Zoomzo Games

Hi fellow IndieHackers, I recently had a talk in Indieway you can take a look at it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZgigcnGUP0

Past years we have been focusing on the HyperCasual game genres. Lately we are trying something new. Hopefully we will create more detailed documentaries about this moving to a new development process phase. Everything is changing around us and it is very hard to catch every new thing on the way.

From my perspective what we do today is going to define what we will be doing in the next 5 years. I have always wanted to make sweet looking games. Right now we are working on a very good designed and well executed game. I am looking forward to sharing more about the game itself. In the next couple of weeks we will be soft launching the game. I am very excited also, I can share more visuals and features of the game soon!!! Follow us for more on LınkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zoomzo-games-ou

-Creating The idea
We had this idea of consuming some items on the screen with an easy input, as easy as possible like a single tap&hold mechanic but some parts were missing in the idea. We have made a brainstorming session with the Blay team as Zoomzo Games members. In the brainstorming session, we have talked about lots of different ideas, how to implement them, how to execute things better and everyone shared their ideas. Tried to fill the gaps and after a 5-hour meeting with the design team, we had the basic mechanic on our mind and a concept of the game idea. The idea itself was unique but to improve the idea, mechanics and visuals had to be perfect! Therefore we have implemented 3 different gameplays for the players and created even many more to clear the imperfections.

-Intervention timely
Each week we had these meetings where we discuss the game idea, mechanics, visuals, game feeling of the product we are working on, and once we detect a delusion we made sure to take a note and fix the issue properly as soon as possible. At the same time, we make sure of having these fixes promptly. Sometimes, instead of making a huge fix later maybe you should make some hotfixes and it will help you execute better performance across the project.

-Monetization key points
Making games is not a job but a passion for us however it has to be the income source for our life so we can move on. On the idea phase (brainstorming sessions) do not forget to take notes about where and how to get some revenue from the player. I hate when I come across an advertisement while playing the game and we do not want to make these kinds of ads for the revenue too.
What we can do is, rewarding the player once they watch an advertisement and this is the way we like to thank our players because we believe players are not some kind of milking cow, we rather think of our players as “guests” who come for a coffee to our shop and we would love them to come back for our fresh coffees as well. Guests who watch ads are the ones who are giving us tips while playing. That’s why we try to ensure that our players are satisfied and entertained after watching an ad. To achieve this goal it would be beneficial to give the player a large amount of power for a while after watching an ad as a reward for their tip.

-The making of the Piranhas Fast&Feast

To understand the challenges we have worked through, you need to understand the game. We are controlling the piranhas. The main characters are piranhas because of that we needed cool piranha models thanks to our 3D Artist that was no problem for us. To give the feeling of controlling the piranhas we have a special camera angle which shows us some parts of the piranhas and we can see many piranhas around, wobbling inside the water. Some god rays are coming from the top of the screen so we know we are a little bit deep in the water but not very deep because we can still see the shining items with the help of the god rays.

-Where to focus?
At first, we thought that would be a good idea to call attention to the pollution in the water but then we decide to give more fun thoughts to players. Instead of focusing on polluted water, we have chosen to focus on the idea of feeding the fishes on some parts of these items people dumped in the water. This would let the player think of the pollution themselves in another way. At least this is what we aim to…
In the first levels, players will be feeding piranhas to many different fully edible things like apple, donut etc… Then you should watch out for the inedible parts.But there was a challenge here, how can we manage to show the player that we are polluting the water without actually polluting it?
We could easily put a plastic bag around an apple and show the pollution inside the game but that was not what we wanted. After a couple of discussions on this topic, we had this great solution where we match shapes with real-life objects. Once we decide on this idea, the rest was lots of googling and finding the same shaped objects with the same shaped edibles. Then we improve this idea by merging the same shaped objects to make it more understandable of edible and inedible parts of the object. We have googled a lot of things before creating the levels and tried to have a visual on our minds so that we can make perfectly understandable levels by the players. I recommend using Pinterest for these searches it is easier for me to focus on some concept in Pinterest other than just using a search engine. It may help you as well. Also, we have fever mode which can be activated by eating the highlighted parts first. Eating the highlighted part unlocks the crazy mode where you will get extra piranhas joining your flock. Then the piranhas will start eating every part of the item quickly as the way piranha flocks do just like in real-life! Here is the market link for the game: https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/piranhas-fast-feast/id1552837564
Don’t forget to comment on how you feel about our game. Thanks for reading and joining us in this journey.

Hi everyone, I have been working on the social media updates for a while and I think it is starting to look good. I wonder what you think about our profile.

Here is the profile: https://www.instagram.com/zoomzo_games/

We are making mobile games for a living. I love my job and I am building my own dreams, help me with your feedback so I can improve myself. We have been getting lots of attention from the social media I guess I am doing something right. Thanks!!

Hello all, I am Emre Ünal. For those who don't know who I am. I have been working as an indie game developer for five years. In 2013 I have started to get interested in game development. Gathered together with some friends, started working on a game project and it changed everything. Then I focused on game development and finally, I established my own game studio in 2020. It has been a lot of fun and consisted of a lot of learning through the way. We have more than 30 games on the ios and google play store.

In 2018, there was a new type of game trend in the market and people called it hyper-casual games. It took a really small amount of time to finish a hyper-casual game and If you can make a one-hit game it will lead to great success for you and your team. ( If we describe success as lots of money of course ). But the handicap is; in the end, you will have many prototypes like games in your hands and it will be a lot harder if you want to continue on the development of that particular game. If I need to describe what hyper-casual game is I would call them (snackable, easy to understand, %100 focused on analytics instead of what you really want to make) these kinds of games.
But why there are so many hyper-casual games in the market right now?
Because like I said earlier, it is easier to make one and you get the chance to share a small slice of a pie from the publisher you worked with (a small slice is actually a lot of money for a studio).

