Rlan's Blog

We wanted to add something that kept people engaged with the game, and kept the game relevant in a sea of "runner" games. We also wanted to own the game ourselves - this was the first big update from a new team taking over from the original "Ninja Pack" group.

Our first attempt was to build into - what was all this stuff was actually for? So the thought was an agent that you had to knock over and get their briefcase. This is a quick mockup I made.

And here's the prototype!

And.. it's not very fun! Kind of boring to deal with. So.. let's try something different!

What about a Sonic styled Egg-O-Matic? Looks more fun, but doesn't feel right. Barry smashing his face into it doesn't look right - especially when the game is about avoiding things.

So then we asked - what's the COOLEST thing we could do? What about a Scientist police squad? You have to avoid the rockets, while hitting the squad. Okay, but still felt a bit meh, and not great for smaller phones.

What about.. a T-Rex chase, Jurassic Park style? A quick mockup I had done.

In this case, a T-Rex would be behind you, and you're trying to destroy it with missiles. But avoiding missiles is super difficult.

What about... A Mega Barry? Some kind of Rock, Paper system mechanism? Eh, too complicated.

Let's simplify! What if you were in a giant robot that you need to shield? Some mockups I made using Metal Slug sprites.

And here's a prototype! Marvel Vs. Capcom Cap shield and T-Rex fit in well. It's a new Jetpack Joyride mechanic - you have to hit everything, rather than avoid! We have our mechanic!

Some concepts. First it was a big Barry, but why would the scientists make this? Something more menacing, more "Legitimate Industries".

An early version with a fire cannon instead, but it didn't really fit either. Needed to be a shield!

Let's talk about the S.A.M building sequence! We wanted to make sure that this felt epic, so it's built in 3 different sections!

S.A.M has 21 pieces in all, and a lot of destructibility. I feel for the people now who make skins for him!

And here's a bit of final gameplay! Big robot, bashing through stuff. He's got 3 hits to him, which makes him very useful, and hopefully get you back every day to play him again!

Using S.A.M means you got a daily challenge! Collect 5 and get a unique piece of clothing!

We added 16 new costumes at the time - so 32 unique pieces. To collect them all means playing for 160 days! That'd be great retention! Plus you could buy a present directly, which increased our spending too!

One of the fun things about S.A.M is his name. In other languages, we made sure his name also also used the S.A.M code.

How did this go? Huge! Our retention went up by 10%, and people loved it! It was a great addition to the game, and has been expanded upon a lot since.

One of my sketches for a Jetpack Joyride vehicle skin - Magnet Man! This is how I pitched the idea to the art team.

The original vehicle is Gravity Guy - which is a game developed by Miniclip! A collaboration between them added Monster Dash levels to their game Fragger, and we added Gravity Guy.

Hey you! I'm looking for feedback on all of my blogs. Do you like what I'm posting? What do you want to see more of? What can I do to improve?

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Over on my Patreon, I'm looking for feedback!

I have posted new content every day across March - new PlayStation Park, Sonic The Hedgeblog, SEGA City and Nintendo Metro GIFs and Videos, and free artwork extractions from Game Art Archive!

I'd love to get more followers on there - even free ones! We post a lot of free content to show off what we're doing. It would be great to help me out, and I think the content we're posting is real fun too! Please follow us there FOR FREE!

I think I'm going to start posting about my upcoming game on here, currently in soft launch! It's version 1.3 of Ready Set Golf! A thread!

Before we start - a little back story. Back in 2020 my small team at PikPok made Ready Set Golf for Snapchat. Made in PlayCanvas, it was our first true online multiplayer title, so there was a lot of learning to do!

But it was pretty basic. It was "Golf Forever", no real meta-game to keep you playing, or things to earn. Still, very fun! The game is no longer available on that platform, so we've been porting it over to truly try our a real online multiplayer game!

Over the last year we've ported it to a new codebase and redone the multiplayer. We changed the game's "unlimited" play to instead be best over 5 rounds, which has made the game way more engaging. We've also added a Level Up system.

So what's in this 1.3 update? Customization! Finally! When we made the original version of this game for Snapchat, we weren't able to get this in. Now, we can!

In the last update we added a simple level up system, which would give you power ups after playing through games. Now it'll also give you a full customizable item!

Players can earn 4 kinds of customization - Balls, Trails, Flags and Hole Effects. Fun fact - the original game's balls, being a single color, didn't actually roll! So it was surprisingly complicated to get this working here.

One of the neatest additions we've done compared to other games is the Flag. When you win a hole, the flag switches over to yours! A new way to show off to others.

We've got a whole bunch of stuff in here for this update. The artists had a real fun time making awesome particles for the trails and effects, and the balls are so cool!

The game is currently in soft launch in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and now Canada! If you're in those spots, check it out!

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/th/app/ready-set-golf/id1669577248?platform=iphone

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pikpok.golf.play&gl=TH

My brother and Dad are big fans of real golf, and I like olf games, so I'm happy we're able to bring this back and do some new, cool stuff with it.