OVERVIEW

Crobia: Enter the Petridome is a multi-player battle arena arcade game designed and built by my team.

The beta version is available on Itch.io.

Process

Vision

In a dream, I was playing an 8bit arcade game that not only had simple gameplay, but also somewhat advanced battle mechanics. It was an extremely fun experience, but nothing quite like it exists in the market.

Thus, I pitched it to my development team and we decided to bring it to life.

Initial research

By conducting interviews with subject matter experts, I determined a list of party games that had particularly fun game mechanics.

Next, I picked the ones that somewhat aligned with my vision and performed in-depth competitive analyses by trying and pinpointing features and mechanics that made them special.

Some of these games include: Super Smash Brothers, Gang Beasts, Hammerwatch, Children of Morta, Gauntlet, Killer Queen, etc.

Project planning

In parallel with the research, I also planned the project by formalizing a project roadmap, mapped and prioritized features, as well as set up a Trello board, schedule, and sprint process.

Prototyping

When it came down to the prototyping phase, I first quickly designed low fidelity wireframes and sprites to start developing the basic game in Unity.

Very soon, I was able to start basic testing with users to validate the overall concept of the game.

After receiving positive feedback from users, I did additional research and ideation to develop the high fidelity art style, themes, UI mockups, and sprites.

Testing & iteration

After we got the game to a MLP state, I did massive testing sessions with dozens of users (I needed many testers because it is a local 8 player game).

After each session, I administered an in-depth survey to all the users and debriefed them for further analyses.

By doing this several times, we were able to really perfect the mechanics of our game.

Reflections & next steps

Version 1: Scope too hot

In hindsight, our first version of this game got to a point where we could not scale it any further. This is due to issues during the scoping process of planning our project roadmap. With the idea of just developing a game for us to have fun, we built it in a way that is impractical to grow into a business.

Although it is a fun game with very unique mechanics, it required a lot of set up to play, which most users are not willing to do.

Version 2: Scope too cold

Eventually, we decided to rebuild the game to make it online for 40 players and with even more fun features (based on the feedback we received from v1).

I proceeded with the same process as v1 and designed a game that was bigger, better, and more scalable with an actual business and monetization plan.

However, this version, in the end proved to be too large for our small team to accomplish.

Version 3: Scope just right

By learning from the scoping issues from v1 and v2, I scoped it much more realistically for our next interation.

Currently, we are building our v3. By analyzing the feedback from iterations in the past, learning from our mistakes, and personally learning Github and Unity development, we are now on the right track to bring my literal dream into reality.