Post Mortem

So my Google play account was about to be terminated.. I only had a dozen days to save it. 

I am not particularly into mobile games anymore. However, I actually got into the game business because of mobile games, like Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Subway Surfers and Wordfeud. So I couldn’t just let my google play developer account expire like that. I had to make a simple game and upload it even if it just took one day to make it. 

Can I make a mobile game in just 1 day? All great challenges begin with a question like that. So I issued the challenge to myself… and what I found out will shock you! Or rather not, because I couldn’t do it. Feature creep, artistic visions, style and ambition took the better of me, and once they sat in the driving seat, I ended up using almost 10 days (roughly) in stead.

The following is the post mortem of my descent into mobile madness and how sunk cost fallacy kept me there until now.  

A little over 10 years ago the mobile market was a different space, and these days you might just press another droplet into the ocean when you press the “publish” button on your mobile game. 

  The potential market of 8 billion people also results in more developers unfortunately, and they are good. So in a mobile market where the big sharks dominate, and user retention, and acquisition is key to earn 2 cent for each marketing dollar spend, I did not kid myself into believing that my game will become nothing more than something people scuff at when they see it in the google play store. If there is a online place where people adore indie developed mobile games, like they do on steam and itch.io then I would like to know about it. 

Off course your game should begin with marketing and genre study in mind, according to Chris Zukowski. That means that you should think about the demand for the product that you are making before you spend time on it. However, nobody needs games - and this one is not made for the goal of making money. So I intentionally neglected the business side of things, but you shouldn’t normally do that. Unless you are a happy idiot, like me. So with my only ambition being to keep my deserted google developer account alive I sat down and decided to make a hyper-casual game. Because I have so preciously little spare time with our new baby in the house then it should be a small scope, and hyper-casual fitted perfectly with this. 

While publishing a small game was my prime goal, I also wanted to make it a learning experience. I consider myself to be a life-long student of games, so I was determined to learn how to design and implement a basic meta game that would complement an equally basic game loop. I wanted to keep it super easy, so I came up with a system where I received a star point for each completed level, and also I incorporated a button on the game menu that gives you 3 stars when you push it - the catch is that you only get the reward after you watch an ad. So with the intention of making any poor soul who stumbled into my game, into ad-watching slaves, I programmed the logic for this skinner box… I mean game. While making sure that people would never be able to retry a level without spending stars, and watching a rewarded ad to revive, I started to design the game loop itself.

Yeah, I worked out the monetization before designing the game loop! This is actually an advice that I have read about from several developers. And I’ve felt it the mobile games that I’ve played myself. The thing is that when the developers design it poorly, that is too detached from the core loop then it sticks out like a sore thumb. My experience of Crash Bandicoot run comes to mind, what is up with all those currencies (spoiler: they mean to confuse you about the worth of game vs. real money, so you In App Purchase (IAP) feels okay). 

I took a look at some Ketchapp games for inspiration about how to make a minimal viable hyper casual… They are surely juiced up, to cover up the fact they are so simple that even my dead grandma can grasp how to play them.

So even though I approached my mobile development with a great deal of irony then I think there is a lot to learn from simply juicing up your game experience and those moment-to-moment interactions in your game. It think I managed to do little of this in Goblin Ball Deluxe by adding a subtle tail of the goblins motion and some classic mobile game bubble popping noises when he adds any solid. Pickups have particles and an epic sound effect once you collide with them. 

But let us be honest - if I had actually cared about the game then it would look even better with even better juice, right? Maybe so, but I know myself good enough to know that I would have used to days doing so, and then I would have felt burned out for another few days, and thus that leads to loss of motivation. The lesson learned here was: to keep it simple, and have my deadline sharp.. 

Another thing that I learned was to make a lot of systems that would fit nicely into the roguelite genre, an increasingly popular genre, and one that I’m actually fond of. So in that regard there was some return on my investment here. 

For instance making the skins for Goblin Ball Deluxe, I had to develop a system for when they would become available. Something that is present in many roguelites, and I hope that my system can be roughly copied into any future projects I make of that genre. I have so many roguelites in my head at this time.

So reuse code between projects. Another benefit from doing this project.  And that leads us to the biggest reward of my game design experience. Doing a small game like this, actually allowed me to finish the game!! The feeling of being done is amazing. But off course, a game is never really done it is just shipped… However, in this case it is done. Because at the current time I don’t want to continue making levels for it and therefore the 20 levels is all you get. For now at least. I made some knights that are shown in the tutorial, but I never got around to using them. I also made a boss level system, but only used it twice. Making 40 levels more and actually seeing benefit from the knights and the boss system is just not worth it. I want to started with a bigger project (however, only slightly bigger).. And I want to get started with that dice based roguelite that I’ve had in my head for years. Or that metroidvania about digging with dwarves. Or, or something entirely different than a goblin ball, no matter what it is.