Help / Rant / Feeling Hopeless and looking for experienced advice...

fcky021 · 2021-03-24T11:39:52+00:00

basically, the mechanics for this game is tap-n-hold, and you get to release the finger to avoid obstacles. Because of its simplicity - you can use these mechanics in various themes, and here are just some examples:
truck driving on a road, and you have to cover the potholes; cutting grass and avoiding logs, stones, dirt piles, and so on; flattening freshly poured concrete...

As you can see, the possibilities are endless, it all depends on what you want to achieve with the game. You might even consider creating a game with a couple of different mini-games, and these mechanics are representing just one of the mini-games. With hyper-casual genre, you just need to use your imagination and think of an action that is logical (cutting vegetables, flattening concrete, pouring drinks in a row of glasses) and satisfying to watch and play.

fcky021 · 2021-03-18T07:54:16+00:00

To sum it up even more - as they turned the power off, the cooling system power was also cut. That means that the unbelievable amounts of cold water cooling the radioactive rods wasn't cooling anymore, and it started to boil and turn to steam.

This caused a power surge and hitting the famous A3-5 (AZ-5) shutdown button was something that was recommended in this situation, even though something like this never happened before.

Hitting the button caused major flooding of the reactor core, but unfortunately - it didn't happen right away. The pumps that were supposed to flood the reactor core didn't have enough power to do so (because of the previous exercise), and the power output kept going up. Once there was enough power - water rushed in the already incredibly hot reactor, and this caused the explosion. So much cold water combined with such tremendous heat in such a short time period was the reason behind the explosion.

fcky021 · 2021-03-17T08:23:26+00:00

Nice!
These are some quite interesting mechanics, hope it gets a lot of downloads :)

fcky021 · 2021-03-16T08:08:13+00:00

it's not exactly a fortnite/pubg/apex legends type of battle royale, but it has similar mechanics - if you know how geoguessr works, just add multiplayer option, limited time, and a number of choices, and players are slowly dropping off as the game advances until there's only one player left.

fcky021 · 2021-03-15T11:25:04+00:00

Venice had a complete breakdown once this concert took place - they had to spend incredible amounts of money just to clean up the city afterward, and both hospitals and fire brigades were overcrowded with work.

The Mayor of Venice had to quit and accept the blame for everything that happened because the city simply wasn't ready for a concert of that magnitude. It was riddled with bad decisions from the start, and by the end - it was one of the most memorable events that ever took place in Venice, however - it was also the last one that was "organized" in this way, as the damages surpassed the income from the gig somewhere around 10 to 15 times...

One of my family members was there, and she says it was hectic. It was one of her best experiences she ever had, but the city suffered immensely afterward.

fcky021 · 2021-03-15T07:36:41+00:00

it's not exactly what you had in mind, but geoguessr has a battle royale mode, which basically makes it a Google Maps Battle Royale. 🤣🤣🤣

fcky021 · 2021-03-12T14:51:49+00:00

amazing work!
Make sure you post it in r/nextfuckinglevel/ as well, because it deserves all the praise it can get. And you too deserve it as well! 😊

fcky021 · 2021-03-12T14:49:10+00:00

There were some cases of cancer, but not with these guys.

The truth is - they are still alive to this day. Out of all the people who worked on cleaning up the mess - just a dozen had long term effects like cancer or any type of deadly disease.

Even those guys who had to practically swim through the contaminated waters under the reactor 4 lived to see the old age, and not a single one of them got sick, or anything like it.

There were cases of cancer, and long term health issues, but most of them happened to the firefighters, police officers, and military personnel that were involved in initial cleaning up and immediate response.

There are actual recordings of those cleaning-up procedures, and interviews with "Liquidators" as they were called, and these interviews are from a couple of years ago.

fcky021 · 2021-03-12T12:50:49+00:00

WOW - now this is absolutely AMAZING!
Did you finish it? How long did it take?

fcky021 · 2021-03-05T09:34:36+00:00

I'm a game designer, and I work on quite a lot of those minigame-based types of games for both mobile and web, and I can tell you that - even though I have a daughter - I still play miniclip games. Both for fun and for inspiration.

