Unfiltered Game Breakdown: Episode 1

I'm muted hi guys let's bring everybody ran hello what a nice surprise and we're alive aren't we yeah all right cool welcome good evening where are you yeah good evening from Berlin everyone oh Berlin I'm in uh Eastern Europe and oh Slovakia you don't want to disclose your exact location no I'm in Slovakia I'm Slovakian I'm in Slovakia welcome to this live stream we're gonna chat with Roman we're gonna have some exciting guests to talk about their games what an exciting subject you excited Roman oh so excited m by way

they they're all waiting anticipating to come on the on the live stream I can see their faces they can't talk to me they can't they can see me can't talk to me so why don't why why don't we say what we're going to do today ran I think we have a three games uh we have the developers of those games and we both going to play them and we're just going to say what we think and we have we don't know what these games are about cuz we have not checked them out so literally what we did was we installed the games made them ready for this live stream but we have no idea what's what's inside of those games and what we're going to do we're going to give developers and game makers the opportunity to see the first reaction when somebody potentially and the the target audience is going to play the game for the first time what is going on in their heads I'm very outspoken I chat a lot so everything that is going to go

in my mind is going to go to my mouth you're going to hear it please don't take it as a um insult or something that is meant to be taken in the wrong way it is literally my brain on on my on my tongue I'm going to be showing it on the live stream and Roman is going to do the same thing except he's not live streaming it but we're probably going through this same pace of the game and game play so he's going to be trying to keep up or I'm going to try to keep up whoever is his his ahead is going to say something that either Captivate their um um interest or you would want to fix it or you don't want it yeah but I think we forgot to talk about you why do you want to kind of break down games I I think you know

something about games yeah just a little bit just a little bit you remember the last stream we did together yeah yeah yeah was pretty good wasn't it no no more than 1,000 views on ton Roi oneone podcast uh so if you like what m is doing or Mike he he said we can use both I'm calling him M right you're good you're good you're good yeah yeah so yeah I think I would good yes we good I think we're good so look we have 15 minutes for everybody so we're going to give every single developer the game maker um today to um give us the opportunity to test it out test out their game um and it's up to them if they want to let us speak or they want to jump in so we'll keep it very free flow it's kind of a nice just hang around in the evening um we have a guest from Europe but we also have a

guest from America uh if I'm correct Michael nod if if that's okay I'll see in the backstage you guys I'm in the gigantic Warner bro Studio I'll see that backstage over there I see I'm joking I'm in my own office but um the the cool stuff about this is I actually charge for this stuff I'm a consultant that I get paid for doing this stuff and in return um to the greater is an awesome game Community I thought why don't I do some of this stuff pro bono and the Roman is here pro bono as well yeah exactly and I'm just I'm just Hing around with M because I I'm in something yeah let's hang around all right cool let's should we get started with the first one let's do it all right we're gonna bring our first guest so our first guest is Yovan and um bringing him to the

stage y man hey guys I need to upgrade this to a really fun fair kind of stuff something more Dynamic man something it's a pilot episode it should be you know like more fantastic but it's still good on tell us who you are what do you do so basically I'm based in Serbia at the moment currently so Eastern Europe plus one um in that sense so we are a young startup and we are working basically on our first game as a team together it's a Ludo game basically it's a Ludo meets Clash Royale sort sort of game so it's a multiplayer game it's a board game PVP based it's it's kind of maybe even more sort of mobile likee uh type of thing you you'll see when you jump in but basically we took the the already existing approach from the entire Ludo games and The Branding and added a bit depth to it and a little bit

more flavor to it so so you'll see see about it I've been in the industry for like 10 plus years and hopefully this will go on for them so yeah all right cool how is how big is your team well currently not a lot I mean we are currently in the process of uh talks with with the VCS or next funding round so about three three four people now at at top we there there was like 12 of us so yeah okay well three is good three is good five is too many it depends it depends you know you know depending it's the core or the Outsourcing or you know but I would go up until 20 and I would stop around there so all right cool so why don't we get started so what I'm going to do is I'm going to screen share um Yan is your game landscape or or uh portrait it's landscape okay so it's landscape so I'm going to have to launch it first so you're going to miss the launch

