The best games with Publisher Wanted — a selection from November 6
This year we launched Publisher Wanted. This is a service for game developers and publishers. The former can use it to declare their project, and the latter can find a suitable one for themselves. Now we will publish on the pages App2Top.ru the most interesting games from the playground.
From the editorial office
We have not decided on the frequency of publications. But ideally we want to come to a weekly format. We will be glad to receive any feedback.
Dark Chess — Tall Troll Games
About the project
The project of the Tall Troll Games studio is chess with the fog of war. The project features a cool picture and an innovative approach to classic gameplay.
The team’s story about itself
Evgeny Orekhov — CEO of Tall Troll Games
We are a small indie studio from Estonia Tall Troll Games. We gathered at the beginning of 2017. We spent the first year and a half building a team and gaining experience.
Today we employ 9 people: 6 permanent and 3 jun. The team is distributed, people from everywhere: from Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The main project for today is Dark Chess. This is a cross-platform dueler, chess with the fog of war. The game allows you to look at chess from an unexpected angle. We have made the game more dynamic, unexpected, interesting and more accessible for novice players.
The current status is late alpha. To date, there are working builds on PC, Android and iOS.
Participated in several conferences to collect feedback from players and fellow developers. The audience accepts the game well, shows interest. The game has also received several awards and nominations.
At the current stage, we are looking for both publishers who are ready to release the current project with us, and investors who are ready to invest in the development of the team.
We are waiting for marketing expertise from publishers. The project is non-standard, it needs to be properly presented to the public. We are ready to communicate with investors and look for conditions of interaction that are interesting to both sides.
Who shot the sheriff — Morboo
About the project
Charismatic steampunk runner from animator Dynastic Egypt. Now the project in general features and style resembles Jetpack Joyride from Halfbrick Studios.
The team’s story about itself
Rinat Kaleev — Head of Morboo
The team working on Who Shot The Sheriff? for a long time consisted of one person. Only in recent months it has started to be replenished with new people.
This has happened historically.
A few years ago I had my own indie studio. She released 4 mobile games, the most interesting of which was the Microcosm puzzle. But it was not possible to do something really successful.
Perhaps it was because I got into the industry from the advertising business. Accordingly, at that time there was no good understanding of game design, workflows and business. Plus, the crisis in the economy of 2014 was superimposed on all this.
In the end, I decided to take a break for a while. However, I did not want to leave the game dev, even for a short time. So I went to work as an animator.
In two and a half years, I have gained new experience, I have understood how to build the work of remote and full-time employees, how to approach development and monetization. And I decided that I was ready for a second attempt.
As an object of application of forces, I chose a prototype of a platformer based on the mechanics of an infinite runner, which I once sawed down as part of the study of the Unity engine. In fact, I decided to finish a long-started project.
I drew a visual style, thought out the mechanics and monetization. Then there were 9 months of constant alterations and improvements. In parallel, I had to work as an animator on other projects. Therefore, the development was not progressing as fast as we wanted.
As for the graphics, at some point, desperate to finalize everything on my own, I went to the course “Creating my own project” at Smirnov School. On it, under the strict guidance of Anna Lepeshkina, he significantly improved the visual component. As a result, by March of this year, the game began to look decent.
Soon a second person appeared in the team — composer and sound designer Maxim Grachev. He created a wonderful soundtrack.
It took another six months to finalize the core mechanics, and the game moved into the beta stage. At the same moment, a third member of our team appeared — artist Lilia Pikatova, who also proved to be an excellent professional and is now actively drawing the next location.
At the moment we are preparing the “Sheriff” for the soft launch. Thanks to the White Nights showcase, we were able to communicate with a huge number of people, get feedback on what is the strength of the game, as well as what would be desirable to refine.
We are still looking for publishers, and we will also be happy to talk to everyone who is interested in the project. In particular, it would be great to talk to game promotion specialists, developers, and game designers.
We are confident that the game will succeed. Even if we are very limited in funds now, but when developing a sequel or some other games, it would be better to start working with people close in spirit right away than to look for someone blindly.
Guardian — No Storyboards At All
About the project
The game is a chamber children’s story with cozy art, which is positioned as an interactive book.
The team’s story about itself
Alexander Pozakchin — iOS developer of the project
The Guardian is an interactive fairy tale for children. The story of the creation of the fairy tale began quite a long time ago — six years ago, when our first daughter Ksenia was born. She became the prototype for the Girl, the main heroine of the fairy tale.
Tatiana Krylova is a mother and, concurrently, the author of a fairy tale, wrote it, of course, primarily for Ksyusha. Then we didn’t really think about some kind of mass recognition.
When the book was completed, watching my daughter’s delight, I thought that it was not worth being selfish, I needed to share this work with other kids.
In the modern world, the shortest way to the audience is the Internet and smartphones. So we decided to make an interactive book on the iOS platform. We can say that our “studio” was born as a part of three people — Tatiana as the author of the fairy tale, me as an iOS developer and our beautiful daughter Ksyusha.
Then neither Tanya nor I had any idea what difficulties we would have to face. Tanya wrote a beautiful text. I know how to develop apps for iOS. It would seem that everything is almost ready.
However, our search for an illustrator was delayed. I can’t say that it’s difficult to find a talented artist. There are enough of them. However, we needed a person who would understand the fairy tale and would be “on the same wavelength” with it.
After a year of searching, Tanya finally found her “own” person – Alla Bobyleva. We realized that we didn’t need to look for anyone else after the first sketch.
We had to search with the same care for other members of our small studio. But it was worth it. The voice acting in Russian and Japanese turned out to be magical, and the guy from Indonesia who made the animation of the characters for us is worth all fifteen animators combined with whom I worked before. By the way, the music for the fairy tale was written by a Kiev studio. So our fairy tale can be considered international.
Our story is dedicated to the story of the friendship of a little girl and her secret keeper — a good-natured man who lives under the bed. This little furry creature can only be seen by children, it protects children’s sleep.
In addition to the fairy tale, there are mini-games in the application: puzzles, a chain game and a small quest.
If you want to get into the category — register on Publisher Wanted and start your game page on the service. We will definitely write to the authors of the most interesting projects.
For all questions, you can write to me at alexander.semenov@app2top.ru .