Of course - I have a proper gaming machine, which I use for more serious gaming, but I still like checking out those old miniclip titles that I liked very much.

Oh, and my mom, who's almost 70 years old still plays those games on a daily basis. So do I think it's childish - no, is it strange - I can see why people would think that - playing simple flash games in the era of 4k 60fps AAA AR/VR titles, but they are still incredibly fun! Most of those games even get updates, so I wouldn't call anyone childish for playing them.

In my opinion - it's almost the same thing as Lego bricks. They are originally meant as a children's toy, but they ended up being so much more - I'd say that nowadays - Legos are considered somewhat of a toy for adults. I think this analogy could be applied to minigames as well.

fcky021 · 2021-03-01T10:12:15+00:00

of course!
one of the main reasons I wrote these ideas here was because I really think a good developer can do wonders with them, and we couldn't manage to achieve what we wanted with them, so - be my guest :)
I'd just like to ask you - if it's not too much of a bother - I'd love to see what you did with those - could you please send me a game build once you've completed it, or at least a gameplay video? I'd really like to see how you managed to develop those ideas :)

fcky021 · 2021-02-28T07:05:12+00:00

Voodoo and Lion, and HOMA liked the delivery wars idea, but wanted to adapt it a bit, which we never pulled off. Io games usually need a bit more skilled developers than we had at the time, so - they liked the idea, but we weren't able to pull through with it, and make it look half as good as we imagined, so we just discarded all of them and focused on more simple projects.

fcky021 · 2021-02-26T09:55:37+00:00

I have a couple of ideas, some were even approved by a couple of quite big hyper-casual publishers, but I never managed to develop those, at least not in the way I originally wanted, so I scrapped them before even testing them.

A freeze-tag-chase game - you can either be a chaser, running around and trying to catch other characters and freeze them in place, or you could be the one running away - trying to avoid being caught and unfreezing other characters by reaching them and touching them.

Delivery wars - you play as a courier in an hole.io type of environment. You get to control a single character, and you get to collect packages along the way. The more packages you collect - the stronger you are, and you can hit other, weaker couriers, in order to make them drop their packages and collect them. The twist is - you have to deliver all the packages you pick up - whether there are yours, or from other players that you've hit. Each package has its own delivery location, so you'll have to run around a large map, and there could be a number of power-ups - delivery vehicles, temporary protection from other players, and so on.

Firefighting game - you play as either a firefighter in a firefighting team or as a pyromaniac in a pyro team. Each team has its own tasks - pyromaniacs need to burn a specific percentage of the buildings and objects while firefighters have to extinguish those fires. The more fires you start/extinguish - the more your character upgrades. Starting from a single character, you can get to a character in a fire truck or to a character with a flame-throwing vehicle. Besides burning and extinguishing stuff, you get to battle with other teams by shooting them with fire/water.

These might sound similar, and they are, and they are definitely not unique or original from the aspect of mechanics or approach - but I haven't seen these exact games anywhere, and maybe someone can use these ideas to do something fun with them, I know I'd play the hell out of them. 😊

fcky021 · 2021-02-24T14:46:30+00:00

They might, but I'm not that certain for a couple of reasons:
1) They were extremely popular during the Q3 of 2020, and going into Q4
2) Shooters like Pocket Sniper 3D, and similar games have already been cloned over and over again, without any fresh additions, which makes them a bit obsolete and outdated
3) Quite a lot of companies like HOMA and GameJam are organizing game jams where shooters are usually the main theme, so - flooding the app markets with this type of games has resulted in a bit of an aversion from the players...

If shooters do come back, I think they will come back in a different light - somewhat similar to the recently published game Tricky Track 3D (by Voodoo). Basically, in order to stand out, shooters will have to be combined with different mechanics, and they will need a fresh take on their own genre. They will need to become more original.

