Started by family and pushed forward with the help of friends, EZEme is a young, ambitious, and independent company located in Russia. With five full-time employees and the help of outsourcing, they work together to create their own games. The Rainbowers is their latest product. Andrey Alishevich, PR and Marketing, tells us about the game’s development.
How It All Began
EZEme developed gradually. We are a few mobile platform games enthusiasts with a wide geography. It all started with two sisters, Olga Wese and Tatiana Babiy, who saw the growing popularity of the app industry in 2010. Almost every social group was introduced to the mobile games market at this time. Inspired by a number of titles and possessing experience in the field as well as resources, the sisters decided to start EZEme. They got in touch with a group of friends who helped propel the studio forward. From then on, it’s history.
Since we are a small company with a handful of employees, we all work on almost everything, but we do have primary duties. Due to the way the company was raised by family and friends, our working environment is friendly and informal. This way, we are less stressed out, as there’s no such thing as scolding. When you are this small, you can carefully choose your employees and make sure all of them are passionate about what they do. That’s what we are: a small group of individuals who grew up to be a team, driven by shared passion, same interests, and aspirations.
The Birth of The Rainbowers
The Rainbowers is a fun and brain-tickling puzzle game, taking place in a fantasy world named Rainbow Valley, where rainbows are edible and a hairy Rainbower monster family feasts on their drops. The gameplay is easy to pick up and goes into the action straight away, although the game politely offers the player a chance to master its mechanics step-by-step. The goal is to combine several drops of the same color into one bigger one so it falls from the spider web into the monster’s mouth. Players can’t drag drops across the game field, but can only merge neighbor drops of the same color. Each monster has a glass jar belly, which indicates what color he needs. In case you’ve combined a drop of unsuitable colors for any monster on the screen, you lose. Basic dynamics suggest that you touch a drop and move it around with a fingertip. A number of more complex special drops are explained upon their appearance and make the gameplay more fun and diverse.
The first thing we made for The Rainbowers were the monsters themselves. Our initial concept was wrapped around The Rainbower family, which we tagged as simply monsters at first, but that underwent a change. They now look a bit different and the initial concept for the game was different, but we fell in love with them. We had several feeding techniques which would be the future base for game concept. Alongside that, the focus of the game was the transparent water color bubbles which we wanted to make as pleasant to interact with and look at as we could. To allow the player to feel a better connection with the monsters’ lives, the family was given a name and a furry, likeable appearance. Also, we specifically chose for the game to be a casual style with its bright colors and warm palette to resemble a fantasy world of magic and make it easier to execute visually.
For the game mechanics, we had few concepts in mind. One such idea was for the Rainbowers to cry and lose fed bubbles gradually, but there were more opportunities to lose the game this way. We even passed a high score phase, but this version wasn’t quite cutting it. The base key elements around which we started to make the game weren’t fit for it. We made an emphasis on pleasant interaction with color drops and the furry Rainbower family, and we realized all the game elements weren’t fit for a fast-paced gameplay. At this stage, we had to make some decisions, so we decided it should be a match 3-based puzzle game. We took a classical match-3 puzzle concept and made it look fresh. The game mechanics are pick-up-and-go simple so the player can focus solely on the puzzle solving. It’s quite competitive and will keep one interested throughout the whole game, thanks to an interesting combination of match-3 mechanics, authentic drop physics, and adorable main characters. We added some new elements, like spider web game field, as well as polished old ones. All of this made for unique and fun gameplay, but it was a long process.
Our goal was to re-introduce the general public to puzzle games, and have a project that looked unique and had fresh looking gameplay rules. Our budget for The Rainbowers was gathered from the profit of our previous projects, which limits us financially a bit, but it’s enough to keep us going on our own and pursue our dream.
The Rainbowers won the Top 5 Game Award at Casual Connect Kyiv‘s 2013 Indie Prize Showcase. You can keep up to date with EZEme by following their Facebook and Twitter.
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