Saturday, August 13, 2022

Game Portfolio -- AlphaCat

AlphaCat

  • Release Date: June 2015
  • Current Availability: Game removed from stores in 2018
  • Release Credit Category: Marketing Credit
  • Company: KingsIsle
  • Business Model: Free-to-Play
  • Category: Mobile Game
  • Genre: Puzzle, RPG
Personal Development Notes
  • Fun Fact:  Typically there is a cap to the number of ads you can watch in a day in exchange for energy in a game, but when we launched AlphaCat you could watch ads infinitely for some reason. Because of this, I played all day and all night to beat the game in a weekend. After that it was simply logging on to attempt to get an epic character and playing through the Invasions feature.

  • Job Highlights: One of my favorite social media campaigns was the use of the hashtag #KnowYourCrewMembers on Twitter. It was a chance to show off some of the fun characters in the game.

    As it turns out, it can be very difficult to get reporters to write about your latest and greatest mobile game, so many times I'd have to reach out to the roads less traveled, for instance, helping craft a top ten tips article for Heavy.com, reaching out to mobile gamers on the Touch Arcade forums, doing interviews with Scifi sites, and rubbing elbows with good ol' bloggers. 

  • Best Memory: I loved watching people play AlphaCat in person at the SXSW Gaming Convention! The game at the time was in its beta phase, and there was one particular girl who would not stop playing it at our booth. She had found "her game," which made me very happy. Sometimes in Marketing you'll pay to have customer profile sheets made up for your target audience -- This girl would have been a perfect profile for Alphacat.

  • Other Comments: This will forever be the game that I "gave an arm and a leg" to promote thanks to a viral video gone bad where I dressed up in an AlphaCat costume and accidentally fell out of a tree during filming, fracturing an arm and a leg in the process. Yup. That's a true story. It was great going to the SXSW Gaming Convention, but being there on crutches in a huge convention hall with no handicap parking nearby . . . not so much. 
     

Sample Gameplay:

2 comments:

Tipa said...

That was a fun game! I like games that require a little thought before you move. I'm not sure how far I made it in the game; I know I didn't make it to the end. I didn't know about the watch video thing; I typically don't watch videos for energy in mobile games, and maybe that's why I stopped playing this one. I played, the game stopped me from playing further, and then I just never remembered to go back to it.

So many mobile games have the mechanic where they want me to stop playing them, and I oblige them, and then six months later I see the icon on the phone and wonder what it is. I know that was the case with the endless clicker game you guys had. I left my iPad running it for days, and then I needed the iPad for something else and never played again.

Stingite said...

I'm glad you had a chance to play this one, Tipa!

Usually when I'm playing a free-to-play mobile game, I'm also doing something else at the same time like watching TV, so hitting play on an ad and turning my attention elsewhere while it plays in the background is second nature to me at this point. hehe.