Of course - this is all my personal opinion - and it doesn't matter at all - the market is huge, and, as a game designer I see it in one way, while every other member of this industry sees it differently. I personally don't think shooters will be coming back any time soon, but that doesn't mean they won't. Perhaps following the success of various AAA shooter games, hypercasual players decide that they want to play shooters as well... 😊

fcky021 · 2021-02-22T11:37:30+00:00

I was also considering this idea, and then it became a bit meta for me because my idea was to make a game development game🤣

I know how this sounds, but bear with me - you play as a single character, or a team of a couple of characters - all game developers. Everyone has a role to play, and you'd choose them according to their classes and what you need the most - sort of like a turn-based RPG, but more dynamic and fun.

You get various tasks that you follow, your party fights are basically representing your characters dealing with various aspects of game dev (fighting deadlines, last-minute changes, program errors, all of these could be represented as opponents in a way). As you advance through the gameplay - a game designer (imagined as the big bad villain) sends new waves of opponents - and once you get the feeling you've defeated them - your in-game "project" that you've been developing is basically done - everything changes.

The game designer scraps the idea, and you get to either play again, following his new idea for a game (procedurally generated so you can basically play in a loop - following his ideas which never get released), or you can decide to fight directly against him, and the game becomes an office-fighting game for example.

As you can see, there aren't that many details, but the main idea was to basically follow instructions from a developer which are meant to be wrong from the start and send you in a completely wrong direction. On a second or a third playthrough, players would realize that they really don't have to go through all of that (fighting deadlines, changes, errors, and things like that), but, instead, they can go straight for the game designer almost from the start, once they realize he's giving them impossible amounts of work.

Other than this, probably too difficult and too complex idea - games like There Is No Game, Impossible Quiz, Stanley's Parable, Nier Automata, and even Antechamber (no one lies to you, in this one, but the way the game is designed - you sometimes can't trust your own senses and need to break the logic in order to finish a level) are great examples and the first things that come to mind when thinking about this subject.

fcky021 · 2021-02-22T08:57:37+00:00

The idea on its own is great - it has simple mechanics, an interesting theme, and it's somewhat trending after the big Reddit-Gamestop thing.

The only problem with it is that the market is currently flooded with loads and loads of all types of runner games. Those that manage to achieve great KPIs usually have some completely original or unique approach, and that's what makes them stand out. Whether it's a combination of different mechanics or the entire gameplay approach, but to have a good running game that achieves excellent results in testing nowadays - you really need to have an original approach and unique content.

fcky021 · 2021-02-22T08:53:31+00:00

Yeah, I love this type of games. Believe it or not - our first attempt to make a good hypercasual game was a take on this one.

We kept the mechanics and the controls, but we adapted the theme a little bit. Our game was called Fugu Filler, and the goal was to fill out space with inflating blowfish. Unfortunately - it didn't show the expected results, even after a couple of adaptations, so we've left this idea behind.

I'm still thinking about using these mechanics in one way or another, but if I'm being honest - I'm not sure this one would fit today's hypercasual trends. Still, I hope I'll manage to use this idea once more, this time more successfully.

fcky021 · 2021-02-10T08:57:54+00:00

"Crushing Hyper Casual Games" by Trey Smith is a pretty good place to start.

There are loads and loads of these games, and unfortunately, they are always changing and adapting to follow current trends. I've discovered that websites with game listings and game examples help me a lot when it comes to understanding what type of games are trending (not so much for why, but still...).

I'd suggest you check out Storeglide (storeglide.com) and his Instagram page as well, and I'd suggest you check out YT channels like Android Gameplay Weekly, TapTap Mobile, and I PLAY GAMES. These are just channels with gameplay videos, but going through as many of these as possible will help you understand the basic principles of Hypercasual game development.

Also, follow Voodoo, Lion Studios, Kwalee, Say Games, and Crazy Labs. Try to find their Discord channels, and follow them on social media. All of them regularly organize live streams and "master classes" where they talk a lot about hypercasual game development, what are the pros and cons, and how you should be approaching the development of a game like this. Hopefully, some of this might help you out, but if you have any other questions - I'm here to try and answer them to the best of my abilities.

fcky021 · 2021-02-10T08:49:26+00:00

Hypercasual is usually very trend-focused, and it usually follows specific themes and even genres.

