Developer Diaries: Mushroom Wars 2

St. Petersburg studio Zillion Whales shared with App2Top.ru the way I was looking for a style for a full-fledged sequel to Mushroom Wars.

Hello, App2Top readers!

It was from the picture just above, painted in watercolor, that the development of the Mushroom Wars series of games began a long time ago.

Today, in a series of real-time strategies about serious internecine wars of little men, there are Mushroom Wars for PlayStation 3, iOS, Android and Steam and Mushroom Wars: Space! for iOS and Android. And on October 12 of this year Mushroom Wars 2 will be released on iOS and tvOS, and later on Steam, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

We offer you to evaluate the evolution of the visual style of the game, in which numerous experiments took place, including, for example, the modeling of game cards and heroes manually from plasticine.

We also tried to draw in the Disney animation style.

We considered three-dimensional graphics.

Inspired by Miyazaki’s works, we experimented with a palette of traditional colors for his paintings.

Our “casual” version looked like this.

There was also a flat style that was fashionable at one time.

As you can see, the choice was not easy. We wanted to keep the “kawaii” of the original game, but at the same time fit this style into modernity, make it more realistic, providing players with an even deeper immersion in the world of mushroom wars.

As a result, after numerous tests, focus groups and discussions, we came to the following style:

Before and afterOur new style now looks like this:

And, as the results of the recent beta test and showcases at numerous exhibitions show, the players highly appreciate the new art style.

In addition to the complete processing of graphics, the game has been enriched in terms of plot, there are esports components and many new features. For example, we have added 8 heroes and 4 mushroom tribes: warlike Scars, alien Proteans, Amazons Shii’Mori and magical Grimes. Each of the heroes of these tribes has unique skills that can dramatically affect the outcome of battles. Now you can send a plague on your opponents, freeze a hostile army, launch a destructive tornado, or help your troops with a landing of mushroom warriors, increasing the morale of the army.

We will be interested to know your opinion about the new art style of the game. Write in the comments what you think. And, of course, add the game to the Steam wish list.