Still Flying High: Sunset Games 101

[Music] [Music] we have been talking a lot about success how to get into business and and how to make it work i really like what jake is gonna talk because he's gonna talk about sunset games 101 what does it happen when afterwards right after the success after everything and i also told you before like there are we have been the whole afternoon with the best publishers in the market the best people working which is awesome quali is a very old friend of the conference they have been supporting the first for years now

and also he's not paying attention but he's really funny to to compliment jake and say how awesome he is because he has he gets red as a tomato it's very good i love your elizabeth it's the best person to compliment in the market every time you say anything good about quality himself he becomes like the you're making me blush again yes it's so good please give a really loud round of applause to jake parker from quality thank you so i think i'm good to go let me drag this in yes this is amazing cool so i'm jake parker i'm the senior publishing manager at kwali and i'm going to talk to you about sunset games so i could stand up here and talk to you about our publishing process we've got an amazing publishing team that could do that for you we've got a publishing portal that can kind of take you through that process so i want to talk about sunset games and

essentially they're they're a type of hyper-casual game that we have built quite a lot of at quality and there there's a kind of core engagement loop in there that's quite exciting and quite interesting to play with so what are they typically a runner-like experience where you're kind of uh upgrading improving your character usually kind of starting from a really small and kind of weak point and getting better and better with each run speeding through this world and kind of chasing the the sunset that's the name so you kind of want to explore distance and verticality in this world that you're creating and and the games that we've launched sunset against we've launched include things like blast city jetpack jump rocket sky which have all been really successful for us so what are they about you start small you want to burst into this kind of exciting world with a relatively weak character struggling to make much ground as you're kind of progressing through um but earning currency every time that you try

and through this kind of persistence you're unlocking new upgrades maybe adding like engines to a to a plane or adding new uh roller skates to your character that like make you go further into the world each time everyone's rewarded so you don't get punished there's no real sense of a loss and and you're constantly kind of getting better and better building this gameplay looper around a tight core that allows you to kind of keep engaging and engaging the player giving them this feeling of progressing and getting more powerful so the things that are that we find really great about them are light decisions so in the in the design there's a sense of light decision making where you're playing through making these light choices flexibility in the design so you can kind of use any theme uh and not punishing like you're not punishing the player at any point so the decisions that you're making throughout gameplay typically like light impactful decisions so there's not too much to consider there's not too much to

kind of take into account typical hyper-casual game play um and you're you're giving this player the player a sense of adventure so you're you're allowing the player to explore through this world unlock more of it and and see more of it and that's part of the key drive of a sunset game is you are unlocking and you're kind of always looking at like what's over the horizon what's around the corner um and that could be that could be as simple as an environment that you're kind of barreling through or a new upgrade that you get that's exciting and makes a big difference to how you're playing the game and then you kind of accentuate all of these little moments with all this polish so you can see with um jetpack jump i keep looking down here i forget that it's up here uh you can see the jetpack jump like every a lot of time and care went into like every impact where you're tapping to jump feeling like this little explosion coming from your feet and really reinforcing the sense of satisfaction that the gameplay gives you loss in sunset games

doesn't really exist uh so they're naturally reward oriented you never really punish the player every time you're playing through you get something completely new you get you get to see this world so with with go with go fish for instance the world that we created was this diverse range of fish that you can collect and there's always something new something to discover with jetpack jump for example it was this long world where you were discovering a new environment a new area each time that you got a bit further keeping players engaged so you want to build a really compelling world for your concept you want to build something that allows players to feel like they want to explore they want to see what the next thing is they want to see what's around the corner like this idea of what's over the horizon where am i going what's what's coming up and combining that with intuitive and accessible controls which is obviously a staple of hyper-casual and meaningful upgrades that are connected to this game world and the the gameplay that you're giving the player

