The history of the creation of the game “Miracle Mix”: from the final chord to the bestseller

The story of the “Miracle Mix” began in the fall of 2014, when Nika Entertainment just turned one year old. However, by that time we already had something to brag about: the games “Magic Kitchen” and “Mysteries of Atlantis” got into the tops of international platforms, porting to Asian grids such as Mixi and Mobage, and holding the leading indicators on them. In addition, at the end of the third quarter of last year, the total number of users of our games reached 40 million people.

Despite a very successful start in the casual games market, we were then caught up in the dream of creating midcore projects and assumed that they would become our main niche in 2015.

At the same time, we could not ignore our experience in creating match-3, and decided on the final chord – to make a bestseller of the genre “three-in-a-row”, where we could realize all the unused and desired developments from previous projects.

Finish or start?

After starting the development of our “last” project in the genre of “three-in-a-row”, we began to form the company’s strategy for the next year and seriously thought about how to develop a key competence as a structured business.

We faced a difficult choice: to improve the competence of match-3 or still try ourselves in midcore projects, as we had planned before.

Having considered the pros and cons of each of the development paths, we came to the conclusion that match-3 is our strong point. So we pushed our midcore dreams to the background and concentrated on the “three-in-a-row”, or rather on the “final chord”.

Moreover, we have set ourselves a clear goal – to make a game that will change the perception of the entire genre of “three-in-a-row”.

With the new match-3 project, we were going to offer the market something unique, as well as make the game as detailed as possible. It was supposed to have solutions that the players had not yet met in a “three-in-a-row” and that had not been tested by the financial success of competitors. It was very important for us that the innovations touched all aspects of the project: game mechanics, graphics, animation and special effects. To realize all this, up to 50 specialists worked on the creation of the game, which was called “Miracle Mix” (English version – Fairy Mix), at different stages of development for six months. However, the basis of the team was 30 people.

Idea and solution

From the start, we focused on an audience of 35+ women.

Why?

Firstly, it is one of the fastest growing segments of casual games users.

Secondly, we already had a lot of experience working with this group of users. We knew what the fair sex liked, moreover, we confirmed most of our assumptions and observations with research results and financial metrics.

We took a colorful magical setting as a basis.

We decided to stand out from the competition with non–standard elements of the playing field – they became cones with magic potions – this idea was proposed by our COO Tanya Evdokimenko at one of the brainstorming sessions.

Another fundamental difference of our project is that we have made a well-developed storyline and a bright hero, which, by the way, is not enough in most games of our genre.

The main heroine of our story was a little Sorceress. She looks 12-13 years old – this is just the average age of our players’ children.

A negative character also appeared in the game – an insidious Witch who is always plotting against the main character. In the story, she destroyed the little Sorceress’s house, and the girl goes on a journey through a fairyland.

By collecting combinations of magic potions and extracting valuable resources, she gradually restores the destroyed estate and frees the magical world from evil spells. And although the plot did not play a major role in the success of the game, it significantly increased the loyalty of players.

Mix of genres

So, we decided on the idea, set milestones. It’s time to think about the content and develop features.

Again, in order to highlight the game against the background of existing projects on the market, we chose to go to the metagample. In general, this trend came to the Gamedev market a couple of years ago and showed itself perfectly, for example, in midcore projects. As for casual games, especially match-3, developers are not so willing to mix genres in them. This is despite the fact that players are constantly shouting how tired they are of the same type of mechanics and the limited capabilities of most “three-in-a-row”. To be fair, we note that for a developer, adding a meta-gameplay is associated with the risk of changing the audience of the game. For example, if you mixed the basic mechanics with an RPG, then the audience may suddenly become younger and unexpectedly (!) become male.

Choosing a metagame for the “Miracle Mix”, we analyzed all existing genres, and chose the bodybuilders, whose audience largely overlaps with ours.

To make the game as interesting as possible for women, we have optimized all the mechanics to suit their tastes. For example, players have the opportunity to free buildings and elements on the field from the Witch’s evil charms, restore order at home locations, etc.

