Spirit Board Game

Challenge

Our team found developing a game for mobile devices an interesting experience, so we decided to try our hand in this field. We were looking for an engine that would allow us to adapt games to different mobile platforms and our choice fell on Unity 3D. To get comfortable with the technology we decided to start off with a small game. Aside from development we also did all the promotion work to grasp the whole cycle of the application delivery to the market.

Primary processes:

• Game concept development
• Creating art for the game
• Programming
• Promotion

While looking for ideas for the game we’ve made a research on mobile games market. We love a well-known Spirit board game and our research showed this niche was not too competitive in popular stores, so this idea seemed to be a smart choice. We made several prototypes, crafted an interesting gameplay and created all the art (images, music and sounds). Once the game was ready we engaged our marketing team into promotion of the app.

Solution

Our team has chosen Unity3D, a cross-platform game engine by Unity Technologies, for developing the Spirit board game. This game engine is used to develop video games for PC, mobile devices, consoles and for the web. Supported platforms are Windows, Android and iOS. Using Unity3D made it possible to create 2D applications which would run on both Android (version 2.3.1 and up) and iOS.

During the development of the server-side application we decided to use an open source library. We revealed a major bug in it while incorporating it into our project, so we fixed the bug and contributed the code to their repository.

We used a Continuous integration workflow combined with the best practices of Scrum and Agile. At the end of every iteration we had a demo build playtested by everyone in the office. People provided us with feedback and ideas and soon enough we’ve found the best gameplay mechanics.

The site was created using the most advanced responsive front-end framework—Zurb Foundation. Our engineers managed to create a simple UI/UX for the mobile app, and all the screens were designed by us. In designing the website we aimed for the goal of high search engine saturation and at the same time not pushing SEO content too far. As a result we’ve achieved the first SERP position when searching for “Spirit board ios” and the third position for “Spirit board android”. The most important part of it is the fact that we did not spend a dime on promotion by third parties.

Also we have developed all the audio tracks for Spirit board game.

We’ve prepared for the publication in advance, we’ve thought through materials for announcements and advertising and had them ready, we’ve developed ad strategy for social networks. Everyone interested in spreading the word about our game could get a special package with promotion materials from us.

Interesting Fact

Redwerk developers often use Spirit board when they feel lonely since anyone can ask the Spirit board about anything and get exactly the answer they’re looking for.