flexibility in sunset games isn't just in the gameplay you can make these games with quite a short prototyping phase so you can build this core game and then on top of that add these upgrades and essentially allow the player to kind of evolve over time and grow and develop and feel this sense of satisfaction from continually beating their last run and it's a formula that you can apply to pretty much any theme and so it's something that allows you to come up with a new concept a new idea that's exciting and has a new core game but still apply this essentially this formula that keeps people engaged and allows you to build engagement based on that so the crucial things are there about adventure explore the world uh give players earnings enable their progress unlock new content with progress and then build new horizons for your players to explore some sunset games published by kowali include rocket sky jetpack jump and go fish

and could have some sunset games made by you guys uh so we'll be running a game jam soon uh from the 14th of march to the 3rd of april we'll have a kickoff webinar and essentially we'll we'll run a lot of kind of coaching and close work with developers to build sunset games and help ideate around what kind of engaging fun gameplay can fit itself well to this formula and that's it that was very quick we're gonna go for questions but i have to make this comment because you talk fast so fast it's so funny fine i'll calm down for questions so fast so before i will give you the questions please think of them i just wanted to ask one question this term sunset games is actually new to me yeah um what is the differentiation between just games with live ops and the the term sunset so games live ops are typically games that you've kind of launched and you're

you're building this kind of live ops and you're building like a calendar of content and stuff to keep players engaged whereas this is you've got a core game play there that is is a hyper casual game right and it doesn't necessarily need these upgrades to work but these upgrades are kind of part of that core game you you earn your and you earn and you allow more kind of longevity with that core gameplay without having to design a bunch of levels you design this one big world and you keep adding in like a player can incrementally get better and better and better got it sorry i had to ask that guy was i was the ignorant one in this one thank you hey so my question is basically i mean in the application industry we can probably have a limit we have a little bit amount of work to to buy game but i mean to create a whole new world probably looks like much more complex so what are the tips to make something i don't know this big world with not that same amount of time that we

have for other type of games yeah i think that's fair so i think like the idea of a sunset again like lets you cut a few corners right you can build just the world that the player is going to see and start implementing stuff that adds this sense of variety and you kind of polish up these sections that you know are going to be impactful and are going to be appealing when you kind of look at them from the distance you kind of see what's that over there but you don't need to necessarily build a bunch of level design you don't need to create these systems where you're going from level to level you're just kind of resetting the progress adding to these upgrade numbers and then running again nice anything else if not i i can always ask like i write books of questions of things but i have another question then um and actually i wrote it down so how how when you're creating sunset games how that keep being i know the hyper casual part is the core loop but aren't there like a little bit starting to get more to the casual side of things

instead of just hyper casual or how how do we still differentiate it kind of depends on how complex you go with the upgrades and any metagame you build around it right you've still got you've still got a really engaging and really simple and accessible core loop with a sunset game but you kind of start moving towards casual if you're building in a bigger meta around that you're building like a bigger system that allows you to upgrade a bunch of different things in a more complex way it feels like this simplifies that upgrade part so it's more accessible for as many people as possible and it continues it still gives that continuous kind of sense of satisfaction of beating the last run and i imagine still keeps the thing of playing with one on only one hand very simple for loop easy to learn got it did you guys think of more questions nothing i can i i can't you can grab me to ask questions at any point i i have one more if again so if someone wants to start usually hyper

casual games are really easy to start because it's simple core loop if you are a beginner it's a good place to start yeah how can they start with a sunset gaming in mind already as a developer yep i think start from a position of like how do you build these upgrades so that they're compelling if you have an idea for the core gameplay do the upgrades fit with that do they work do they do they make sense in context of the game that you're playing or you're kind of just sticking them on top because you find that if the games the upgrades aren't related to the gameplay that much it's not going to feel like you're actually progressing as a player or improving or having any kind of impact with those upgrades so you're then like more likely to churn because you don't feel like you're improving your character in a any meaningful way that affects the gameplay so you kind of want to think about what upgrades what improvements you can make to the player character that affect the gameplay and feel meaningful to the player

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