On Off Games is a team of highly motivated and passionate game developers and artists who came together with one aim – making global hyper-casual game hits. On Off Games would like to share their experience with you in this regard. In this article, you will find out 5 steps to design a successful concept.

Founded in May 2021, On Off Games produced a successful game in a short time. Of the 10 prototypes they have built, 4 received successful metrics, and their team expanded from 3 to 8 people in the first year. Currently, On Off Games is preparing to achieve more significant successes in the next year, together with new strategic collaborations. Let’s take a closer look at those 5 steps they want to share: Trend tracking, Store tracking, Ideation & Gamification, Right decision and Adaptation.

Trend Tracking

To understand the trends correctly, On Off Games break them down into a few categories. Like social media trends, pop culture trends, and mechanics trends. 

  • Social media trends: you need to learn to use other tools effectively, especially TikTok, Youtube, and Meta. You can adjust your algorithms for this, like using keywords that gain popularity among large audiences. 
  • For popular culture trends, follow series, movies, comics, anime, computer and console games, talk shows, challenge programs and memes. 
  • You should identify mechanics heavily used in top download lists for mechanics trends.

Store Tracking

Many studios monitor app stores once a week and think this is enough. However, it would help if you devoted a few hours to this work daily because hundreds of new games are released daily. In that case, you are partly following the social media, popular culture and mechanic trends because many studios are releasing new games based on these trends. Thanks to this, if there are points you missed in the trend research you made before, you can reveal them all here. For starters, it’s worth transferring newly released games to charting software with all their data.

By studying this data, you can make predictions that will increase your chances of creating successful games.

Ideation & gamification

On Off Games can address the issue of idea generation with three basic options. 

  1. For your first option, you need to see if the trends can be gamified first. If the game is simply self-explanatory and your team has enough art and development skills, this concept can be considered gamification-friendly. 
  2. For the second option, you need to think of game ideas that you can combine with the above trends and the rising mechanics you removed from the store follower.
  3. Your third option is to challenge your imagination. By brainstorming with your game developer, it would help if you discovered mechanics that have never been seen in the store. Try to create ideas by designing these mechanics with the player experience in mind and appealing to a broad audience.

Correct decision

To have fewer regrets in the future, you need to navigate your studio’s limited production capacity properly and discern the concepts you rely on the most. It would be best to jot down even your silliest ideas in a file with their references, mechanics, wow moments, and other data. So you can create your database. This method has both pros and cons. If you can afford the cons, the reward for this method will be high.

The downside is that you will have to spend a lot of time preparing this document. The plus is that since you follow all the data, you will have the materials at hand that can combine the right trend with the proper mechanics. This way, the probability of creating a game where you can enter the top chart lists will significantly increase.

Adaptation

Everything you do up to this stage is enough. However, it may be more helpful in some exceptional cases if you do not stick to the concepts you set out at the beginning. Because pivoting to a more significant, newer, more promising concept can bring greater success to you and your project.

Don’t be afraid to take a risk!

Help Ukraine

 686