yeah but while are you launching this uh I just want to ask uh youan like what is his goal for this like for this review are there like a specific things that you want to cover here well basically the the entire experience you know we we got some experience from the folks not not not a lot we are now trying to launch a mini campaign in the UK just to get the the metrics like day one day seven day 15 um but basically overall your opinion guys as a users and as a Professionals in that sense so you know from the first time user experience to the overall game design the ux flow whatnot the monetization aspects the general side awesome so we got 10 minutes uh left let's get going to the game should we start do it all right Roman launcher all right so the first thing like do you like the popup I love

it man I always do ask app not to track oh no is that what you do as well no actually I always do track just because this is how developers make money no money money that's that's why all right cool um please choose your age all right that's good so I'm not revealing my age I'm 31 yeah let's your real I'm 25 25 is good all right I'm confirming to play animation Heroes please confirm by continue all right cool person all right cool so far I love love the graphics all right sign in I'm going to go with the guest because we only have 10 minutes definitely all right I love this I see the car was a little bit cut out yeah it's the the aspect ratio all right all right we don't have

a sound but it's us who brings the sound in so um is you guys have nice sound I don't want to play sound because it's going to mess with our live stream but there's a sound right Yan I can't hear the the game sound no I hear the game either but yeah yeah naturally if you play it there's a sound right so we're like What 30 seconds in we got an intro I didn't pay attention to intro I don't I don't rarely I rarely pay attention to this um you're finally here it's great to see you tap to continue are you keeping up with me Roman yeah yeah am same same my name is Bella I need your help to find my grandpa let's see well hold up Grandpa let's see how these things work all right your mobile Bas and figures are always in the bottom right corner my what my mobile basee and figures guys

I'm playing as dumbest person because I am dumb but I always play it like this so don't I'm not pretending anything your mobile base I don't know what you mean my mobile base but okay let's go at start one figure is already outside the base okay I get what you're saying by the base tap to bottom to tap the bottom to roll the dice all right so now I'm confused what bottom you say tap the button Mike you can't read not the buttom that's all right okay cool button to roll the dice we're rolling the dice okay I've played Luda before I didn't actually Yan do you expect people to play Ludo or Eastern Europe yeah first time play Ludo everybody knows about Ludo I mean mostly everybody it's planetary known game man you know yeah

really You Got U you got five tap the figure you got five what what do you mean five oh I got five on the dice all right okay got it got it got it tap the figure to move it why don't you why is it called figure it's a nice rabbit call it rabbit tap on the bottom button to end your turn and let others play all right so we played five and and turn so we turn base cool that's your opponent turn who is that oh I see I would I would add a real person here you know like this fake fake real person like I don't know mikal is playing against me and he has his flag over there and he's telling me like ah I'm going to destroy you but Roman did you notice those those um

opponent figures up at the red part the red uh base like on the third or the fourth move I've not when they started to move this is when I when they started move but I didn't notice them before that maybe there's something you can do you on about that because I didn't notice I I thought I'm in a single player dumb you don't play Ludo in single player but it doesn't matter you you still need to show me that there's there's you play against some I did not notice so now I know but probably not a not a bigger thing here still still quite a few visual communication needed in that sense so yeah these are actually very important for D7 because your first five minutes literally were were five minutes plus some talking here maybe I'll be like on my own the third minute of a game play right now and here is where I would be but in your first five minutes it's super crucial to get

every detail right because it's like people are like super um kind of picky yeah and as the time progress they're like okay I like it I like it I I forgive you I forgive you I forgive you but the first five minutes is less like that yeah def let's carry on awesome you got six you can always get new figures from base where you roll six tap on one all right anyone After Rolling six you roll the dice right cool all right should I expect something different to regular Ludo uh yeah definitely you you'll see should I spe it up I'm not going to expose it I'm just going to let you all right let's speed it up we got a couple of minutes left I told you time flies and the turn all right let's got three come on five I'm racing home that's my

