“We actually have half a team – without experience in game development”: about the development of League of Arosaurs

Matvey, hello! On Friday, the trailer for League of Arosaurs appeared. The project looks very cool, but before we talk about it, please tell us a little about yourself and the studio.

Hi! Our MintFrogs studio is only six months old, but there are already two titles in the portfolio – League of Arosaurs and Towar.io .

Before MintFrogs, I personally had the opportunity to work in the MSQRD team (an application that allows you to put a mask on a user’s face in real time, Facebook acquired it in March). I was also involved in startups – I made a fintech application MintPay (it allows you to pay for real purchases without a credit card – using QR codes).

According to the video, League of Arosaurs looks like a mix of Clash Royale and Pokemon GO. Please tell us about the gameplay of the game.

We started making League of Arosaurs long before the release of Pokemon. I won’t lie, somewhere we really focused on Clash Royale, but the game also has absolutely original features.

The root gameplay of the game is a mixture of three-in-a-row and KKI.

In short, the player, using skill cards (for mana), must defeat the opponent in three minutes. Seeing what the opponent casts, the player can both counterattack and
defend.

Meta consists in promotion through the leagues – schools of magic, as well as in accumulating and upgrading cards. At the same time, you can collect cards in chests only on the map in AR mode, or by paying real money.

From a completely new one, something that, as far as I know, has not been anywhere before:

• Realtime matching on the map (you can see all the players who play League of Arosaurs as cars in Uber). But now we will have a very stripped-down geolocation version for now. We plan to expand its capabilities in the near future.
• A mix of KKI and three-in-a-row in combat.

You wrote on your Facebook page that the project has been in the works for six months. In the process of work, how much has the original concept changed?

Something has changed. Initially, they wanted to make a new world with new fictional characters, but then they moved to ordinary animals “with a body kit”. We thought it would be harder to introduce people to the new world.

The production of the project is at a very high level (without discounts on the region – this is unconditionally – from the point of view of appearance – an AAA-class project). Probably, this is a question for the team again, but how was this achieved? Lots of iterations, autosource graphs, expert advice?

There are no experts! We actually have half a team – no experience in game development at all. It was just that the right goals were set, the right guidelines were set.

But I remember how difficult it was at the very beginning: it was hard to find a style. But then everything went faster and more productive.

How do you plan to enter the market? By yourself or with the help of a publisher?

We ourselves understand that we will not pull out the project, so we are in dialogue with many companies: Ketchapp, EA, Game Insight, Wargaming, Mail Ru Group, Yodo1, Yuri Gursky (Prisma, MSQRD) and even Supercell (they are not engaged in publishing, but they invest). With whom we will enter the market, we do not yet know ourselves – we will finish the software, and then watch. Who will offer more “velyu”, with whom we will converge with vectors.

When to wait for the game?

We don’t know when to wait for the game yet, but I think we will do a softlonch during this month.