Gamedev Gone Wrong: a case study - part 4 (finale) (Patreon)

Hi everyone!

This is the final part of this mini-series about the development of 'Ninja Attack!' and why I hate it so much! You can read part one here, and then part two there and then part three over there!

So far I wrote about the design I accepted to make into a game, the process of making it and my workflow and main tool (Unity) for doing so.

Today I want to write a bit about the mobile platform which is the target of this game and then conclude this mini-series with a small recap and a small announcement!

Like 'Invaders... From Space!', 'Ninja Attack!' will be released on iOS and probably nowhere else. The Frosty Pop Corps were not the first one to ask me if I would make mobile games for them. Usually I refuse the offer because I'm really not interested in the platform and its public. I make and I want to make PC games. I think making games for mobile is unlikely to get me more known to the PC public.

I accepted The Frosty Pop Corps' proposal mainly because I needed money and also because at that time I did want to try something new. It was going to be a one off thing with 'Invaders... From Space!', but they have been so nice with me and when they said they had more designs ideas for other potential collaborations, I ended up making another game for them.

I had a few fears about making games for mobile, the main one being that everything would have to be obvious in the game. A lot of people who play mobile games are not necessarily familiar with common game mechanics, so I couldn't rely on those as I do in PC games. This turned out to be a lot more true than I thought.

According to The Frosty Pop Corps' feedback, it seems that it is safest to consider the player as an unintelligent and particularly non-curious lifeform that needs to be shown anything that I want them to be aware of. OK, I'm exagerating but only a little. It's really frustrating and it makes for particularly boring designs imo.

And then there's the freemium monetization model! I already wrote about this quickly in another part but it's really awful stuff. Showing ads every few game-overs and have ad-locked bonuses, it really feels like sabotaging my own game. It's even worse when you remember that the reason you have to do this is that there's so many people out there who are not willing to pay for a premium game and that makes the freemium model a safer choice.

When I made 'Invaders... From Space!', I really didn't have the idea of freemium in mind and so the only elements of the game that relate to freemiumness were the ones that the Frosty Pop Corps explecitly asked for. For some reason, I didn't realize that I needed to make sure the player would come back to the game with superficial rewards and stuff like that. The game (and the Frosty Pop Corps) suffered for it financially.

So I did things differently with 'Ninja Attack!'. I can't really tell if it is going to work out so well, I wish I could, but at least I gave it a much better shot. The game loop is (I think) more interesting than the one in 'Invaders... From Space!', it also has much better pacing, but apart from that, it also has things to unlock and quests to complete! Hopefully that will keep the players coming back and things will go better with this game than with the last.

Yet, whether or not it does work out, it still sucks that I added these things just for that reason. The quest system in particular is really simplistic and so unnecessary to the game, yet I do think it's gonna make it more successful. And showing ads sucks. For one thing, the implementation with the badly documented plugin sucks. But then, simply having ads in the game feels... wrong. I believe a good game experience comes from immersion into the game's atmosphere and pacing. Game flow is really important to me. This is hardly compatible with ads.

To say something positive, I was surprised at how well the performances are holding up on iOS. I really thought I'd have to do some extra optimization on Invaders and I was wrong. It doesn't look like Ninja Attack is going to need it either. That's pretty cool!

Something else, I was somewhat skeptical about touch controls but actually now I think they're ok. Touching a screen is still miles away from the satisfaction of pressing an actual button, but still I can see that there's a lot of possibilities when it comes to touch-controls and that's pretty exciting!

So in the end I'm back to my original opinion that making games for mobile really isn't very interesting to me. And that's why after 'Ninja Attack!' is done, I will not be making another freemium iOS game.

Instead I will be making a premium iOS game. (maybe - probably)

Yes, the Frosty Pop Corps and I have already been talking about a potential next project. The discussion came up as I asked that if we worked on something else after the Ninja game, I'd appreciate it if it would be more of the type of game I'm used to make, in particular a pixel art shoot'em up would be great. A few days later, they came back to me with an idea for a game called Tokkō.

Tokkō would be a racing-game/shoot'em-up hybrid where you're racing your space-ship against other space-ships while also having to deal with lots of critters/enemies on your way. And I really hope it will be the messy explosive action game it sounds like. Here's a mock-up I did last week, it's not super representative of the gameplay we'd be going for but at least it gives an idea of how I'd like the game to look. (making this mock-up felt great, I really miss doing pixel-art)

So this game will be premium, no ads, no taking the players for complete idiots and also this game will not be made in Unity! The reason that bound me the most to Unity was the need for the ad plugin, so now that I'm free of that, LET'S USE SOMETHING ELSE.

Now this is still somewhat undecided but I would very much like to use MonoGame for this! I mentioned this engine in a previous Weekly Recap, it's another editor-less engine, much like Love2D, with full control over pretty much everything, with C# programming, and hopefully better performances! I say it is undecided because I have yet to try out MonoGame, but I will be making something with it very soon after the Ninja game is done to see what it's worth.

If it doesn't work out, (hoping it does but we established it's best to have a plan B) I'll go with GameMaker instead. Still better than Unity.

Oh and also, because making a premium game is kinda risky, the Frosty Pop Corps asked if it could be multiplatform, to which I wholeheartedly said yes! So this game should come to Steam (!) and maybe even the Switch (!!!), who knows!? (that'd be really cool)

Another important thing is that this game is obviously not started and no contracts has been signed or anything yet. In other words, this game might just not happen. In particular, we have yet to negotiate the development period (I'll probably be arguing for two months) and how much they would pay me, although we did agree that we would share the revenue in exchange of a smaller development budget, to lower the risks for them.

I'll keep you up to date on this, but even if it doesn't happen, I'm very much looking forward to not making the mistakes I wrote about this week again!

I have some other projects in mind for during and after Tokkō (if it happens, otherwise those projects will happen sooner) and I will let you know about those soon as well! For now, finishing 'Ninja Attack!' is the priority. Then I'll feel a lot better.

Thank you for reading this mini-series! I hope you liked it, please let me know if you did or didn't so I know if I should do that kind of thing again and/or do it differently!

If you want to ask questions about 'Ninja Attack!' or about Tokko, please do go ahead!

Thank you again so much for your support!!

Have a great week-end!

Take care!

TRASEVOL_DOG