game dev – Glowing Eye Games

March 3, 2021

Mexican Train Dominoes Gold has Just Pulled into the Switch and Steam Station!

Announcing our first ever Nintendo Switch and PC game release: Mexican Train Dominoes Gold! It’s a deserving family favorite that we’re happy to launch into the world for your gaming pleasure.

Mexican Train Dominoes Gold has been available on Apple and Android devices for a while, and more recently on Mac. However, we noticed that while there are other domino games around, there is definitely a gap in the market for Mexican Train Dominoes and it is one that we are well equipped to fill. Only time will tell how successful this venture will be, but the team did a great job with both the Switch and Windows ports. I thought this would be a good time to share some of the differences between touch screen phone development and developing for the Nintendo Switch. All aboard for several train-based words and puns as I steam ahead with this post… sigh…

Firstly, the PC version works well. One finger, one-touch games are fairly easy to translate to both PC and Mac. The normal changes were made while making sure menus work better for the mouse interface. The biggest effort was always going to be making our engine work on the PC and within the Steam framework a difficult job, but necessary.

The Nintendo Switch on the other hand was much tougher! It’s a fantastic console (that I love dearly, it’s no train wreck like the Wii U), but because we couldn’t rely on the touchscreen, we had to completely rework the control mechanism to efficiently support the controller. We created a grid system to place the dominoes and hoped that would be it. Nope! Of course, the management of the dominoes needed a lot more conducting than that.

Mexican Train Dominoes strategy involves the player creating chains of dominoes that they can lay on their row. This meant we needed a good way for the player to manage the dominoes. We had to get creative. When players moved the dominoes around, the arrangement of all the other dominoes was affected. It took us a while to create our domino inventory system, so it was quick and easy to use! It now shunts along the other dominoes when the chain is interrupted, keeping the order even when the player makes changes.

We had other challenges making the Switch version compared to the phone versions. Saving the game state on the Switch slows the whole system down to the point where we were experiencing a drop in frame rate that caused the game to temporarily stall. I mean dominoes is an intense game but should still do better than just chug along! We had to rework the save and resume game system to better fit the console. Most players won’t even notice the difference, but it showed us that we had been a little bit spoiled in the way mobile phones work with their seamless usage of the SSD.

After all this work, navigating Nintendo’s developers’ pages to get the game into lotcheck and arrange the marketing pages was surprisingly difficult. I do have to say that the people in Nintendo themselves especially in Europe would fix small errors without setting us back and their replies got us back on track quickly. That being said, the lotcheck went through pretty smoothly and it’s a vast improvement from the last Nintendo system I worked on which was the GameCube.

Of course, I’m talking like I ran this project, but I’m just the guy writing about it. The hard work was done by the team. Jasmine, Gregg, Steph, and Katie all pulled together to make Mexican Train Dominoes Gold a thoroughly enjoyable experience for the players on whatever format they want to play it on.

If you fancy taking a look yourself, you can find direct links to all the versions here!

November 19, 2020

Solitaire is For Life, Not Just For Christmas

Sing it with me! ‘Tis the season for a themed game, fa-la-la-la’ – Too soon? Alright, I’ll stop, but for some gamers, holiday themes are what get them in a celebratory mood. From festive Christmas to bunny-bouncing Easter, there seems to be no end to the party with games transforming month after month to suit the season.

Glowing Eye Games knows its customers love a game to stay familiar and at its best, so we never adopt seasonal skins. We do, however, provide whole games devoted to specific holidays. For example, Halloween Solitaire is beloved by all those who fancy a horror themed card game to get their spines tingling. Christmas Solitaire Tripeaks also suits the cozier, more festive feel that we all love about Christmas.

