Upopa Games started out as a small indie games company. Following the success of their first game, Hopeless: The Dark Cave, they were acquired by ironSource, and now form ironSource’s in-house game development studio. The team consists of Niv Touboul, art director and head of the games studio, lead developer Or Avrahamy, and game designer and analyst Gideon Rimmer, Their fresh creation named Mutation Mash is a crazy puzzle game where you need to match radioactive animals to make new mutants.
radioactive animals
Mutation Mash is a fast and crazy puzzle-action game. The player’s goal is to sort and match sets of radioactive animals, which merge into crazy mutants. The mutants can be collected and upgraded to produce “Goo,” an in-game currency used to unlock and play more levels. Mutation Mash was released globally on January 15th, 2015 and is currently available on Android through Google Play.
A Match-Three For the fast
The concept for Mutation Mash was born in 2012, shortly after the three of us started working together in what eventually would become the Upopa Studio. We wanted to create a skill-based puzzle game that required the player to think quickly, in contrast to many other puzzle games, which give players plenty of time to strategize.
Mutation Mash is a match-three style game, designed on a grid-based layout where mutants arrive from the right side of the screen. The basic gameplay involves dragging and dropping the matching mutants to the correct place on the grid, thus creating identical sets of three mutants that eventually merge into larger monstrosities, clearing spaces on the grid. The varying starting layout and the speed at which mutants arrive determine the difficulty of each level.
The Evolution of Mutation Mash
In the first version of Mutation Mash there was a player-controlled character, which had to grab the mutants and drop them in the designated lane specified on the grid. This player-character was also the basis for our strategic in-app purchases model: collect (or buy) in-game currency and use it to acquire new abilities, power-ups, and in-game items.
We started working on the game part-time. After a few months of development, we found out that while many game testers enjoyed the art, design and visual aesthetics, there was a consensus that the character control system was too cumbersome. We also initially created the game without an end to allow continuous gameplay, but after a while that gameplay felt repetitive.
hiatus and comeback
Just when things seemed “hopeless,” along came Hopeless: The Dark Cave. We created the prototype for this game over a three-day period, and immediately recognized the game’s potential. We decided it was best to shelve Mutation Mash for the time being, and devote our efforts to supporting and developing Hopeless.
It was almost two years later that we returned to the development of Mutation Mash. Our time away gave us a new perspective to re-approach this larger-scale project, and we had matured as a team, with a larger knowledge and experience base. We were ready to tackle the game again.
Energy: wait to regain, or buy more
From initial player feedback we knew we had to remove the player-controlled character. But that also meant we needed to find an alternative business model, and it had to be based on in-app purchases (IAP). Since our primary goal was to reach a wide audience and connect with as many gamers as possible, it was clear the game had to remain free-to-play.
So we decided to try a different approach: unlocking levels with collectible in-game currency, which we named “Goo” in the Mutation Mash world.
The idea was to take the familiar concept of an “energy system” and make it more flexible and balanced according to the player’s skill. For most games that use an energy system, one unit of energy equals one life, but in Mutation Mash the energy cost of a life or level rises as the player progresses. Since energy is scarce throughout the game, the need for energy, or in this case Goo, would give the player two options: either wait for more energy, or pay to get more.
In Mutation Mash, we treated the levels as items that could be purchased for increasing amounts of currency. At the end of each level the player is awarded with a mutant, which is then automatically placed on the player’s “farm”. The farm is basically the player’s Goo production facility. Upon level completion, each mutant collected produces Goo at a fixed rate, which can be upgraded. The Goo is then used to unlock and play additional levels. Throughout the game the rate of Goo production increases as the player progresses.
What Went Wrong
When we first released the game, players did not immediately have the positive response we expected. Many loved the gameplay and found the levels enjoyable, but were confused by the farm and Goo production aspects of the game. We had created a “game” side and a “currency collection” side that were too divided.
The game’s economy underwent several balancing iterations, but no matter what we tried, the same two inefficient outcomes always arose. The initial level progression was always smooth, but when players would reach more advanced levels, either they didn’t have enough Goo to try more than one or two levels a day, making the game frustrating to play, or they had too much Goo and never had to wait, thus unlocking game content too quickly and reducing motivation to pay.
Furthermore, we viewed the mutants as “collectibles”, assuming that players would want to uncover, discover and obtain the 19 different species of mutants. In practice, this aspect of the game wasn’t sufficiently integrated, nor was it properly explained to the player, which created some confusion.
Data-Driven Decisions
Joining the ironSource family has been the driving force for Upopa’s growth and development. Being part of ironSource has given us access to several key elements that positively impacted our development process.
Goals: As indie developers, we tend not to outline a clear set of goals for how our game will perform. The experts at ironSource helped us identify and set goals. Keeping our end-goals in mind throughout the entire process helped make sure we stayed on the right track and recognize if and when we weren’t.
Analytics: Every game today should be supported by data. Although this might seem daunting or unnecessary to indie developers, it is a crucial component to analyzing the success (or lack thereof) of the game, and learning from it. In our case we were given access to ironSource’s sophisticated in-house business intelligence tools.
Marketing Budget: To use an analytics tool, you need players. The best way to acquire them (other than sheer luck) is a marketing budget. Initial exposure is crucial to gather enough data to make the right decisions to optimize the game as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Having the proper tools to measure the success of a game is not only beneficial to the process but necessary for go/no-go decisions. Mutation Mash wasn’t meeting the goals initially outlined, so we collectively decided to take a break and invest our time and energy elsewhere.
Back to smaller projects
While we have a number of ideas on how to improve the game, the really big takeaway from the process of working on Mutation Mash was how it changed our outlook on how our small team should operate. We decided to shift our focus to smaller scale games, more akin to Hopeless. These can be produced, tested, and analyzed quickly to assess whether it’s worthwhile to continue improving the game, or whether it is wise to move on to another project.
The main lessons we learned from creating Mutation Mash
It’s critical to decide on a sound economic model. Removing the player character was a necessary design decision, but it meant changing the game’s economy in ways we weren’t sufficiently prepared for. If you’re trying something new, test it thoroughly before launching, and be prepared to make radical changes if necessary.
Have a realistic scope of the project. For complex game economies, make sure your team has the time and the tools necessary to run tests and balance the economy before the game’s release. Our team learned through Mutation Mash that the scope of the game may have been too grand for a team of three who were simultaneously working on supporting our previous games.
Trial and Error: Playtest, playtest, playtest. If you think something is working properly in your game, test it to see if the players think the same. If you think something isn’t working, don’t waste your time trying to fix it. Move on to something else, and get rid of it as soon as possible. In theory this is something every game designer should know, but most of us (the Upopa team included) sometimes have a hard time letting go, and need to constantly remind ourselves to respect the audience’s opinions.
All in all, knowing when to let go and stop working on a game is hard. Actually doing it is even harder. Whether you’re an indie developer or an industry giant, sometimes the best course of action is to cut your losses and start working on a new project. It’s something that every game developer today will most likely experience at least once in their life.
“We learned a lot about ourselves and Upopa during the development process of making Mutation Mash”, the developers conclude. They are currently working on their next game, while staying true to the indie roots. “The next game to come out of Upopa will be a fast-paced action game, which no doubt will be fun and addictive—so stay tuned!”
Meanwhile, Mutation Mash can be already downloaded for Android, and an iOS version is coming soon.
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