strategy that's the goal how you doing how many how many I'm of you I'm winning oh God can I play with Roman uh yeah I think you guys can do one game if you go to Friendly battle okay we got turbo um the outline on the card means it is playable tap on it uh by the way the text on that card is really tiny I want to be able to read it you can press and hold it oh it becomes bigger yeah probably now in a tutorial so we going to try now tap the figure you try it if you want you can tap on the next side it's no outline on the figure as well right see oh he's boost okay what was the Boost uh what was my number okay so this one I would be trying to make it more clear I go the number and then then I got a boost it's

a multiplier no no no it's a it's a specific type so separate St okay it's it's it's cards basically it's the abilities on the cards like powerups I want to have ability to comprehend right away I don't want to do like two three Trials of that I want to be able to understand that so well that is some speed you can play cards or dice in any order you want now let's finish this turn all right finishing turn getting home six oh that is almost prescripted uh almost when you step on luck this is good this is good I love this I love this this is well done I was luy too not on the same time same stream we're we're doing the okay everybody's got the same experience this is good you

want to keep it that way okay 1 two three and plus what what happened did I get six and three you don't need to roll exact numbers to get into the Finish oh I got it got it I'm used to getting the exact great job all right finish vers which means you won your first game all right we got minute and 30 seconds left wait so the match is over so so that was about four minutes per match three four minutes per match that was just just a tutorial the match is around five to seven minutes long all right main menu you won your first match choose a hero as your reward confirm all right Bob my name is Bob let's move on can I be I can be Bob this is awesome okay so we got hero you're earn an adventure Road reward tap to collect I don't know what the heroes do right now I have no idea what the hero

are okay so we're going to got a progression here is the gotcha okay yeah all right cool Okie toie don't know what that is this this screen still needs iteration on it yeah so so I would say uh I'm holding uh nothing's happening so I have no bloody idea what these are these cards uh I would love to know either give me the little ey it's going to have like on the sideways it's G to have like a complete description the Rarity all all the nice stuff and this is very rich gacha like I've got like seven items here I love it I I got already like summary screen awesome I got summary screen awesome I'm goingon to claim money all right we got a couple of minutes left um Yovan where do we get after this uh basically you you go back

yeah all right well so I don't get what the heroes do so let's say we' got 10 minutes in do you want me to know what the heroes do are they important for your game um the heroes are basically each of them has a unique ability in its own it can be upgraded further so they add another layer to the let's say to the strategy the the abilities are rather simple for example the bunny you just ch chosen she has an ability to jump two Fields over it seems pretty basic but when you play it you can see it's going to it's one of the best heroes in the game because you can combine certain cards and get certain things yeah okay so I I would probably try to do in 10 10 minutes kind of Rich if the player gives you 10 minutes you probably want them hook you want to hook them pretty fast right so I if the Ludo you I know what Ludo is about but it's probably you need some unique selling point those would be the heroes and I

would want to see the heroes almost instantly right so maybe I would cheat a little bit make the board smaller so you run through the first match within a minute and 30 seconds almost like give me 36 right just make the tutorial shorter um give me 36 go to the first run faster and then introduce the heroes and let me play with the heroes and pack that in 10 minutes like literally script it out in a game play that would be in 10 minutes because you want to hook me fast oh it's basically the next game that you're going to play that was just you know the real the basic and if if you know you talked a lot in that sense not a bad thing but you know delayed quite a lot it can be done under minute I guess replace you don't need the gacha like for now like the gacha is not important the hero is more important cuz you're not sticking the hero there you're sticking the gacha was much longer than the hero I want I want to

