The Outer Space - Game

Try the Beta

Occupation/Position held

Full Stack coder, game designer, game developer

Main activities and responsibilities

I took care of the research phase, the development of the game mechanics, testing of the game, game's structure and its entire technical implementation

Description

In this concept we have decided to develop a game. We then carried out a series of investigations and tests to understand which games were suitable for mobile phones and which path to take. This research will lead us to develop The Outer Space.

We decided to continue the project, starting from the App Statement “Develop a strategy game for casual gamers who want to entertain themselves in their free time”. And the main reason behind this choice, is a data we collected: about 3349.8 millions of downloads of strategy games were made during 2021, and now among them there’ll be also the ones of our game: The Outer Space. In TOS you’ll be a rookie spaceship pilot of the Earth’s Royal Guard, sent into the unknown “Outer Space” in order to extract resources from the other planets and reinforce the Earth. Of course, this won’t be an easy task: you’ll have to fight against the mysterious enemy armies in order to complete your mission and help the Earth.

But let’s have a look to the main features of our game: first of all, you’ll pilot your spaceship throught the space in four different and challenging missions, in which you’ll be able to interact with the world in various ways. You’ll have to avoid the asteroids and destroy them, to conquer the planets with your lander and take it back after you’ll have defended it, but most of all, you’ll have to fight against the ordinary enemy ships and the boss, that will try to defeat you during the planet’s conquest, and to destroy them, your best ally will be your spaceship, that you’ll be able to choose between 48 different versions.

The great ideas and assets that we had were amazing, but we didn’t consider the main difficulty that we found during this process: to translate this into a real, playable game, considering that 5 weeks ago we had 0 knowledges about game development. Our main boss was not an enemy spaceship, but the frameworks, particularly SpriteKit. After hours and hours of tries and study, we succeded to implement the core gameplay mechanics, and in order to fullfill its lack about the menu creation, we added also UIKit and the storyboards, and then AVFoundation for the music and sound effects.

About the graphical aspect, these are the palettes of the spaceships, decided thinking to a colored, flat and simple design, perfect to avoid the common general confusion of the space games. We created with our hands also each other asset, like the planets that you can see on the background, the asteroids and the lander, and we decided to design also two versions of a logo, one more complex, and more more simple, perfect for some complex in game views. We decided for a light and minimalist UI, with simple controls, because you just need two fingers and your phone in portrait mode to play the game, and we avoided overwhelming animations and particles, and finally we also introduced the possibility to customize this UI, because the user, in the setting menu, can switch between a free shoot mode and a shot modality with a button, and the movement stick can be placed both on right and left. Finally, also the music and sound effects were entirely composed by us.

Then, founded a resolution to our struggles with the frameworks, we landed to the internal testflight with a build which was pretty ugly: you could just fly, shoot and destroy the asteroids. Then, in a week, we switched to the external testflight, where we implemented the planets and their conquest, the enemies and new assets. The test was pretty good, we collected almost 350 sessions with just 31 crashes, so we got also a lot of feedback: first of all, the users expressed their opinion about the shoot and the possibility to perform it both with or without a dedicated button and with a long or single tap, they asked also for a faster rate of fire, for a general bugs and crash fixing, and someone suggested also to add a mini-map to orientate among the space, which will be present in a next update.

The Business Model of the app was probably the easiest thing to be decided: we want the game to be free in order to face the tons and tons of competitors available on the app store, but considering the huge amount of assets, aesthetic contents and customization possibilities that we had, we decided for a freemium model where the user will be able to buy elements both with in game currency and with the faster in app purchase system.

Finally, let’s talk about some future implementations: the first two, which are almost already completed, are the multiplayer mode through game center, and the possibility to mix the components of the spaceships in order to create your personal one. The story driven campaign, which is very raw for now, will be really implemented, and we’ll also differentiate the galaxies from both aesthetical and gameplay aspect. So that’s all, that’s the result that we achieved in the end, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback, so download our game and let us known.