Fledgling Videogame Developer

We entered to year 2022 for few days ago, so it is time to check what was achieved during last year.  On 2021 WestSloth Games released total of 4 casual or hyper-casual games: Reaction Training Game Speed Tapping Game Laser Dodger Tower Rescue Hero (still in beta) On top of released games we kept up developing our own hyper-casual development platform on top of Unity3D game engine. It simplifies and speeds up our game development cycle enabling us to concentrate on game mechanics. Platform handles boring tasks like scene management, main state machine, ads and game services integration. Also, it takes care of consent dialog and management nowadays.   In fact, all four games listed above are using some version of platform to implement scene management, main state machine(s) and advertisements. Also, Tower Rescue Hero is also using consent management feature that was introduced in the the 4th version of the platform.  5th version of platform is under planning, and that should streamlin

Fourth version of our hyper-casual game development platform is alive! It simplifies and speeds up our game development cycle enabling us to concentrate on game core mechanics. Platform handles boring tasks like scene management, main state machine, Ads and game services integration, and it also takes care of consent dialog and management. Our hyper-casual platform forms up on Unity package that can be imported basically on any Unity3D project at almost any design stage. At the moment package supports Android development only since we have not yet done any development for iOS. Also, Admob is the only supported ad network in current version, but we are planning to add others later.  There are certain steps to be done to get hyper-casual platform to use:  Create new Unity project (or load existing one) Ensure that target platform is "Android" Import hyper-casual package Select which services you want to use: consent, ads, Google Play Game Services Set up selected services We ar

There are several ways to create mirror in Unity3D. Some of them require more scripting than others, but I will now present an easy way using just one extra camera and RenderTexture.  In this solution you will use RenderTexture on an object and place camera behind that object. This is easy option that does not require scripting. Alternatively you can use reflective shader, but it requires some more work. Seven small steps to create object with mirror RenderTexture: Create new Unity project. It is recommended to use latest LTS version (Long Term Support).I was using Unity 2020.1.3f1 version for this example.   Create plane object for ground and Cube for the mirror object. Scale both objects to match your needs.  Create new camera for attaching the RenderTexture. Position it inside recently created cube and adjust direction so that it is pointing out to the direction where mirror should be reflecting the image.  Create RenderTexture. Name it as you wish. No need to modify any other setti

Hello All! For WestSloth Games year 2020 was mostly business as usual. We were still working part-time on game development within the time that was available. Sometimes there was no time at all and sometimes there was some spare time for gamedev. I any case, we accomplished and learned a lot during this year.  Here are some highlights: Major update for Flamingo Tap Tap Run Android game was released in the very beginning of the year. Some statistics with download numbers and ad impressions/eCPM values is revealed in separate blog article .  Couple of updates were done for Flamingo game. These included couple of bug fixes and API level updates. Biggest update introduced embedded minigame to get more shrimps.  A new variant for our previous rocket game was released in June 2020. Rocket Orbit can still be found from Google Play Store, although the number of downloads has so far been bit disappointing. In interested in details, please check separate blog article on releasing " Rocke

Our reasonably popular Flamingo Tap Tap Run Android game is celebrating 1-year anniversary after a major update in the beginning of January 2020. In this update we introduced several playable Flamingo characters and did some improvements and fixes to gameplay.  Although the game has not been a real breakthrough, the number of new downloads has been fairly steady throughout the year. Advertising revenue has also been steady, and even increased towards the end of the year. We are still talking about less than 10 Euros per month, but with current investment and effort it is just ok. All Flamingo game downloads are organic , since no paid advertising used. And yes, we have not included any in-app purchases in any of our games. I collected couple of graphs showing how the total number of installations and number of new installations (28 days moving average) has developed since the very first launch date in September 2019. Major update was done in the beginning of 2020 and that has been m

  Today we published new hyper-casual game to Google Play Store (beta version, still).  Game is called "Rocket Orbit" and it is some kind of a facelift for "Rocket to Uranus" game that was published about two years ago.  Biggest modifications were done in visual outlook where original multi-colored UI with (almost) all possible colors is now replaced with restrained set of colors. Main theme consists of different shades of blue. We also added a UFO to bring some randomness to the game.  Playing Rocket Orbit game is simple: You are controlling small blue rocket that is jumping between the planets from one orbit to the second orbit. You need to schedule the tap accurately so your rocket can get to next planet orbit safely.  🚀 Rocket Orbit game features:  ✔️ Easy to play hyper-casual game mechanism ✔️ Yet challenging and hard to master ✔️ Annoying UFO disturbing your perfect game ✔️ Google Play Services Leaderboard ✔️ No levels, just endless space in front of you How