know what the hero is about the gacha is not going to hook me right cool uh we need another guest they're waiting Yovan any last words uh not a lot man just you guys you can try the game afterwards you can do oneon-one and see see how it goes from that point all right I'll keep you posted on LinkedIn awesome guys people reach you if they want to talk to you yeah definitely don't link them they can find me there I'm quite all right cool thank you very much thanks a lot guys goodbye byebye stay safe Roman did you like the game I love the visual aspect can't believe you never played Ludo I I never so that was actually the biggest problem for me uh what do I do like am I the Right targeted audience it doesn't matter man doesn't matter doesn't matter but should if you're doing a game about Luda are

you explaining the rules of the Luda or you assuming um if you never played it and let's say because what we did was we installed the game because we were on the live stream right but if you end up being hooked on one of the social medias you'll see an ad for Ludo and it's super cool something just caught your attention you're going to come in and you're like oh I want to know how to play the game right but then that something that hook you is unlikely to be the rules of the game right it's something in the game it's either art or specific mechanic right so you're going to be in the game and you want to understand the rules but you want to quickly get to hook you does it make sense yeah yeah all right cool we we're uh short of time let's get the another one guest in all right I'm bringing Michael in

hi there hey welcome to the live stream thanks so much good to be you live don't share any personal details I mean okay a part of where you live where are you from uh I'm not exactly where you live where are you from I'm near Washington DC okay cool nice all right what do you have for us today I've gotten a uh a new spin on on word games it's a it's an idea matching game so it's about the meanings of words not not the not the letters not how you spell it cool and I want to see think awesome tell me is your game uh released no this is we're kind of coming into beta now and uh this is the second game I have a small indd studio uh the first game kind of got into Eternal development because it was a cool game with no real way to monetize so this one I just brought all the monetization to the front we might see that said it's going to be a hard pay wall and uh is a much shorter um uh

overall Loop for the game awesome um tell me use your game landcape or portrait portrait it's portrait awesome I'm gonna we're gonna see the whole thing you're G to see the games that I have install but let's see okay I'm gonna share the screen we're GNA jump into it and then we'll chat that's good all right so give me a second all right I'm on I'm doing good in technical right yeah are we still live you you you Chang the layout I'm not sure why you changed your mind in the middle of the stream now we have I want I want to see my big head but I see some people are in the in the comment section if if you get a chance reply maybe that's going to work but we're all focused on the developers because we really really want to give them the best I'm gonna screen share and we're going to jump into the game all right so I'm launching the in other

words are you with me Raman yes launched it all right let's go words I awesome all words are connected play will you find your path hey I love the character is that AI yeah that's AI first I had a w good one and then my daughter told me I needed to switch to a kangaroo mouse okay I love it nice and the words are animated as well that's awesome all right hop to it ready to find your path by the way right I don't know what I'm playing what what type of game I'm playing I'm going to be trying to guess right so quick daily mental leaps origin by the way me and Roman were not native English speakers so this this is going to be hard so origin crank

Target Gala go how to play Let's see don't know what I'm doing right now Target Gala SP I'm going to use this yeah I done the same what is what is going on with this one I don't know why it's still spinning but it already gave you a hint oh okay I got it spindle right that's my hint yeah okay I didn't notice that I was super focused on the right bottom corner well that was because you tapped it yeah what am I supposed to do you're supposed to tap a word on the screen okay okay uh try tapping spindle that'd be a good next move okay crank spindle dude I'm lost I'm completely lost I'm gonna go for the question mark again it's helping me spindle and then Arbor

and sash I'm going to go with sash so we got crank spindle Sash and got two hops I'm going to go for the question mark again I have no idea what I'm doing commencement dude these are very tough words I don't even know what they I know what Comm so a new feature that doesn't does not an onboarding try holding your finger on on any word on the screen any sure and try dragging your finger to that question mark to the question mark yeah for the people who are watching um he's got his finger so he's looking at his finger so uh he when he drags to the question mark dude that is not working for me well I I managed to reproduce it so just

