Today, we have some exciting news to share with you. GameAnalytics and GameIntel will be joining forces to provide an integrated, comprehensive platform that brings together analytics and wider gaming market insights – all in one simple, unified service.

One of the key focuses for us at GameAnalytics is to continually evolve and provide more value to our users. And again, we’re taking a significant step forward in that journey. From next month, GameIntel will become an integral part of GameAnalytics, bringing robust market insights like detailed KPI benchmark trends for all major metrics along with app store charts and rank positions for major gaming regions – right into our core platform.

Why is this exciting?

Having access to both GameAnalytics and GameIntel’s capabilities in a single place allows you to explore the broader connections between your in-game KPIs and your global app store rankings. This unified solution will provide you with a more comprehensive picture of your game’s performance, your competition, and the broader gaming market as a whole.

You’ll soon be able to track and analyze not only your own game’s data, but also the wider market rankings and performance estimates of other games and publishers that you’re interested in. Imagine having the ability to easily see how KPIs like DAU or retention translate to app store rankings – all on one single graph without needing to export and crunch different data sources. This is just one of the many powerful use cases you can look forward to.

What’s changing?

Going forward, GameIntel won’t operate as a standalone service. Instead, it will be integrated as a paid add-on within the GameAnalytics platform. This means you’ll find all the unique features and insights that GameIntel offers directly within the GameAnalytics interface.

Existing GameIntel users, rest assured! You will still have access to the same extensive data and insights that you’re used to. The key difference? You’ll be accessing these features within the newly redesigned GameAnalytics interface.

We’re working hard to ensure this transition is as smooth as possible and brings added convenience to your game and market analysis. From next month, you’ll be able to easily switch and access GameIntel from the main menu as shown below.

Key feature changes

Firstly, all of these updates bring huge performance and stability improvements, meaning that your market insights will load more quickly and reliably across all dashboards, and we’ll be able to continue launching new features with greater ease.

On this note, we’re excited to introduce a brand new feature – the ability to save games or studios that you want to track into ‘Your list’. This means, rather than searching for them each time, you can now have quick and easy access to your favorites directly from your dashboard.

As part of this consolidation process, the Top Publishers, Global Hits, Upcoming Games and Game Explorer dashboards will be deprecated. Our aim is to instead make this information available in the more streamlined market intelligence views shown below.

What about the billing changes?

The best part about this upgrade? All of GameIntel’s pro features will be available under a single plan at $499 per month. But, if you’re an existing user, we’ve got some fantastic news!

If you’re an existing user, you don’t need to do anything to access these new features! Simply continue with your subscription, and you’ll automatically have these features enabled and retain monthly pricing at your existing or discounted rate. Yes, that’s right – more features, greater value!

Please note, you don’t need to do anything to access these new features and pricing benefits. Simply continue with your subscription, and you’ll automatically have these features enabled and pricing changes reflected in your next billing cycle.

Onwards and upwards

We’re genuinely excited about these changes, as we believe they will give you better tools to understand both your games’ performance, the wider market dynamics and the way these two factors impact your ASO efforts. Remember, this is just the first of many improvements we plan to make – all designed to help you gain a deeper understanding of your audience, make smarter decisions, and ultimately succeed in the gaming world.

As always, we’re here if you have any questions or need further clarification about these changes. We’re all about making your journey with GameAnalytics as valuable and smooth as possible. So, please don’t hesitate to get in touch or share your feedback.

We’ve previously delved into how AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard can speed up your development process. These tools are highly efficient for creating large amounts of text at once – from lore snippets to item descriptions.

Another powerful application of AI is in the realm of art. We’ve explored how you could use PicFinder to help generate AI art for your game. But AI generators aren’t just useful for character concepts. They can create a wide range of assets that you’ll need. As we mentioned in our previous posts: the results won’t be perfect, but AI can certainly help you develop a workable prototype faster. You can then pass these AI-generated creations to your actual art team for further refinement, ensuring stylistic consistency.

Understanding AI commands

Each AI tool operates differently and has distinct parameters you can tweak – especially in the realm of art.

MidJourney has a whole array of parameters

There are two ways to change your settings in MidJourney. The first is to change your default settings using “/settings”. But these only touch the surface of what you can do.

You can explore the full list of commands on their website, but there are a few that are particularly useful to know. Put these commands at the end of your prompt. They all begin with a double dash, followed by the parameter of your choice.

• –chaos <0-100> The more chaos you decide to have, the more random elements MidJourney will add. This is useful if you want each of the four images to be very different from one another.
• –no <terms> MidJourney will try to remove your terms from its results. For example, if it keeps adding lakes to your landscapes and you want it to avoid that.
• –v <number> or –niji MidJourney regularly updates the version. But if you’ve used a prompt using an earlier engine and liked the style, you can always specify which version to use. You can also use niji, which is their model specifically for an anime style.

PicFinder prioritizes the front of your prompt

If you’re using PicFinder, you can change the settings next to the prompt bar. It’s worth experimenting with the aspect ratio, as this can lead to quite different results. For example, square images are more likely to look like portraits or avatars. The most important part of PicFinder is that it prioritizes the first words you type in. So make sure you put the key information at the front.

They also have four models you can choose from:

• MindCanvas. This is their default setting, and it’s the most varied option you can use. It’s good for anime, cartoon and fantasy styles, but covers most bases that you’ll need.
• ReV Animated. Use this one when you’re making a character and want a good front-facing portrait. If you’re looking for character inspiration, this is the model to use.
• AbsoluteReality. This is the model to use when you want something more photorealistic. It’s particularly good at environments.
• Samaritan 3d Cartoon. This is for really cartoony characters and objects.

Whatever tool you’re using, try out different settings, models and parameters to see how it affects your image. Once you find what you like, for example, a specific art style to use, make sure you copy and paste that style into each prompt at the end (or make a note of the settings you used). That’ll help make sure you get more consistent results.

Inspiration for art styles

It can be a bit daunting when you first start using an AI generator. What exactly should you add? Thankfully, Andrei Kovalev has created MidLibrary, which can let you see pretty much every style possible. Even if you’re not using MidJourney, this can be a useful site to help you refine your prompt. Similarly, you can use a site like Stable Diffusion Art to find styles.

Give your artists a better brief

When coming up with characters, it can be difficult to describe what you mean. This is where an AI generator can help you give a better brief to your artists. You see, a generator can’t create a consistent character – every time you use it, it’s going to start from scratch. But it can help you show your actual artists what works for you. So type in your prompt, pick out the results that appeal to you, and use them to form your actual brief.

When using PicFinder, we typed in these prompts to get a design for our character:

• female character who is a vampire hunter
• female character who is a vampire hunter pixel artstyle
• female character who is a vampire hunter cute artstyle
• female character who is a vampire hunter studio ghibli style.

You can even use it to rule out certain routes. For example, we really don’t like the top-right image that it generated. So we’d let our art team know what to avoid.

Create maps to help your world building

Struggling to start creating your world? Maybe you’ve got a rough idea of the layout, but don’t know how it’ll all look when it comes together. Well, AI can generate you a map.

A map of a fantasy world, include three continents, parchment –v 5 (MidJourney)

Admittedly, it seems to have struggled with the number of continents. But it’s a start. We could easily use this map as a starting point for creating lore or places of interest for our characters.

And if you need it in your game’s style – you could start with a more specific prompt. Just by changing the style, we can get vastly different results.

A map of a fantasy world, include three continents, 3d isometric, –v 5 (MidJourney)

Generate textures for your tile maps

It can be painstaking to get textures for different surfaces – especially if you want a specific style. But AI can generate these for you in a matter of moments.

Cartoon stone texture wallpaper (PicFinder)

If you’re making a 2D game, you could even get it to generate an entire tileset, letting you build new rooms with relative ease.

A tileset for the floor in a mobile game –v 5 (MidJourney)

Create assets and icons

If you’ve got a thousand different items in your game, it can take months to draw each and every icon by hand. You could licence a library from somewhere, but then every game starts to look the same.

Instead, you can describe the items to an AI and get them in a style that fits with your game. Even if you’re only using these as placeholders in your prototype, while your artists work on the real deal – it’s going to be far better than a generic icon.

Flaming sword, item icon for a mobile game (PicFinder)

Remember, with some tools you can use a specific image as an initial prompt. (For example, we took a photo of a random hat we had lying around and asked MidJourney to turn it into an icon.) Maybe you do this when you want a specific look or maybe if you want to create variations of the App Store icon.

A random hat we had lying around as an item icon for a mobile game (MidJourney)

Remember: If you don’t like the options that it creates, you can always try again or ask it for more chaos.

Add flavour to lore entries

In our previous AI article, we got Google Bard to refine a description of a floating city – Yuttgard – for us. We can just imagine that the player could unlock the lore and check it out in some sort of in-game codex.

But having just text might be a tad dull. Maybe we want to spice up the entry and show the players what Yuttgard looks like. Well, AI could help there, too. Type in your lore and see what the AI comes up with. It might be abstract, or it might show the location you’re describing.

We put the full description from Bard into MidJourney, along with “Arcology style –v 5” (MidJourney)

It might not be just in a lore entry you use this. Maybe you need a background image for your marketing or a landscape shot for a blog post you’re writing. You can create these kinds of image, too. (In fact, we used MidJourney to create the cover image for this article.)

An island landscape with a volcano in the centre, in a mobile game screenshot style –v 5 (MidJourney)

As you can see, there are plenty of ways you can use AI to speed up your development process – and get to a prototype faster. Textures. In-game images. Icons. Character concepts. All of these could take months to develop by hand, but with AI you could do them all in just a couple of days.

Test out your ideas

Using AI, you can create lots of variations of your art and then A/B test to see which ones appeal to your players more. If you’d like some help tracking the results, you can use our live ops features for games. This includes A/B testing and Remote Configs so that you can switch out assets without having to release new versions of your games to the App Stores.

At the start of June, Apple announced the Vision Pro – a headset that marks the “era of spatial computing”. We’d call it a mixed-reality headset. Part VR, part desktop computer, part entertainment system. You can either fully immerse yourself in a virtual world or you can blend the image of your apps over the real world.

This week, Apple also announced the release of Apple Vision Pro developer kits, with developers able to apply to receive a kit. Developers will be provided with an Apple Vision Pro “loaner” that will allow them to develop and test apps.

Pretty interesting. It’s not entirely new, of course. There are other headsets out there already that promise similar features. But these haven’t quite broken into our day-to-day lives.

