After working and leaving many indie studio due to financial issue, I decided that Smashingclicks will be my last indie studio. I enjoyed working in a small studio because of its flexible roles and taking the responsibilities of the game. I joined in on June 2015 while they were developing a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) prototype. They had successful MMO facebook games (sadly I forgot the names) and they want to upgrade their engine and create new MMO game for mobile devices. Here are some screenshots they used to create for facebook games: For the past one year, we had been working from home and meet up once a month. It was very flexible yet challenging for me to have work-life balance while having the integrity of getting the work done. We start by testing prototypes of players interacting with isomeric environment. Our first prototype was a simple tiling method. Though the prototype did well in terms of optimizing, we found the overall universe too boring to look at, let alone playing it. Our next prototype goal is to enhance the visual look of the environment while using the same tiling method. Dofus game was our main inspiration and we did a lot of tiling research. Their environment look natural despite using repeated tiles and we decide to explore deeper into getting this result. Below are some prototype environments I produced using our tiling editor: Beside environments, I did sketching for character and monsters. Previously, the characters are done and animated in 6 different views (top, top-left, top-right, bottom, bottom-left and bottom-right). The result was too rigid and tedious. We end up going for the easiest and smartest way; by creating a "fake" 3/4 view of both characters and monsters. We tested with a few users and it turned out a lot better compared to the previous method. We originally want to make spine animation as we thought it is easy, smoother, flexible and cost less memory. However, when comparing my spine and my sprite animation, the sprite animation look a lot more lively. Perhaps I need more practice in doing spine animation D: Our team were having fun experimenting, testing and finding out new results. We were doing good process until something unexpected happened. Our investors decide to pause our MMO project and wanted us to create a hyper-casual game within 3 months! We were definitely shocked. But thankfully, our team were able to react professionally and finding ways to play smart to overcome this situation. After our meeting, I quickly created a pitch deck for our new game. I reused some sprites as placeholder for visual purpose. At this point of time, we want to have the main game mechanic right. Here are some samples of the pitch deck: We did several variations before we decide on "one tap" mechanic which the player just smash (tap furiously) on the screen. We keep the art style simple and appealing for younger audience, as well as to make it achievable within the remaining 2 months. And since the players are going to tap furiously, our monsters animation does not require a lot of sprites for visual feedback. We managed to complete the game in two months, and for the remaining one month, we focus on marketing (both social media and physical booth) and publishing the game. It was a new and fun experience for us. I get to interact with our potential players; receive feedback and behavior when playing our game. I also learnt basic marketing such as A/B Testing. Even though our game does not meet the Key Performer Indicator (KPI) and the investors decided to withdraw, both the investors and our team are aware that we put efforts to make things possible. I am glad to say that this is my best (and final) experience working in an indie studio. Even though we are no longer working together, we still hang out once a while as friends! And finally here is our video trailer done by our artist, Ryan! Check out Smashing Heroes! App: https://appadvice.com/app/smashing-heroes/1149018238 Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/smashingheroes/
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