Twins Memory Game - clone another game find a pair? Or is it something new? A brief history of game development

    We decided to approach the creation of a game based on simple mechanics “find a pair” is not quite standard. As a result, not just a Twins Memory Game appeared , but a whole game world with a plot, with many locations, levels and level restrictions.



    Read more about the process of working on the game, what difficulties we encountered and how to solve them after all, you will learn under the cut.


    Idea The
    idea came quickly enough. Take the simple “Find a Couple” mechanics as a basis, but add a few highlights to it:
    • Custom level configuration. Not just a square box, but various shapes
    • Story line
    • Network mode - when on the same field on-line two players play sequentially with each other

    The storyline was also born fast enough. Couples - decided to associate with the twins - twins.
    The story was born about how twin brothers and sister Alex and Mia went for a walk through the magical forest and Mia was kidnapped by the evil wizard Zilzibar. Alex has no choice but to go save his sister, going through many locations and obstacles.
    No sooner said than done. Now we need to bring our plans to life.



    We choose the engine.
    In the team, we have native developers for each mobile platform. But do not write the same code for each platform. Therefore, drew attention to the game engines.

    Among the engines considered:
    • Unity
    • Marmelad
    • Cocos2D-x

    Requirements that were made to the engine: cross-platform, popularity, free, availability of documentation.
    As a result, taking into account the requirements that we set for the engine, we chose Cocos2D-x.



    Terms of development
    About 2 years have passed since the preparation of the task and the launch of the game. They periodically returned to the game, then did postponed development for several weeks. New ideas always came up, I wanted to quit and rewrite everything. Something to improve. But then they always stopped and realized that new chips and ideas all the time cast off the launch time and increase the development time. Therefore, we stopped, returned to the original plan and continued to work on the game.

    Show the game to publishers
    The first working prototype of the game we made for DevGamm 2014, which was held in Minsk. We were lucky. We presented our project at the Game Showcase. Many people came up to our table. All of them enjoyed playing the prototype. Feedback also left comments. No offense to the boys, girls have much better visual memory. They coped with the game and levels much better. By the way, on DevGamm Game Show 90% of games were written on Unity.



    We also managed to show the game to more than 40 publishers and experts as part of the Speed ​​Game Dating at DevGamm Minsk 2014. The experience is huge. In 3 minutes you need to talk about the project and get feedback. There were many reviews. But as it turned out, publishers are not interested in this kind of project. Someone specializes only in racing, someone in Match3, someone give HTML. Someone gave tips on how to optimize the game. Everyone liked the idea of ​​a network game. So we decided to implement this feature in the project.

    Returning from the conference, they realized: thousands of people - a thousand opinions. We decided not to deviate from the initial ideas and move on.



    Designing levels and game balance
    It took a lot of time to design the levels, test them and select the parameters of the restrictions on the levels to create the right game balance. This is how the levels were first designed on paper, then translated into electronic form.



    In order to increase user retention we introduce life into the game. Which are selected if the game is unsuccessful and restored after some time. You can also get life right away by inviting friends to the game or watching an ad.

    Monetization
    Banner advertising in the game + video advertising for life. In-app advertising can be completely turned off by buying IAP.

    Getting ready for a soft lunch.
    It was decided to launch on Windows Phone and Windows 8 platforms. The launch was scheduled for late January. Preparing for launch began in December. Then I’ll warn everyone when it seems that everything is almost ready there are a lot of little things that we did not think through or forget, or which we did not take into account, but which are necessary for launching. Thus, all of December and January we licked the project.

    The launch was successful. They introduced Microsoft, nominated the project for featured in several European countries, but unfortunately we did not get the effect that we expected from featured.



    Imagine Cup 2015 Russia
    Since students also worked in our team, we decide to take part in the Imagine Cup 2015. The project is pre-selected for the Russian final. We get a bunch of reviews and ideas. Everyone likes the idea of ​​network mode again. We promise to make a network mode for showing at the Russian Imagine Cup finals.

    Multiplayer - the network mode of the
    Initial ideas for the implementation of the heap mode. Invite friends, tournaments, game nets, leaderboards, etc. But we understand that all these additional features complicate our initial idea. Players need to register (either by e-mail or through social networks), you need to write a registration server and ...
    In general, we stop at a simple Multiplayer with a random player. The server rises in a cloud of Microsoft Azure. We implement multiplayer with a random player. Players play in turn. They can see the opponent’s moves. For each open pair - one more move.



    Gameplay Video


    Summary
    A few tips for those working on game projects based on personal experience
    • Try to release the prototype as quickly as possible. Set yourself a deadline (let it be an exhibition or a conference, so you focus as much as possible only on the main chips and make a working prototype)
    • A thousand people - a thousand opinions. Listen, but filter. Do not deviate from the original idea
    • Start getting ready for launch as early as possible. Believe me, so many little things will come up, without which it will simply be impossible to start a project


    The game is available for download on Goole Play and the Windows Store

    Google Play. What next? We plan to collect feedback from users. Learn analytics. Release the project on iOs. We are interested in your opinion about the game. Write comments, ideas, suggestions. We will analyze everything and try to implement it if possible.




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