Fantasy Fighter Arena (FFA)
- Release Date: July 2020
- Current Availability: Prototype Cancelled 2020
- Release Credit Category: Design Credit
- Company: KingsIsle originally -- Rights transferred to WIMO Games
- Business Model: Free-to-Play
- Category: Mobile Game
- Genre: Turn-based, real-time PVP Strategy
Personal Development Notes
- Fun Fact: A lot of developers at KingsIsle and WIMO Games are wrestling fans! Getting to create a game with wrestling themes was a well-loved choice by a lot of our developers. This would end up being the last game I worked on (that I can talk about) at KingsIsle before it was sold to Gamigo's parent company.
- Job Highlights: I was one of three designers on this game, and I was heavily involved in all early aspects of development: pitch selection, pitch deck creation, pitch presentation, and paper prototyping. During development I was also involved in tutorial creation, helping set up character templates, and designing basic AI interactions
- Best Memory: Brenton Sewell and I initially invented the first paper prototype of this game in an empty office space at KingsIsle. Eventually we got all the designers on the FFA team involved as we firmed up the rules and gameplay, but I'll never forget playing around with home-made pogs on a paper grid in that office with the other designers.
This was the first game where I could point to a character and say, I invented this character's kit and movesets, for example, Sparrow! Of course when I invented her, she was called Rhyna because she liked to charge at people like a rhinoceros. Art got ahold of her and she became a barbarian on roller skates, which was absolutely brilliant. - Other Comments: The best comment I saw about this game is that it played almost exactly like someone envisioned how Star Wars Chess would play, but with fantasy wrestlers. Unfortunately turn-based 1v1 PvP didn't grab the audience we were hoping to attract, and after a couple iterative changes on the game, it was cancelled in prototype. It's too bad we never got to add an announcer to this game, it would have been pretty hilarious to hear someone calling out moves like in WWE.
Sample Gameplay:
There are several mobile game Youtubers that snatch up everything new in the app store and play it despite having a limited release location of New Zealand and Australia. I loved watching Professor Showtime enjoy our game.
2 comments:
You say for a lot of games that it didn't meet the target demo. What was the target demographic for these games?
Couple things in that statement I should de-couple. First, you have a Target Demographic which is usually obtained through perceived competitor games, key search terms, genre classifications, and desired audience (It's a bit of Marketing/Advertising magic). Those players are then drawn to the game through spending money on targeted advertising. Second, metrics come from the data we collect while people are playing our games. We analyze actual metrics vs. our desired metrics. If things look good or great, then a prototype can proceed to further development milestones. If things are just meh or downright awful, then either we figure out why and give it another spin with a new twist or we move on to the next game.
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