I have tried working with publishers, learned a lot, shared a lot of experience, and increased my knowledge of games. This is time to learn more about casual games and learn the market for a niche audience. Casual players tend to expect different things in a game. Hyper-casual players do not have many needs they just play the game because they wanted to spend time while they are riding a bus or waiting for the elevator waiting for something or even while watching a boring TV series.

I have been reading a lot about mid-core, casual games, different kinds of game genres. It is making me excited. Today I am starting our casual game. (I can not share it yet but I will be sharing a lot through the development). I will be explaining the differences and how to monetize your casual game in the process. Hopefully, by the end of this month, I am going to upload the game on the IOS store. For now, you can take a look at our previous games. Here is the link for the website: https://zoomzo.games Also you can follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emre.unal_gamedev/ for the update on the casual game and It will encourage me to make more posts like this too. :D Cheers.

For a long long time, it has been just me and my shareholder has been working non-stop to reach our goal of making a hit mobile game. Today I am thrilled to announce that we have a colleague working with us to improve our games and the core team!! Very happy to be moving on. You don't need to rush things just make sure every day you are one step closer to your goals.

Finally, after working non-stop for 10 months we have founded our game studio. In the meantime, I have been focused on game development and I have postponed company related stuff. Right now I am happy to say that finally, we are ready to take things more seriously and keep moving forward.

This was a happy announcement, I feel like I am going to share more in the future.

Note: I almost forgot saying that we have changed our name to Zoomzo Games instead of Swift Panda Studios. (Because of legal stuff). It was a pleasure to work under a name we have created and it really makes you feel like you are working in a company. We have tried it and I can definitely say that it helps you become more productive. Now there is a bigger step and lots of responsibilities for us.

Good thing is, we have tried it and we know we can do better! Now it is time to make it happen. Thanks to the Indie Hackers community for being supportive and sharing your experiences.

I will share more...

I can say this is a milestone for me. I am happy to say that I have started earning by doing the job I love and now I am financially more relief. I have been working hard for ten months. Now I am changing my revenue from twenty dollars/month to two hundred dollars/month. Thanks to all Indie Hackers who have shared their experiences and help me learn to find my way through. Good luck all!

Hi Indie Hackers,

I wanted to talk about how we have made changes this month on our schedule and how these changes helped us improve our working rhythm.

We have been working full-time for 7 months. We were focused on making a one hit game. Then we realized it is not an easy task to handle. After working on game development for 3 years and full-time game development on 4 months we have realized it is not just about making a game. The change was inevitable.

What changes did we make?

-Recently we have renewed our social media and web sites. I have started writing a blog on game development.

-We have started working with Trello instead of sticky papers. It is way easier and more organized.

-For the first time, we have accepted a freelance job. Worked on it for a week to pay the bills. (I am not a very big fan of this but I have to live).

-We have spared some of our time in a day to be more active in social media, forums, blogs. (this helped us to feel relaxed and think something other than game development).

-This is the part where I am most excited about!!! We are working on innovative things on our weekends from now on. As you can imagine technology grows really fast and it is sometimes hard to keep up. In order to keep ourselves in the cycle, we are working on new things. Like an Augmented Reality application or a Virtual Reality game maybe?

Hello indie Hackers,

I just updated the website of Swiftpanda game studio. Can you take a look and give me some feedback?

Here is the URL: https://swiftpanda.studio/

Specifically, I'd like to know if the basics make sense. Can you tell what my product does? Am I missing anything obvious? Is it easily readable in your browser?

Thanks so much!

We started working on our game idea with the publishing manager assigned to us. Publishing manager can help you solve many things, for an indie game developer publishing manager is the essential part of the team. I will try to explain why.

Let's assume we have three different kinds of developers:

1- An indie developer with a hit game.

2- An indie developer who made many games but couldn't reach too many players.

3- An indie developer who just started working on games.

If you are like the first developer you already have some amount of customers, therefore, you may have some user experience feedback. So you can work on the next game with the same community also you can try to increase the size of the community with a forum or blog. If you are hit some publishers will reach out probably :)

If you are like the second developer I am assuming you have experience in making games and you just need to find a way to increase the potential of your games.
How can you do that?
I can suggest you work with a publisher. When we were stuck with the reality of our games are not being downloaded, played. We reached out to many publishers. Some of them were interested and it changed a lot. Because of the experiences they share with us, we definitely have better games now.

If you are like the third developer don't feel bad because once someone told me on this beautiful community "Every journey starts with one step". This is your step don't be shy start working now! Don't forget to keep me in your contacts I would love to hear your story too.

Reality is, you can actually do the job of the publisher by yourself but the market is too dynamic. Everything changing so fast, you can't search the trend, market, news and work on your games at the same time as an indie. If you have more than 24 hours in a day you can do that. :)

Don't be afraid to talk about your games. Every game is a new journey to share.

After our first test with the publisher. We understood that some things don't have logical explanations. Take a look at the podcasts with big indie developers some of them will say "I don't know why people play my game or I don't really know how I made this far". This is real. Sometimes it is hard to understand players, but at the same time after making many games you will have a user profile in your mind. In the end, you will realize that your users are like you.

In conclusion, maybe we can say that "make games for yourself and connect with people who are like you". You will have some amount of users. Your customers are the most important thing in your game. Listen to them. What they want, what are they interested in? These questions are so important. Good luck finding yourself in this huge market! Share your slice of pie with indies. We need each other! #growth #fyi