Froop - Published Hypercasual Mobile Game
From ideation to production
.jpeg)
My Role
Froop was my first full-fledged product. I wanted to see what I was capable of at the time and it was always my dream to create a video game for the world. I worked on all stages of this game, through ideation, wireframing, coding, designing, animating, and marketing. It was an exciting and proud product to work on.
Tools: Unity, Sensor Tower (ASO), Appodeal (Monetization), Fabric (Crash Analytics)
Skills: Front-End Development, Back-End Development, UI Design
Background
I have always wanted to create a video game. I wanted to create an app I could claim as my own and share it with the world. Since I was at the beginning of my programming career I wanted to create an app that I could handle. I decided to go with creating a mobile game, where I could stretch out my skills in design and have fun with the solo project as well.
Problem
The main problem was I did not know how to program with a game engine, much less know about designing or creating the art for a game. It seemed a bit overwhelming to think about.
Solution
I was determined to go through with my dream of creating a game. I spent the next few months watching tutorials of work with Unity a game engine and researching on UI design & video game design.
Implementation
Genre
First I needed to know what type of game I wanted to make. At the time (2018), the most popular type of game on the app store was a genre called Hypercasual, a simplistic game with a minimal UI design that was easy to pick up and play immediately. Since I did not have much experience with art or UI design this was a perfect genre to start working with.
Ideation
I read about the most popular hypercasual games and what made them successful. I read to visit flash game websites, in order to see trending games that were only available on web browsers that could have the potential of being translated to a mobile version. I decided to visit multiple popular flash game websites and jot down the trending games. One particular game was simple yet fun to play with and the comments suggested they like the game as well as being a nice "short fun break". This is where I found a game that would later become the basis for Froop.
Some popular flash game websites I visited for research
Learning
Even though I had a general idea of how the game would work, it wouldn't mean anything if I didn't know how to actually create in Unity. I spent the next month watching tutorials in Unity and tinkering with all its tools. I created multiple mini-games that would explore an aspect of the game engine. Working on:
-
How to move characters
-
Manipulate object physics
-
Weaving scenes together
-
Creating side scroller and learning to reuse objects to save memory
-
Animating objects
-
How to save game data
All of these tools would eventually help me to create Froop.
Design
While I was learning how to work with Unity, I was also learning about UI design. I need a theme for my game. Something that most people were familiar with. The idea of the game was a small circle inside a big loop. I spent days trying to figure out a theme for the game. That is when I decided to use fruits as a theme, where each level's theme would revolve around a fruit. This way I could have a diverse color palette for each level and have users excited to see what the next level would be about. This is when I also came up with the name Froop = Fruit + Loop. This would a nice, short, and recognizable name to be found in the app store.
Example of different fruit levels: Plum, Squash, Cherry and Grape
Production
With the theme, I began coding each level. The problem, however, was that I needed to engage the users. I wanted to make each level feel unique. That meant I needed to learn different tools in Unity and change the code each time to introduce a new game mechanic. For each fruit level, I tried to create a mechanic that was similar to a fruit's characteristic. For example:
-
Grapes:
-
Have two loops to represent multiples grapes
-
-
Squash:
-
Completely redesign the level to mimic a squash game
-
-
Plum:
-
Change the size of the loop to mimic the width of a plum
-
Other times, if I could come up with a mechanic that related to fruit, I would just tinker with Unity's tools to see what could be interesting such as manipulating an object's physics or animating certain elements to surprise the user.
In the end, every level was unique. So much so that the last level was an actual RPG game, that completely changed the whole premise of the game.
Monetization
With the game completed, I wanted to the game be a complete project, so I wanted to implement ads as well. After some research on top ad platforms, I decided to use Appodeal, an ads platform with a Unity SDK.
As for when to show ads, after some user testing with friends, families and strangers I decided to use this scheme:
-
After 4 losses in a level an ad will show up
-
Every 2 levels a reward ad option will pop up, allowing the user to watch a 15 second ad in order to gain currency
-
Every 2 levels an ad will appear
This approach seemed to be the best mix between monetization and not getting the users frustrated on the amount of ads in the game
Some popular flash game websites I visited for research
Appodeal Homepage
Example of Appodeal's dashboard for Froop
User Testing & Feedback
After completing the game and implementing ads, I created a test flight of the app. I invited friends, families, and random users. I beta tested for a month, receiving continuous feedback based on game design, bugs, and overall experience. In the early stages, I used Google's Fabric for crash analytics and also add trackers to each level to gauge how difficult they were for users.