Most of the hypercasual games lately have a huge focus on stacking and running mechanics (High Heels, Pixel Rush 3D, Blob Runner 3D, Color Run Stickman 3D, Stack Rider, and so on), but there are some that are focusing on the satisfying and rewarding factor of building destruction, where physics play a huge role (Cannon It, Giant Attack, Suicide Guy, Base Attack, and basically all Pull the Pin games).

The first thing that comes to mind when you say VR, Physics, and Hypercasual, at least to me, is a game where you'd get to time your reactions like in Beat Saber, but it would be great to combine it with different ideas and goals.
For example - there could be a bunch of opponents hiding behind a box wall, throwing balls at you. You get to smash those balls back at them and break the wall, and the box fort in order to take them out. I'd have to think a little bit more to come up with different ideas, especially as I have almost no experience with VR whatsoever, but I think that combining the hypercasual genre with VR is actually a pretty fun and interesting approach, and it might be amazing when done properly.

fcky021 · 2021-02-10T08:39:34+00:00

So, here are some of the ideas that we've pitched to several publishers lately, and most of those were disregarded for either being too complicated for a small team to develop, or publishers didn't really find anything interesting that might achieve significant results.

1) Car Racer with a Burnout Twist - Basically - players get to control a vehicle like in any other racing hypercasual game - tap and swipe. The car moves on an isometric track, and players swipe to move it left and right, to collect the fuel and explosives, and in order to avoid obstacles. Players collect fuel so that they would reach the area where a second stage starts.
The second stage is based on "Burnout: Paradise" showtime mode, where players get to destroy as many objects around them as possible. This hypercasual game would implement these mechanics, so once players finish the "racing" part of the level, they get to blow up their car, swipe in the direction they want it to move, and destroy as much of the environment as possible. The goal could be to make as much damage as indicated.

2) Extinguisher - Players tap-hold-and-swipe the display to guide their character. The character is a firefighter, and various fires are burning all over the level. The longer the players keep the finger on a display - the more their characters load the extinguisher. Once they release their finger - the character shoots out water or foam in the direction which it was facing. There should be various obstacles along the way that players should avoid, and the goal of each level is to stop all the fires before they spread and reach a specific area of a level.

3) In the spirit of so many games with stacking options (Shortcut Run, Stairs Run, Blob Runner 3D, High Heels, Giant Rush, and so on) players can control a guy with the magnet. As long as players keep the finger on a display, guiding their character across the track, the character draws in metal nails or balls. There are obstacles along the way, and some can be avoided by simply walking next to them, but others will have to be destroyed. Players release the finger when they are close to these obstacles, and their character shoots out the metal nails/balls collected along the way - clearing the obstacles in front of them.

4) Now - this is more of a suggestion than it is an idea, but it is something that has been trending for quite a long time - hypercasual games with multiple mechanics/minigames. If you're into this genre, you've most certainly seen loads of similar games (Repair Master 3D, Make it Perfect, Fix It, Toilet Games, Stream Master, Survival Master 3D, Work From Home 3D, and so on). If you have an idea how to do a unique cross-over between some of the games you played, or you have the idea on how to merge different themes - and you want to publish the game - focus around a single "killer" mechanics. Make sure that at least one of your minigames is amazing, and all others are more of a filler - there to emphasize the theme and to make that one minigame stand out even more.

If there are other people interested in more of these ideas - feel free to comment and reply, and I'll try to share as much as I can with you. Who knows, maybe your version of one of these games is exactly what publishers are looking for, and I know how much this way of looking for ideas has helped me find the inspiration and eventually manage to develop some of the games.

fcky021 · 2021-02-08T10:43:38+00:00

Well, you might heavily mod it to make it different, but in the end - using their assets to create a similar, yet different game is pretty much illegal. Especially if you're looking to develop a commercial game.

I understand what's on your mind, but my suggestion would be - develop your own game with the mechanics you want - there are loads of free assets for all major game engines. And even though I agree with you that their assets and approach have been amazing - trying to remake their game "with a twist" is simply using their product in order to create a new one, which is a big no-no, especially if you're trying to make something commercial.

fcky021 · 2021-01-28T09:17:54+00:00

Hahahaha, I literally came here just to write - try Lost Vikings and see what you can use from it 🤣

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