press drag question mark left finger so I press on okay so I'm on the Wasteland right where do I drag it towards the question mark to the bottom no no no there another one another one that appears yeah that little one and then just release apparently it doesn't work but um sure you're dragging your finger too far it does work man yeah yeah it's kind of finicky oh gosh okay okay okay um okay so there I probably play with the colliders is this Unity no this is um different engine all right no worries I I would is this for a casual audience this is going to be for PE yes but it's for people who who want to play a word game Word game uh okay are they good with the um what's it called the

dexterity they you should be able to be in your 80s and play it which means that we got to fix we got to fix the problems you're in yes yes yes yes this it's the grandma problem okay she's she's GNA be good with words meaning but if you this probably but that's okay but what's the point so it explains right a wasteline is a strip of fabric Z word so you now that you got the feel I'll tell you a little bit more because you can tell me what I should tell people so okay you might be wearing a sash because you've gone to a Gala you're getting close to the concept okay gala's not quite here yet but commencement or pageantry are probably going to get you almost to that Gala okay Roman how are you feeling about this game are they targeting you as an audience no I I think I need an onboarding like

you just said Michael but some somehow turned into on onboarding now I felt like I was thrown into the sea of different words and I don't know what to do so one one question I have is that well try to finish it up so do either of those two because those will take you where you're going okay but so these are highlighted these highlighted are yeah but you could have gotten there with other words this is only giving you some of the hints the English language is kind of fascinatingly connected so you can get to almost any word in about six or seven hops cool but there are some words that would be the wrong answer or wrong choice they wouldn't be as efficient as getting you there okay got it okay so what what happens can I just select one that would be in this case would be the the uh wrong option short or just take longer but what happens like nothing happens because it just prolongs the

distance before you get there yeah but what I mean from the user experience so let's say for example glazing randomly pick any three words in a row and we'll see what happens okay so I'm just gonna hit glazing and then I'm going to M I've never seen this word M's new to me oh and Style Style with an i all right let's see okay and then what how many more where am I actually in the in progression of the game the game play core gameplay I would say you're at five hops but which I don't want to answer you because I want to detect your frustrations okay I am frustrated dude I'm just about to close this game all right and I I'm never going to open it again okay I'm gonna be like what the so what do you want to do next do you want to move toward winning or move toward losing how about we lose I I want to see both States so in order

to lose you have to make a um a poor choice a few more times so if you want to just click randomly the next four go Corridor and I want to go Lobby all right do do do three more bad choices I want to do Atrium or Atrium or how do you Gallery I understand Gallery the word is I know this word all right and now what happens one more and maybe it was too far out of Hop try again origin crank okay so I get what's going on I'm probably not winning because it says try again out of hops right well so here's the first question do you think that was too long to let you wander in the sea before you lost for for sure like for the first session yes 100% so there's something I I want your feedback but there's something I just going to repeat again the English language is very interconnected so if you were into this a game like this

you can really get from any word to any word and usually in five or six hops so there isn't ever really a wrong or a right because everything circles back eventually okay so what connects these words just meaning they're all well there's two types of things um sometimes you're incrementally changing a little closer in meaning and sometimes a lot of words in English like for example the word sash that you had yeah the word sash is something you wear across like your like your miss your Miss Slovakia but a sash is also a piece on a window so word word play Gamers can either incrementally move or they can use a word that switches them to another meaning but maybe we should try again all right cool so on this screen it isn't obvious to me right away that if I'm out of hops it actually means that I'm G to have to play again or I lost so has something wrong happened

like wrong choice of words how about game over 100% because it's a it's a closure you get right so you know something bad happened here you're um communicating that I ran out of energy got it but I don't necessarily know if I've done something wrong if I'm playing this game correctly or if I'm getting to my target for example you say clearly Target is a Gala origin is a crank to me neither of this are just me nothing rings the bell I don't know where I'm going I don't know what I'm doing but also right now I should be knowing am I doing okay or am I going completely wrong direction right now I have no idea so this screen should tell me let's try to retry because I have a couple questions for you for sure so we're gonna go retry now I would swap these buttons around you don't want them