The Vision Pro will likely become commonplace

At a starting price of around $3,500 – we won’t see it in the wild until the beginning of next year. So it’ll take a while before everyone starts buying one. But Apple’s brand recognition alone is likely to catapult the technology into quite a few people’s homes. It’s also very likely that Apple will focus heavily on the actual experience and make it feel as slick as when the first iPhone launched.

They’re also pitching it quite differently to other headsets – which are usually exclusively targeted at gaming or enterprise. Instead, Apple is focusing on an addition – potentially a replacement – for your desktop and TV. That’s likely to appeal to quite a few people and will help Apple gain a lot of ground. It’s a better use case for the majority of people.

We imagine that we’ll soon see lighter and cheaper versions – eventually replacing our phones with sleek glasses. By then, most of the apps that people use day to day will already be developed. So it’ll just be about making the device itself more portable. Sure, it’ll take a while. But that price is bound to drop.

This creates a lot of opportunities for gaming

According to The Verge, Vision Pro will have at least 100 Apple Arcade games when it first launches, which bodes well for other developers.

In fact, it’s likely the Vision Pro will appeal to techies and normies alike. Sure, at first only the hardcore people will afford it. But that’ll soon change. As soon as it’s affordable, it’ll be the people who want a massive TV but don’t have the room. Or people who just want to relax and browse the internet.

Wccftech reports that Apple originally had a target to sell one million devices, but that they’ve lowered that to 150,000. While it’s a big drop, it seems a sensible decision. And the next iteration could be far cheaper and far more ubiquitous.

And as that number grows, we’ll start to see people play around with the fact that it’s a mixed reality. Apps will start to interact with the real world. Simply, at first. And then growing in complexity.

Like with the smartphone, these people won’t see the Vision Pro as a ‘gaming’ device. But they’ll start to use it for games. The casual and hardcore gamer alike will get one – and they’ll both want to see what it can do. That’s where the opportunity lies for developers.

What will you create?

We see three kinds of game that will come out of the Vision Pro:

1. The immersive game. These will likely be big, intense games that use the hardware to its full potential. Games that completely immerse you in the world, while letting you interact with the real world. It’ll probably take a year or so before we start seeing these, though. They’ll take a long time to design and develop.
2. The ported games. These will be the games that are already out in the world, but ported over to the Vision Pro. Some will just need some adjustment to work with the new controller system (the Vision Pro uses a gesture-based approach). But these games will essentially be played on a virtual screen projected in front of you. So we’ll see mobile and console games alike being ported over to work on the Vision Pro.
3. The innovative games. There’s a whole realm of opportunity here for fun, casual games that interact directly with the world. Even something as simple as being able to bounce a ball off the wall or toss virtual paper into a real bin to score points.

These games will be small at first. Maybe little more than time-wasters and prototypes. Single mechanics that bring people a little joy. But they’ll mark a shift in how we interact with games in general. Those mechanics will bleed over into the big immersive games, as players begin to expect them as standard.

In the same way that we saw an explosion of games when the first computers were released – and again with the smartphone – we’ll see a huge surge of exploration and experimentation.

A lot will likely be on the casual side, until the hardware is beefy enough to handle the quality we’ve come to expect from our computers and consoles. They’ll be the Minesweeper and Solitaire of the future.

Get familiar with Unity

If you want to get started developing for Vision Pro, you should get familiar with visionOS. But one interesting note is that they specifically call out Unity. You can even check out Unity Beta for spatial experiences.

You’ll need to create your own benchmarks

As with any new technology, there won’t be standards and best practices for quite some time. You’ll need to track and analyze your own data to find what works and what doesn’t. If you’re using our tool, we recommend learning how to create custom events, so that you can make sure you’re getting all the data you need.

We also have a ‘Heatmaps’ feature currently in Beta, which should help you begin to track spatial analytics for AR/VR games. To request access, just get in touch via our contact form. In the meantime, sign up for our newsletter to keep up to date with anything we release to help you on your journey.

In January, industry expert Eric Seufert predicted that brand spend would reach at least 10% of in-game ad monetization. It’s a prediction that we couldn’t resist looking into. When we look back on 2023, will it really be the year we see brands spending far more of their budget on in-game ads?

Brands are definitely seeing the value, but it seems like there are a few barriers still in the way. For one example they want brand-safe slots and better measurement, so it could take a little longer than just 12 months – especially in the the current economic climate. Brands are generally tightening their advertising budgets, and this will likely be reflected in the gaming industry as well. According to reports, 30% of advertisers cut their 2023 budgets.

This belt-tightening impacts the predicted growth rate of ad spend in gaming, potentially delaying the moment when brands commit more of their budgets to in-game ads. Still, the value and potential that gaming presents are undeniable. It’s just that the path to full realization of this potential might be a bit rockier than we’d hoped.

Brands are spending, albeit slowly

Statista predicts that the advertising expenditure in gaming will rise from $46 billion in 2021 to $130 billion in 2025, a considerable increase over just five years.

Most of this expenditure is channelled into mobile gaming. Statista reported in 2022 that mobile gaming would constitute half of all gaming revenue. Consoles came in second, accounting for 28%.

Source: Statista

Evidently, mobile gaming is the preferred advertising platform for brands. This is understandable, as console and PC games typically require one-off payments. Free-to-play games on other platforms much less frequently rely on advertisements for revenue; they tend to use subscriptions and in-app purchases for funding their development.

Brands spend far less than they should

Big brands tend to have big budgets. But the amount that brands are putting aside for gaming is far less than you’d expect. Gaming accounts for less than 6% of total digital ad spend in the US, according to the IAB.

That’s a very low figure, considering the potential audience. People spend far more time playing games than they do with any other media.

According to Ernst & Young, one of the big four accounting firms, brands spend nearly $60 billion on TV ads and $1.5 billion on gaming. But people only spend 8% of their time on TV content, but 37% of their time gaming. It’s all backwards.

According to EY, brands spend far less on gaming, but it grabs far more of people’s attention.

This data suggests that brands would reap more value by investing their budgets in gaming rather than television ads. However, common misconceptions about gaming deter them. EY further explains that brands hesitate to invest because they often adhere to outdated stereotypes about gamers, viewing them as unemployed young males.

But that’s just not true. Almost half of gamers are women, and the average player is 35. The gaming market is huge and varied. It’s just that brands haven’t realized it yet.

What is true is that the younger generation cares more about gaming than any other entertainment. A Newzoo report found that younger customers spend nearly 15 hours a week engaging with gaming content. Almost half of that time is playing, the rest is reading, creating and watching others play.

Irrespective of their target demographic, brands need to rethink their stance on gaming. It’s an opportunity waiting to be seized.

Brands want to advertise in a safe space

One of the key concerns for companies is whether the game they’re advertising in is suitable for their brand. They don’t want their brand associated with controversial opinions or a bad game. They only want to advertise in high-quality titles, with respectable content.

The shift in the industry from hyper-casual to hybrid-casual helps developers here. Hyper-casual games are typically lower-budget and have a quick turnaround. While they’re fun, they’re not very deep.

On the other hand, hybrid-casual games are – by definition – deeper. They focus more on retaining players with meta-features and are less reliant on spamming ads at the beginning of the game. Their players stick around for longer and are less frustrated. So there’s not the same level of concern for brands to be affiliated with an annoying game, and targeting unhappy players.

It works both ways, too. Because developers are focusing more on deeper gameplay, longer playtime, and a hybrid-monetization approach, they’re much less likely to want to advertise other games. All that does is encourage players to leave their own titles and play other games, instead of their own. Instead, developers want brands to advertise in their games. So brand advertising is a win-win for both.

Brands want to spend more

The brands themselves know this. According to The Drum in 2022, 81% of media buyers plan to increase their spending. And 93% intend to run in-game advertising by 2025.

In fact, we’re seeing this shift already. Brands are already teaming up with game developers. Ralph Lauren is releasing content in Fortnite. McDonalds got together with Overwatch 2. Kraft, Hershey, Frito-Lay, M&Ms – they’ve all launched campaigns that appeared on gaming platforms.

We’re seeing more and more stories of partnerships like these. And it’s likely that we’ll keep seeing big brands working directly with developers to share their IPs.

But brands don’t have the usual channels to advertise and partner up with game developers. We’re a new industry. And a large reason that brands aren’t running campaigns is that there’s a barrier to entry. They don’t know how.

According to that earlier EY report, developers need to do three things to help brands:

1. Make good games. Brands don’t want to be associated with spammy games. So you need to seamlessly blend ads into the core gameplay loop.
2. Help brands measure. Brands are concerned that they can’t get the data they need. So offer ways to integrate measurement SDKs into your games to help them track their ads.
3. Help educate brands. Work with agencies and mediation platforms to teach brands about the value of advertising in games.

It’ll take a while for brands to shift

As you can see, there’s definitely a trend for brands shifting their budgets towards gaming. They’re realizing the benefits, seeing that their preconceptions are wrong, and slowly moving over.

But it’s likely to take them a little while for them to get the results and spread the word. As an industry, we need to show brands that they can measure the data they need, that ads aren’t breaking the gameplay experience, and explain the value of advertising in games. If we do that, we’ll definitely see more brands spending on in-game advertising and partnerships.

Will we hit that 10% figure? Hopefully. It seems ambitious, but possible. And we’ll definitely get far closer. But if we work together to help ease brands into the process and show them how they can measure their results, we can speed up the change.

First of all, let’s face it, AI is not great at everything yet. But game designers, artists, and producers have adopted it rapidly because there are things it does really well. Concepting, storyboarding, and ideation are prime examples here. We’ve been doing our own exploring, and wanted to share with you the cases that have worked well for us.

We’re using examples from PicFinder, so you can explore and get inspired by each use case, starting directly from this article.

Environment concept art

Getting ideas for new games, concepts, worlds, and environments can be a time consuming concept. You can search for images, which can take hours. Or you can create them, which will take even longer. But 2D gen AI tools make environment ideation extremely fast, so you can explore many versions of a concept and storyboard your way into a crystal clear design.

Some examples of game environments with different formats.

Action games

Robot battle – tall scene

Large battlefield – wide scene

Casual games

Green garden scene – portrait format

Castle interior scene – tall format

Character concept art

Generating new characters prevents many teams from accelerating their release pipeline. Generating character assets is also essential for monetization and engagement, as players can unlock new characters through progression or payment. GenAI makes character iteration a lot faster, for a few different genres.

