How Cool Goal was created! — development history from Gismart

Cool Goal! — this is a minimalistic three-dimensional arcade game in which players have to score a goal in the most unpredictable places, for example, on the moon in low gravity. The essence is to hit the ball into the goal by choosing the right trajectory of the kick.

Idea

Initially, we were preparing the Pool it! project, in which the player must send the ball to the pocket.

First version

Basic mechanics in the first version of the game:

• the player adjusts the impact force;
• the ball is flying in a straight line;
• there are obstacles on the level;
• the ball must go into the pocket.

Challenges faced by the team:

• high difficulty (you need to control the impact force, the small size of the hole, as well as a large number of obstacles that prevented the ball from hitting the hole);
• monotonous gameplay.

As a result, we decided to modernize the project.

Second version

We have made the following changes to the mechanics of the game:

• made the pocket bigger;
• the pocket “magnetizes” the ball;
• added three new mechanics.

Unfortunately, this did not solve the main problem: the game remained monotonous. As a result, she had a low retention.

We realized that the reason for boredom is the lack of interest in “shooting in a straight line”. So came the idea of mechanics with a twist of the trajectory, which then became the main feature of the game. Since the mechanics of hitting the trajectory exist in football, we decided to transfer this to the game. So the pool turned into football.

The use of clear game mechanics taken from the real world attracted a large number of users, allowed us to reduce CPI, purchase more traffic and increase retention.

Softlonch of the third version — Cool Goal!

Basic mechanics in the new version:

• the player controls the direction of impact;
• the ball is flying on a curve;
• obstacles appeared on the level;
• added football player characters with funny animations (for example, they can dance around a campfire in the middle of a football field, rejoicing at a goal scored);
• the ball must hit the goal.

Challenges:

• high complexity of management.

We needed to work on the game further in order to lower the entry threshold due to management difficulties.

Work on the fourth version

In the fourth version, the player has the opportunity to adjust the direction of impact. This made it easier to manage.

We also continued to work on the level design. They also became simpler, which led to a decrease in the number of “dumps” on the levels.

The right color and appropriate settings can also affect the game performance. During the softlonch, we were able to increase the retention of the first day by 3% by simply changing the color of the football field to the “correct” green.

The final version of the game

After the worldwide launch, we noticed that the game lacked variety for long-term user retention. Short-term retention at the same time was good. We started working on it.

We started from the concept that the emotions of the characters should reflect the user’s gaming experience. Therefore, it was important for us to have special elements in the game: character actions, animations, emojis, etc. Such elements can delay the player for a longer time, add a few percent to the retention of the first day. In Cool Goal! after adding emojis, dancing characters, as well as new settings, the retention of the first day increased by 4%. At the same time, it was the addition of emojis that gave the biggest increase.

We also actively continued to work on game levels (content in hyper-casual games is traditionally “eaten up” very quickly). To simplify the work on the levels, we made “mixing levels”. It’s about mechanics that gives users the same levels, but with different graphical assets. The structure and architecture remain the same, but the visual execution of the level changes, which is why the level is perceived as new, although there have been no structural changes.

Monetization

The best place to display rewarding ads in Cool Goal! it turned out to be a losing screen, “game over”. The player does not want to lose progress and, in order to save it, is ready to watch a commercial. At more complex levels, the probability of losing increases and, accordingly, the percentage of ad views increases.

Success factors

We believe that one of the success factors of the game was the high replayability and lack of rigidly fixed gameplay.

Another reason for the long-term success was Live Ops*, which helped to increase the life of the game.

Live Ops is for us an operational activity that includes any changes to the project that are made without a separate release of a new version or update. They include: regular and relevant in-game events (sales and gaming events), analytics, technical support in the form of answers to players’ questions, social media activity (contests and events), push notifications — everything that keeps loyal users and engages new ones. The set of Live-Ops tools will be different for each project, but their implementation will help to increase the performance of the product.***

We will be happy to answer questions about the development and launch of the game. By the way, we are now continuing to look for development teams.

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