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Today I sit down with Academy Member Chris Trudeau of Boston Trudeau Studios, who landed himself a Voodoo publishing deal with his latest game title Twenty48 Solitaire, so huge congrats to Chris, super excited at such an awesome success story.
Download: Twenty48 Solitaire
In our conversation, we discuss how Chris made the leap from being a professional finish carpenter, dabbling with selling print on demand t-shirts from his 2 Etsy shops as a side hustle, to stumbling across Buildbox and ultimately creating mobile games.
Using a deck of cards to brainstorm game ideas, thinking how to twist this classic card game, and grabbing tons of feedback from family and friends, the first versions of twenty48 Solitaire was born.
Chris hired someone on Fiverr to create his first prototype ( made in just 12 hours ) in unity. Soon after that, he made the transition to the new engine and he quickly starting learning for himself, and has never looked back.
After contacting Voodoo with his idea, within a few months he had secured what would become a life changing publishing deal.
Chris tells us why he loves Voodoo so much and how he’s constantly learning from the publishing support team. He loves the fact they are genuinely excited about building games and make you feel part of team. Voodoo have patience with small dev’s, are pro-active and get things moving fast.
Although Twenty48 Solitaire is not the ‘normal’ hyper casual game we are used to seeing from this publisher, Chris explains they are always open to new games that go against trends, something different that will stand out from the crowd.
Next on the agenda for Chris in the coming months will be the maintenance of Twenty48, making sure it performs well and carrying out further game test ideas with the Voodoo team. There are also thoughts of team expansion within Boston Studios, but the main focus will be with Voodoo and coming up with that next great game.
It’s fantastic to have Chris inside the Academy and it’s been an absolute pleasure to celebrate his Voodoo signing. It really couldn’t of happened to a nicer guy. I asked Chris what he enjoyed the most about being a member, and unsurprisingly ( as everyone says the same ) it was the Friday Live Sessions where we keep up to date with research and App Store trends that bring the most inspiration.
I’d like to thank Chris for joining me in today’s special podcast and for sharing his game Dev story, I wish him every future success.
Website: https://bostontrudeaustudios.com/
Thanks so much for listening.
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
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We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
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After our Academy Anniversary month of July, we took some time for a lot of soul searching about what is next on the agenda for us as a Indie Game Studio and the company in general. The fact is, it has been way too many months since the production of our last game, and this has long been an itch that badly needs scratching! We love doing the podcast and it’s been a lot of fun, but it has surprised us at just how long a process it is.
We’ve come to the difficult decision to take a short hiatus on the podcast, to enable us to free up some pure focus time to head off and start a new game and concentrate on providing the best advice and service to all Academy Members.
We’ll be back to share all our highs and lows on our game dev antics, along with the problems we face and how we solved them ( or not )!
Until then, be sure to follow us on our social media accounts Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.
If you want to join us inside for our regular weekly live video calls, in-depth training and workshops, personalised game consultations, game developer community and a whole ton more, simply head on over the Academy for all the details.
Bye for now and we’ll speak to you very soon indeed.
Thanks so much for listening.
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
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Hyper Casual games are dominating the App Store Top Charts.
In early in 2017, we saw the rise of Hyper-Casual games going main stream with publishers like Voodoo.io leading the way with their smash hit paper.io. These usually lightweight games, consisting of nothing much more than an addictive core loop on launch, are typically a few steps ahead of a MVP ( minimal viable product ) or prototype.
Pushed heavily via social media campaigns ( Snapchat / Instagram / Facebook ) publishers can achieve extremely low CPI's ( cost per install ) and thus propelling these simple small mobile games to the pinnacle of the mobile App Stores with a relatively modest budget. Because if this, they are highly scalable and massively sharable and often go viral pretty fast.
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
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We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
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To finish up our devlog style episodes for this month, we look ahead to what we’ll be working on for the 2nd half of 2018.
With the imminent release of Buildbox 3 ( Beta ) in the coming weeks, we're super pumped to get back into our favourite game creation software and take a look at the next generation of Buildbox.
Whilst of course it’s very exciting to have new tools to play with and finally get to play around in 3D, it’s also worth remembering that the Arcade Style Hyper Casual games that are dominating the charts, and the ones we love to build, are always simple in concept.
In fact, as we deconstructed a whole ton of these in our Hyper Casual Games course “Seriously Snackable”, the very essence of these games revolve around the core loop and really not much else.
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
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We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
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More of a general chit chat this week as we’re on holiday, or at least we were supposed to be.
Following an impromptu decision to take some time out as I was approaching burnout, it soon became apparent that our schedule was completely shot and there was no podcast ready, oops.
We made a commitment to show up each and every week, and not wanting to break our run so far, we came in, sat down and recorded.