Fashion, makeover, and decoration games

Fashion makeover outfits – tall format

Portrait with eye makeup – portrait format

Cozy living room – square format

Cute, cozy, casual games

Explorer bear

Girl next door

Royal cat

What we learned along the way

1. Prompts matter a lot

Using longer prompts is better. But also thinking of prompts like a Google Image Search description more than how you would describe the item in real life seems to work well. Words like “high definition” or “perfect features” help get better quality art in general.

2. Starting from an image saves a lot of time

Many genAI tools allow you to upload an image and will then create new versions in that format. This can help a lot with initial iteration, especially if you’re looking for a very particular type of art. For fashion outfits or makeovers starting from an existing outfit image will help.

3. Different image formats generate different results

Searching for a character in tall format might generate a full-body image while in square format would create a portrait. The format changes the results a lot, so exploring with the exact format you need can help get closer to what you need faster.

How can we help?

If you’d like us to share more genAI resources, drop us a note to let us know. GenAI is on everyone’s minds and we love being a resource on anything that helps you make better games.

According to Statista, the VR and AR markets are steadily growing. In the next five years, almost a third of people will have a headset of some description, and there’ll be about 2.5 billion players. The average revenue per user? Likely around $14. Far higher than the $0.13 that hyper-casual games get.

But making a VR game? Well, the process isn’t all that different. It’s a lucrative opportunity for developers. So we asked Ed Lago, executive producer at Cloudhead Games, for his advice on entering the market.

Who are Cloudhead Games?

Though they were founded back in 2013, their founder – Denny Unger – has been in the VR industry since the 90s. A self-proclaimed “VR garage hacker”, he made friends with Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, and managed to get his hands on some prototype hardware. Since then, Cloudhead Games has created multi-award-winning titles like Pistol Whip and The Gallery series. And collaborated with industry giants like Meta, Sony, HTC and Valve.

With that in mind, what’s been the secret to their success?

Ask if your game makes sense for VR

While there are some similarities between VR and mobile games – they should be easy to learn and have straightforward mechanics – a VR game is really all about fantasy fulfilment. The player should feel like they have become someone else in another world.

“As someone who made the jump from mobile games to VR, it’s all about understanding the technology and the best use cases for it,” Ed explained. “Not all types of games work properly in this medium because of the different types of hardware. Mobile developers will typically have an easier time making games for hardware like the Quest 2, because they’re used to making games on less powerful tech. Going from mobile, to mobile VR, to PC is easier than the other way around. Devs who have only worked with PC VR and consoles will often struggle making games run properly Quest 2 hardware.”

This is particularly true when it comes to how the player actually controls their character and interacts with the world.

“In mobile games, you need to focus on the key strengths, which include using the touch screen, swiping, tapping,” Ed added. “In VR, you need to take into consideration the comfort level of the user, the physicality of your experience, the amount of load cognition, and the immersion factor when the user puts on the headset.”

So developers need to think about how their mechanics can translate across to VR. What do they need to do to get the same result? Take an endless-runner style of game. On-screen, it’s simple enough to swipe left and right to make the turns.

But how will that work in VR? Does the user physically move? That might mean the levels need fewer turns, so the player doesn’t feel sick. Or do they swing their hands? If so, does that really feel immersive?

Learn from your mistakes

Whenever you enter a new market, you’ll have teething problems. You’ll be too ambitious or create a mechanic that’s just a little too complicated for VR. That’s fine. It’s a new space; everyone is still figuring out the best practices.

“With The Gallery series, we really wanted the player to have agency and feel like they were the hero in a movie,” Ed said. “In retrospect, these games were too advanced for VR at the time. The onus was on us to not only teach the player how to play the game, but how to use VR.”

By 2019, though, Cloudhead Games applied that lesson to Pistol Whip, their latest title. The core philosophy is the same – help the player fulfil a movie hero fantasy – but the gameplay itself is much more refined.

“How could we make something that was fun, super easy to just pick up and play, but hard to master?” Ed said. “These questions resulted in us developing Pistol Whip so the controller scheme is dead easy and uses one button or motion to do multiple things. We wanted a game with low cognitive load – the opposite of what came out of The Gallery series.”

Get to know the hardware

The main limitation and challenge of all VR games is the hardware itself. In fact, there are three types of hardware you should be aware of:

• Standalone headsets. These have a mobile chipset and can be worn anywhere in the house.
• Console headsets. These are powered through a specific console.
• PC headsets. These plug directly into someone’s computer.

It’s not simply that you need slightly different versions of your game to run on each of these, but the hardware itself can vary significantly.

“Making a product for all these types of hardware – which are so different from each other, with their own set of controllers and exclusive features – and making the game look and feel good is a big technical challenge,” Ed said. “This is especially true because the users of each one of these platforms are concerned about their platform being the best for the version of the game they’re playing.”

Know the process is the same, but harder

Once you’ve decided how to tackle the hardware and design challenges, the process itself isn’t all that different from what you’re likely already familiar with.

“Everything is pretty similar,” Ed said. “We always go through the cycle of ideation, prototyping, pitching, market research, funding, getting the greenlight, pre-production, production, etc…”

But throughout that process, you need to bear in mind that the players themselves are a different beast to mobile gaming. Mobile gaming is quite familiar to almost everyone. VR? Not so much.

“Your product can literally be someone’s first-ever VR game. And it could be their last if they have a bad experience with it,” Ed explained. “We still need to convince a lot of people that VR is legitimate and that you actually can have a good time playing it. So if there’s a bad experience, there’s a big chance this person won’t believe in the medium anymore.”

Reach out to the community

While making a VR game is harder, it’s still worth the effort. The opportunities in VR are endless, and the market is much less saturated than the mobile industry. It’s much easier to get spotted. But how do you get the word out and market your game?

We spoke with Cloudhead Games’ marketing team, Alex Blahout (digital and social media marketing) and Lindsay Sherman (marketing manager), to get their advice on the next step. Their first piece of advice? Get involved with the community. There are a lot of specific VR communities you can become a part of and learn from.

“Our players’ feedback has been invaluable and helped build the foundation of our success,” Alex pointed out. There were three main areas that they focused on:

• Discord. This is where the Pistol Whip community mainly resides.
• Social media and Reddit. Here they can have fun conversations with players.
• Store platforms and forums. This is where they talk about news, support and suggestions.

Once you’ve engaged with your community, it’s time to build hype around your game.

“To understand a game like Pistol Whip, you need to see it in motion,” Alex explained. “Teaser videos and trailers have typically been the marketing priority. As we continue into 2023, we plan on making more video content than ever, so our players can really get a sense of how much playing Pistol Whip is like being dropped into an action movie.”

In those videos, the key is to develop a narrative around what it’s like to experience the game. It’s not all about the mechanics.

“Building an advertisement for any title requires telling a story,” Alex added. “Your marketing strategy requires language and visuals that clearly communicate the value: getting fit, feeling like a movie hero, enjoying the action-rhythm, etc…”

Track data inside and outside your game

Your in-game analytics will help you spot where to improve your design, just like with a mobile game. But with VR, you need to track data from more sources.

“To gauge player satisfaction and the kind of experience they want to be immersed in, we use things like store reviews and comments,” Alex said. “For example, between May and September of last year, the engagement rate for our social posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter doubled. That shows we have a healthy relationship with our growing community.”

What you track is subjective. But there are some useful metrics that everyone should keep an eye on. And consider data from VR stores, social media platforms alike.

“We look at our Active User data (DAU, WAU, MAU) to see how many people keep coming back to Pistol Whip, as well as to see what time periods had the most in-game engagement,” Lindsay said. “We also track data within store platforms for general performance, demographics, User Acquisition, and Marketing Attribution.”

But know that the results might not always be what you expected.

“The key difference for VR versus any other platform is, primarily, the high adoption barrier to owning a headset, combined with the (relative) newness of VR,” Alex added. “This leads to fewer opportunities to gather important data and find relevant benchmarks.”

Keep improving your design

Those metrics can help you iterate and evolve your game. For Cloudhead Games, they were able to keep track of how players were responding to their updates and new content. Back in June 2022, they released Contracts – new ways of playing Scenes (levels) and adding in new challenges every day, week and month.

“We analyze certain in-game analytics to track progress,” Lindsay said. “How many players are participating? What are they engaging in? Which Contracts are they completing? Are they going through the more vigorous monthly Contract?”

With that information, Cloudhead Games can figure out which of these challenges are successful and where they can improve them to be more fun, comfortable and challenging.

Start your journey

If you need help with keeping track of the data in your games, our free tool has SDKs that work across all the major VR platforms. So plug in and get to developing your first prototype. Get started.

Branching paths and dialogue trees go hand-in-hand with games. If you’re developing a game with even a modicum of story, the likelihood is that you want to give players an element of choice, too.

It can seem a little daunting at first. But creating a dialogue tree – a flowchart of the player’s choices in a conversation – doesn’t need to be complicated. Even the smallest changes can really immerse a player into your game. It’s about making them feel like they matter. I did this, therefore that is different.

The same principles for creating a single dialogue tree apply when planning your plot. So whether you’re coming up with a single conversation in a mobile game or developing a completely story-driven RPG, let’s dive into how you can plan out your dialogue trees.

Separate your choices from your hubs

There are two main reasons you’ll want to write a dialogue tree. You either want to advance the story or give information – give a choice or create a question hub.

• Choices are a one-way street. These are dialogue options where the player picks a response and there aren’t any takebacks. They make a decision and there’s a clear fork in the road.
• Hubs are for information dumping. These options are about answering questions. While speaking to a character, your player can pick an option, get the answer, and then return to a central hub – listing all the options once more.

It’s important to recognize this difference. When writing a choice, you need to make the response in-line with the character’s personality. Whereas you should write hubs in a more neutral, straightforward style.

So when you design your dialogue tree, make sure you distinguish between these two types of dialogue. Both in your planning, but also in your game’s design. (Maybe you only give hubs to NPCs that don’t affect the overall story, so people don’t accidentally make a choice when they thought they were in a hub.)

Not every choice needs huge consequences

Just because you’re giving a player a choice, doesn’t mean it needs to result in an entirely different ending. Not every choice is a huge branching path. Some – if not most – might affect your game in other ways.

In Beholder, all of your choices affect how other characters treat you, what happens to your environment, and even the ending of the game.