to go home you want to go to try again you want to keep them in the loop anything uh on the right usually means that you're going to the next stage and that means don't get them out of the loop swap the buttons around does it make sense or should I remove the home button because there's no real need to go there probably if you don't need it not necessarily uh for the the flow U because we're still in onboarding get rid of it just just do retry right we're going to do retry ran you retrying as well I I won actually all right man I normally people shouldn't have to um read the help but take a look at how to play to tell me if you think there's something there that we should surface into like a forced onboarding um okay that's a we got three minutes for onboarding uh I would can you tap how to

play for a second huh tap how to play please okay all words are connected I I would say don't do for this is good don't do force on boarding because you're really talking to smart people in this game so you're targeting smart people I'm a kind of a lazy casual player I don't want to do words game for sure uh and you're not going to help me out by forcing me through some kind of tutorial I think you want to be smart so you just need to figure out your audience what works with your audience I don't think the force tutorial is going to work with your audience okay then close it so this one this this is actually this is good because it explains what needs to be done all words are connected your target is Gala with nine hops thousands of paths exist uh but finding a three hop path that's a genius okay you're you're telling me now how I can be a genius with three hops so I kind of

have a structure in my head right now I just need to fill in the gaps hold any word for its meaning dude this should have been the first thing when we launched the game after play this is you need to show me this and here is what I would do actually I would sequence out every single one of these segments and I would say how to hop question mark then you would t and then show me next two lines and then tap show me next two lines or even sequence it out automatically just show it to me slowly here is what I would do you mean this view but in a sequence yes in a sequence yeah my opinion Raman you like that yeah yeah give me thumbs up works works all right let's we got a couple of minutes more okay let's let's go let's try one more time so we got the same thing can we get something else cuz this

one didn't work it's a New York Times style daily play so the concept as a single puzzle which brings a question which is that should the should a new player get the game of the day or should a new player get a prean one that give them options give them options you don't know you need to somehow figure out your audience right so if your audience is kind of like I didn't like the words before do they have an any option uh no you got to stick with the same one as before I don't want to stick with the same one the crank is missing with me I don't know what the word I know cranking right the crank the shaft but it's really I'm lost at this point so and the gala dude that doesn't resonate with me I need something more so give me two option I'm gonna since we're end on time you could do the hint but let's try using reel at the top because a reel also has a sense it's a reel that's round but it's also sense with Cinema can I go back I can go back

there there's an undo but you you don't get you don't get back your hot oh you're you're mean you're mean okay I want okay real it's here I'm going to try it one more minute real and we're trying to get toward Gala I'm just guessing here we could probably use cast in the top or you could try using hint all right help me out cuz I want to see the winning part uh probably actresses would get you there troop Playhouse you could you could try hint again all right actress we have to get to something which is a festivity like an Oscar Premiere premere okay I bet CH Gala is gonna come up now I see it click on it it's a oh my God I'm supposed to find the word okay okay I think I so what was the core what's the core point that was

missing that you needed to know so I didn't know I need to find the word Gala in all the mess of the words in all that all that I had no idea I thought that the gala is is at the end like it reveals like hey it's a Gala now but not like the word in in all the words so what what would you tell yourself when you went back and time you first saw the screen um back in time to what point um a couple minutes ago uh when you were first introduced and you knew you had to go to Gala the basic point is keep tapping through the Sea of words until you get to Gala yeah but you want to get to the to the word itself right that's where you see the puzzle solved right um okay interesting maybe I need to think about this maybe I'm not

really good with words uh but uh for sure give me a couple of more hints don't let me let let me play right because it's still a game right so let let me casually uh help me out more right so if if I'm completely lost if you want to get player like me you got to help me out a little more so small um animations how they connect to each other but also explanation not too many words I know it's a weird game but even if you explain something sequence it so I can process slowly right um I guess that's it for me that that would certainly help Raman is it a new genre Michael or this is like I I am creating the genre of Ideal linking games all of them man yeah so this is where you'll get a lot of challenges right because