As a small business owner, there’s never enough time in the day and there’s always something that needs to be done, it’s a never ending ongoing process.
However, there definitely comes a point when R & R needs to take priority and, although slightly broken, we are on a go slow right now and taking days away from the grind. It’s important.
We discuss all what this means to us, our accountant pains and I also managed to do probably the worlds worst maths equation ever, but hey, we showed up and that’s the most important thing, to us anyways!
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
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As July marks the one year Anniversary of our Game Dev Training Academy, we decided it would be nice to sit down and have a chat about our journey so far, and revisit the reasons behind why we decided to set up the Rising High Academy.
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
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For all you seasoned game developers out there, when September time rolls around and Apple releases new devices and iOS versions, more often than not we need to update something to ensure our old games still work correctly.
Whilst this can be a pain the you know what, it can actually be turned into a positive, and a time to revisit our old games, breathe some life back into them and bring them up to date.
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
Say Hello & Connect with us:
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Working under constraints, especially in a creative field, can be a challenging but highly effective way to build up your inventiveness. Often when starting out a project, setting some kind of constraint can force you into action and get your brain thinking in a different way.
For instance, it’s time to start a new game project. “Let’s now build a game.”
You’re at your workspace.. Cool… erm… yeah… so… yeah… erm…
Now, let’s imagine you put some constraints on the project:
“Let’s build a game with only 2 colours” or
“Let’s build a game in 48 hours” or
“Let’s build a game with only Triangles.”
By starting with some constraints in place, whatever they be can be a hugely powerful jump point to get those creative juices flowing.
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
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We had an interesting question come in this week from Podcast listener Stuart, so we decided to have a chat about just how essential having a website and press kit is for your games.
Stuart says:
“I’m half way through building my game and I’m starting to have a think about marketing. Do I need a website and press kit for my game and is it something worth doing anyway?”
Great question! We answer this and more...
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
Say Hello & Connect with us:
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Browsing around on the App Store has been part of our daily routine pretty much ever since we first started building our games.
The App Store is the playground we play in, and thus it’s super important to keep a keen eye on the market.
With the Store refreshing each Thursday, it’s always a bit of a buzz to have a good look around at just who the movers and shakers are, and what’s working right now.
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
Say Hello & Connect with us:
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This week we discuss our Top 5 hacks to ensure you stay motivated during your game development cycle. Keeping energised and focussed is critical to meeting those deadlines, however loose they may actually be.
We all struggle with motivation from time to time, it's inevitable, however you can definitely influence your own motivation if you can actually figure out what you want, set and commit to your goals and try and push through those difficult phases.
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
Say Hello & Connect with us:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
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Defining success for any mobile game can come in many forms. You may be just starting out in the business, and, by the very fact that you have built a game and released it on the App Store, can be in of itself defined as a great success.
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
Say Hello & Connect with us:
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As game developers, shipping your finished game, whether you’re a hobbyist or part of a professional studio team, the goal you should always be heading for is to finish.
We all know that at times, life just gets in the way, but there are a certain number of pitfalls you can fall into very easily, and often unknowingly, and this can hinder you releasing your game and often stop dead your project dead in its tracks.
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
Say Hello & Connect with us:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
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So what exactly is game polish? It’s all in the details, details, details. It’s all about mastering the art of fine tuning and learning to be slightly obsessive. Mix this with a sprinkle of OCD thrown in for good measure and you’re on your way to becoming a polishing Jedi.
The truth is, polishing your game could in theory go on forever, and the urge to tweak details over and over can seriously impact on you actually releasing your game. So, as game designers / game developers, just when do we know that we’ve done just the right amount of polish?
We’ve put together some of the most important tweaks for you to hone in on during your game polish process. For us, these are the solid bedrock of polishing stages that we do on every game we release and ones we recommend you do too.
Visit us for the Full Show Notes & Links to all the Resources:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
We truly do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen and hope you got some value.
If you enjoyed today’s show, it would go such along way if you hit that Subscribe button.
We’d also be forever grateful if you’d consider sparing just a quick minute to Leave us an Honest Rating & Review.
We always read each and every one personally and it always makes our day!
Thanks so much, Kevin & Jilly.
Say Hello & Connect with us:
Website: RisingHighAcademy.com
Facebook - Twitter - Instagram
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So you’ve built your game, spent countless hours crafting each and every pixel, polished it to the end degree and now you’re ready to launch it to the world! But, just how are you going to make money from your brand new mobile game?
You should be thinking about monetising your mobile game from the moment you start to build, and this can have a big effect on how you actually end up constructing your projects. As game designers and builders, it would be absolutely fantastic to serve up our games with no ads, but as small indies, we need to earn money!
