Category

Strategies

3 min read
#AI

Creating concept art for games, with genAI

While it may not excel at everything yet, AI's prowess in concepting, storyboarding, and ideation has captured the industry's attention. Join us as we delve into the realm of GenAI, exploring its ability to create stunning concept art and assets for games.
Pistol Whip Cover
9 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Cloudhead Games’ advice on jumping into the VR Market

In the next five years, almost a third of people will have a headset of some description, and there’ll be about 2.5 billion players. But how do you make the shift to this incredibly lucrative new area? We asked Cloudhead Games.
mobile gaming shipping cover
7 min read
#Game Design

Ship fast without regret: lessons from 15 years in mobile gaming

One of the biggest mistakes a studio or developer can make is failing to plan ahead. Teemu Haila, Co-Founder & CPO at Metaplay, talks about how launching a game with a short-term mindset can be detrimental to its long-term success and cause avoidable headaches further down the line.
Dialogue Trees Cover
14 min read
#Game Design

How to write perfect dialogue trees for games

One of the key times players get to make a choice is during dialogue. But how exactly do you create and plan all those branching paths?
Inclusivity in Games
11 min read
#Game Design

How to make your game more diverse and inclusive

How can you make your game more diverse, accessible, and inclusive? It's not only a great thing to do, but it can also open up your game to a larger audience. Here's our guide on how you can make more inclusive and diverse games.
Anime Dimensions Cover Image
7 min read
#Data & Analytics

Making the leap from 100 players to 10 million

Anime Dimensions had Roblox’s best-rated launch in the platform’s history. We spoke to the founder and key developer of Albatross Games to discover how they managed to make such a monumental leap in just 60 days.
Frozen City Cover Image
16 min read
#Ads & Monetization

Frozen City post-IDFA global launch UA case study

In this case study, Matej Lancaric deconstructs Frozen City from Century Games, to find out how they went from $1 million a month in 2020, to $20 million a month today.
Translation article
6 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Translating games: tips and best practices

Want to reach entirely new audiences and increase player engagement globally? Then let people play your game in their native language, but don’t fall into the pitfall of bad translation. Here are some examples and best practices for translating a mobile game.
10 min read
#Game Design

How to build successful VR games as a solo developer

Building video games has never been a simple task. You can have a brilliant idea for a game, but without the right skills, tools and resources, it can be near-impossible to tackle by yourself. Especially if we consider something as complicated and new as virtual reality. Not that this stopped Sergio Hidalgo. Being a one-man studio, Sergio managed to produce, release, and publish two successful VR titles. His first title, Dreadhalls, sold up to 250,000 units worldwide, and hit over 60,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch. (For comparison, Team Fortress 2’s highest was around 80,000.) While Cosmodread has had approximately 25,000 players on Steam alone. So to get his advice and learn his secrets, we sat down to hear his story and journey as a solo-game developer. Here’s what he had to say. 1. You don’t have to have it all...
Splitting Point cover image
6 min read
#Game Design

Splitting Point: how Field Trip Z got 45M players on Roblox this year

We recently spoke with Janzen Madsen, founder at Splitting Point Studios, to get his perspective on how to develop a hit on Roblox. Splitting Point has created multiple experiences, including Field Trip Z which this year alone saw more than 45M unique players. Janzen is intimately familiar with what makes a Roblox experience a success. Roblox is an absolutely massive platform, with over 32 million experiences and 52 million active users. But making a game there is unlike making a game anywhere else. It’s much faster paced, the audience is much younger, and it’s much more tricky to design. The typical principles you might expect are quite different. 1. Don’t make it like a mobile game “Often, developers coming from the mobile gaming industry will assume that they can replicate their success by rebuilding their games on Roblox. This just...
Fruit Ninja Cover
10 min read
#Game Design

Fruit Ninja dev talks porting to VR

Obsessed with making games that people will remember for a lifetime, Halfbrick decided to convert their hit title, Fruit Ninja, into a VR game. It was a natural evolution – people apparently really enjoy slicing fruit and swinging swords. After that success, they created Fruit Ninja VR 2 – adding more features and exploration to the game. “Making a game for VR is very, very different,” said Liam Potter, one of the lead gameplay programmers on Fruit Ninja VR 2. “There are a lot of things you need to take into account that you just don’t for console or mobile.” With that in mind, let’s dive into those challenges and see what Liam advises. Show players the play space early In a VR experience, it’s incredibly difficult to make sure that players are looking where you want. Gamers notoriously fail...
Hyper-casual library article
6 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Hyper-casual bible: top resources for making a hit game

Building hyper-casual games is a great way to get into game development. With their short cycles and simple gameplay, crafting a hyper-casual title means you can learn important skills across game design and monetisation, which you’ll need for success in the mobile games industry. But how do you get started building a hyper-casual game? What exactly goes into creating a hit in this genre? What KPIs should you track and what results should you be aiming for? There’s a lot you should know before getting started. So before you get tapping away and developing your next hit, make sure to read through these resources to master everything ‘hyper’. 1. Understanding hyper-casual The hyper-casual genre is a unique one. It’s made up of short, satisfying, and simple gameplay, basic artwork, and relies heavily on ads to make money. So to kick...
Redcliffe Games cover image
6 min read
#Game Design

Reaching a +40M playerbase: advice from Trihex Studios

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve probably heard of Roblox. It’s a gaming platform with over 30 million games – which they call experiences – 52 million daily active users (DAU) and 12 million creators at the time of writing. One of the keys to its success is that it makes it exceptionally easy to create and release games on its platform. We spoke with Tae Kim and Eric Park, co-founders of Trihex Studios and the minds behind Redcliff City – one of the most popular titles on Roblox which has, this year alone, amassed a community of more than 40 million unique players. During our conversation, we asked them what mobile developers could learn from Roblox and how they could make the move over to the platform. Here’s their advice. First up,...