We have had our share of experimentation. Our green-themed St Patrick’s Tripeaks Solitaire never did us any favors and no one seemed to be interested enough to get fully on board. What we found from that experience was that our customers are led by a need for atmosphere. A seasonal game is not just a selection of themed images, but it has a specific feel. Halloween Solitaire is so popular because it is drenched in gothic iconography, spooky sound effects, bespoke cards with beloved legendary figures and eerie animations. Similarly, the soft jingling of bells, snowy landscape and a welcoming, rosy-cheeked Santa Claus give a perfect sense of Christmas. They are also accessible. From grandparents to children, and everyone in-between, these games are for everyone.

Both our Halloween and Christmas solitaire games are just another element of a person’s life that they can integrate into their celebration. Bake some gingerbread, pour a festive tipple, decorate your home, stick on a festive film or play some Christmas tunes. What would top that off better than settling down to a winter wonderland you can hold in the palm of your hand?

Seasonal games slot into a certain time, but we’ve found they are actually played all year round. Maybe it’s the comfort of a familiar game, perhaps they appreciate the artistry, or maybe they like to, now and again, unlock the sensation of a time they feel most joyful. We don’t think there should ever be a time limit on that.

August 5, 2020

Review: Control

Okay, before we begin, let me give you a chance to get very angry. I have never seen X-Files (I was young, okay?) and the extent of my science fiction education came from intermittent episodes of Star Trek and Men in Black, not (and duck for flung debris) Star Wars. And I apologise. I just wasn’t there.

The gateway drug into the weird and warped was probably from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a large array of monsters, demons and otherworldly creepy-crawlies to frighten and unnerve. After that, a few doses of Doctor Who and dabbling in horror sent me happily over the edge into everything from Alien to Signs. It didn’t really matter what monstrous form reared its head at the end, as long as I was unsettled and unnerved throughout.

This is exactly where Control comes into play.

There’s a lot to love about Control and mostly I can only think of good things. The design, the gameplay, the world building – it all blends into a delectable paranormal enthused slushy fit for slurping. Just watch out for the brain freeze.

The premise is simple: Jesse Faden arrives at The Oldest House in search of her brother. Years of hunting have led her to this exact moment in this exact deserted foyer. She calls out and, as the player, you wonder who or what might respond. That feeling never goes away. Like Theseus tying his thread to the post and entering the labyrinth, you just feel compelled to descend ever further. Only thing is, you expect answers and a lot of the time, they just mean more questions. This is the kind of deep-dive immersion I love. It’s mind-boggling, frustrating and completely addictive. With no other game have I sat and spent the time to read the documents you pick up along the way, indulging in their SCP vibes. (Don’t know it? Look it up and prepare to get lost).

Control isn’t explicitly a horror game, but science fiction always has a habit of falling into horror tropes such as body horror. Fear is in the unknown, the future is unknown, and it’s totally plausible that knocking on that door to the future you’re going to invite in things you never expected – or necessarily wanted. Such in Control, that is The Hiss. A disembodied presence that mutates its targets into unthinking soldiers bent on killing you.

Usually, the brutalist structure of The Federal Bureau of Control is a simple stark grey monochrome with a red carpet. The more you play the game, the more you’ll find ‘red’ means ‘The Hiss’. When first witnessing its impacts on the space, it’s like seeing a parallel universe crunching its jaws over the brickwork and trying to take a bite out. What results from this are a series of flinching, overlapping cubes, encroaching into the mundane office space like geometric tumours.

Control plays with this architectural ‘glitching’, fusing humdrum elements of normal life, like boring toilet cubicles and desks littered with paperwork, and suspending them in the glowing white Astral Plane – an empty space filled only with black cubes and the office debris. That’s not the only thing that’s suspended though. You also have Hiss infected employees, chanting in mid-air. Some of them, you’ll never be able to save.

Control gives you the sense of déjà vu. Maybe it’s heavy 60s design, 70s equipment of slide projectors and pneumatic tubes, or Jesse’s very modern-day leather jacket. Maybe it’s the normality of the stark office space, the professional jargon, the complaints and reports you can sift through. Maybe it’s just the gentle disconcertion that nothing is as it seems. As quickly as the monsters appear, they vanish, and you’re left in an empty room as if nothing happened.

