital skills.
There are two modes in the game: Classic and Back and Forth. Each of the modes is responsible for training different skills:
- Classic - suitable for those users who feel that the reaction they have at the proper level. In this mode, the player controls the speed of the hamburger: slows the hamburger or accelerates, thereby using not only the reaction, but also the speed of decision making and the speed of thinking about the consequences. In order to gain in this mode as many points as possible, you need to think through each step.
- Back and Forth - will be more useful to beginners. This, so to speak, the first step in restoring the required level of reaction. In this mode, the hamburger and fork move in the same direction at the same speed, but at any moment the plug can change its direction. The task of the player is to have time to click on the screen, thereby changing their direction.
Endless Food will be useful not only for the younger generation, but also for a more adult audience. Because a person is over 40 years old, care begins to deteriorate, he becomes more diffused and does not have such a quick reaction as in his youth. But, after a very short period of play for 2-3 weeks, even an adult will begin to feel better.
You probably wonder where the calculations came from, if you need to play at least 15 minutes a day for 2-3 weeks? From the moment of development to the release of the game, we conducted many tests on different groups of people, in order to determine the optimal time for training. The game was tested on 50 users from different age categories. 44 of which showed an impressive result. For the remaining 6, we increased the playing time to 20 minutes per day, and after 2 weeks they showed a much better result, although it did not reach the previous 44 users, but it proved that our game can help people of all ages.
The graphics also made a special approach: our goal was to make the graphics simultaneously stylish and pleasant, to attract both young and older audiences. Therefore, we chose the approach to use low polygonal graphics, thus the game became less demanding to the power of the phone, but the graphics remained at a decent level. On the main screen and during the game, it was decided to use as few distracting elements as possible, thereby completely immersing the user in the game.
The game also has a table of records, thereby giving the player to compare their successes with the successes of other users of Endless Food.
The game is free, but the game has unobtrusive advertising, which is necessary for further research in this direction and creating more games.
Addition:
Endless Food is the first, but by no means the last, mixture of the game and the application, in the meaning of which is the help to people. New projects are already being prepared that can help a person in all sorts of life situations.
I want to help as many people as possible using games in their devices. Telephones now have almost everyone, but not everyone can find the necessary information in it. With our games, all the vital information the user can acquire and train through the phone.
To understand if such an approach is necessary for people, we need to get as many downloads and, as a result, feedback. Once in the top on xda-developers, we can quickly get a large number of reviews and complete the game, if necessary. After that, I will immediately start creating new projects and will be able to help even more people.
I plan to gather a team of like-minded people with whom we can do more large-scale projects aimed at helping people. At this stage of development, I need to get into the top xda-developers, after which Endless Food will immediately receive a lot of downloads and reviews! I'm sure that this type of games will become more useful for users every day.
Once again, I apologize for my English.
Thank you in advance and thank you for your time.
Best wishes to you!
Thevisioline
Download: t(dot)co/2zPlbh0fmB
Hello everyone,
I am glad to be able to present you a game I created. It's called Money Clicker. As you can imagine, this game is an idle clicker. But before you say: "Just one more of many boring idle clicker games", I want to show you what Money Clicker makes different than the competitive apps. In Money Clicker you can not only click until you finger hurts - no you can purchase world-famous skyscrapers, buy company stocks in the virtual stock exchange, and even start your own business with thousands of employees! Additionally, the game is tightly integrated with Google Play Games, so you can earn achievements, climb leader-boards and compare with your friends. And the best: Money Clicker is completely free and doesn't contain ads.
It started as a small app on a January afternoon but turned soon into a much bigger project. Please notice that this game is still in Beta and may contain some bugs. I would really appreciate if you could test the app and give me feedback (perhaps in this thread or per Google Play Store feedback).
Interested?
Unfortunately I am not permitted to post links so if you want to try it please go to the Google Play Store and search for "Money Clicker" and select the app from "Illumination Apps".
If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask me.
~Jonathan (Developer of Money Clicker)
Awesome. Sounds great. I'll give it a go.
Would it be possible to get changelogs of updates to see what's changing from patch to patch?
Love
I'm a beta tester and I'm currently obsessed. I would like to eventually be able to have more strategy involved in some areas, but I'm just craving a deeper real time turn over. Long term stocks and day trading. I like the randomization and variables. All ready more categories to explore than most and different incomes to acquire. Keep up the great work!
suggestions and maybe a bug
I have a few things to say, first of all: Great game, great idea, it's really fun.
I'd like to know more how things really work, for example when I upgrade the research facilities of my business what will this do? will I have a lower cost? will I be able to sell my goods at higher prices? What about using money to spend in research? What's going to happen???
Also I'd like to report a bug: I upgraded the factory this morning by 1 level and it was already at maximum level, the hint said "you should hire more workers in order to get your goods out in the world fastest" or something like that, the problem is that the minimum amount of employees I could hire was 12.000, thus I was -30.000.000 in the account balance and after a few minutes the game said "your business failed, you sold everything except the REIT to repay your debts" ....
Anyway it's really a good game,
Thanks
Wow, now 500k+ downloads.
I'd like my game to be so successful too.
So I’ve developed an android app now and I’m really curious about your feedback! The app is completely free to play.
Here’s the link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=callandha.app
As I already mentioned in the headline, this is an interactive text adventure story app, so you can make your own choices to alter the course of the story.
I’ve orientated myself on certain other text adventure games and specifically added a lot of graphics and illustration, because that’s what I’m always missing when reading good text adventure story games and I believe it pulls the reader even deeper into the story and makes the characters more realistic.
Short overview of the story:
The story is about five girls, who discover supernatural abilities like a special bond to one of the four elements. Laurel, the protagonist, also is repeatingly dreaming about a certain boy, but every time she encounters him in the dreamworld, his face looks unfocused. One day, a shady figure appears in her dreams as well, watching her from the shadows and threatening her. Laurel also encounters four other girls in the real world, who seem to have supernatural abilities just like her, though some of her friends seem closer to the darkness than Laurel might have thought at first gaze. The following days, the five girls meet up regularly and eventually find the way to a hidden school that teaches magic. But not all is as well as it seems. Laurel keeps getting into bad accidents and someday, one of her friends suddenly disappears without a trace. Is this related to the creepy shadows, that lurk around the school? Are they somehow connected to the mysterious school director? The shadows are coming… Can you keep your friends safe from them?
The whole book is parted into six parts and I’ve just released the first part and I’m already working on the second part now. A second book is planned as well. Please leave a review on Google Play Store if you like the app.
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram to keep track of every new story release!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/callandhastudio
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/callandha_studio/
Greetings, Callandha