There are four ways a choice might affect your game:

• Story changes. These are those critical moments that create an entirely new branch on your tree. Maybe a character’s life hangs in the balance, and whether they live or die takes you down a completely different path.
• Power changes. These choices affect the gameplay itself. If a player successfully persuades an ally, maybe the final battle is easier. Or perhaps they gain more uses of a specific power because they were kind to a small child.
• Character changes. A player’s choice affects how a character treats them throughout the story. If you’re rude, they’re rude back. If you’re sarcastic, they tell everyone how funny you are. These reward a player for roleplaying. (For example, in Fable if you act aggressively then the NPCs will show that they’re afraid of you.)
• World changes. More subtle changes happen because of the player’s behaviour. Maybe a character grows roses in their garden because the player idly mentioned that was their favourite flower. Or maybe when the player was rude to the queen, they later overhear two NPCs gossiping about it.

Fable is a prime example of character changes. The more evil deeds you do, the more terrified the villagers are of you. 

So when planning your dialogue tree, note down what affect the decision will have on the rest of the game. Tagging these choices will help you keep track of what you need to add to the final version.

Signpost critical choices

One of the most frustrating experiences for a player is to make a choice, and not have any idea how it’s going to impact the story. If most of your dialogue has been question hubs or the choices generally led to simple power changes, they might not expect a sudden story-changing option.

So try to make it clear when a choice matters. You don’t need to literally flash a message on the screen. (We’re looking at you, The Wolf Among Us.) You can let the characters explain the importance to the player. It’s much more natural if a character says something like: “It’s all down to you. No turning back. What’ll it be?”

Give big choices time to breathe

If a choice is going to have huge, game-changing consequences – it’s good to leave time between that choice and the final result. Mass Effect was infamous for its ending branches, because it felt as though everything the player did up until the ending was pointless. It was only the final choice that mattered.

But imagine they’d offered the same choice much earlier – and more subtly. Throughout the story, characters could’ve asked the player what they felt about artificial intelligence: Would you kill or control them? How you responded to each of those characters could’ve determined which option Commander Shepard took at the end.

It still would’ve been the same choice. But it would’ve felt much more impactful. You said you’d kill them all. You said it every time. You chose to make Shepard this way. The result wouldn’t be arbitrary. It’d be inevitable.

Signposting how critical those decisions were would be a challenge. But not impossible. Characters could hint that the player ought to watch what they say. “Careful, Shepard. You oughta watch your mouth. Say something enough, and it changes you to your core, you know.”

Keep your branches down

The more branches in your dialogue tree, the more work you’re going to give yourself. Even if it’s an isolated conversation, be wary of exponential growth. There are two parts of a conversation to consider:

• Branching points. These are the moments where the conversation is going to branch completely in at least two directions. Even if you loop back around, you’re going to be writing two separate versions of the conversation.
• Dialogue options. How many options do you give your player at those branching points?

If you have three branching points in a conversation, each with two options, you’re going to have eight branches to write. Add one more option to each, you’ve got 27 branches. Another option? 64.

The equation is simple: It’s the number of options to the power of the branches. So the more branches you want, the fewer options you’ll want to give.

Consider your resources

How complex you want to make your dialogue tree really depends on the resources you have. How many people do you have in your team? If it’s only a few, you probably want to keep your dialogue tree pretty tight. What platform are you publishing on? If you’re making a mobile game, you’ll want to keep your dialogue short and sweet to fit on the screen.

Reigns is renowned for its choices. We’ve lost count of how many endings they have. Which is something Nerial could easily do. Because their core gameplay and design are so simple, they could spend more time crafting endings.

Any size studio – for any platform – can use a dialogue tree. But make sure that you don’t take on more than you can chew. Good dialogue takes time to refine. And when there are lots of moving parts and branches, you’ll need to go over the whole story multiple times to make sure it’s consistent.

Draw out your structure

The best way to design your dialogue tree is to draw out the structure like a flowchart, either by hand or with a tool like Microsoft Visio. If you want a tool specifically for gaming, Twine is a good alternative. Though it takes a little getting used to.

Once you’ve decided exactly how you’re going to draw your tree, start with the main path. What’s the main line through your game? This is the trunk of your tree. You can decide where to branch off the main path once you’ve got the main structure sorted.

It can help to write segments of the main path first, so that you have a better idea of how the story will flow.

How should it look?

Bandersnatch was a Netflix show with lots of branching parts, endings and deadends. It’s a very useful model to use when planning out dialogue trees. In fact, Reddit user alpine- recreated the flow.

As you look through the tree, you’ll notice a few key features:

• Loops and returns. Quite often, there are moments where the choice either loops back around or two choices only branch for a little while before returning to the main trunk.
• Skips. Occasionally, a dialogue choice is there just to bypass a lengthier section. If you use these yourself, ask yourself whether the skip might affect what the character knows and any future dialogue.
• Notes. You’ll notice that rather than drawing a completely separate branch, they’ve used dotted lines to indicate when a choice affects a different section and then added a note. For example, near the top right, it says: “Now Stefan knows about this pathway.” And this causes a small dialogue change in the scene.

Bandersnatch is probably denser than you’ll need for your game. With five different endings, and a huge number of options, it can get a little messy and intricate. So we’d recommend trying to have fewer endings and more sidenotes – where decisions cause other effects in your game, such as world or character changes. Rather than a completely alternative path.

Create variants, not just branches

The trick to creating an immersive experience isn’t to have loads of endings. It’s to have a mix of loops, skips and notes. Choices don’t have to affect the main branch that you’re creating immediately.

One way to do this is with variants – a slightly altered version of a scene or dialogue. Rather than a completely separate branch, you just have two versions of the same conversation. For example, if a player is rude to a character – maybe add a tag to all the scenes where that character appears. You now know that you need to create a variant of each of those scenes to keep the whole story consistent.

These smaller variants of scenes make it feel like every decision matters – even if they don’t completely change the main storyline. If you combine these choices that cause world or power changes, you won’t need to write hundreds of different scenes.

Think about locks and keys

One way to help a player feel accomplished is to lock certain choices. Did they pick up a key item? Do they have the relevant stat for this interaction? Has a major character died – so the player is forced down a specific path?

In Detroit: Become Human, they actually show the player the flowchart for the game as a way to encourage players to explore every outcome.

You’ll notice that certain choices are unlocked because of what the player has done in the past. For example, “Used friendly approach in ‘the interrogation.’” Because the player made that choice, this option is now open to them.

Interestingly, you’ll also notice that this is all within a returning branch. All these choices lead to the same result: The player finds Jericho. At this point, the main story continues. The small choices they made in the past merely affect how they discover Jericho – and how hard it’ll be.

There are four kinds of locks that you can use:

• Open. These are dialogue options that have no restrictions. The player can choose these freely, without needing to have done anything in the past. Often you’ll use these.
• Direct. These are where a specific choice has led to certain options opening up. For example, having enough intelligence, picking a certain background for the character, or having a specific item in your inventory.
• Convergent. This is where two or more choices need to come together to unlock a specific option. For example, if they persuade the three army generals to join their cause, perhaps they could strongarm the foe into a truce rather than fight.
• Accumulative. Multiple options scattered throughout the dialogue add up to unlock an option. Morality systems are a good example of this. The higher your morality, the more ‘good’ options you unlock. Or perhaps it’s tied to a specific character. If you’re kind to them, maybe their loyalty meter increases, unlocking more choices.

You’ll notice that games like Fallout or Cyberpunk use a combination of these locks to feel more immersive. While smaller titles like the text-based adventure game, Lifeline, primarily use open or direct paths.

Think about both sides of the conversation

Remember, you’re not only writing the dialogue for your characters. You’re writing what the player can say, too. When writing that dialogue, there are a few principles that can help make sure they land well:

• Use questions for hub items. If the player can repeat the dialogue – like in a question hub – questions can help make sure the player understands they’re not actually making a choice. So be careful using questions for actual choices.
• Make the option specific. You often won’t have room to write out the whole dialogue the player will say. So it’s probably best to try and summarize the first few lines. Giving just an emotion can lead the player to think: “Wait, I didn’t mean that.” Vague options make it difficult for the player to know which to pick.
• Decide if the player actually talks. When the player chooses an option, do they see what they said? Do they actually speak or do you skip straight to the NPCs dialogue? Just avoid making your dialogue choices a press-a-to-continue button – otherwise it might seem like the player has only said about ten sentences the entire game.

Whatever you choose, it’s important to write the dialogue in a character’s voice. But remember that the player is affecting the character’s personality. So if they’re always picking the angry options, maybe they take on a rougher tone.

For example, in Red Dead Redemption 2 there are many subtle changes to the dialogue depending on the player’s honor. For example, the low honor Arthur comes across as greedy and callous, while high-honor Arthur comes across as much more empathetic.

Make the conversation feel natural

It can be rather silly if a character is crying about their dead parents one moment, and jovially answering questions the next. If you have any dialogue that the player can repeat – like a question hub – think about how that should change depending on where they’re at in the story. Write different variants of the dialogue so that it feels right.

Another way to make a conversation feel natural is to allow the player to interrupt the other characters. This is much harder to implement, but Oxenfree does it beautifully.

In Oxenfree, the player can choose dialogue choices at any point, even while other characters monologue. The interruption itself isn’t what’s so great, though. It’s how they get the dialogue back on track. Using phrases like “Anyway…” or “As I was saying…” they can seamlessly cut back to the original dialogue as though it was a real conversation.

See how players react

As Ernest Hemingway apparently said: “The first draft of anything is s**t.”

You never know how smooth your dialogue is or whether it feels quite right, until you start getting people to play your game. So it’s important to test out how players react, which options they choose and which options they miss.

If you’re looking to craft your own dialogue tree, you can use our tool to track where your beta testers are jumping ship or which choices might be falling flat. Give it a try.

It’s been a busy year. Mergers and acquisitions left, right, and centre. New ownership of Twitter. More progress with NFTs and Web3. Even tighter regulations with the app stores. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But one thing that hasn’t changed is new hit games entering the market. And boy, we’ve been spoiled for choice over the last 12 months. So to end the year on a high, we rounded up our top 22 games to hit the charts this year.

So grab your phone and get comfy. Here are the top games we loved playing this year. If you want some inspiration for games to binge over the holiday period, look no further.

22. Spinner Merge by Sunday.GG

Think of this as a hyper-casual Beyblade game with a merge mechanic mixed in the middle.