May 19, 2020

On The Importance of Brand Consistency

Don’t judge a book by its cover – or, perhaps, you should.

You can tell a lot from a business from its consistency of branding. It’s more than quality pictures, games and text, it’s about style and how that carries on through the company from the game itself to the artwork.

For us at Glowing Eye Games, we love attention to detail and we love the little things. They are those subtle little morsels you might not even notice – and that’s the best part. Most of the time, you’re not meant to notice each that playing card is tailored to the theme of the game or how the load screen images have their own take on our logo. It’s just part of the overall experience and allows the game to be seamlessly immersive. You’d definitely notice if the background wasn’t quite right or if the sounds were discordant to the images.

These delightful details are handmade at the point of the game’s origin. Halloween Tripeaks has Dracula as the King, the Witch as the Queen and Frankenstein’s Monster as the Jack, whereas Magic Towers has a regal King, majestic Queen and princely Jack. Our most popular card game, Pyramid Solitaire: Ancient Egypt is entirely Egyptian themed with appropriate cards, font and background. It’s all about building the scene and creating an atmosphere our customers want to spend time in. This level of detail reflects the consistency to our brand and within our company, as each game is completed to the highest level of quality.

But it’s not just about logos and artwork, it’s about our players and respecting their own individuality. You may have noticed by now some of our games are the same game, just in different coats. Let’s take Tri-Peaks solitaire for example. Halloween, Magic Towers, Christmas and classic are all versions of Tri-Peaks with the same principles and same gameplay, however the key difference is that they target different types of people. We want everyone to enjoy the game and we don’t want anyone to feel they have to conform, bear flashy themes they don’t want or experience the game in any other way than how they would want to play it. We respect those who love the simplicity of our classic version of Tri-Peaks solitaire, just as much as our customers who love Christmas and jump on the chance to have a festive theme. It’s lovely that people still play it during the summer months! Similarly the same goes for Halloween, with ghoulish backgrounds and spooky sounds, and Magic Towers, which is the most calming of the four with an animated sky of passing clouds and twittering birds. Whichever game our customers prefer, they can guarantee they’ll be getting the same attention to detail and consistency of brand, as they would with any of our other games.

The point here is this: customers love to be immersed and they can tell immediately if something is made with care. If you’re a game developer or even a marketer, remember to pay attention to the little things, because, after all, they make up the whole. If you look after those details, they can help make your game an overall success.

February 7, 2020

Credit Where Credit’s Due

Orient Express Dominoes Credits

Okay, okay, you may scroll past the credits in games and films (fair enough, they take forever!), but we all know they’re important and we’d miss them if they weren’t there. It’s truly amazing and humbling to see how many hands go into making something so enjoyable to play or watch, so it’s only right their name is there!

In the games industry, credits to the creators and support staff sadly seem to be a thorny issue. Some companies, such as Rockstar Games, have what I consider to be an unfair draconian policy. For example, if a creator leaves the company before the game they have been working on is shipped, they won’t be mentioned at all. That’s pretty severe and it happens even if they’ve been working for years on it! I wonder how many developers on Red Dead Redemption 2 suffered that fate?

Other companies are even more lax and let their staff fall through the net without a blink of an eye. Back in the day, I worked at Glu Games on mobile games, long before the smart phones and iPhones came out. The policy was quite haphazard, so much so we often weren’t credited at all. There were always excuses, including lack of memory on those very old phones and fear of co-workers being poached by other developers. I’m understanding to a certain point, but, like the title of this piece, I always believe credit is owed where it is due, no matter how small the contribution. I gave a cursory glance over at Glu Games recently, downloaded one of their games and was disappointed to find none of the developers were credited. If there’s something good to be taken from my experience, it helped me make the decision to never act in such a way to demoralise our team.