Ads are a necessity in our world unfortunately, but if done with the least amount of intrusiveness and a little thought towards our players, we can still monetise well. Let’s go over some of the popular monetisation methods open to us indie game developers today and ones we’ve used ourselves in our hyper casual / snackable games.
Simple eCPM Equation
eCPM = ( Cost Per Mile Historically ) How much per revenue per x1000 impressions
Example:
The eCPM is $5.00.
For every x1000 times the ads are displayed, you receive $5.00Interstitials
Interstitials can be shown after game over, so for an endless running game these serve purpose from the off. Just how many game overs is acceptable? In theory you could show these after every single character death, but this obviously depends on how ‘brutally’ hard your game is. If your character dies often, your player is going to end up being bombarded with ads and this will almost certainly end in a game ‘delete’ from their device. As a rule of thumb, interstitials set at every 5 - 7 game overs is much more digestible and a little more friendly to the player.
Banner Ads
UI Screens - A great way to monetise for both portrait and landscape games and typically set at the bottom of the screen.
In Game - Again, typically placed at the bottom of the screen for portrait games Most players, including ourselves find this method of advertisement the most unobtrusive and ‘comfortable’ just make sure you don’t unfairly place your in game play button too close to the banner placement! Players will feel cheated and you may well end up with another delete on your hands.
Banners can be set at the top in a portrait game depending on what your gameplay is all about, for example, if you have a downwards scrolling or static play game. It’s possible to make banner placements on a landscape game as long as they don’t effect gameplay.
When we’re thinking of ideas for a new project, being game developers of mainly casual, snackable games, we will always try to head for a portrait version if it fits, because of the great benefits banner ads offer.
Rewarded Videos
Players love rewarded videos because they offer complete choice and remind the player that they are in total control over whether they watch an ad or not. The option to watch a short video for the reward of double coins, or time, or an ‘instant’ character or world unlock, is utterly at their command. Most players will embrace that ‘get it now’ offer, where some will prefer the challenge of completing objectives of the game knowing they have done so without a quick fix.
Rewarded videos can potentially increase retention in your game, players know there is a way to achieve game advancement without the grind of playing for weeks to get the same rewards. It can be the difference between getting bored with the grind and deleting, to unlocking a great new character or power up that refreshes the interest to play further into the game.
In App Purchases
These come in many forms, buying characters, coin packs, gem bundles, power ups or upg
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Your icon is arguably one of your most important assets when it comes to your App Store presence. It is usually the first opportunity to impress potential customers and therefore makes it critical to your overall branding.
When speaking about icons, there is without a doubt some best practices that should not be ignored. Often when we think of icon design, less is usually more. However, the icons main purpose is to fully encompass and capture the very essence of your game.
Ideally, this should be achieved with as few elements and colours as possible. The best rule of thumb, and at the very core of great icon design, is that you should try and head for a single element that is clearly visible when viewed on the device itself.
Highlights, Quick Wins & Takeaways:
From personal experience, and as you’ll begin to notice as you delve deeper into your research tasks, the vast majority of featured games in any given week, will all have an extremely strong and clearly defined icon.1. Try to use a single element and keep it simple
2. Choose a Limited Colour Palette that fits
3. The importance of scalability
4. Avoid using words
5. Avoid using Photo's
6. Get some feedback!
Full Show Notes and Resources:https://RisingHighAcademy.com
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Defining Fun is certainly and tricky one for sure. What is fun for me, could quite possibly not be particularly fun for you. So how do we define fun when it comes to Game Development and in our games?
Rather than thinking of the word "Fun" in the traditional sense, we should be thinking about our Games as being an experience, to which fun is an aspect.
For instance, let's say we have built a Horror themed game where there's spooky moments, creepy music and scare jumps a plenty. Whilst there may not be too many "fun" aspects, it's still completely enjoyable. When we boil everything down, each and every game we'll ever play will consist of training us in some aspect.
We'll learn mechanics and gameplay systems, master timing and "hand to eye" co-ordination. The achievement of completing levels can be motivating and engaging and have positive reinforcing side-effects.
These, and many more aspects, amount to certain levels of fun even if we don't really realise it. Use our list below to see how you can weave the 5 Factors of fun into your game.
Highlights, Quick Wins & Takeaways:
1. Overcoming Challenges and Problem solving
Challenge > Adversity / obstruction > Goal - Satisfaction
2. Leveling up / Progression
Achievements / Rewards
3. Interest and curiosity
4. Wonder and surprise
- The unknown is fun - ( check out Episode 7 - The Top 10 ways to add Surprise and Wonder to your games )
5. Balance / Pinch Points
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Creating a Mood Board is an essential starting point when you're starting out on any new game / project.
