On January 8, a cute bubble Hero Pop was released in the App Store. Developers from the Ukrainian studio Nravo shared with us the history of its creation.
Thursday, January 8, is now at least a red day in the calendar for us. After two years of creative search and hard work, we have finally released a project that I think any team can be proud of. The road was long for us, but it was worth it!
Three years ago, my team developed only flash projects. The main advantage of such projects is that you can make a ready-made game in one month, immediately get feedback from users, and then immediately start implementing a new idea based on the experience you have just gained.
However, the flash market, at least for us, had become uninteresting by that time, since the era of flash games had slowly begun to come to an end by that time, and it had become much more difficult to make money on it. Fortunately, we have many teams at Nravo, each of which creates games on different engines and in different genres, so our director Andrey Tabachin easily gave us carte blanche to create any new product. That, in our opinion, is exactly what Hero Pop should have become.
Attempt #1
We set ourselves the following task: to develop a unique match-3. That is, a project with clear, recognizable mechanics, but at the same time one that would stand out significantly from the host of products that exist on the market.
So we came to the following concept:
On the playing field there is a wall of colorful balls that descends from top to bottom. Below it, characters are running from left to right, holding one balloon in their hands. The player’s task is to prevent the wall of balls from reaching the ground. To do this, you need to cut the ropes for which the game characters hold the balls. If the balls from below form groups of the same color with the balls from the wall, consisting of more than three units, then they disappear.
Our lead programmer created the first version of the game in a few weeks. We liked the project and decided to continue working on the project. It took us six months to get the full version for iPhone and iPad.
The “soft launch” in New Zealand showed that the project turned out to be too difficult for our audience. Plus, there were moments in the game that annoyed them. For example, after losing, players had to start the game from the beginning all the time.
Monetized also not very successfully. There was only one impulse purchase in the game – this was obviously not enough. However, there was also a store with various “boosters” and charges for them, which helped to pass the levels, but it did not bring the numbers we expected.
Attempt #2
After heated discussions, we came to the conclusion that the project needs to be significantly redone. As a result, we never launched it to the world, but we threw about 75% of what was done out of the game. We left only graphics, boosters and various technical developments.
Throwing your work into the trash is always hard, but sometimes it’s a tough necessity.
Unfortunately, sometimes you have to pay a big price for understanding this simple thing.
The fact is that at that moment we made a serious mistake: having thrown out most of the game, we left the basic gameplay, within which the player, if he does not want to lose, should not be distracted. Considering the long game session (from 6 to 10 minutes), this was a serious mistake.
However, we did not come to this immediately. Yes, we abandoned the endless gameplay in favor of a multi-mission structure, but at that stage it did not help the project. So we lost another two months. The project didn’t stick and stopped bringing pleasure. The whole team left work on the game for three weeks…
Attempt #3
After almost a month, we still returned to the project, we can’t say that with burning eyes, but, you know, we quickly got involved in the work. We have faith in him again, and with it the desire to do everything on the “five”.
In fact, we started the game all over again. The game has become step-by-step, and therefore unhurried, not requiring constant user attention. Her sessions became short, just for 2-3 minutes. The modern world dictates its own laws of gameplay – such games are played at a bus stop, waiting for transport, during a trip in an elevator, subway or sitting in the toilet. All these are short sessions of 2-5 minutes, with the exception of the last one :)
But, most importantly, we did not abandon the original concept.
There was still a field with balls at the top, and game characters at the bottom. Only they no longer moved themselves, but at the player’s request.
Over the next ten months, we refined the gameplay, changed the graphics, animation, and worked with the sound. The composer wrote the music, redesigned the UI several times. We have improved a lot of funny features that appear in the form of new elements during the game. We have created and balanced more than two hundred levels.
As a result, at one of the conferences Chillingo offered us to publish a project. By the way, they suggested a new name for the game.