Here at Glowing Eye Games, we have a different problem and that’s only come over time. Our games have stayed popular and are regularly updated to this day. This means they’ve had loads of different contributors over the years. Some of the team are no longer here and people have moved on. While some are still prominently displayed in the credits, others have been removed after a very long time has passed. There’s no solid policy at the moment on this, but I’m keen to create one that’s fair. Fair for me is noting that someone contributed in the past, and that current team members who are working on those games are prominently displayed. So, in the future, we’ll be adding a new credit title: – Previous Contributors. Right now, I don’t think we’ll list what their job was, but I want to make it known to them that their efforts were valued and remembered. Sometimes, it’s just the little things that can make someone’s day.

September 6, 2019

Not a One Trick Pony – Keeping the Customer Entertained

Glowing Eye Games has been going for eleven years now and we’ve learned some tricks of the trade along the way. In this blog, we’ll take a long at the pros of having a diverse range of games to suit all kinds of players.

Games have the miraculous ability to whisk you away into untold worlds: Ancient Egypt, a fairy-tale kingdom, a haunted house, but one man’s paradise is another man’s hell. Each world speaks to the individual. It has to be a place they’re willing to dwell in for hours on end. That’s why we have a huge selection of games to choose from, with diverse landscapes and characters, and even a few which – simply put – do exactly what it says on the tin, with no frills or distractions. Our games are derived from classics, such as solitaire and many of its popular variants, and Mexican train dominoes, so they’re not only beautiful, but beloved by every generation. We think that our themed games have meant that those generations can enjoy their favourite games with renewed joy.

Golf Solitaire Club

Despite our small company, there are many ways in which to contact us. Communication, as someone once said, is key, and it’s certainly a part of our key to happy customers. The dialogue between us and our gamers is constant. Whether its comments on our social media, feedback or just general queries, we listen to what you have to say – and what you say feeds into our games. We put a game out into the world expecting it to grow and reshape as time goes on to ever home in on the exacting standards of our consumers.

Variety comes in because no single customer or gamer is the same. We have some people who use Pyramid Solitaire to teach their grandchildren basic maths, whilst others use it as a form of brain training. Whilst others relax, some would rather play competitively against themselves, friends or AI. Whatever they like, consistency is key when they decide to branch out. Every game has our own stamp through its style and gameplay, so the gamer is being treated to something new without going into unknown territory.

Magic Towers Solitaire

Our games also have their own individual customisability from the backgrounds to the settings. Whilst some games only allow you to make aesthetic changes, most of our games allow you to set how many cards you want to use (The Golf Card Game), how many rounds you want to play (Mexican Train Dominoes Gold) and if you want to play competitively or not (Pyramid Solitaire: Royal Gold). Mexican Train Dominoes is our most adaptable game, allowing you to play with your friends in a group by passing the device around and also to move the tiles around as the tactics come to you. This customisability and adaptability stemmed from the original games which are stilled played out on tables and desks. Most players have grown up learning the rules and playing the game with physical cards or tiles. It’s only polite to allow them to carry on playing their own way and give them the choice to do so on a tablet or phone.

Mexican Train Dominoes Gold

We’ve been working on a word game currently, taking inspiration from hangman and Scrabble, but giving it a more refined appearance. It’ll have its own world, its own players and a few devotees of Glowing Eye Games, I’m sure. So, watch this space!

Classic card and boardgames needn’t be a dull thing of the past. We gave them a good update and a new modern face and they fell into the palm of our customer’s hand! If you’re developing your first game or perhaps you’ve already got a few under your belt, remember, you don’t need to pigeonhole yourself. Experiment, have fun, and as long as you take your audience along with you for the ride, you should have a loyal set of fans.

July 8, 2019

Crunch Time and How Glowing Eye Games Has Never Done It

Think of all the most famous of teams. The A Team. The Thunderbirds. The Avengers. What do they all have in common? They’re great team players! (Unless we count Civil War, but let’s just brush over that for now). Although each member has their own individual strengths and talents, as a team they are at their best. Here at Glowing Eye Games, we cherish our teamworking skills and hold them paramount in all our business dealings. We know a happier team does better work and that’s one of the reasons why we avoid crunch time.

