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.

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.

April 9, 2019
It’s the Little Things: Updating Sound for Pyramid Solitaire: Ancient Egypt

Ah, the sultry sounds of Pyramid Solitaire: Ancient Egypt. Fun-loving, with a heady mixture of somewhere exotic, somewhere you’d probably rather be. Visuals do so much for our games, but they’re often completed with the right balance of ambience. To create a soothing atmosphere, we delved into the world of audio to revamp Pyramid Solitaire: Ancient Egypt and give our players something to swoon over. Soon, we found the right sound for the overall game, but we’re sticklers for detail.

What about the sound when you remove a card from the tableau? After all, that’s the aim of the game and it’s gotta make you feel good!

So, the old sound was fine. It fitted the theme nicely and gave a twinkly wink of success initially. But after a few quick moves, the sound repeating multiple times in quick succession became kinda annoying. Actually, very annoying. So, we started out to find a replacement.

Finding the right sound has its own challenges, especially when the change is tiny. You don’t have symphony-sized room to make someone feel happy, you’ve got half a second. We trawled through our in-house library for some inspiration but found nothing that was both less irritating and just as emboldening, if not more. We ventured out of our own realm and into outside sources, mostly consisting of royalty free, creative commons sites, such as freesound.org, soundbible.com, and audiojungle.net. Yet, try as we might, we came out from our search empty handed and so very sad and disappointed.

Finally, we gathered our thoughts and decided to go for a one-time payment, licensed sound pack, chock full of different sound effects which would make an audio engineer weep with joy. It was audiojungle where we found this delightful pack, so the preliminary search was not a wasted journey after all. As a side note, we’d recommend any budding developer to make sure the licensing on audio suits your project, especially if players are going to be streaming the game. Make sure these sound effects can be used by any third party!

The pack was like a gift from the Gods and once opened this veritable Pandora’s box, we were totally entranced by the sheer range. Whilst we had set out to find only one upgraded sound effect, we were tempted by the many versatile sound effects on offer that could be used multiple times. With some crafty slicing and pitch altering, we came out with tons of new sound effects, which we implemented with wild abandon. Now, a countdown could be used at the beginning of the round, to enhance that feeling of achievement when the round was complete, and score totals had some extra added sparkle. These new effects all culminated into a warm fuzzy feeling, kind of like a reward on the ears.

Audacity handled the sound editing, a free wave editor, and then exported to Wwise. We use Wwise for all our projects, like many developers, including AAA developers.

Now we have a game which not only makes you feel great, but sounds great too, down to the smallest detail. We know only 20% of casual mobile players play with sound, but it’s important to get it right for those tuning in.

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