What we liked about Spinner Merge is how they came about the idea of bringing in the merge mechanic. Sunday.GG relied on data to figure out what they wanted this game to be. They had the spinner idea in mind. But after researching the market, they found that merge games were steadily growing and were a solid choice to go down. All they needed was to add a unique spin to their game.

Ideas can come from anywhere. But a good place to start is watching the ranks and spotting trends.

21. Cart Crash by TastyPill

Who doesn’t love a good rollercoaster? TastyPill launched this game in April this year and has hit a tasty million downloads on the Google Play store alone.

Cart Crash is an incredibly satisfying game that relies much more on timing than any other mechanic. You control how fast the rollercoaster goes to collect carts and when to stop to avoid obstacles cutting off parts of the ride. The more carts you have, the higher your score at the end.

Why is it so satisfying? You’re constantly rewarded throughout the game. Getting a small smiley face for every person you collect. That, plus the bonuses and rewards at the end of each level, just makes you want to come back for more.

Sprinkling rewards throughout the gameplay, rather than at the end of each level, can make your game all the more fun to play.

20. Net Fishing! by Voodoo

Cast your net to collect as many fish as you can. That’s the core concept from Voodoo. And despite Net Fishing! being a simple and easy game to play, there’s much more to this game under the surface.

It doesn’t feel like just another hyper-casual game. Each level, you have set goals and targets that you need to complete. And the gameplay actually requires some patience and skill. Which only adds to the player’s sense of achievement. Even the design for each level is different. So it never truly feels all that repetitive, which is crucial for casual and hyper-casual titles.

Going the extra mile with your game and adding in just a few more features or touches does make a difference. And your players will notice.

19. Army Commander by Lion Studios

Casual strategy games have definitely made their mark in 2022. Mixing in the relaxing and simple mechanics of a casual game with the touches of strategy and real-time decision-making makes for a rewarding and satisfying experience.

You’d think that army games and a relaxing experience wouldn’t mix. But Army Commander by Lion Studios seemed to nail this on the head. We enjoyed levelling up our base, taking on enemy teams, and running around collecting coins.

If you’re going for an action theme, it doesn’t always have to be over-the-top guns galore. You can still make it a fun, engaging and relaxing experience.

18. Vikingard by Netease

There’s a lot to love about Vikingard. The core gameplay follows a ‘build and battle mechanic’. But Netease has layered a lot into this title.

Aside from the core gameplay, players have plenty to explore – from farming and growing the land, levelling up heroes, raising pets, making alliances with other clans, to even following a romantic storyline and going on a date. Perhaps the Viking theme is in fashion (thanks to a certain God of War game hitting the stores), but it’s made our list and definitely a game to get lost in.

That doesn’t mean you should add features for the sake of it. Think about what adds to your experience, and work from there.

17. Gun Action – Shoot n Run by Ketchapp

Parkour. Monsters. And explosions. Ketchapp clearly had a fun time making this game. And we had a blast playing it.

It’s a casual action game. The gameplay is super simple, you just tap the targets you want to hit. So there’s the casual element. But to make it a bit more fun, time slows when you shoot a monster, making each kill all the more epic.

The design for each level is very similar, but it doesn’t ever feel repetitive. They even have artwork on the walls from famous films and games (we spotted Mars Attack and what we think was Left for Dead). And they keep the game fresh by introducing new weapons as you progress through the game. The only bad thing about Gun Action – Shoot n Run is that we reckon it deserves more downloads than what we’ve seen on the app stores.

16. Supermarket Village—Farm Town by Codigames

When we realised Codigames was behind this title, we weren’t surprised why it was a hit. Masters of simulation, this studio is renowned for making popular sim games for mobile.

We especially love what they’ve done with Supermarket Village. In the game, you run your own farm, create your own products, and sell to the local community through your own small business. And we don’t see this often enough in games. It’s awesome to see some good messaging baked into its core gameplay. So it was a no-brainer why this title made our roundup.

It doesn’t just have to be about the gameplay and mechanics. If it works with your idea, then you can bring across important messages in your titles, which only adds to the experience.

15. Runner Coaster by Dual Cat

Yep, another rollercoaster game. But we thought this one was worthy of our list, too. Simple mechanics, as with any hyper-casual. All you need to do is swipe left and right to collect money and people, and dodge spikes and danger (we’re glad this part is left out of real rollercoasters).

What we liked about Runner Coaster was that it wasn’t just about reacting or mindlessly swiping left and right. At different points throughout the game, the path splits into two. If you choose the wrong path? Well, that could affect how many people you collect, which affects your overall score.

Dual Cat made this game hard enough to be a challenge, but easy enough to be fun and rewarding. They did a good job spacing the ads out, so it never felt too disruptive for the player.

14. Aquarium Land – Fishbowl World by Homa Games

A perfect example of show, don’t tell.

The onboarding process in Fishbowl World is spot on. Aside from a little text explaining what you’re doing, you learn everything by exploring the game. It’s intuitive and rewarding, without babying the players.

We don’t see this often enough in casual simulation games, but there is a lovely open-world feel to this game. Once you know the controls and objectives, you’re left to your own devices. And there’s plenty to do and manage once you’re all set.

Of course, there are ads (although not too many). But Homa Games did a stellar job with their rewarded ads, too. If you want to ride the jet ski placed on the beach, well, you’ll need to watch an ad. It’s not forced on the player and never disrupts them. They find it by exploring the map. A fair exchange for any player, but not needed to progress in the game.

It’s clear that a lot of thought and care has gone into this game, with the player’s experience at its core.

13. Football Life! by Ruby Games

Live your life as a football star. Football Life! hit the stores in April this year and, so far, has reached over 500 thousand downloads on the Google Play Store.

We’ve seen a few more simulation titles hit the charts this year. And although this game belongs to the simulation genre, we definitely felt more hyper-casual vibes than we originally expected.

Not that this was a bad thing. Ruby Games has done an excellent job of keeping the gameplay fresh and interesting. Each level is a different experience, from chatting with your manager, training for a game, or even picking the number of your shirt. But they keep the gameplay simple, satisfying, and short. It feels like a bunch of hyper-casuals games merged into one, with an interesting theme and story layered in.

12. Hit & Run: Solo Levelling by Supercent Games

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Hit & Run is a typical runner game, where you avoid dangers and collect, well, in this case, people. But for this game, they layered in choice – fight enemies to make your character stronger, and avoid ones that are too tough.

We reckon this has the grounds to be a great game (not to say it hasn’t been successful – it’s hit over a whopping 5 million downloads alone on Google Play Store). We love the concept. And we reckon if Supercent threw in a couple of extra features and maybe a catchy tune, it would just take this title that extra mile.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just adding a unique theme or idea can make your title stand out from the ocean of games out there.

11. Torchlight Infinite by XD Entertainment

Definitely for the more experienced gamer. Torchlight Inifinite is an ARPG (action roleplaying game), and the fourth title in the series made by XD Entertainment. But not only is it the first to make it to mobile, it’s also the first one to be free to play.

A lot of players were afraid that, considering this one was F2P, the developers would make it pay to win (or there would be a decrease in story or quality). That hasn’t been the case. Although there are plenty of microtransactions in the game, these are more for cosmetic or novelty items, rather than the core gameplay.

We’ve seen a lot of F2P games take this approach. And Torchlight Infinite is just another example that it can work. If done well.

10. Summoners War: Chronicles by Com2uS

Summoners War: Chronicles is yet another MMORPG to make it to mobile. It’s an incredibly fun game. And the graphics are beautiful, but very demanding. At the lowest settings, it looks a bit like a PS2 game. But that’s to be expected until the tech has another leap.

It’s an extra special treat for any hardcore fans of Summoners War. It’s nice to see those 3D characters and monsters come to life. What we have heard from the community is this game is very similar to other MMORPG’s on the market, so new players may not be that impressed. But considering that Com2uS only released this title over a month ago, we think it’s got a lot of potential, and should make its mark in the industry soon.

9. Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds by Netmarble

Beautiful artwork. Incredible story. And breathtaking environments. Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds is another free-to-play MMORPG to hit mobile this year, and is the first to do so in the Ni no Kuni series.

We couldn’t wait to jump in on this game. And we weren’t disappointed. Aside from some not-so-great controls (players have said that this game just plays itself, and we can see why), we still think this is a noble attempt to bring such a large and demanding game to mobile.

We’ll likely see Netmarble release some large fixes and changes in no time, which will hopefully make this title an easy 9.5 out of 10 in no time.

8. Dicey Dungeons by Terry Cavanagh

It’s tricky taking any game from PC and Console to mobile. There’s so much to take into consideration – from adapting to a smaller screen, adjusting mechanics and creating simpler controls, down to CPU power and graphics.

But despite all of that, Terry Cavanagh nailed the transition. Originally launched back in 2019, Dicey Dungeons was an immediate hit indie game. High-quality music and unique and beautiful design, all smashed together with fun gameplay. And earlier this year, he finally released his mobile adaption – hitting a nice 4.6 star review on the Google Play Store.

If you’re looking to switch your game from console to mobile, then Dicey Dungeons is a prime example of doing this right.

7. Rovio Classics: AB by Rovio

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Except for the original version of Angry Birds, they did, in fact, have to fix it. They actually had to rebuild this game from the ground up. It’s because the original version was created on Unity’s old engine. Apart from a little polishing, they kept everything the same. And building it on Unity’s new engine means they will be able to continue releasing updates and fixing bugs – something they were blocked from doing for a while.

What we especially love is Rovio decided to make this an affordable premium game, rather than F2P. So ads won’t ever spoil what is arguably a perfect mobile game.

6. Idle Siege: War Simulator by Gameloft

Plan your attack. Ready your defences. And deploy your troops.

We had quite a bit of fun with Idle Siege. It combines strategy with smaller tasks, features and rewards to keep you engaged. That, slapped on with some vibrant colours, cute art style, and upbeat music, made playing this game a treat.

What also stood out for us is Gameloft’s community management. Mobile games that rely on ads tend to get a bad rap (understandably so). But the crew at Gameloft have done a stellar job listening to their community and keeping them engaged and in the know.

5. Dislyte by FARLIGHT and Lilith Games

Mythological creatures in a cyberpunk futuristic setting (yep, you heard that right). This was definitely one game that easily caught our eye this year, and for good reason.

In true Lilith Games fashion, we found the usual systems that this developer usually works with. Their daily tasks, arenas and dungeons. There are a lot of familiar and welcome features to dig into.