If you’re in the game development business, then you’ll understand deadlines can come up pretty fast. That’s why we very rarely release games on a Friday. No one wants their weekend disturbed by emergency fixes and we totally respect that. It’s very set a deadline that doesn’t end on a Friday!

Speaking of deadlines, we make sure these often aren’t fixed when the scope of a project has changed. There’s nothing more stressful than pulling your hair out, trying to meet a date when so many changes have been made and there is so much more work to be done. We always value a job done well over a botched one. Sometimes, a little flexibility goes a long way. If a deadline is crucial, we make sure to structure our time more efficiently, with stronger planning and more miniature deadlines, so the project doesn’t seem overwhelming. We make the scope of our projects realistic, too, otherwise it’s just unfair. Sometimes business can strip the humanity out of a company, and we remain conscious at every level to instil empathy and encouragement. After all, we’re all in it together.

Whether updates are big or small, we make sure both get equal focus. Obviously, bigger updates need more time and their scope is more comprehensive, whereas small updates can be completed in-between or during quieter periods. It’s just the simple tactic of scheduling time in the most efficient way possible.

As a company, we have employees around the UK, America and Japan, so that’s a lot of coordinating to do, but flexitime takes a lot of the strain off. With different time zones to cater for, meetings are kept to a minimum and planned in periods of overlap. Some employees even have other ongoing projects, and as long as they don’t interfere with the productivity of their work with Glowing Eye Games, we’re happy for them to continue with them. This allows a great work life balance for our team, ensuring transparency and happiness.

So, there you have it. At Glowing Eye Games, there’re a lot of humans working behind those screens, coding your game, designing its background, writing its information and all the big and little stuff in between. We’re glad we’ve managed to do this without burning anyone out.

May 7, 2019

Did You Know? : A History of the World’s Favorite Game

Our love of solitaire knows no bounds. From tri-peaks to forty thieves, we’ve made a hefty chunk out of the solitaire catalogue and we are still going. But our obsession is not exclusive. It turns out, solitaire is a global fixation and one that has been capturing hearts and heads for centuries.

The humble game goes by many names, from Kabal or Cabale by Eastern European and Scandinavian countries, Patience to the British and Reussite by the French. And that’s just for classic solitaire! The game of Tri-peaks also goes by Triple Peaks or Tri Towers, and Forty Thieves can be found under Napoleon or Roosevelt because of its famous devotees. Crescent, Pyramid and Spider solitaire all take their names from their very obvious visual tableau.

Call it what you will, solitaire is a firm favorite the world over. On our journey creating card games, we’ve come across some pretty interesting trivia!

Solitaire itself is rumored to have originated from a multiplayer card game. It became private after players who loved the game so much would go home and practice alone. Thus, its favor began to spread throughout the globe as a solitary pursuit and one to pass the time pleasantly. It even went as far as the mountainous Yukon, where Klondike the card game came to fruition amongst bored prospectors trying to make a living from the gold rush.

Other popular variations were mostly born in America. In the late 1890s, Richard A. Canfield was a clever man, a gambler, and the creator of Canfield solitaire. Looking to get himself some quick cash, he’d set up the cards and get the player to put in $50. For every card laid in its foundations, $5 was earned. If the game was completed, the lucky player could win $500! Pity the success rate of winning Canfield is less than 30%.

Over fifty years later and FreeCell is conceived by medical student Paul Alfille in the late 1960s. Originally played with physical cards, it was adapted for computer in 1995. Most recently, our familiar friend Tri-Peaks was actually only invented in 1989 by Robert Hogue of Winter Haven, Florida.

