Imagine this. You come into work, load up your dashboard, and you’ve got a map of the world – each country a different colour. The greener the country, the more your game is making there. Visualizing your data can help you understand how your games are performing on an instinctive level. Numbers don’t often ‘click’ in our minds. But visuals – those give us gut feelings. They can help you see your data from a different perspective, and let you spot important insights you would have otherwise glossed over. But what can you do? Let’s dive into the top data visualization techniques and how to use them. 1. Line charts: Think time Line charts show us how values change over time. They’ll let you spot trends, like whether you have a lull in your installs on the weekends. Need to...

Image courtesy of Hypernia Gaming News. As we saw in part one of our multiplayer series, the mobile multiplayer opportunity is bigger than ever. And there are a lot of reasons you should make multiplayer part of your next mobile release. But how do you get started with actually implementing multiplayer into your mobile game? There’s a lot to consider. And a bounty that makes it easier than ever to get right. You’ll need to read more than a two-part blog post to master it all, but we’ve done our best to round up as many pointers and links to get you started on the right path. So let’s dig into part two. There are rules to mobile Over the years, mobile gaming has diversified (and then some). Game genres like casual, mid-core, hyper-casual, pay-to-earn and premium now offer very...

Adding multiplayer elements to your mobile game is a straight-up win-win situation. It creates a sense of community, brings a competitive edge, and gives your players a reason to come back. Taking all that on might feel intimidating. But today, building quality mobile multiplayer is easier than you might think. But how exactly do you make your mobile game multiplayer? What steps do you need to take? And what do you need to consider? We will cover in this two-part article that will help set you on the path to mobile multiplayer glory. This first part will look at the broad concepts and overarching considerations. And next time, we’ll dive into the tech and techniques for part two. Yes, your game is suitable for multiplayer We appreciate there are different types of games. But multiplayer isn’t purely about competition and...

The GameAnalytics crew dug out the crystal balls, consulted the oracles and tossed tea leaves all over the office. None of that helped and it was a pain to clean up, so we decided to ask our experts instead. So after a lot of thought, consideration, and a couple of debates, here’s what our team predicts will happen in 2022 for the mobile gaming industry. 1. Augmented reality games and technology will grow We’re going to see a surge of Augmented Reality (AR) games and technology in the next year. Over the last few years, AR has been simmering beneath the surface, getting ready to boil over into the mainstream. It’s clear that big things are on the horizon. The biggest player in AR, Niantic, was recently valued at $9 billion and raised $300 million in investment, which it says...

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by the clever clogs at Voodoo. You can read the original version here.  In December 2020, two young programming students called Harvey and Mathis founded Blue Monkey Studio. By September 2021,  only nine months later, their first hit game had entered the charts. Flex Run 3D reached number 1 in the Android charts in 39 countries, including the US, and number 2 on iOS US. But what’s the story behind this super speedy success? How did they go from hyper-casual beginners to the top charts in just nine months? The two co-founders, Harvey and Mathis, joined us at the recent Voodoo Live event in Paris to reveal exactly how they managed to bag their first hit game in such little time. Read on to find out more about Flex Run 3D and their three key secrets to success....

Editor’s note: This article was originally crafted by TapNation. If you fancy reading the original, you can find it here.  It’s no secret that creating a game can be pricey. Hiring a strong development team is just the start of your journey. Aside from the months (even years) of developing a game, when you start focusing on your marketing and ongoing user acquisition campaigns, the expenses and costs can pile on (before you’ve had a chance to make any revenue). Making it near impossible for smaller dev teams to enter the market. Hyper-casual is changing that. These games are turning into a developer’s stepping stone into kick-starting their career in the gaming industry.  Without the need for large initial investments. And to get a better idea of how the hyper-casual genre can help game makers enter the professional world of...

Editor’s note: This article was originally written by the brilliant minds at Voodoo. They’ve agreed to share the story with us here, but head over to their blog if you want to see the original.  Run of Life is the brand new hit game developed by Tarek Mongy, a solo-dev based in Cairo. Transforming the popular stacking trend into a super relatable concept, the team hit over 20 million views on TikTok, generating a huge number of organic installs even before the game was officially launched. We sat down with Tarek and Jill, Publishing Manager at Voodoo, to take a closer look at the game as well as their tips on how to come up with viral and mass-market ideas for your next prototype. Ideation Fundamentals Your ideation process is key to creating hot prototypes. The more you prototype, the more...

Editor’s note: This story was so great, we pinched it from Voodoo. You can find the original on their site, here. (Don’t worry, they gave the go-ahead to share it.) Slice it All! is the brand new hit game by the Serbia-based studio Tummy Games. The game hit number 1 in the iOS games charts in 35 different countries across the world, including the United States, just weeks after its release. Tummy Games teamed up with Voodoo over two years ago, and this is our second hit game together! One of our top innovation techniques is ‘change the toy, keep the rules’, and they managed to bring this to life by combining a niche hyper-casual mechanic from two years ago with a contemporary social media trend. Let’s take a look at how Slice it All! went from prototype to worldwide hit,...

For everyone creating Hypercasual games, prototyping and testing is a crucial part of the process. It allows developers to save time, to avoid over-investing, and to be able to iterate accordingly. In addition to testing the gameplay and mechanics, an important part of the process is to evaluate a game’s marketability. And that’s where creatives come in handy. Creatives are the ads used in a user acquisition strategy to drive installs and, as the first touchpoint with most of the players, they can have a huge impact on the success of a game. In short, the goal of a creative is to give a good idea of a game and to make players want to play it. Testing with creatives is the best way to rapidly assess the potential of a new product no matter the type of game. But...

This article was originally written by OneSignal. You can it out on their blog here.  Before OneSignal, our company was a mobile game studio called Hiptic Games. Our experiences at Hiptic helped us see the need for a simpler, more reliable, and more powerful messaging platform to improve user engagement. In many ways, we built OneSignal with game developers in mind. The top 25% of mobile games have an average Day 28 retention of just 4% and the cost of acquiring a user that eventually makes a purchase is over $40 USD. Yet, the vast majority of mobile games still don’t implement basic best practices for improving user engagement and retention through messaging. In this guide, we’ll walk through the four main user-engagement channels that every mobile game studio may want to leverage — Push Notifications, In-App Messaging, Email, and SMS — and...

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by our friends at Voodoo. You can check out the original article here.  How long have you been working in Unity? Are there simple changes that you could make to your work process to get the most out of your iterations? Whether you’re super experienced or just starting out in hyper-casual game development, taking the time to review your processes can be key to staying efficient and producing great results. A team of our in-house Game Developers recently got together to discuss best practices when working on Unity game prototypes. The result? The Voodoo Dev Manual. Filled with simple tips and tricks to help you work as efficiently as possible and speed up your iterations, this brand new resource is now available for all partner studios on our exclusive e-learning platform . The Voodoo Dev Manual...

Every game developer hopes to see their game hit the top of the charts. The thrill of seeing people play it on the train, glowing reviews in gaming outlets, and your own section on Twitch. (The increased revenue doesn’t hurt, either.) But nobody really prepares you for success. What happens when you get that surge of new players and become so popular that even non-gamers have heard about you? With great success comes great responsibility. The more players you have, the more pressure you’re under to improve the game, add new content, fix bugs and keep the game alive. It’s a tough gig and one game can easily turn into an entire career. And there are quite a few tasks you’ll need to take care of behind the scenes. What goes on behind the scenes? This isn’t an exhaustive list,...