An investor is wanted: a studio from Russia is looking for support for the development of the BitGoblins RPG game

Let's return to the series of articles about projects in need of investment or publishers. The current material is dedicated to the mobile idle game BitGoblins from Yoga Games studio.

Eduard Kumykov, producer of Yoga Games studio, told about the project.

Eduard Kumykov

About the team

Yoga Games is a Russian game development company that has been in existence since 2020. In three years of operation, we have released more than a dozen projects. We invested our own funds in the development of most of them (but for two projects from the portfolio we attracted funding from major publishers, the funds went to the release of several specific updates and to the entire marketing company during testing).

16 people are directly involved in the development of the company: These are programmers, 2D and 3D artists, UI/UX designers, game designers, animators, testers and one sound designer. Also, an additional five people are engaged in operational processes — accounting and legal issues.

The company's strong point is people. Our team consists only of developers with experience and a good background. The studio's producer came from Belka Games, where he previously developed Solitaire Cruise, the studio owner was responsible for the QA direction in Social Quantum on the Megapolis project, and the heads of the 2D and 3D development departments came from Elephant Games.

About the project

BitGoblins is an Idle RPG in which you need to improve your hero, go through dungeons and fight monsters. The game is now available for Android as a technical demo (we developed it on Unity in just three months). In the next two months, we plan to release several updates for it with the main game mechanics in order to start the first marketing tests and collect data for primary analytics.

We took the Legend of Slime game as the main reference. Our game features a more classic fantasy setting and a unique visual style, which, in our opinion, is much closer to the Western audience. We also plan to integrate a number of mechanics more familiar to midcore and hardcore games into the project. I am sure that they will help the title in terms of retention and monetization.

I want to focus on the visual style of the game. We understand that it is very difficult to find a style that will "catch on". But it seems to us that we have found one. We have already received a large number of positive responses to it from partners, players, as well as from independent experts from various game development sites.

We also pay great attention to the UI and UX components. We want to implement solutions in the game that will greatly simplify the experience of interacting with role-playing mechanics. Interfaces look complicated in games like this right now.

We clearly understand how to develop and monetize this project, which benchmarks should be followed and how long it will take. We are ready to provide potential partners with a detailed roadmap, according to which both the deadlines and the budget of our project are clear.

I would add that we want BitGoblins to become the hallmark of our company. We put all our experience into BitGoblins and use all our best practices.

The main game cycle

The main mechanics of the project is to improve the hero. Now it is implemented through idle mechanics. In the future, leveling up will require visiting various game modes (for example, exploring dungeons), which will give players access to new opportunities for improvement.

The main game cycle will look like this:

• in battles with monsters and bosses, the hero gets gold;
• gold is spent on improving the parameters of the hero (idle mechanics - the player needs to constantly improve the characteristics of the hero, there are many characteristics, you need to choose what to pump at one time or another);
• Leveling allows you to defeat stronger monsters and opens access to new modes.

Each new game mode provides the player with access to new mechanics and parameters that open up new opportunities to improve the hero.

Only one mode is available in the technical demo, but so far the team has made four more. In general, the game is approaching the kind in which it will be ready to collect the first metrics.

Now the game has implemented:

• dungeon battles (in which the hero gets equipment);
• battles with superboss (gold is given for their passage, which is the main currency);
• Goblin raids (in raids, the player earns crystals, the local "hard" currency);
• Endless Tower mode (designed to increase engagement, aimed at those who are willing to spend a lot of time in the game);
• Adventure mode (allows you to collect very rare currency, created for those players who want to maximize the potential of their hero).

We do not plan to stop and are very actively developing the project with new content and mechanics, creating everything we need for the first tests and to verify monetization.

As soon as the game reaches payback and we can scale the team, we plan to implement the following complex and resource-intensive mechanics:

• PvP mode (will be designed to improve the motivation to pump the hero, and will also significantly affect retention and monetization);
• Guilds and world bosses (today these are the best social mechanics for creating an active community around the game);
• guild battles and elite heroes (for those players who want to take first place in the rankings).

Audience and monetization

When developing the project, we were interested, on the one hand, in high ARPU, and on the other — in low CPI.

Accordingly, mobile games in the RPG genre have the highest ARPU, but at the same time, cartoon visual stylistics and idle mechanics are what can help reduce our CPI.

The choice of these mechanics has largely determined our target audience. She is a man who is interested in midcore projects.

As for monetization, based on the analysis of competitors and the deconstruction of top games from mobile ratings, we plan to build it around four game mechanics.

1. Selling the main game currency (gold and crystals) so that the player can buy the rest of the game entities with them. We plan that the player will use them to buy summons: weapons, new heroes and pets, as well as new abilities and bonuses that will be implemented through gacha mechanics.
2. Selling currency to complete events: keys, tools and bonuses that will give the player access to dungeons and adventures if he exhausts all attempts in a day.
3. Special offers for paying players. They have proven themselves well in our other projects. These are Premium Pass, Welcome Pack, No Ads Offer and various offers with unique items that enhance the hero and allow him to move faster through the game.
4. Rewarding videos that accelerate the accumulation of resources and the "recharge" of dungeons.

In addition, I would like to note that it was not for nothing that we chose Legend of Slime as a reference for our game. This is a very young project that has generated more than $60 million in just one year of operation.

Moreover, we believe that Legend of Slime has created a new niche in the mobile gaming market. And within this niche, we want to win over the European audience before competitors and big studios appear on it. We have been following this project since its release and can tell exactly how it developed, which solutions his team rejected, and which, on the contrary, introduced and strengthened.

We have already taken the first steps and started supplementing the game with basic mechanics. However, in the future, in order to be able to compete on an equal footing with the leading RPG and idle games, we will need to create more complex mechanics, as well as funds for hypothesis testing, resources for promotion and monetization settings. That is why we are looking for an investor.

Who are we looking for

We are looking for not just an investor or publisher, but a reliable partner who will be interested in the project at the same level as the team (and our team is ready to put their soul into the project).

We expect understanding and return from the partnership, among other things. We believe that this kind of collaboration will make it possible to make a hit.

In addition, it seems important to us that the partner understands:

• The path to the top of the top charts is not easy;
• The development of free—play projects in the RPG genre is not cheap and not fast.

My contact: yogagameslicence@gmail.com