Computers really kept the heart of solitaire beating, from the earliest desktops to the present-day smartphone. It’s popularity and recognizability is partially thanks to graphic designer, Susan Kare, who illustrated the playing cards and clickable icons for Microsoft’s original solitaire. From there, hours of fun could be found, but that’s not the end of the story!

Solitaire is still being developed, even by the likes of us. We took the classic game of Pyramid solitaire, often used by parents to teach children simple maths, and enhanced its original format. The game was quite tough, so we created a temporary card slot to make the game a little easier. We also changed it to just one deal to ensure the enjoyment of the game was sustained and to aid in more consecutive wins! What more is there to love?

Whether you use it as a guilty pleasure, refreshing break from a hard day’s work or to practice your tactical skills, solitaire is the game for everyone. From the casinos to kitchen tables, Napoleon de Bonaparte and Prince Albert to the ordinary folk of today, there’s no stopping the allure of solitaire.

If you’ve enjoyed this blog, find our handy guide to solitaire on the Apple bookstore. Learn how to play Canfield, Spider and more using physical cards. It’s totally free!

https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/learn-how-to-play-solitaire-card-games/id1442286946?mt=11

April 25, 2019

A Decade of Magic Towers Solitaire: Lessons Learned

Ten years is a long time in the games business. Back then, online games made with Flash sustained thousands of small indie game developers. Games on Facebook were massive and helped build companies like Zynga and PlayFish. Slowly, old and clunky feature phones were replaced with iPhones and Android phones. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 fought in the console space, whilst the Nintendo Wii delighted people of every age and gender.

This was the time in which Magic Towers Solitaire was born. It was actually the third game we had ever created and was designed to help tick us over whilst we worked on our mega downloadable PC games. The first two games before Magic Towers Solitaire are now defunct and the PC games turned out to be a venture never to take off, but Magic Towers Solitaire is a survivor, and not for any old reason.

Magic Towers Solitaire has a devoted fanbase, history behind it and is one of the founding stones on which we expanded our company. There are so many stories to tell from Glowing Eye Games but here are some lessons for all you indie developers to help you along the way to creating and sustaining your game and business. Class, take your seats!

Lesson 1:

Take responsibility.

Full of beans about our new game, we hired a small contractor in the Crimea to make it. All was well at first, until the graphics came back to us. In retrospect, our art brief was poor, so at first it looked like a childish game, which was not what we wanted. This mistake was on us and one which we had to pay for – not a great sum, but the mistake was memorable. We went back to the developer and asked for changes. Although at first the air was a little tense, we managed to collaborate and discuss terms to make something better. Always remember, if you’re paying for a service, don’t let emotion or mistakes stop you from starting something again. There’s no shame in admitting you were wrong. Even the best of us want to blame others for our mistakes, especially when working with outside sources. Take responsibility and you’ll get the results you want quicker. Likewise, if your contractor doesn’t take responsibility for their side, reconsider them.

Lesson 2:

Check your Trademarks!

When we first released Magic Towers, it was called Tri Towers Solitaire. OMG this was a massive mistake! Little did we know, it was already a registered trademark, so, out of the blue, we received some pretty threatening letters from the owner’s lawyers. What followed was a lotof paperwork, a lotof money and a lotof time getting our renamed game updated on the thousands of small websites on which it was hosted. This was a bad burn, especially considering we could barely afford to pay wages at the time. So, don’t go in blind, do your US trademark research! This is much easier than been hounded by lawyers. (Honestly, they’re good at sending the dogs after you!).

Lesson 3:

Friendly competitors are worth having. Treat them well and if they’re decent they’ll do the same.

Despite the frightening lawsuit, we weren’t completely down on our luck. Our previous sponsor, Jochen of Smiley Games, told us about Mindjolt, an exceptionally popular games service on Facebook at the time. Without Jochen’s tip-off, our company may not have survived the year. Magic Towers Solitaire became one of Mindjolt’s most popular games and even led to the creation of Pyramid Solitaire: Ancient Egypt, which is still one of our greatest successes. Jochen is now doing brilliant mobile Match 3 games and we have a good connection to this day.