But what was refreshing were the new systems Lilith Games layered in. One mini-game that stood out to us was their new “DJ contest”, which brought across mechanics from more rhythmic games.

It’s easy to get lost in this title – from the story, PVP battles, events, social aspects, mini-games, and even collecting the most powerful gear. We’re excited about where Dislyte heads.

4. Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales by Next Games

Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales wasn’t initially created for the Netflix Platform. It actually came out a year prior as a F2P title by Next Games. After the streaming giant absorbed Next Games, they added this title to their new gaming library over a year later.

So, technically Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales wasn’t released in 2022. But what we will say is Netflix didn’t just shift it over. They removed all of the F2P monetization, polished some of the features, and released a new batch of content for season 4.

When studios get acquired, it’s easy to see their games have drastic changes. And in this case, we’ve only seen good things.

3. Dracula City Master: Idle Army by Tilting Point

Dracula City Master is an Idle Tower Defense game, where you play as the bad guys. Your goal? Conquer the world with your vampire army. But in all honesty, we quickly fell in love with this game. It has a charming mixture of fun gameplay, cool mechanics, an adorable art style and a catchy soundtrack.

Gameplay aside, the whole look and experience just feels well-rounded and polished. And they’ve clearly had fun with the spooky theme. (You get a body count of how many humans you slayed after each level.)

Tilting Point released this back in October, and we’re surprised it hasn’t been more popular. It’s still early days, and we reckon this one will have its time in the sun (or moonlight, rather).

2. Mini Basketball by Miniclip

Miniclip took everything that made their football mobile game brilliant and slapped it on a Basketball themed game. This title has reached an impressive five million downloads in the last eight months, and rightfully so.

One of the biggest things that stood out to us is its onboarding. Each mechanic and button was introduced over time, and there was plenty of room to practice and learn. And despite the game sometimes feeling a bit challenging, it was never overwhelming. Which is a difficult balance to strike.

All in all, Mini Basketball is a well-rounded, polished and fun game. As to be expected from Miniclip. Definitely worth a play over the holiday season.

1. Apex Legends Mobile by EA

As technology improves (especially with hardware, server management, ping, etc), we’re starting to see more and more AAA fast-paced titles hit the smaller screens.

Apex Legends Mobile launched on the app stores earlier this year. And after a shaky launch on Nintendo Switch, Apex coming to mobile was actually a welcome surprise. It’s obviously simplified (they only released 10 legends on mobile, compared to the 20+ on console and PC). But the experience still feels good, when compared to that of a PC or PS4.

It can be difficult trying something new. Especially when there’s no guarantee that it’ll be better. So what we love about this launch is that they didn’t just adapt it to mobile, but they gave it some extra value, too. They released a new mobile-only hero, Fade, and specifically designed this character for handheld devices. Making it much more exciting for players when making the switch. They’ve even confirmed that this character won’t be making its way over to the consoles. A brave, but perhaps smart move from EA.

Think we missed any?

That’s our roundup from 2022. It’s been a brilliant year for games, and we can’t wait to see what the next 12 months will bring. If you think we’ve missed out any of the epic games that were launched this year, then let us know.

And if you fancy some more reading, make sure to check out these articles:

• 14 low-budget, highly successful story games
• Happy Volcano: why a growing studio picked Player Warehouse
• Trihex Studios: delighting 40M players with analytics
• How To Conduct User Research In The Prototype Stage For Your Game

Obsessed with making games that people will remember for a lifetime, Halfbrick decided to convert their hit title, Fruit Ninja, into a VR game. It was a natural evolution – people apparently really enjoy slicing fruit and swinging swords. After that success, they created Fruit Ninja VR 2 – adding more features and exploration to the game.

“Making a game for VR is very, very different,” said Liam Potter, one of the lead gameplay programmers on Fruit Ninja VR 2. “There are a lot of things you need to take into account that you just don’t for console or mobile.”

With that in mind, let’s dive into those challenges and see what Liam advises.

Show players the play space early

In a VR experience, it’s incredibly difficult to make sure that players are looking where you want. Gamers notoriously fail to look up in regular games, but in VR, it’s even more of a problem. Players can look anywhere at any time. So getting them to focus on the correct place is tricky.

“If we don’t direct the player properly, they could look at it from the wrong angle or completely miss something that’s outside their field of view,” Liam said. “So we needed to let the player see the play space before anything happens. If they know where things will happen, they’re more likely actually to see it.”

So prepare your players. Show them their local surroundings, before dumping them into the action. Otherwise, they might easily get lost.

Use audio clues to grab their attention

Another method to make sure that players are looking the right way is to remember that VR isn’t just a visual experience. You can use directional sound, too.

“Audio is another major strength of VR,” Liam said. “It’s a very useful tool for directing the player’s attention. If you hear something outside your field of view, you know where it’s coming from and naturally turn your head. It’s very distinct.”

Enemy footsteps, powerups, item drops, or even oncoming danger needs these audio clues – otherwise, the player is going to miss them. Think about how frustrating it would be if you were playing a shooter game in VR and could never tell where the enemies were. So maybe in that situation, the player hears the sniper’s gun cock, before they fire.

Strip back your user interface

In VR, you can’t really have a heads-up display. It’s strange and disorienting. Instead, you’ll need to come up with other workarounds to show that same key information – in a much more immersive and natural way.

“This really changes based on what you want people to experience,” said Liam. “But if you want an immersive experience, you can’t have a HUD. It’d be floating in the corner, and you’d have to only move your eyes if you wanted to look at it. People just don’t like doing that.”

On the first Fruit Ninja VR, this wasn’t too much of an issue – there wasn’t much need for a HUD anyway. But for the sequel – where the player can explore – it presented a key challenge for Halfbrick to overcome.

“We wanted to make it more immersive,” Liam said. “So we moved all that HUD onto a physical pad – a ninja scroll. You pull it out, and it’s like a real-life tablet. You press buttons with your other hand and interact with it in a much more natural way.”

As Liam mentioned, every game is different. And you might need to come up with clever ways to show specific pieces of information. Guns can have their ammo count on the model itself. Health could be written on the back of your hand. Settings and meta-features might be on a watch. The key is making it something that feels natural to the player.

“But remember,” Liam added. “The player can’t see the controller. You can’t rely on them to remember simple button prompts. It needs to be really simple and intuitive.”

Play with immersion and interaction

One of the core mechanics of a VR game is being able to interact with the world around you. It’s such a fundamental mechanic that it feels strange if your game doesn’t include it.

“Mobile’s strength is being able to pull the game out instantly and start playing,” Liam said. “VR’s strength is immersion. So you should play with that idea. You might as well attempt to incorporate more immersive things into your game if you can. The more you are playing to the strengths of the platform, the better.”

And immersion leads to interaction. Being able to reach out and feel like you’re touching a physical object is key to VR experiences.

“But don’t mould your interactions around your design. Mould your design around the interactions,” Liam said. “Look at what’s fun – you can pick things up, throw them, look at them. Those might not change your design, but it’ll improve the immersion.”

Cater to all audiences

VR is a huge expansive arena, and there are plenty of gladiators that want to step in and try their hand at it. But the motivations of those players can vary wildly.

“One of the key motivations is exploration,” Liam said. “Some players want to really explore the map and travel around. But others want to jump right in and explode some fruit for a while.”

It’s important to cater to each of these audiences. Halfbrick navigated this challenge in more ways than one by adding a fast-travel system to their ninja scroll.

“We initially didn’t have a fast travel system,” Liam said. “But some players don’t want to walk around; they want to get into the action straight away. Why exclude those people? Now, once they’ve found an area, you can get out your scroll and boop – you’re there.”

Make sure they can physically do it

It’s really important to make sure that you think about the physicality of the game itself. In VR, people are actually moving around. There are actually three parts to this.

1. Be wary of making people feel sick

“Realistically, VR is a demanding space,” Liam said. “You can get tired and even sick while playing VR. And people’s comfort levels are very different.”

Halfbrick found this was particularly true for movement mechanics, where there are three usual ways to move around:

• Blink. The view disappears, and the user teleports to another location.
• Dash. The view surges forward and feels like it’s moving, but in a set amount for each button push.
• Smooth. The player moves around like a typical first-person game.

“Make sure you give people the option to change how the movement feels,” Liam said. “We initially didn’t have those movement controls. And we really saw that retention in the onboarding phase wasn’t doing too great. We were using analytics and saw that a decent amount of people were only using dash. But if you can’t use that mode – and that’s the only mode you think is available – you’re cutting those people off.”

Halfbrick realized that some people were just feeling sick and taking the headset off before they even really started. So they ended up showing people the movement options before the rest of the tutorial.

2. Make sure your actions don’t overlap

It’s not just moving around the map that you need to be careful with. It’s how people move their arms, too.

“When you’re in VR, you might want the player to go really crazy,” Liam said. “But they need to be able to physically do it. We could throw fifty fruits at the player, but can they physically slice those? How do we design the waves to be satisfying?”

Halfbrick needed to be constantly aware of where the player’s arm was and in what position it would end up in.

“Where is the player’s arm? If they slide across, you don’t want them to need to make the exact same action again,” Liam said. “Generally, we design our waves so that it’s fun to do combos. You want to have the player slice like seven fruit in one swing, without getting all tangled up.”

3. Consider the player’s body size

Another aspect is the player’s physical height and the length of their arms. This can affect how you design your levels.

“In normal gameplay, it didn’t really matter how tall or long someone’s arms were,” Liam said. “People can just step backwards or forward. But with archery, we had a real problem with people’s heights. If you were too short, you’d have to hold the bow up in the air to hit the angle.”

In the end, Halfbrick had to normalize the height during this section of the game – to make sure that everyone was on a level playing field.

“We also think about how we designed the space,” Liam said. “How long should the blade be? How long is the general person’s arm? That’s important, because you don’t want to be slicing the fruit at the base or the tip – and you don’t want it coming too close to your face.”

This affected how far away the fruit should be when it was flinging past the player. It had to be at that perfect distance that felt natural.

Be aware of what platform you’re using

While VR often feels like its own platform, it actually varies quite significantly between devices.

“Are you going to be on PC or console? Or are you using a standalone platform, like the Quest, where it’s not connected to anything?” Liam said. “If it’s the latter, you have to recognize that it’s essentially a mobile device. Powerful, sure. But it still has limitations.”

And those limitations might seriously affect how people feel while they’re playing your game.