Unobtrusive meta gameplay does not distract users from the main process – collecting elements “three-in-a-row”, and the game becomes more exciting and diverse. In total, in the “Miracle Mix” we have provided 14 different buildings with 5 unique positive effects, 20 types of resources for their construction and 2 additional locations for every 15 levels on the map!

The experiment with mixing genres in the “Miracle Mix” turned out to be quite successful: now up to 90% of players use the new mechanics constantly. Moreover, in comparison with our other projects, the audience of female players of “Miracle Mix” has increased by 3%.

Wow effect

Visual experience is one of the key points in any game, no matter if you are doing a 2D or 3D project, so we paid special attention to art and animation, achieving a wow effect.

Like our previous games, we created a “Miracle Mix” on Flash. It was necessary to develop a complex set of animations so that it could be applied taking into account the limitations of existing technologies, and this is not an easy task.

Our idea was that each super element would give a unique effect. We had six such elements of different colors.

We have been working on the task for a long time. As a result, they began to use different types of animation – software, frame-by-frame and twin. We used Adobe Flash together with the Dragonbones extension.

Another non-standard technique was used when creating the map. We wanted to give the game volume and give players a sense of endless adventure. So the idea to make the map spiral was born.

I also wanted to diversify the levels. Players got tired of the endless collection of gems in match-3 projects, and we went to the experiment – we began to try to move large elements of the playing field.

Again, this has not been used before by other developers. Therefore, it was difficult to predict what kind of reaction such a mix would cause. At the first tests, the players gave a positive feedback. According to them, there was a feeling that each level is a new game, so I want to move on and on. So from the point of view of user engagement, the idea worked.

Release

As I have already said, we have completely revised our strategy for 2015 and have chosen match-3 projects as our key competence. Having changed the direction for development, we decided on an independent publishing house. The first such project was the “Miracle Mix”. It was a real test. We ourselves needed to establish interaction with the platforms on which the release was being prepared. The company was waiting for a continuous series of meetings and negotiations, preparing a myriad of presentations, studying all the requirements of the platforms in terms of game design, technical solutions and marketing, improving the project with maximum speed, etc.

Despite all the difficulties, at the beginning of March 2015, the game finally saw the light. The first platform that accepted it was the VKontakte social network. A week later, a Facebook release took place, although it was still far from a happy ending.

Let’s take at least Open Graph 2.0 Facebook. Not all developers, especially in the CIS market, figured it out, and continued to work according to the usual schemes. We had to study all the best cases of the platform very quickly, and quickly implement new solutions based on them.

Surprises were also prepared by the mobile version, which was developed in parallel. As I said, “Miracle Mix” is a cross-platform game that we write in Flash. Far from all the requirements that platforms put forward in their unofficial feature sheets, we could implement on ready-made native extensions. This refers to those that can be purchased from contractors. And again we had to rebuild, develop the necessary solutions ourselves.

Conclusion

“Miracle Mix” has taught us a lot, and one of the main lessons we have received is the need to change our way of thinking. We create a product and strive to ensure that every employee on the project realizes that we are a product company. Of course, many specialists – developers, artists, animators – have gone through the outsourcing school, but this approach needs to be changed. There should be a click in your mind: your client is not a customer company, but a market, end consumers. It is worth learning to form new preferences, which players often do not realize themselves.

Now is the time for this! There are a huge number of match-3 projects on the market, but the vast majority do not meet the needs of users. Players do not agree to a small amount of content, rare updates, weak level design, ill-conceived game logic. They are annoyed by bugs and long loading of the game. We decided to build barriers with high quality. And, looking back, we understand that a lot happened. A month after the release, “Miracle Mix” entered the top 100 Facebook bestsellers among games of all genres. His starting performance on this platform was noted as one of the highest among match-3 in history. In the first two weeks, the game was downloaded by more than 1,000,000 users, a month later the constant number of players remained unchanged (MAU, monthly active users – 1 million people).