🥅 👨🏼‍💻 🚴🏿 Kinda Heroes - Devstory Cute Chibik RPG ⚛️ 👍🏿 ⚔️

Hello! Having quite a serious experience in developing games and applications, I was afraid for a long time to take up RPGs. I mean a full-fledged role-playing game, and not a casual clicker or idler. So, I will share with you a story about how to quickly make your RPG in 1 month, with blackjack and everything else.

About unsuccessful attempts

To begin with, in the piggy bank of dead projects I already have two whole RPGs. You need to be well aware of how much time and resources it will take to fully develop. And since there was no objective understanding of this, the projects got up. The first sound idea was to reuse the accumulated achievements. In order to somehow recapture the time spent, we decided to publish a character editor with sprites from our games in the Unity Asset Store .

It went well, made several variations in different settings. And then we decided to completely switch to the development of assets, since the development cycle is short, and the money is paid right away) 2 years passed, and last summer we began to notice games made from our assets. Moreover, some are quite successful (by the standards of indie). And we thought if we could make our own RPG from our own assets? Once again, quickly, in a month. We made a plan and started to work.

How to surprise a player?

So that the game does not turn into a typical clicker, we decided to implement mechanics with timings from such adult games as Dark Souls or Monster Hunter. Evasion, movie sets, two-handed charge, and all that. It turned out pretty unusual. Because of this, complexity has grown greatly, the hero can be beaten in a couple of strokes, if you do not dodge and do not put a shield. They immediately decided to simplify the game by abandoning the open world. I had to, hopefully temporarily, implement a classic casual track with levels. In each level you need to defeat a dozen enemies and fight with the boss.

About inventory

There is nothing much to tell about the inventory system; it is classic, as in Diablo. All clothed equipment is displayed on the characters. Unfortunately, this is rare in modern casual RPGs.

Where are you stuck?

... and so it goes unnoticed 10 month development. It turns out that even having 7 years of experience in game development, it is very difficult to evaluate your strength. Of course, in parallel I had to deal with assets and other projects, for example, Pixel Studio or 0xWarriors .

I'll start with the hardest part in RPG. And no, this is not graphics, equipment or plot. This is a game balance and testing. It is completely impossible to calculate or simulate an infinite number of parameters - monsters, equipment, locations, skills, player progression and so on.

Data visualization greatly simplifies the work with them. For example, we use Google Sheets with equipment icons.

The first solution is to reduce everything to a small set of key parameters, thus making all other parameters their derivatives. For example, we assume that an abstract weapon of level 1 has damage of 100. Next, for each type of weapon we prescribe damage coefficients, for example, 100% for swords, 120% for axes, 80% for daggers, and so on. The same thing can be done with monsters. That is why in the table above there are no specific parameters of the weapon - only the type and level. The game itself will calculate everything else.

The second solution is modeling. You need to write a bot that will simulate the actions of the player. He will buy equipment himself, learn skills, and then go to battle and collect statistics. Thus, you can roughly select the curves of the main parameters and adjust the complexity of the game.

The next stage is game tests. You need to integrate analytics and track the behavior of players. Who buys what, where it gets stuck, and where vice versa - too easy.

In general, I will not bother you much) If someone is interested in the details, ask questions in the comments.

At the moment, we are already getting ready for Early Access in the game stores Google Play , Steam , App Store, creating all kinds of promotional materials, PR and talking with publishers. Do not forget about the community, so we are active in Reddit , Discord , VK and other social networks.

Briefly about the technical part

We use the Unity game engine and our own Fantasy Heroes: 4-Directional Character Editor from the Unity Asset Store. For monetization, we use the services “out of the box” - Unity Ads and Unity IAP . For analytics - Unity Analytics and Yandex App Metrica . To be able to flexibly adjust the balance and complexity without updating the game, we use Unity Remote Config(very convenient thing). We worked separately on optimization - we managed to reduce the size of the APK (only x64) to 37 megabytes (mainly due to atlases and maximum compression of graphics and audio files). For comparison, the size of the very first assembly was about 1 gigabyte. Unity text logs about assembly are very helpful for analyzing file sizes.

About launch

I’ll try to write a separate article about the launch, because it is still just beginning. Will our RPG fail or will it succeed? Will we find a publisher or publish ourselves? Himself interesting) Thank you all, good luck!