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I got bored again and started to look at reddit for a partner to make some mobile games. I only worked on this project for a total of 3 weeks here or there, so I'll catalog the weeks as such. Even though this was only a small project, I learned a lot....
Week 1 was scouring /r/INAT for a partner. Eventually, I found someone who was very eager to start on a new project after his last partner "got too busy" (red flag). His games all seemed to be semi-functional and had 500-1k downloads, which I thought was impressive. So, we partnered up. From the get-go, he seemed like the "idea guy" because everything he contributed was just text and I was responsible for interpreting his gibberish into mechanics and a prototype (red flag). He wanted to make a hyper-casual game, which I knew about but hadn't play all too many.
The first thing I did was do some research on what makes a hyper-casual game. From what I gathered, they are games that espouse a few key elements:
Mobile game only
Extremely simple input and mechanics - typically, you get away with a just touch
No menu screens and minimal UI
Level-based with increasing difficulty
Extremely repayable miniature game loop that can be expanded through additional mechanics
After dissecting many of this reddit partner's ideas, from shooting basketballs, to bounding ping pong balls, we settled on 'toasters shooting bread'. I had to massage his idea a bit, but I ended up with this prototype after a day.
As you can see, the initial prototype worked nicely enough that I could go on. You could hold input and the toaster's tab goes down to denote power. The toaster is ejected in the angle and direction of the goal toasters. In this version, there are 3 in a row and that's it. I used this prototype to determine the number values for force, rotation, and distance for what feels good. It took a couple of hours to figure out these values, but that I used that time to get pretty good at this simple game. I applied them to create a simple random generator for levels. The generator would just ensure there were X more toasters at a certain distance apart.
My 'partner' had yet to contribute anything but disgruntled suggestions about what needed to be done or what looked weird. I intentionally made everything black so that I could hide the lack of art and make it apparent that I was awaiting assets. Eventually, he came through and provided a very basic model of the toaster. The toast I used was just a random asset I found online under a free license.
Week 2 began and I wanted to expand the infinite toaster paradigm to be level based (because that's what hyper casual games do). I created a simple level scriptable object that tells the level generator how to lay out the subsequent toasters. I made a template of 5 levels and began designing out a difficulty progression.
Additionally, although the code supports X more toasters, I decided that there should only ever be 1 goal at a time in order to reduce clutter and focus the player.
Finally, in this version of the game, 10 shots in a row were required to complete a level. The basic UI displays your progress and current level. I experimented with a few UI's that were more intricate with information, but this minimal one seemed to work best and is seen in a lot of hyper casual games, so I stuck with it.
At this point, I sent an apk to my 'partner' so he could try it for himself. The next morning, he informed me that he sent videos and started submitting the game for testing to his contacts in the casual market without telling me anything about it (red flag). Normally this would be great, but I confronted my 'partner' about contributing more to the project first before going on to deliver it as his product. He was outraged and decided to end working with me on the game. It was later that I found out he published the this version of the game to the Apple store. Thankfully, I had proof and got him banned from /r/INAT. Code thievery is not okay with me, even for such small projects. This is the #1 I learned from this project -- to be more protective of code that I write, even for dumb little apps!
After that incident, I tweaked the numbers eventually deciding that 4 shots in a row was the level completion requirement, and added 2 small mechanics. On top of having increasingly separated toasters, levels would eventually have more rotated toasters as well as oscillating movement. I expanded the 5 levels to 40 and created an "infinite" mode once you get past those initial 40 levels. Lastly, I added Untiy Ads integration so that every 10 attempts you see a short ad to continue (although, since the game is so small and loads quickly, it's faster to just close and re-open the game -- don't tell anyone!).
At this point, because of the aforementioned incident, I lost interest in the project since there was no art coming in. That is, until someone saw this and approached me with his concept. I am being more protective with the source code now, but his concept was amazing. The one image he provided was 1000x's better than the contribution of the first reddit partner. And that's where I'm currently at. The project is on hold until I can get the assets to convert the base into this concept, but if it can happen, it would elevate it to the max! I'll give the artist some time, but if it doesn't happen, I'll commission an icon for the generic one I have now.
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