“Bad performance might not kill a game on PC, but if your game runs poorly in VR, you’ll make people physically ill,” Liam said. “Imagine every time you walk through the door, and you have a frame drop. You might not notice that, but your brain will. And you’ll start to feel ill. Even small drops.”

So test thoroughly to make sure that you’re not getting any delays or lag. If there’s just a little bit, your players might stop playing.

Track how people interact with objects

“Analytics are great for every game, but those interaction analytics are super important for VR,” Liam said. “Being able to track what they’re enaging with and how long they’re interacting with it – it’s important. Once you have that info, you can ask the questions like: Are they missing anything? Is there anything they’re avoiding? Do they stick to just one interaction?”

So it isn’t just about metrics like retention. There’s far more to look at when it comes to VR.

“There are lots of metrics that can give you important insights. But what people are doing with their hands is a hugely important aspect of VR, “Liam added.

Start your own VR journey

Halfbrick uses analytics to track what’s happening in their game. If you want to get set up quickly and start developing VR games yourself, you can use our free analytics platform.

One of the reasons why hyper-casual games are so popular is due to how quick and easy they are to make. Simple controls, artwork, and game design make it easy for any developer to pick up. But hyper-casual isn’t the only way to go. There are other ways to build a game on a budget.

One way is narrative. We’ve talked a lot about how to add new layers to your games by simply layering in a story. And we discussed how you need three Cs: character, conflict and change for your narrative. This time, we’ll look at the top games that use storytelling as a core mechanic and show you that you don’t need sparkling design and intense gameplay to create a hit. You just need an extra C: Choice. Because choice is how you can differentiate a book from a game.

Let’s dig in.

1. Reigns by Nerial

• Published in 2016
• Available on mobile, console and PC

Games of Thrones meets Tindr. That’s how the crew at Nerial described Reigns while pitching it to Devolver Digital. Players must make quick-fire decisions on each card and either swipe left or right to say yes or no. Although it relies on some artwork, the style is simple, and the core gameplay is the story and choices a player makes.

It’s a game filled with characters, change, and a lot of conflict. A perfect example for your research pile.

Keep the text meaningful and impactful

Because the game is so fast-paced, the text and narrative have to be in short, snippy sentences. But most importantly, the text is impactful.

When adding a story to your game, make sure the reader can understand it immediately. Is this a safe choice? What’s the risk like? Is my character in danger? It’s important to give players an idea of the outcome of their choice before they make it. Reigns does a good job balancing this information while leaving enough mystery for unexpected twists.

Here’s our rating:

• Character: 6/10
• Conflict: 10/10
• Change: 10/10
• Choice: 9/10

2. Lifeline by Three Minute Games

• Published in 2015
• Available on mobile devices, Apple watch and PC

Lifeline is a text-based survival game and a brilliant example of a story-driven experience. You’re talking to Taylor, who is stranded on an unknown planet and helping guide them to safety while offering moral support.

Three Minute Games also included a time mechanic to make it feel even more realistic. Once you give Taylor an instruction, they won’t respond for a couple of hours. It’s all in real-time.

You don’t need many choices to make a story engaging

Lifeline has fewer paths than other titles on this list, but it makes up for it with a gripping story and a well-developed character. It also relies more on creating a sense of urgency and imminent disaster, with plenty of conflict and tough decisions for the player.

Here’s our rating:

• Character: 8/10
• Conflict: 8/10
• Change: 7/10
• Choice: 6/10

3. Bitlife by Candywriter

• Published in 2018
• Available on mobile devices only

BitLife has developed quite a bit over the last couple of years. It’s a life simulator game where you navigate through menus to manage your character. You walk them through their life, from babyhood to their final year – developing skills and making choices.

Stripped-back design can equal more creative freedom

Firstly, you don’t need to release everything already in place. When BitLife first came out, the choices were quite limited. But because the design is so simple, it’s been easy for Candywriter to layer in more elements. This has kept the game alive for years.

Secondly, you don’t need a lot of design. BitLife relies on the choices, text and actions rather than any graphics. It’s almost entirely descriptive, with little-to-no speech. And to keep it entertaining, there’s a random element. It also helps that the tone is quite quirky. In one instance, our cousin bit our knee and we took our daughter to a freestyle hip-hop battle. The developers intentionally made the game weird and wacky to keep players interested.

• Character: 6/10
• Conflict: 7/10
• Change: 7/10
• Choice: 9/10

4. Card Survival Tropical Thunder by WinterSpring Games

• Published in 2022
• Available on Steam

A recent entry, but boy, are we loving it. You’re stranded on a desert island and have a limited number of hours to juggle various needs, from thirst to your mental health. But everything is done with cards. On the surface, it’s straightforward – mix cards together, explore parts of the island and either escape or make a home for yourself. But this simplicity means the game can go much deeper and make every choice feel meaningful.

A simple game can lead to lots of complexity

Because it’s all based on cards, WinterSpring Games’ Card Survival can focus more on how elements interact and affect one another. There are simple starting points, such as a farmer looking after her grandfather – adding a new layer to the story.

• Character: 4/10
• Conflict: 10/10
• Change: 9/10
• Choice: 10/10

5. Horror in the darkness by Karmic Shift Studios

• Published in 2016
• Available on mobile

Horror in the Darkness is a text-based horror puzzle-esque game. This is definitely a game for any H.P. Lovecraft fans, as Karmic Shift Studios have admitted that it’s been heavily inspired by his works.

Telling a story can be enough

Horror in the Darkness is an incredibly simple game that focuses purely on the story. Players have even touted how good the narrative is. This is a prime example of how to create a simple yet engaging game with story at its core.

• Character: 5/10
• Conflict: 7/10
• Change: 7/10
• Choice: 8/10

6. Simulacra by Kaigan Games

• Published in 2018
• Available on mobile, console, PC and Switch

Simulacra is a horror mystery game set entirely on a mobile device. You find Anna’s device, and the entire game is set as though using a regular phone. You need to go through her images, files, texts and videos to figure out what happened to her.

Let the player piece together the story for themselves

In Simulacra, you’re piecing together what happened through snippets of text. And so it’s the characters that take the spotlight. You don’t just learn about Anna; you also learn about her friends and colleagues. And Kaigan Games did a great job building relatable and believable characters.

• Character: 8/10
• Conflict: 8/10
• Change: 6/10
• Choice: 6/10

7. A Dark Room by Amirali Rajan

• Published in 2013
• Available on mobile, Switch and PC

This game is as stripped back as they come. It’s entirely text-based (aside from a progress bar and a few buttons). Interestingly, the developers have also decided to strip back on the story. They leave a lot to the imagination and only show snippets of the backstory to keep you hooked.

Amirali Rajan’s A Dark Room proves that complex gameplay and a concoction of features aren’t always what you need to build a strong title. Making choices can be the sole mechanic, and you still have a game.

• Character: 8/10
• Conflict: 8/10
• Change: 6/10
• Choice: 6/10

8. AI Dungeon by Latitude

• Published in 2019
• Available on mobile and PC

AI Dungeon is an intriguing game. It’s wholly text-based; you can type in anything, and the story will continue. It’s a creative person’s dream. You can do, say and experience whatever you imagine. The crew at Latitude worked alongside artificial intelligence company, OpenAI, to create a truly unique adventure text-based game.

Consider partnering with other companies

True. Developing an AI is beyond most budget games – AI Dungeon manages to understand what the player is saying and builds on the story. But the thing to take away here is that every decision has a meaningful impact on the rest of the game. It’s a design principle to remember.

We recommend watching the interview with the developers to learn how they did it.

• Character: 8/10
• Conflict: 8/10
• Change: 10/10
• Choice: 10/10

9. A Normal Lost Phone by Accidental Queens

• Published in 2017
• Available on mobile, PC, and Switch

A Normal Lost Phone is a narrative-driven mystery game. Similar to Simulacra, this title starts with, as you can guess, you discovering a lost device. As you dig through, you learn more about the owner – his life, issues, friends and family.

What’s brilliant about this title is how much thought Accidental Queens have put into the story and characters. The characters are relatable and realistic, and you’ll find yourself feeling attached to the phone’s owner.

Design and text can work in parallel

Although the core gameplay is within the text, the design is simple but beautiful and unique. Which only adds to the experience. Choice is limited – this is much more of a mystery and puzzle-type game. And that’s fine. Adding narrative doesn’t mean creating hundreds of branching paths. It can mean choosing the right option to advance.

• Character: 9/10
• Conflict: 7/10
• Change: 7/10
• Choice: 7/10

10. The Dreamhold by Andrew Plotkin

• Published in 2004
• Available on mobile and PC

One of the earlier interactive fiction games to be released. The Dreamhold is easily AI Dungeons’ predecessor. It’s not as custom or advanced as the more recent game. But The Dreamhold still holds up on its own.

A simple UI and design can support a rich story that all types of gamers will enjoy. And, it’s free. Completely free. No IAPs. No ads. No subscriptions. All you’ll need to spend is your time and attention when researching this title.

• Character: 8/10
• Conflict: 8/10
• Change: 7/10
• Choice: 7/10

11. Google’s text adventure

• Published in 2018
• Available on… well, Google

Google’s very own Easter egg (well, at least one of them). Google’s text adventure was originally a hidden game in Google’s source code. Players would have to search for ‘text adventure’, look at the source code, and then head to the console and enter commands to play the game.

You can get the game on Chrome now as an add-on. It’s entirely text-based. And although one could argue that it’s not a serious title, we still recommend giving it a whirl to see how the devs made it.

12. Magium by Magium Games

• Published in 2018, we think…
• Available on PC and android

Another interactive fictional game. Magium is heavily influenced by DnD (Dungeons and Dragons), and it shows that the developer clearly loved this franchise. The writing is rich with story, and it’s easy for the player to get lost in the world that Magium has created.

Consider what features can add to the experience

The responses are limited and sometimes vague. But alongside the story, the developer has layered in a points system where players level up based on their actions (most likely inspired by DnD). Keeping them hooked and engaged in the game.

• Character: 8/10
• Conflict: 7/10
• Change: 7/10
• Choice: 6/10

13. Device 6 by Simogo

• Published in 2013
• Available on iPhone and iPad only

Simogo’s Device 6 is a surreal story-driven thriller but with a twist. The interface at first seems relatively straightforward. But you soon realize that the text is everything. The words change to reflect what’s happening in the game. It’s a pretty ingenious approach to a mystery game and only adds to the player’s confusion – reflecting how the character in-game is feeling.