this is I still think like uh mik at the end he he didn't get it right yeah so you help me out for sure to explain Michael where can people reach you out uh they can reach me on LinkedIn all right place we've got couple of minutes left we need to bring more guests but is there any final word uh click on see your path for a second just to see if uh you have a criticism of that one your path crank Real cast actress it's basically telling you what you did yeah I'm still lost man all right still lost let's catch up on LinkedIn awesome thank you for the opportunity maybe I can give you a little bit more hint from what's going on in this head may help you cool all right thank you very much for being here let's keep in touch on

LinkedIn thank you bye thank you all right Roman I I like that it's a new idea but um I think uh the whole idea is to do like this game I forgot this word game that was super popular and you get one word every day do you remember that one oh gosh um so some newspapers but you mean like the the one that you put a word together yes I can't remember I don't play them by the way but I I I've seen them I I guess the big idea is that like I'm competing against you we get a word every day and I'm like in your face saying dude I've solved it in three turns I'm genius and you solved it in 10 turns like like we just saw yeah yeah um so it's I think

what's important is no matter whether you understand the game or not the point is that the game needs to do the job for when you don't right so it it's important to understand like if you target me as an audience then I'm probably going to rely on the game heavier than when you U than when you target like the Right audience so if you can figure out who your audience is by the way I'm setting up the the next one because this one is trickier but um if if you target me then I'm probably like five minutes away from churning which is not good and that means your the heavy lifting that the game is going to have to do is going to be really really really you know well worked out so the developer going to have a harder time to to get me on board after five minutes yeah but it's also a New Concept

it means that Michael really needs to like try and explain this New Concept it's not like M three like everyone it's good that he met two of us because you you figure out the you're essentially figuring like your stress testing on the hardest audience right so that gives you kind of hint on what would be going on when you hit like if you don't know how to figure out your audience this is what will go on continuously because you acquire uses players right you have no idea what how they going to react to the game right so you can be ready for that part as well all right we're running out of time let's bring the other two guests they've been holding in the backstage for a long time I see rames he's smiling okay let's bring them in CIA hello guys hello heyy thank you very much for waiting on the line it was

a pleasure how you doing it was super interesting to uh follow the previous games I really love the previous one and you meant Wordle from The New York Times They acir yes every day it's awesome oh here is the audience for the game yeah Michael you still see this but uh you got to try these these dudes out as well all right guys um what are you what are you working on uh we're working on a match three game at the moment uh and we're trying to combine it with a new kind of flavor of a meta game and make our own kind of flare to it added to it awesome where are you guys from uh the Netherlands okay all right Europe represent the West Europe represent Eastern Europe with America here gotta get some Brazil and China India on the I think easy see

worldwide game review yeah all right guys shall we jump in let's do it yeah all right is your game landscape or portrait portrait all right it's Port trade yes so let's I can we can try this layout here let's see one one moreful one moment ran this is this may be going to work out [Music] okay you try to set it up M I'll talk with the guys just to keep everyone entertained let see it will take a while I have a feeling no come on man oh look I'm almost there we don't we barely see anything oh wait wait no this way this way oh gosh this this one this one will do yeah if you have to choose what are Bakery should we jump in yeah yeah yeah I just asking guys what are their goals and if we need to focus on something specific here well we're just making

we're trying to make a fun experience with the metch tree genre we've got some experience in the industry regarding it and also just uh with our expertise and we're trying to give our own flare to it um so we're trying to make it just engaging and stuff so just focus on having a fun time with the game and uh yeah I I think for the current state it's mainly about the firsttime user experience checking for crushes it's still inclosed the testing uh checking day one retention um yeah getting as much feedback as possible all right speaking of feedback let's go whoa Alexander look at this we actually opened Sweets bakery shop Roman you're you're G you just going to observe here yeah I trust your feeling this is this game so this is closed beta okay correct Ran's gonna go bu Android because we're all iPhone and then he can play it but regardless I'll say one thing guys give us equal