Lesson 4: Maximize your distribution and platform coverage.

Back in the day, online indie games were mostly supported by other gaming websites. We’d noticed and been a part of clustering around the benefits of Facebook games, but there was still room for growth. We set up Solitaire Paradise, a website for all kinds of card games, which hosted our own and others’ games. This helped bring in revenue and promote our products. Additionally, there were websites that wanted games with their branding. We made nine deals here on Magic Towers alone, mostly easy jobs that brought in more revenue. Nowadays, you can advertise and implant your game on so many app and console stores, so never pen yourself in to one sector. There are so many more options, so take your time to investigate!

Lesson 5:

Cross Promote Everywhere.

Remember Jochen from lesson 3? Well, during our time as friendly competitors, we helped each other out with some cross promotion. Cross promotion is always worth doing between your own games, especially if you have a house style. Cross promotion with friendly developers is rarer, but if there is an overlap, you know players will move on sometime. So why not to someone who can send some new players back to you?

This way, you can expand your audience, rather than having to source new customers every time you release another game. Done well, you could have a long queue of them ready for you on the release date. We also promoted across platforms. Starting off with online PC games, we branched into the iPhone with a little help from a good university friend and royalty deal we could all trust and work with. We were always bug fixing, enhancing and updating. After some time, we had some small triumphs. Our game got featured by Apple in their category lists and was the number 1 card game in Uzbekistan. I still like saying that, it did well elsewhere too, but Uzbekistan is just a great sounding name for a country!

Lesson 6:

Thank you for your custom. Please come again!

As mentioned in the above paragraph, there are lots of thing to mull over and improve. Most of the time, you’re not doing it to be fancy, it’s just things that makes it better for the customer. Make fonts more readable, port to Android or iPhone, clarify graphics and simplify instructions; these are all often well-received and keep players satisfied. So, no need to rest on your laurels once you’ve completed the game, you’ve got to tend that garden and get rid of the weeds!

Lesson 7:

Change is scary, but an old game can learn new tricks.

Whilst Magic Towers Solitaire was ticking over, we decided to update Pyramid Solitaire: Ancient Egypt with new technology. We changed the timing of how the game was played and changed the graphics significantly, so that we were deluged with angry customer emails. We always take customer feedback to our heart, so we quickly went about doing a lot of fixes and alterations. Some of our changes were for the best and went unchanged, but the end result was that we lost a few customers. So, with Magic Towers Solitaire, we learnt our lesson and were far more cautious. Changes were gradual and What’s New updates helped keep the customer informed and prepared. Happily, the players kept playing! The transition was as smooth as a scoop of the finest, organic ice-cream (vegan option available).

Lesson 8: Always keep improving!

For complete disclosure it’s worth saying Magic Towers could do with some sprucing, so let’s take lesson 7 and make it a practical one!

Which of these updates should we do?

– additional themes

– new levels

– statistics tracking

– enhanced graphics with particle effects (oooh fancy!)

– updated characters

– improved menus

– a simple tutorial

– a veritable boat-load of little tune-ups.

We’ll pick one or two of these with each update, just to keep the old fanbase satisfied while making it better for new players.

You see how this business works? Always maintain, update, keep it brand-spanking, sparkly new and it will seem that way to the customer, and maybe Magic Towers Solitaire will continue to bring joy and relaxation to players for another ten years!

October 3, 2018

The Mistake of Mahjong Seasons

As a small indie games developer, business mistakes can be deeply painful. Here we share our biggest mistake with the game Mahjong Seasons. We wanted it to be beautiful, brilliant and big. We wanted it to be perfect! We threw time, effort and money at creating the best Mahjong game out there to try and be the PopCap of Mahjong.

