ContributionsDevelopmentGame DevelopmentIndieOnlinePostmortemPR & Marketing

Bioludus: Don’t Quit, Be Inspired Instead

January 16, 2016 — by Industry Contributions

main

ContributionsDevelopmentGame DevelopmentIndieOnlinePostmortemPR & Marketing

Bioludus: Don’t Quit, Be Inspired Instead

January 16, 2016 — by Industry Contributions

Bioludus is an Israeli game studio, founded in 2012 by Aaron Thurgood and Ivan Chernykh. Located in Jerusalem, they have been releasing mostly casual mobile games like Crazy Alien Snake, Godric Runner and Rock Paper Scissor Puzzle! The studio is working and evolving as Aaron tells more about their approach to creating games. 


Why Bioludus? Well, it’s simple. Bio means changing and alive while Ludus is “games” in Latin, and we didn’t want to focus solely on games, choosing entertainment in general, so it fit what we decided to deliver to our customer.

We can say our first game didn’t start in the usual proper way to make a game. It started with an engine and rules in space that were changing daily. It was a new idea without any example of how the user will react to it.

We took classic casual games and tried different graphics so they could be more attractive for…Click To Tweet

We took classic casual games and tried different graphics so they could be more attractive for today’s users. And
since such games were relatively new, we weren’t sure who our audience would be. Games like Farmville proved they weren’t only for kids, and we wanted to make our games not too easy. Today’s runners are a bit easier than their predecessors but we knew the ending would anyway be the same - so we worked a lot on making the game at least 5 minutes longer than usual before a user loses.


ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER THIS AD FROM SUPERSONIC
d1
The devs first checked the game on all possible devices, and then added graphics.

Then we did all possible technical checks on all devices we could reach, and only after this we started to add the graphics, step by step. This game is about an astronaut collecting stars in space regardless anything that gets in his way .But only due to technical problems we had to delay that project and used the same engine to create a new and special version of the classic game of Snake.

inspiration: Classics

Games have always been in us, and Snake as a classic felt like the proper game to start our company from. We knew there are users who loved Snake too, and that ensured us in the need of a new smartphone touch version for this classic game.
At first it worked very well but the graphics weren’t the way we expected since the quality of mobile ads had evolved so much in 1 year. This is why we did a reskin for the Snake world and for the character as well, and here it is!

i1
A modern remake of the good old Snake game.

We also improved and updated the GUI and UX since the expectations of the users had also evolved. We kept track of the games that were trending, and that also gave insights on the way the audience is used to play. This is how we managed to meet all the changes.

The importance of marketing

We understood that marketing is crucial. We were a bit in denial and believed too much in the viral effect of games and in the users’ desire to share their plays, scores and medals. So we didn’t see many downloads. We did it all in our free time and without revenue, and understood we had to do marketing by ourselves. This takes even more time than the production, and at the same time we had so much more ideas popping up - like small casual games and skins that we wanted to create.  But the product already on air needed to be pushed. We got to a stage when we had to decide how to properly evolve. We brainstormed it almost daily and then hired a team that would work on our main project marketing only. In order to be on the same page, we put together a brief and short business plan.’

b1
Do not be too sure in the virality of your game. Pokikex was the first game in the stores that the company made.

Casual Connect and Indie prize

Casual Connect has been a great experience for the reason that we could hear and meet teams like us,
sharing the same dream. The quality and variety of games is so great that it only make us more
happy to be a part of this industry.

12109326_918779934869727_965747707407549314_n
The Bioludus team at Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2015.

others are better? get inspired!

If you see other products, games and graphics, and feel bad that your product is not of the same level as theirs, then quit. Instead, the best thing is to learn to be inspired and try to reach the skill level of those a few steps ahead. Like we do: we realize other games are more solid and have better graphics and animation, so we fully dedicate ourselves to the product and understand we won’t be rich from it the next day.

fantasy_screen_preview
The new edition of Rock Paper Scissors Puzzle! is coming soon.

The Bioludus team is now happy to have the option to choose what’s best for their company. They have collaborations with other industry players who suggested working for them. Meanwhile, they go on developing their own games and promise more in the stores soon, including the Apple App store. All their creations are now available through GooglePlay. For the new games, the team decided to use the same engine and improve the gameplay by adding small features that won’t take long to make, so that users would play the game and not think the company abandoned it to make some others. 

They also took the Rock Paper Scissors Puzzle! and decide to make it a full fantasy game. It’s mostly the same, but they made 4 worlds, a new character for each sign, a storyline and special bonus effects,  as well as points for the way you solve the puzzles.

Comments

Industry Contributions

logo
SUPPORTED BY