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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.


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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Recent Posts
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  • Our Games Reimagined by AI December 19, 2022
  • Evolving Our Evergreen Game Magic Towers Solitaire November 2, 2022
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Recent Posts
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