Oh, how we failed…

2014 was a heady time for the tech industry, which thought tablets would rule the world and replace PCs. It was also the year we released Mahjong Seasons. We loved the form factor. We knew our games were best experienced on the iPad (this was back when we only supported iOS). We wouldn’t compromise on quality and make a weaker mobile version; it was to be iPad only. The decision alone meant that it was unavailable to the huge number of potential iPhone players. Worse still, mobile phones got bigger and better, making our decision to ignore their furtherment short sighted. Tablets are still important as great consumer devices, but they didn’t and won’t take over the world.

Our perfectionist attitude to the game’s development meant we had massive, long-winded debates over things like the level select. That bloody level select! We developed a massively time-consuming streaming code, which would allow players to scroll through levels. This was visually redesigned several times. Heck, even the way a player scrolled through the levels was debated and refined a multitude of times. And you know what? It didn’t matter. We put so much focus on this area that we increased the development time by months! We should’ve gone with a simpler design, knowing now that most players really wouldn’t have minded. No one in the company voiced that we should be spending our time on other things, we just had to do it right.

The mistakes don’t end here. We created a poor combination of revenue generation with a badly thought-out balance of advertising and purchased level packs. Instead of maximising revenue per player, we reduced it. We could have a created a game that had randomly selected levels that would be played more often, but our problem was that our game was level based. This limited the amount of time any player would take enjoying the game, reducing the advertising revenue. In fact, this business model, married with our design, conspired to create a game where we ended up with an average revenue per player of $0.22. This is worst revenue per player from any of our games.

The artwork was redone several times. We created beautiful effects as the player enjoyed the game, delicate animations and delightful particle effects, all of which required a significant amount of coding. Each little item stacked up: the time, cost and debates on whether it was good enough. Each tweak and rework eventually sapped the morale of the team.

After almost a year, it was ready. It looked good, it felt good and we were proud, too. We unleashed it with the most expensive advertising campaign that this little company had ever done and then –

It flopped.

The hope was that the advertising would get it noticed and give it traction. The reality was that, after the advertising campaign, it became one of the least downloaded games we have ever made.

But we weren’t even done there. We knew the game would never make any money, that the amount of people finding it and enjoying it would be miniscule. But out of pride and loyalty to the few players we had, we made one more level pack. Something for the tiny number of loyal players. It was a nice thing to do for players, if not a little delusional, benefiting maybe a few hundred of them, but it increased the cost of making the game upward again. Really, why? Why spend another penny on something that had so obviously been ignored by the casual gaming public? In retrospect there was no proper business-minded justification for this extra effort, only a desire to be a supportive game developer who really valued their loyal players.

The game failed to make back even 5% of its developing and marketing cost, and everyone’s confidence plummeted. After a year, this was the final nail in the coffin and it was hard to face.

After its one update, we let it stay on the App Store, picking up the occasional download in the hope it would quietly accrue the final few cents of revenue. By 2017, it was taken unceremoniously off the App Store.

I wish I could say there was an upside in going through this project, but much of it was heartache and headache. We learned from our mistakes and developed some technology, although we didn’t reuse most of it. We lost so much time doing it that it’s horrible to write about even to this day.

But why should you make the same mistakes we did? Here’s our take home advice to avoid this kind of wasted effort.

Don’t overdesign and over scope your game. We should have limited our main efforts to the actual playing experience rather than elements, like the level select screen.
Know when to give in. When a game looks like it won’t bring you any additional revenue, that is the time to cut your loyalty to your players. Our efforts to bring an additional level pack lost additional money and time for us.
Think about your business model. An advertising-based game thrives on re-playability. A game with in game level purchases thrives on people wanting new content. Our game failed on both counts by incorrectly combining both.
Support as many platforms as is feasible. Our mistake was supporting tablet only. We should’ve made it compatible with mobile phones, even if that reduced player enjoyment a little.
Advertising. Advertising can give a game traction, but if it looks like it is failing even with a solid advertising campaign then it’s time to cut it off.

Good luck!

Mark