11 LESSONS FROM DEVELOPING TAKE COVER

MAREK-MARTIN MATYSKA

GAMAJUN GAMES

GAMAJUN GAMES

• Founded in 2012, Located in Brno

• Focused from the start on work for hire, to gather experience on Mobile.

• In late 2014 development of our own mobile game – TakeCover has begun.

TAKE COVER

• Take Cover is midcore strategy multiplayer game for mobile/tablet

• Combination of base builder and combat elements

• Player is able to directly control troops on the battlefield

• Featured by Apple in Europe

• Nominated for best mobile game and best multiplayer game on Casual

Connect in Tel Aviv 2016

DESIGN CLARIFICATIONS

• Initially game was designed to be Single-player soldier vs soldier experience

• After research, decision was made to switch to multiplayer

• Do we go Synchronous or Asynchronous?

• Due to technical side of Synchronous multiplayer, we had to redesign the game to fit Asynchronous

• Ended up being reversed tower-defense.

GAME ECONOMY DECISIONS

• Designing the game economy we had to come with set of currencies

• To simplify the system, we ended up with two soft currencies and one premium

• The amount of currency types limits developer control over player progression

as well as limiting the possibilities of special offering to generate extra

revenue

• Fixed by preparing the system to enable us to add additional currencies.

• However it is much harder to do after the game is already released.

SKILL ELEMENT IN FREE 2 PLAY ENVIRONMENT

• Unique twist of our strategy game is direct control of troops on the battlefield

• This allows players to leverage their playing capabilities to maximum

• Proven to be difficult challenge for us as developers to balance the game.

• Challenges the F2P model in a way, that even a higher level player can be defeated

by lower level player if he is playing perfectly

MATCHMAKING

• To provide the best possible experience for our players, we created a complex

ruleset for our matchmaking.

• Proven to be an error due to relatively small community in the early release of the

game.

• To improve the waiting times, we had to ease the restrictions

• Which caused higher unbalance and disrupted the experience of our players

• Create the server code to allow quick modifications based on the size of your player

base

MEMORY SIZE

• During the Soft-Launch we’ve noticed that our game has increased its memory

size to levels that we were not confident with

• By doing research we have found out extremely detailed textures

• By looking at the Data we have spotted places that did not require this

detailed graphics

MEMORY USAGE

• During the investigation of Memory size we’ve noticed Memory usage issues

• Upon looking at the data of tutorial completion of weaker devices we have noticed massive

drop between tutorial 1 and 2 when military base is loaded

• We have fixed this in two ways

A) first our graphic department had to repack all the sprite and texture atlases

B) We have created a priority list for all our assets what needs to loaded immediately

and what can be postponed

• This have resulted in massive improvement of performance on weaker devices as well as huge

improvement in loading times on all devices

LOCALIZATION

• During our preparation for global launch we were thinking what can we do to

improve the experience

• Decision was made to localize to multiple languages

• This proved to be a double-edged blade

• We have gathered a positive reviews, however it forces us to localize new

text we add to all the languages.

• Our lesson is to treat localization as a treat to the community, once the player

base in that given country reaches reasonable size.

RESPECTING THE DATA CULTURE

• During our soft launch we had to cut features to be able to launch the game

• When the data started flowing in, instead of scraping the existing designs, we

started to fit them

• This proved to be an error and the correct approach was to scrap everything we had

and craft new features to directly reflect the needs of our game

PUBLISHER PARTNERSHIP

• We have partnered with publisher to help us launch our game

• However we did not spend enough time unifying the 3rd party solutions

• We have ended up implementing different SDKs for Advertisement,

Attribution and Analytics

• This proved to be completely unnecessary if we would unite our views upfront

FEATURING CURSE OR BLESSING ?

• While Featuring is a blessing for any developer to have be sure you are

prepared!

• During our Soft Launch everything went well and smooth

• Being featured by Apple in most of Europe caused insane traffic and pressure

on our servers

• The Damage it causes to your reviews is very hard to repair

SUMMARY

• Create your high level design while respecting your technical possibilities!

• Craft your Game economy to give you control and options!

• Be cautious about Skill element in Free 2 Play Environment!

• Code your matchmaking so you are able to modify it quickly!

• Think why your game is increasing in size and if it brings value!

• Test your game after adding each new feature for memory usage!

• Use localization as a treat to the community!

• Don’t bend your data, bend the features!

• Be upfront with your publisher about 3rd party solutions and unite your vision!

• It is easier to prepare yourself for smooth featuring than repairing the damage!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!

QUESTIONS ?

MAREK-MARTIN MATYSKAGAMAJUN GAMES