Fledgling Videogame Developer

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...

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 be...

  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 o...

My previous Unity3D post was demonstrating my trials with scriptable render pipeline and shader graphs. Now I have gone one step further and combined these techniques with one of my previously released game. "Ball Twister" was originally released about an year ago. I did not advertise it too much because of boring outlook and bit simple gameplay. However, now I have found this game perfect for testing scriptable render pipeline and shader graphs in real 3D environment. Attached video shows how different new version of Ball Twister looks compared to the original one. Original version (on left) is using standard Unity render pipeline and shaders. Enhanced version (on right) is using LWRP (or URP) and shader graphs. In enhanced version, rolling checker board texture, swirling sky and obstacle materials are all using shader graphs to create a sense of movement just by tweaking textures. Basically, only objects that are really moved are black obstacles and coins. Everyth...

For some reason, hyper-casual games seem to be one of the hottest thing in mobile gaming at the moment. Just do some googling and you will notice that they really are trending. This weekend my target was to do fast-paced game development, starting from a concept and resulting to a published game. And goal was achieved, even though there is still lot of room for improvement. Anyways, my coding skills got some practical exercise, what was the purpose of this project. "Rocket to Uranus" is so-called hyper-casual game for Android. It is available at Google Play Store .   Some statistics: - Total of 15 hours of time (3 evenings) - Approx. 400 lines of new C# code written + ~100 lines of re-used code - 10+ art assets drawn with Inkscape - 2 Unity scenes created - Lots of testing, debugging and bug fixing -Jussi

Does your job contain lots of conference calls with customers, co-workers and/or subconstractors? If so, I bet you have also noticed that same phrases and unintentional voice effects are repeated in almost every conf call.  In addition to the engineering work my job contains lots of conference calls. And same soundtrack from one call to another. So I decided to make a small game like application which makes use of these commonly heard phrases and other sounds.  Today I uploaded first version of "Conference Call Bingo" to Google Play Store. It is currently marked as beta release, because I still have some improvements in my mind. But the core functionality should be working pretty well already in this release.  Please download the app and give it a try. I am pretty sure that most of you will find the phrases very familiar, especially if you are having regular meetings with people all over the world. :)  -Jussi.

Bananamarine game project has been progressing quite smoothly most of the time. But yesterday I ran into situation where Unity got stuck when I tried to add Google Play Game Services plugin  to my project. I want to have at least leaderboard to my game, so leaving game services out was not an option. Basically, plugin installation was successful, but after that all I got was a dialog window telling: "Getting list of installed Android packages". And tool was not responding anymore, even if I waited couple of hours. I tried to search help for this problem using google, but there were not many hits to help me forward with this issue. Somehow I figured out that this was something related to the Android SDK version(s), so I decided to update my Android Studio installation first. After Android Studio update I removed game services stuff from Unity project, updated SDK path to preferences, and tried to re-install plugin. But result was still the same: I got a dialog telli...

After long period of hesitating I started to work on my first Unity3D app. To get things going, I selected very small and simple concept to work with.   Basically, Task Timer is a simple tool to track time used for different tasks. Main features: 3 independent timers that will run also on background and when display is turned off Minimal design: no bells and whistles included. Just the necessary functions! Fully-customizable task names (no limitations) Possibility to export timer data to email template (in csv format) Measurement accuracy: 1 second You can use Littlest Helper: Task Timer for your everyday time tracking tasks. And it is fully up to you how to use the data generated by the tool: Exported csv data can be taken directly e.g. to Excel (or equivalent) and processed as you wish. Get Task Timer from Google Play! I think this app would be a good tool for everyone who is should measure time used for different tasks (project workers, consultants, e...

Do you find dachshunds (sausage dogs, wiener dogs) adorable? If so, then this game is for you ( removed from Google Play Store because of outdated API ): Dogs Games: Flying Dachshund is a simple and funny game for kids. Make dachshund puppy to fly by tapping screen and try to catch as many sausages you can. Your dachshund gets flying energy by eating sausages. Golden sausage fills the energy meter, and flying consumes energy. And if this sounds too easy, bear in mind that evil cats and flying turkeys are trying to stop you. So be careful out there when playing Dogs Games: Flying Dachshund! Features: - Easy to play game mechanics - Energy meter - Give flying dachshund any name you want - Google Play Leaderboard Game was developed using Construct2, and Android conversion was done with Intel XDK (Crosswalk). Game background music is Spazzmatica Polka by Kevin MacLeod ( incompetech.com ). Happy flying with Dogs Games: Flying Dachshund! -Jussi PS. All graphics are dr...

