“Hi! I’m Sebastian and I developed Flutterfly — a side-scrolling color matching game currently available for iOS. Guide colored butterflies as they migrate and match colored blocks. I’m thrilled to have brought Flutterfly to Casual Connect USA, and as part of that process the folks at CC asked me to say a few words about the app’s backstory”, said an indie dev Sebastian Conley in 2014 after Casual Connect, as he shed more light on the app’s creation.
PLAYERS WANT TO WIN
I created Flutterfly originally as an endless side-scroller mainly because I wanted to finish an app quickly and not spend five years on it. Why design 100 levels when you can design one, am I right? And of course the endless platformer/flappy/runner is a tried and true genre all unto itself. But there’s just one problem: You never win.
It’s not a problem for games like Flappy Bird. I think the frustration of dying repeatedly is what spurs players on in a game like Flappy. It’s addictive masochism. But that sort of hardcore die, die, die experience flew in the face of my app. I discovered too late that people really liked these butterflies. They didn’t want them to die! And when they died, they felt bummed and didn’t want to play anymore. I needed to let people win.
So I spent a lot of time developing levels. It has been a lot of extra work, but I think the results have been worth it. Playtesters are finally experiencing joy with the app. Saving butterflies is compelling. Winning is compelling. And it keeps people playing. Besides, I don’t want to be the guy forcing people to kill all their butterflies, right? Because that’s what an endless game is. It’s inevitable death. The lesson for me is that I had a happy game on my hands — not the casual equivalent of Team Fortress 2 (God, but I do love me some Team Fortress 2).
SCREENSHOTS MATTER
Flutterfly 1.0 looks great in motion. I made a trailer that I think showcases it nicely. But stills? Not so much. I had this idea I’d be Jony Ive and use this minimalist solid color approach. Helvetica everywhere. The problem is this makes for really, really boring screenshots.
So I’ve gotten to work adding particles, flares, glow effects and a nice handwritten font. It makes a world of difference. The game is much more beautiful, both in playmode and in a still screenshots.
When you’re an indie dev and no one’s heard of you or your game, screenshots are THE first thing people will look at. I’ve learned the hard way that your screens have got to be amazing. There’s a chance no one will watch your video — let alone give your game a try.
ONE MECHANIC AT A TIME
At its heart, Flutterfly is a pretty simple game. Or so I thought. Match butterflies with colored blocks. What’s so hard about that?
But sometimes as a dev it’s hard to see your own game clearly. If I’d been honest with myself I’d have admitted that there are actually many different kinds of blocks to match: avoid black ones, match identically colored ones, and hit the correct side of a dual-colored block.
In Flutterfly 1.0 I’d spent a good deal of time on a lengthy tutorial hoping this would be enough to get players comfortable. But it wasn’t and they weren’t. They were confused. I failed to realize that my game really had more than one mechanic. In a way it’s semantics, but I think it’s helpful to think of a mechanic as any one thing a player does that gets a unique result. Matching a black block is different than matching a colored block: It’s a different mechanic.
As a result, people were confused playing Flutterfly. There were too many mechanics thrown at them all at once.
Flappy Bird can get away without a tutorial and without levels. Press the screen once and the bird goes up — that is the only mechanic in the game.
But even an ostensibly simple game like Angry Birds has several mechanics happening. If you think about it, the game is more than just a slingshot. Tap the yellow bird and it goes quicker. Tap the blue bird - it splits apart. Hit ice and it shatters. Hit wood and it breaks. Pigs with helmets are harder to kill than pigs without.
And the player has to learn and master each of those new elements. And if you don’t want a frustrated player, you need to introduce new mechanics one at a time.
In Flutterfly, what was once a one-shot tutorial is now a series of 15 levels. The player learns the same tutorial content, but it’s spread out over time. Now the player is engaged and is having fun as they learn. Moreover, they have time to master each new mechanic before moving on to the next. It’s no fun trying to learn to ride a bike and swim at the same time. (For more on this, see Daniel Cook’s amazing presentation on feedback loops.)
The lesson here is: Players can only master one mechanic at a time (a notable exception being if the mechanic is so well-known it’s part of the vernacular — like running and shooting in an FPS. WASD. We all know that.)
The revised version of Flutterfly launched about a year ago and also didn’t do very well :(. But I feel like I learned some important lessons, several of which I’ve shared in this article. Moreover, I’m glad I put in the extra effort in order to create a game I felt like I could be proud of. I think a last hard lesson is that it’s difficult if not impossible to get second chances with a launch. So next time I’ll make sure to polish the heck out of it before releasing version one.
“And that’s what I’ve been doing with my latest game Dr. Steambock’s Amazing Contraption of Wonders which I describe loosely as haunted, steampunk pinball. I’ve tried to incorporate all the lessons I learned in Flutterfly’s failure here”, Sebastian says. And he has come to terms with the fact that the most he can ask for is to try to create a game that he’d love personally. Whether other players, or the market or the world will love it as much as Sebastian does remains to be seen. And in the meantime he’ll simply get to work on the next one!
