Mooncake Mania
Roles: Sole-developer
Responsible for all elements including: Concept, Prototyping, Game Programming, Game Design, Game Art/Animation, Publishing, Trailer Production, Cross-platform compatibility
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Premise: Hire rabbits for your factory and make enough mooncakes to buy the moon.
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This game was conceptualized, developed and published in 5 weeks by me for Sproud. While initially developed for web desktop (WebGL/HTML5), the game turned out pretty fun and polished. So I spent some time optimizing and writing it to support mobile, building it as an application and releasing it on Android PlayStore and iOS AppStore. It can also be played as a standalone executable for PC, making it my most versatile game, supporting 4 platforms at once with a single project codebase. It was designed for long-term maintainability and I developed a robust workflow that allowed me to easily update the game on all platforms.
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The idea was to make a game for the mid-autumn festival and was inspired by a GIF my colleague sent me. I also made the scene above and the lighting and composition was very well received, so I added some animations and it eventually became the game's Main Menu. Given the very short timeline of 5 weeks, I went for the idea of a casual game that is easy to pick up. The game mechanics are inspired by Cookie Clicker with idle and clicking elements, while containing strategic elements. I designed the rabbits to be adorable and gave each rabbit a unique animation to inject life. Each rabbit also has a unique ability.
I am a fan of Tower Defense games but 5 weeks is insufficient to create something so elaborate, however, I designed the rabbits to have interesting synergies with one another, meaning to maximize the rabbits' productivity, you have to be strategic in their placement. This resulted in a significant improvement to the depth of the gameplay and player's decision making.
It made such a drastic improvement from the early prototype seen above, where rabbits and entities were automatically placed at fixed positions.
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For example, blue rabbit boost production of yellow rabbits but lower the pink rabbits. Green rabbits increase food quality, at the cost of worker speed.
I like my games to have a progression system, so I added Factory Upgrades, which increase various efficiencies while also providing a cosmetic boost to your factory when purchased, to give even casuals a sense of reward. My favourite is the Spy Rabbit upgrade, which you can see above is the black rabbit that drops down from the sky to help deliver your mooncakes!
I also implemented an online leaderboard using Firebase, for competitive players to submit their highscores. I remember sharing the game with colleagues in the office on a Friday. At the end of the day, they started competing on who could complete the game the fastest. The mood and vibe in the office was really high that day.
I then prepared the material to publish the game - creating cool-looking screenshots, even scripting and producing my own cinematic trailer, and creating the certificates for Android and iOS. This final phase is not any easier.
After some difficulty with XCode and my horrendous ability to use a MAC, it was finally done and to my surprise, the game was approved and went live within a week of submission!
It feels really good to finally see your app up on iOS and Android (above respectively). It is no easy feat to make apps so that excitement you get from completing a project is a feeling I hope never goes away even as I build more apps.
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While I had built my own apps prior to this, they were always in teams. This was my first project where I handled all aspects of the pipeline from development to publishing, from start to end independently as a solo dev. It is also thanks to my colleagues for the enthusiasm in playtesting the game as it progressed, allowing me to take in their feedback to further improve on the game mechanics and amplify the fun.
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I put a lot of passion and thought into the game, just like I do in every game I made. I inject lots of trivia and light-hearted humour. Do you know that the rabbit names generated in the game are real? Every single rabbit has been named after the employees at the company I made this for, and I think it is a nice touch to include them all - from interns to the bosses.
Bonus fact: At one point, the game would crash when clicking the spy rabbit, so I fixed it and wrote a funny prompt that now appears when you attempt to click on the spy rabbit:
Below is me speedrunning the game in 4 minutes so you can glimpse at the gameplay if you are unable to play it. The game is not meant to be completed so quickly. For comparison, the average player takes about 10-15 minutes to complete the game on their first attempt. But I'm the developer so I know useful tricks, the best winning strategy and shortcuts keys. :)
That's all folks!