Thanks to the analytics and user feedback I conducted continuous iterative development to polish the app on each integration to the point that I felt it could be released to the world.
ASO (App Store Optimization)
With the Froop's launch in sight, I needed to figure out how to make it stand out on the app store. There were thousands of Hypercausal games on the app store at the time, this was good and bad. Bad in the sense that I needed to distinguish my app. However, it was good in the sense that I could learn from these apps by understanding what their app store page looked like and what certain keywords or phrases they were using. I spent the next week learning and teaching myself about ASO and these were my main takeaways:
-
Utilize A/B testing to understand which screenshots worked
-
Create a list of words to add to the description to increase the search rate
-
Understand top trending apps and what similar keywords they used amongst themselves
I made sure every word I put on my apps store page, the description, the title, the keywords. and the promotional text was essential to maximize search rate. To aid me with identifying keywords to use I used Sensor Tower, a mobile app store marketing intelligence to identify what keywords top apps are using in their ASO and to view the most used keywords. Using their service, I was able to come up with a list of keywords to use in my app store page and strengthen my ASO for Froop.
Example of Sensor Tower being used to identify keywords for Among Us
Localization
With Froop almost being ready for release I wanted to make sure that the game was able to be played around the world. Although the apps store has the ability to release your app worldwide I wanted Froop to be user-friendly. Therefore, I first search up countries that download the most mobile games and cross-referenced that data with the most used languages in the world. With this data, I decided to localize my app for six languages: English, Mandarin (simplified), Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The localization would enable Froop to be more user-friendly and improve the user experience for countries that Froop has been localized for.
Froop localized for Mandarin (simplified), Spanish, Japanese and Portugese respectively
Potential Publishers
I knew that most of the top-rated hypercasual games at the time were not self-published but were published by various mobile app publishers. With Froop ready to launch I wanted to see if I could potentially get a publisher to publish Froop in order to have the best exposure and to have people with experience in marketing handle getting more users to play the game. I contacted the most popular mobile game publishers and got two responses, one from Kwalee and one from Lion Studios.
Kwalee
They were interested in publishing Froop and wanted to conduct a user acquisition test on the game. They wanted to observe the user retention of the game and use their data to predict how will Froop do if they went through with the publication. I provided them with a promotional video for Froop according to their specification. They tested the game in the US, Brazil, Argentina, Netherlands, Philippines and Vietnam.
Unfortunately, they could not move forward with publishing the game. "It came back with a very high CPI that sat over the $1 mark with the D1 retention sitting around 23%. Sadly this means that the game is expensive to acquire for with people not staying as long as we would like once they are playing" - Kwalee Representative. Although it could not move, it was a great experience to see how a publisher thinks and what I could do if I wanted to create another game in the future.
Lion Studios
I was thrilled to be contacted by Lion Studios as they publish many popular hypercasual games. A Lion Studio's representative named Chris scheduled a meeting with me over Skype. We chatted about how I came up with the idea of Froop and my passion for creating apps. Unfortunately, he could not move forward with publishing Froop similar to the reasons of Kwalee, he knew that the game may underperform in the hyper-casual market. I understood his reason, however, I knew I wanted to understand the market more and he was more than willing to give me tips on what to improve for the game and explain the core demographic:
-
The demographic for the hyper-casual market is mostly females in their mid-30s, mostly mothers.
-
They are mostly busy with their children like to spend their few minutes of free time enjoying a brief game
-
-
I could improve Froop by including a joystick icon in order for users to play the game with one hand.
-
Perhaps Froop could more marketable if the theme was something centered around clothes in a washing machine, or perhaps trying to get a baby to sleep by rocking the Loop. A theme that would be more recognizable for females in their mid-30s.
Chris's tips and general information on the market was surprising and made me understand what a future game would need to look like to succeed. The meeting was definitely helpful and made me further understand the mobile gaming market.
Results
The results of releasing Froop were beyond what I had imagined. The total amount of downloads was 431 across iOS & Android with an average rating of 4.7!. This was amazing and it was great to see the total amount of downloads increase every day. Each new review was great to see and helped me to improve the user experience for new users.
iOS download analytics for Froop
What I Learned
Froop was an incredible project to work on. I learned more than I had anticipated when I first started it. What started off as just an idea became a full-fledged app that was being played around the world and even sparked the interest of high-profile mobile game publishers. Overall, I learned what it takes to not only create a mobile game but the determination necessary to follow through with a product idea. I hope to use this experience to create even better apps and further improve my design skills.
