Developer Diaries: Guard of Wonderland

Hi! My name is Mikhail Pimenov, I am the CEO of Wonder Games. At the moment we are developing and supporting Guard of Wonderland, a mobile battler based on the works of Lewis Carroll about Alice.

This is the first game for the studio. However, it is not the first time for the team members to work on a game in such a genre as a card buttler. Most of us have already worked in companies such as Nival, Ork Work, Overgamez and Zillion Whales (the team has 10 employees in total, we also actively resort to outsourcing). Having felt that together we could pull our own project, we took up development.

Engine

The project was created on the basis of an existing game with similar mechanics. This foundation perfectly fit into the tasks that the team faced. In addition, the experience of working with the previous project gave a non-exclusive advantage both in speed and working with already familiar assets. In addition, it pretty much reduced the cost of many aspects of development. To be more precise – several times.

There were also disadvantages with this approach. For example, the engine was built on the basis of Adobe AIR. As a result, we were unable to integrate into it many SDKs that did not work with this technology.

Another disadvantage of the ready–made solution is the complexity of changing the main code. Often the introduction of new original features was delayed. Such tasks were often very resource-intensive, complex, requiring thorough polishing and difficult integration into an already well-coordinated system.

It is good that the team that owns the original project managed to agree on access to the source code, as well as to enlist their further help and advice on a number of technical issues.

Setting

The world of Wonderland fit perfectly into the genre we chose: a huge number of characters, an interesting world, a lot of opportunities for a variety of readings.

We decided to interpret the universe in a gloomy way, but at the same time leave a lot of references to the original and everything that its readers like so much – word games, riddles, hints, an ornate plot that turns out to be far from as obvious as it tries to seem at the beginning.

We also decided to submit all the content in verse. Alice’s adventures are perceived by many as a fairy tale, and even if the setting has matured, this does not mean that it is worth giving up the feeling of a fairy tale. The game is divided into chapters, and all levels are called page numbers. It’s still a fairy tale, only grown up. The poems just emphasize this feeling. In addition, games written in verse can literally be counted on the fingers.

Working on the plot in this manner is quite difficult, but incredibly interesting. Very few people often dare to take such a step, and this has become an additional motive to try.

The presentation of dialogues in the manner of a visual novel allows you to reflect the emotions that the characters are experiencing at a particular moment. This allows you to make the story much more expressive.

Before we started writing the script, we set ourselves a specific task – to observe the “mirror vertical”. There are two heroes in the game, and at the beginning of the game a choice of sides is given. If one hero meets some NPC, then the second one is waiting for a dialogue at this moment (while the NPC may be completely different).

By itself, writing such a script looks like this:

• first, a plan is written (location number, level number, who got where, who talked to, what he did);
• after that, the dialogues are written in more detail, there are more details in them and the essence of each phrase is spelled out;
• and finally the dialogues acquire a smooth poetic form. The characters continue each other’s phrases, answer in rhyme.

The script was written by me from beginning to end.

Development

Of course, there were some pitfalls. When working with outsourcing, there are very different things: someone got lost, someone cut deadlines, someone postponed something due to the main work.

The best way out of such situations is to lay down such risks from the very beginning and be ready for them. For any project, you need to lay down 1.5 months more from the planned minimum period in a good way. Ideally, 3-4 months. Such problems can be solved by the time allocated to them in advance and the redistribution of resources at the right moment.

Our development, as is the case with almost any game, began with the writing of a concept doc. Then we set deadlines and summed up the estimate.

After that, we started writing a design document, recruiting a team and, in fact, the production itself.

Management was carried out using ordinary tools – Trello, Google Docs.

Some features had to be abandoned during development. For example, when certain characters appeared, a certain soundtrack had to appear. There were plans to introduce voice acting, but it was abandoned due to the fact that it would inflate the size of the distribution. Already during the development, the system of rarity and evolution of maps was revised – it became much more obvious and convenient.

General

It took about a year to develop, while the project budget amounted to up to a million rubles, taking into account further marketing costs that are not yet involved at the moment.

Not so long ago, the game became available in English and was released to the world on Google Play, although a full-scale announcement has not yet been made. In the next update, PvP, player ratings and a number of other innovations and edits are expected, after which a full-fledged world release will already take place.

We plan to further develop the project by all means. We have a lot of plans, opportunities that we want to see in the game, the future attraction of players who are either waiting for the game on iOS, or do not yet know about its release on GooglePlay. We hope that they will be pleasantly surprised in the very near future!