"Shapecalypse: Cosmic Impact" is a fast-paced space battle game with unique twist. Attention and quick reflexes are required to be successful in this galactic war. Features: - Google Play leaderboard - Local highscore will be saved too - Geometrical aliens have 4 different attack styles (will be mixed) - Compelling background music - Easy to learn but hard to master Facitious story: Mankind decided to set up a colony on distant asteroid zone. Unfortunately, that part of the space was already inhabited by geometric alien race. So serious consequences will be expected! (what a surprise) Your task: Your mission is to defend the surface of distant astral body as long as possible. Geometric aliens will send geometrically shaped meteorites to crush the base, and you are the only one between them and rest of the colony. How? Geometrical alien shapes are coming from the sky in different formations. The only way to stop each wave is to catch one of the shapes with ...

After releasing Battlecards Android game, we started working on a game concept that was invented couple of years ago. At that times, I created quick&dirty prototype for testing basic game mechanics. Also, main characters were also drawn then. But for some reason we did not continue to work on it. The working title of this game has been "Fly Attack". But after some not-so-careful thinking we decived to rename it to "Fly Assault!". At least there are not too many games with same name in Google Play. :) Game itself is very simple and easy to play: There are flies coming from top of the screen and player tries to catch them before flies get in touch to muffins in the bottom of the screen. There are couple of special "weapons" available to boost killing the files: Fly poison and Frog. Please watch attached video clip from Youtube to get understanding of this game: Fly Assault! will be available at Google Play Store in July 2016. -Jussi

Last week I ran into situation where I noticed that my Android Keystore file used for signing e.g. Battlecards game was somehow corrupted. Obviously, I had  not done any backups of my keystore file, so there was no way to fix it. So I decided to generate new keystore and compile my app again with cocoon.io. But that was not so easy: After cocoon.io compilation was finished, I was not able to load new .apk to my testing device. Tablet complained that previous version of app has been signed using different key and refused to install new version. So I removed old version of Battlecards from tablet, and realized that I had to do same for all my test accounts that were created to that tablet. Only then I was able to install new version (signed with new key). After some struggling I was able to install new version generated with new keystore file and started the app. But then I noticed that all Google Play Game Services, including leaderboards, achievements, etc. were not working at ...

We decided to try an alternative promotion video for Battlecards Android game. Target was to create not-so-serious gameplay video using the properties we already had in place. So, best idea we got was to record short live gameplay of "War" (that is the model for Battlecards). Video was recorded using mobile phone, and both "actors" are amateurs. So, here is the result: Not perfect and probably not exactly what we planned, but at least we got it done. :) -Jussi

Hello Friends! Now it is time to present you the latest Android game from WestSloth Games . Game is called "Battlecards", and it is a digital version of ancient card game "War". There are several variations of this game, and our version is probably one of the simplest ones. Gameplay is as simple as it can get: The deck is shuffled and divided evenly among the players. On each round both players reveal the top card of their deck, and the player with the higher card takes both of the cards played and moves them to the bottom of his stack. Aces are high, and suits are ignored. If the two cards played are of equal value, then there is a "battle". Both players place the next card of their pile to the table. If topmost cards are still equal, battle continues with another set of cards. Battle will continue as long as either player has higher topmost card than the other one (or player runs out of cards on his/her deck). Winner gets all the cards that were on ...

