In the world of free-play games, it is often said that nothing ends with the launch of the project, but on the contrary, it begins. What happened to Angry Birds 2 in the year since its release, – said Mans Wide, a leading game designer and product manager at the Stockholm branch of Rovio.
According to Vida, the game has become one of the most successful in the company’s portfolio. He said that at the moment the indicators of the project are even better than a year ago, He did not share exact figures, however, he noticed that the game has “130 million fans”, without specifying whether it is about downloads or about MAU.
Such success was achieved because the game has undergone strong changes over the year.
In order to attract the right audience, the project was turned from a “simple and cheerful puzzle” into a “light RPG,” says Wild. To do this, we had to remove the focus from moving around the map and pay more attention to upgrading the characters.
The PvP arena, daily tasks and sets of hats that need to be collected have been added to the functionality. Vide noted that with all the body kits, the game turned out to be a little more complicated than the average casual project. But from the very beginning it was more hardcore than the first project of the franchise, so I just had to put up with it.
“We realized that Angry Birds 2 requires a certain skill and, no matter how simple we try to make the levels, the player can always shoot the bird in the wrong direction or forget to use the ability. But in super casual games like Candy Crush, you can’t make a mistake – unless the game wants you to make a mistake.”
Answering the question of what lessons he learned from the development, Vayd said that the project made him “a more modest person.” And he also taught me that it is very important to know what kind of game you are doing and try to make your vision of the project coincide with what the players want.
Source: Pocket Gamer