Think outside the confines of the code

There are other ways to invoke emotions than just words. For example, Anna, the main character, turns a corner at one point. The text describing what’s happening also turns 90 degrees, forcing players to rotate their phones. This is a compelling story, but Device 6 has found a unique and exciting way to tell it. Definitely worth a play during your research period.

14. Unmemory by Patrones & Escondites

• Published in 2020
• Available on PC

Another text-adventure game with a mystery and detective theme. Patrones & Escondites described this game as “an escape gamebook about a girl gang with a broken mind”. Still arguably in its early stages, the story is filled with twists and turns, although some have argued that it is sometimes somewhat predictable.

The devil is in the details

What we love about this title are all the little moments – the details. The developer has gone the extra mile to layer in beautiful, clever puzzle elements that keep you wondering and coming back for more.

Think we’ve missed anything?

These are just a few of our favourite story-driven games. If you think there are any that deserve a spot on our list, let us know, and we’ll give them a try. And if you’re making your own story-driven game, set up your analytics as soon as possible. Data can tell you a story of its own.

If you happen to be one of the many developers we’ve mentioned above, we’d love to have a chat and learn more about your process. Get in touch with us.

Fancy some more reading? Make sure to check out these articles next:

• The top 22 mobile games of 2022
• How to Use Collectibles in Mobile Games to Keep Players Coming Back
• Deconstructing Meta Features In Social Casino Games (With Examples)

Building hyper-casual games is a great way to get into game development. With their short cycles and simple gameplay, crafting a hyper-casual title means you can learn important skills across game design and monetisation, which you’ll need for success in the mobile games industry.

But how do you get started building a hyper-casual game? What exactly goes into creating a hit in this genre? What KPIs should you track and what results should you be aiming for? There’s a lot you should know before getting started. So before you get tapping away and developing your next hit, make sure to read through these resources to master everything ‘hyper’.

1. Understanding hyper-casual

The hyper-casual genre is a unique one. It’s made up of short, satisfying, and simple gameplay, basic artwork, and relies heavily on ads to make money. So to kick things off, read the following articles to fully understand what this genre is all about.

• Here’s how to keep hyper-casual games short, satisfying, and simple
• This is Voodoo’s guide on how to create “Hyper-Snackable” games 
• A list of 14 of the best hyper-casual mechanics to use for your game
• How to make effective game art in hyper-casual games

2. How to get started

So, now you know a bit more about what hyper-casual is and how it works. The next step is getting ready to start crafting your game. At this stage, you’ll be brainstorming all kinds of ideas and setting up your tools.

• This is a nice round-up of the best tools to use for mobile game development
• A useful list of ideation tips for creating viral games
• Here are five techniques to supercharge your ideation
• A guide on how to hire the right team for your game
• Everything about GDPR and what you need to know (we recommend reading before you start collecting data)

3. Prototyping, testing and analytics

Hyper-casual games are all about prototyping and iterating your games to hit certain KPIs and targets. Testing is a crucial part of releasing successful hyper-casual games, and you need to understand your games’ KPIs and how to improve them.

• How to do fast prototyping and what you need to know
• Here are a bunch of early testing strategies
• This article is full of useful tips on rapid testing and development
• Our latest report on hyper-casual metrics and industry benchmarks
• How to visualize your games’ data (when and how to use graphs)

4. How to make money

No one works for free. Hyper-casual games notoriously rely on ads to make their money. But there’s a lot more to it than just showing random ads in your game. Have a read of these resources to understand the ins and outs of ad-based monetization.

• The basics to making money in hyper-casual games
• Making money from your ads in your hyper-casual games
• How to find the right ad network to work with
• How to calculate CPI, CPC, eCPM and more
• Top 10 Hyper-casual Game Ad Networks in 2022

5. Soft launching and publishing

Ideally, you should soft launch your game to help test, refine and fix any bugs before the real launch. And there’s a couple of routes you can take when you are ready to hit that publish button. Here are a few guides to give you an idea of how to tactically approach your soft launching process.

• Zeptolab put together this guide for soft launching your game
• These are five A/B tests to run during your soft launch
• Here’s a guide to help you decide whether to self-publish or use a publishing partner
• This is how Umami successfully self publishes hyper-casual games
• This is a guide to publishing your game in China (and what to expect)
• And this is how to find a publishing partner in China

6. Take the next step to hybrid-casual

It’s worth mentioning here that even though hyper-casual is still arguably the most popular genre in the industry, it is starting to hit a saturation point. It’s definitely an easy stepping stone for most developers. But with more games on the app stores, it’s getting harder to cover CPI costs and make a profit.

Image source: Bowmasters by Playgendary Limited

Hybrid-casual is starting to make some noise here. So it’s worth having a read-up on what this emerging fusion genre is, and how you can evolve your own hyper-casual game into something more.

• Homa Game’s breakdown and guide to hybrid games
• What is hybrid casual and how it can increase retention
• A list of systems and meta-features most used in hybrid-casual games

7. Top hyper-casual studios and publishers to follow

Whether you want to reach out to these guys to work with them or just to research their games and story for your inspiration. Here’s a list of some of the leading hyper-casual studios and publishers in the market today.

• Voodoo: They’ve hit over 6 billion downloads across the globe, and released titles like Helix Jump, Paper.io, Aquapark.io, and Crowd City.
• Homa Games: These guys have hit over 500 million downloads, and work with some of the top brands, including Kadka, Topchop games, and Funcell games.
• Lion Studios: Based in San Francisco, Lion Studios is owned by AppLovin, and has published chart toppers like Wordle, Match 3D, and Nail Salon 3D.
• Supersonic: With over ten years of experience publishing games, Supersonic is one of the largest and most established publishers. The’ve published titles like Bazooka Boy, Clone Ball, and Hide N’ Seek.
• Kwalee: They’re reaching almost 1 billion downloads, and they publish games across mobile, PC, and consoles. They also run Creative Wednesdays, a hybrid event where designers can brainstorm ideas and work on their prototypes.
• Amanotes: Experts in music, Amanotes focuses on musical hyper-casual games. Brilliant for anyone looking to specialise in sound.

Got something to add to our list?

Hopefully, this has been a good starting point for you on your hyper-casual journey. If you’ve seen any good guides out there that are worthy of our list, feel free to send them our way.

In our last article, we covered the three major C’s of storytelling: character, conflict, and change. Using these rules will set the foundation of your game’s narrative. But that doesn’t mean your work is done.

There’s so much more to building a strong narrative. And in part two of our storytelling series, we cover six narrative techniques you can use in your titles to help boost your storytelling and character development.

Let’s get to it.

1. Consider a shared story

You might not want to go into a huge amount of detail for every game you create (especially if you’re working with hyper-casual or casual titles – which have notoriously short lifespans). While it would make each game unique, it can take a lot of time.

Instead, think about whether you can create a single story that all your games tie into. This can help keep players in your ecosystem, jumping from game to game to get the full story.

Angry Birds is an obvious example of this. Rovio has released a countless number of games, shows, and even a couple of films in the Angry Birds universe. All use the same characters in each game.

2. Keep your story straight with a lore bible

Make a shared document with your whole team and write down everything that you’ve decided about your story. The key here is to make sure that every time you make a decision about your game in the future, you check back with your lore bible. Does your newest idea fit with your story? Does it match other decisions you’ve made?

For example, if you decide to add a new colourful level, do the colours match the theme of your game or character? Does it fit into the overall narrative? Does it contradict anything you’ve previously established?

3. If you have branching paths, keep them limited

It’s fun to allow for multiple branching paths. Players will enjoy being able to choose between one option or another – and might even replay your game to experience each route.

But the more choices you add, the more complexity you add. Each time you offer a player a choice, you add a layer. Your first layer might have three paths, the second layer will then have nine. By the time you get to the fifth layer, you’ll need to write 243 different paths. Either limit the players’ decisions or have rules in place to loop them back into the main path that they’re on.

Keep this in mind if you decide to offer your players branching options. In general, it’s not necessary to make your story satisfying – and in more casual games you probably want to steer clear of this.

Image source: Life is Strange game

Here’s a handy article on the illusion of choice in games. They use Life is Strange as an example (spoilers inside), but offer up some pretty useful advice. 

4. Show the story with hints

You can subtly tell your story through your item descriptions, in-game audio or snippets of dialogue with your supporting characters. For example, maybe you have a mascot who helps the players learn the controls. This character might drop little hints or lines about the greater foe that the player is tackling.

You don’t need to tell the whole story. You just need to know what it is. In-game, the player’s avatar might just say: “Hurry, the water is coming!” You don’t need to explain that the world is flooding and your character is looking for high ground. You characters’ backstory is much more impactful when subtly sprinkled in. No one wants to be forced to read paragraphs of exposition (but giving the option could appeal to the true fans).

Image source: AFK Arena and Dislyte

Multiple dropped hints can be much more effective than a single cut-scene. Lilith Games does this really well. In their games AFK Arena and Dislyte, you’re always guided by a character, showing you what you need to do through subtle hints.

5. Add unlockable lore

If you’ve built a world around your story, you might want a way to reward players with more information about that world. Rather than interrupting their gameplay, you can give them a currency that can buy snippets of lore as they progress through the game (or just unlock them directly). This might be simple descriptions or even a short story or comic strip.

Image source: AFK Arena

AFK Arena is another prime example. With each hero that the player unlocks, there’s a story you can read about them. Reading this story rewards the player with diamonds, which they can spend on getting more heroes.

6. Make someone responsible for narrative design

Give someone in your team the responsibility to make sure everyone is keeping to the story. It’s easy to come up with new mechanics or character designs that don’t fit with your original narrative.

Your narrative designer should make sure that you’re staying consistent. It’s not their job to say no – but to figure out how a new idea could work. How could that new item fit into the game naturally? Does it need changing? Does the name match similar items?

Those ideas should constantly be adding and changing your story as you go along. And that’s fine. You won’t have all the answers on day one. But you should be building on what’s coming before, not retconning things you’ve already established.

Image source: Climbtheladder.com

Climbtheladder.com has a nice overview of what your narrative designer should do. They describe all of the responsibilities and tasks this role should tackle.

Test your ideas before rolling them out

If you want to test different visual elements, designs, or even your characters dialogue, then you can always run A/B tests. Head over to our GameOps tools to see how you can experiment and test your ideas. And if you fancy some more reading, check out our article on the top low-budget games that found success through narrative.