I started App Store Optimization trial  in the beginning of September for an Android game called "Del Gibbon's Mad Maths". Based on Google Analytics data, it seems that this trial was not successful at all (what a surprise!). Target of this trial was to improve the game visibility at app store and get more installations. Both targets failed miserably: there were just handful of new installations during the last 3 months. This was the first time I was trying to do any sort of keyword research and optimization, so I guess the result was expected. But what were the reasons for the failure? I guess it was a combined effect of my inexperience in ASO plus usage of related key word research tools. Also, the quality and attractiveness of published game was not too high. If your app is crap, then it is pretty difficult to market it. At least your supporting material, including thumbnails, screenshots and videos should be high quality. What I can do better next time? Pro...

Have you ever heard abut Monty Hall Problem? Basically, it is kind of a brain teaser that has been named according to the host of the television game show called "Let's Make a Deal". The starting point for this matter is the situation where there are three closed doors in front of you. Behind one door is a grand prize (money, car, whatever), and behind other two doors there is something less desirable (nothing, goat, etc.). Anyways, you have to pick one door. After selection is done, one door (with less desirable content) is opened for you. Now you have to decide whether you want to stay in your original selection or switch to other door. There are conflicting opinions which choice is better, but but now you can try it yourselves using this free Android application: Monty Hall Problem Simulator.  EDIT: Monty Hall Problem Simulator by WestSloth Games was removed from Google Play Store because of outdated API level. This was a nice and relaxing weekend project for me...

Now it is about 7 weeks since I started an ASO trial for one of my apps at Google Play. The target was to improve the visibility of " Del Gibbon's Mad Maths " Android game and get more downloads for it. I have no previous experience on ASO, so this really was the first try to do something for it. I did some keyword research, used a commercial tool for finding primary keyword(s), optimized app description with the findings, and so on. No idea if any of my methods were correct, but I was trying to follow the guidelines obtained from one ASO course from Udemy's collection. Unfortunately it seems that there were just few new downloads for the app for last 7 weeks, so I guess I was not able to do ASO properly at this time. Another option would be that my app is so bad (or looks so boring) that no-one wants to install it and give it a try. :) Anyways, I believe ASO alone is not enough to make your app successful. First of all your app should be interesting enough to ...

Since there has not been too many downloads for " Del Gibbon's Mad Maths " for Android, I started to investigate if there is something to improve app visibility at Play Store. To begin with something, I decided to get familiar with App Store Optimization (ASO). That is a process to improve app visibility at app store in a similar way than SEO for webpages. This was just to see if that helps at all in this case. In reality it might be that no one wants to play this game, but at least I have to try. :) After taking a short ASO training from Udemy course selection, I used a keyword tool (whose name I will not mention here) to find out primary keyword for my app. This keyword is now used as my app title at Google Play. Also, I tried to tune app description using the secondary keywords to maximize visibility. I am not too sure how I succeeded, but I guess the result can be seen during next weeks (or months). Who knows. My plan is to report the result of this ASO trial...

Edit 20.5.2020: Del Gibbon's Mad Math was suspended from Google Play Store about one year because of outdated API. However, just about a month ago we uploaded new version created with Unity3D to Play Store. So original Construct2/Crosswalk version does now exist anymore.  Greetings after a long time! This blog has been quiet for a long time and there has been only few updates during this year. I have been extremely busy in my day job, so I have not been able to use enough time for my game development activities. Anyways, during my summer vacation I started two totally new mobile game projects. The first one was released to Google Play couple of days ago, and it is called " Del Gibbon's Mad Maths ". This game is aimed to test and develop player's mental calculation skills. Concept is very simple: the answer is shown on top of the screen, and player has to select two or more numbers that totals are same than the answer shown on screen. There is a time lim...

Perhaps no one has noticed, but I have had couple of months break in writing this blog. I've been extremely busy with my day job, so my leisure time projects have got less attention. Anyways, there has been some progress in my game development projects. Our second mobile game (SortOut!) was published at Google Play Store for some weeks ago. Game itself is very simple and easy to play: you just have to use your finger to swipe boxes to the corners with matching colors. Sounds easy, but I promise this no-brainer game is more challenging you first would imagine. :) We have been looking for game concepts that would suit well to the mobile devices. SortOut! is one of them, and we have couple of others under development. Let's see what comes out next... Please check video below to get an idea about the SortOut! gameplay and visual look. And of course we would appreciate if you spend couple of minutes your valuable time to install this application to your device. Just give it a ...