Toppled
HYPER-CASUAL ARCADE IOS/ANDROID UNITY
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Roles: Game Designer, UI/UX Engineer,
Programmer
Project Timeline:
In-development
Team Size:
2 People
Overview
Don’t topple! Navigate through worlds and overcome obstacles without falling over to continue your adventure.
Contributions
• Designed and scripted game loop, various game mechanics, monetization model and save system.
• Implemented all UI elements.
• Sketched, designed and implemented multiple levels.
• Conducted multiple playtest sessions.
• Researched and documented current mobile market trends.
Goals
• Create a successful mobile game that could survive in the mobile casual arcade genre.
• Experience the full game development cycle.
• Practice working with publishers.
Designing for the hyper-casual audience
The hyper-casual genre has a very broad audience. We have to keep the barrier to entry low so that anyone can enjoy the game.
Level Design
• Teach, Test, Challenge
• Levels feel fair and player's don't feel cheated
• Keep players in the cognitive flow state by having a balanced difficulty
• Using game difficulty to increase monetization revenue
Art Style
The art style is designed to be generic and appeal to a large audience.
The bright colors are designed to attract the attention of users in the real world and while they are scrolling through the app store.
User testing of this art style has proven that it is appealing to most users in our audience and outside of our audience.
Monetization Design
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Scarcity of monetization events
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Show option to watch ad when players are frustrated
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Optional ads no pop ups
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Store to buy character customizations
High-Fidelity Mock up
User Testing
Through user testing, the game has evolved and many mechanics have changed.
Below is a formal playtest session we hosted with the goal of acquiring general feedback about usability.
One of the changes made due to this playtest was to re-work our level design formula.
Problem:
• Level difficulty is not balanced and fluctuates.
• Mechanics are not introduced properly.
• Introduced mechanics are sometimes forgotten.
All of this disturbed user ability to enter the cognitive flow state.
Action:
I created a formula that would introduce mechanics and help levels flow one after another in a natural manner.
Outcome:
Currently, the level sets created using this formula have not been deployed so I cannot comment on the success or failure. But so far it has increased productivity as we know exactly what level to create next. It has also helped us Iterate on levels in more focussed fashion as we knew the exact purpose and the requirements of the levels.
Outcome
The feedback from user testing has been very positive. Currently, we are in talks with multiple mobile publishers about releasing for Android and IOS.
Through this project, I have learned a great deal about designing, developing, deploying for mobile platforms.