What is a Mood Board?Simply put, a Mood Board is a collection of images that you find inspirational, aspirational and aesthetically pleasing all collated into 1 central document that you can refer back to throughout your game development.
Using keywords or phrases into google images, other search engines are available, start to cherry pick images that you like the look of, like the colour of, like the shape or form of or give you some kind of enhanced emotion.
It could be the way the mist sits eerily over the grass tops, the shadows that a candle makes when it flickers, anything that you'd love to encapsulate in whatever type of game you're building.
Of course, that all sounds super fancy, but what about my "Snackable" / "Hyper Casual" mobile game I'm building?
Your Mood Boards can take any form you like. It could be inspiration for level design, UI / UX concepts, the colours of platforms. The important part is to start collecting reference points so you can always revert back to and not to lose ideas and feelings.
You shouldn't overthink this and gather everything and anything at this first stage, you can always discard some of the images later. It's all about creating that melting pot of inspiration.
Highlights, Quick Wins & Takeaways:1. Helps you to set the right tone to reflect the mood of your game.
2. All your ideas into a visual form & gives you something tangible to look at.
3. Helps to visualise and potentially determine your games colour palette.
4. It helps you not lose interesting images your find.
5. Central point of reference for your games inspiration.
You can see an Example of One of Our Mood Boards over at:
http://www.RisingHighAcademy.com
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With just a few precious seconds to grab players attention, your screenshots need to pack a punch and convince them to hit that get button. As the old adage goes, " A picture is worth a thousand words" and for your App Store screenshots, this is most certainly true.
This week we discuss how to create enticing, informative and exciting screenshots so you can master the art of how to fully show off your games potential. Our Top 10 best practices for designing your killer visuals will guide you through all the do's and don'ts when it comes to creating App Store screenshots.
Whether it's including Marketing Strap lines, highlighting key aspects and features or even creating a mini tutorial, our Top 10 Tips and Tricks for creating awesome App Store screenshots will boost your conversion rates and get you more people downloading your fresh new mobile game.
Highlights, Quick Wins & Takeaways.1. Always show off the most exciting parts of your games
Think Action Shots, Explosions, Movement "Swooshes".
2. Include Characters if you have them.
3. Add banners to explain to benefits and features.
( 3 to 5 Words is usually best, keep it short n snappy )
( Think about translation + professional services ( Gengo & Onesky ) )
4. Consider using a story or tutorial sequence to explain the gameplay
5. Add variety, make sure all your screenshots are different
6. Use all 10 screenshot space now available in the Apple App Store.
7. Don’t use stretched images.
8. Avoid including UI screens unless they’re interesting or look really cool.
9. Remove Banners and Status bars.
10. Ensure you Check for Typo’s and Grammar.
For More Information:
https://www.RisingHighAcademy.com
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This week we discuss the plans and goals any Indie Game Developer should follow when making games for the mobile platforms. Be it the Apple App Store, GooglePlay or Amazon, our advice is always the same whether you're an absolute beginner or have been making games for a while, head for that Publishing Deal.
There's a multitude of benefits for teaming up with an established mobile game publisher when launching your titles, the most arguably is traffic. Without a solid User Acquisition ( UA ) strategy in place it's going to be a struggle to drive downloads to your game and to get noticed.
Any Publisher worth their salt already have a vast, daily active network of players within their existing portfolio to cross promote and market your game to, this is vital especially on launch day. They'll also have solid connections within the industry especially with the platforms themselves.
They can get your game in front of the people who make the decisions on the games that will be featured on any given week on the stores ( Thursday is the main refresh and launch day ) and often have contacts in the press to get that all important exposure. They bring experience you can learn from as for the most part know what will, and will not work.
You'll also typically earn more money from your mobile game. With downloads comes increased revenue and it's also not uncommon for the Mobile Publishers to have special deals with the Ad Networks to ensure the highest eCPM possible for the ads that show. Although you are sacrificing a decent percentage of the total revenue of the game ( usually it's a 50 / 50 Split ( after any UA costs ) you'll still earn way more due to the downloads achieved.
It's a win / win situation and we strongly believe that you should be striving to build a game and sign a publisher deal within your first 10 games if you're serious about building games in the mobile space.
Highlights, Quick Wins & Takeaways:
1. It sets your standards high right out the gate - Average generally won't make the cut.
2. Forces You to do your market research to increase your chances of building games the publishers want.
3. Publishers usually have great relationships with the Platform Feature Teams ( Apple App Store, GooglePlay, Amazon ).
4. They have Traffic and can drive downloads - An established cross promotion network of players to market your game.
5. You’ll typically Earn more - A smaller slice of a much larger pie generally works out better.
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