opportunity to play so don't wait for me to get an Android you got to go IOS and Android it doesn't matter which one is first but they're both need to be options right and that's an old school way of developing games 2024 AI come on guys iOS test fight uh by the way big praise to the previous two you guys uh rock and roll do you have Android as well just not yes or no in the backstage oh Yan yes Michael you you you got Android as well working on he's uh um he's he's not responding all right cool let's let's go um Sweet bakery shop um Raman there's no kitchen here oh well maybe in the back you haven't started playing it's pretty my amazing oh this these two characters are

AI yeah we uh we use make them Less Pretty they're they're very pretty too pretty too pretty too okay it's pretty amazing isn't it who would who would have thought we get sorry guys I need to come closer thought we would get here from our kitchen experiment right remember when you burn that first batch this is Roman this is they're talking about you of cookies I've never thought we would see this day I'm Isabella Roman you're oh should I can't read I barely see anything yeah yeah yeah I know I know I'm sorry ha yes and now here we are I guess it just goes to show a little persistence goes a long way hell yeah hell yeah absolutely oh too much talking guys too much talking but how important is text I was always wondering how important is it no it's

not it's not but wait hold on there there are people who kind of love the stories right but I always wondered if there's a better way to do the story so maybe 30 seconds 15 seconds animation and then half of that couple of words it's always better yeah yeah okay and your chocolate CL oh God yeah love story going couldn't agree more let's roll up sleeves and get to work sweet B let's get to work ah okay day one Monday all right let's add our first recipe to the menu wait we got a uh we've got um um heads up display um what are we seeing there's Monday we're seeing time we're see pause we see see two cookbooks maybe and my profile why am I Isabella guys

yeah so we want to add a character selection uh at the start in the later versions but now for the testing purposes that that part is less required got it so Isabella is me and I am playing but also Isabelle is talking to me yeah sure you're controlling the character yeah but she's talking to me but I'm also Isabella my profile is Isabella mind bugling oh wait I'm split personality here right what's going on here what's the thought process here see she's thinking out loud oh gosh okay oh nice's let's keep going nice safe return okay simple sugar cookie all right what's this what's these Stars 1233 63 what's going on here easy I would like to see you figure it

out okay all challenge right I love the style man so far art loving it game mode complete all Milestones to win after reaching a milestone all moves are replenished easy baking I'm in an easy mode whatever man okay my match three I can do match three look at this I'm doing good Roman which one would you like to go next donut on top this is the worst move you can take man it's like what what are you doing are you trying to break my game here mil reached oh man you knew what to do I always try to lose on in this onboarding sequences but it will be very difficult this is dumb proof Roman don't try this is challenge yeah all right let's keep going I don't know by the way I don't

know what just happened so I'm just going to keep going and you're probably not going to figure that out in the back end so you want to know if I'm carrying on and registering what happens on the game if you just have the steps and you go from step one step two turn step two three churn and you don't know what's going on um that's not good I hope you have a good Analytics did you guys watch our video on retention with M no oh he's explaining this in details we'll send it over to you all right oh that will be delightful thank you okay what just happened our first recipe was done or not cuz we just completed something but I don't know Mone yeah the yeah so the milone concept seems to be a bit uh we try to do a new take on how M tree

kind of progresses but it seems that the Milestone thing uh uh doesn't communicate well what it's trying to communicate it's kind of like you you it's like a esteta how do you call it in English I don't know but like you do a race and every time you reach a certain Milestone the other the other participant picks up and runs so it's kind of like resting points okay um all right let let's keep going see where we get uh Raman do you have a choice oh you you don't know the next turn no I'm thinking ahead but uh I want to uh say something clever and that is uh not the next turn but something clever would be I am struggling with the noise you know what's going on here uh the brown

background is overpowering everything the main part of the game so my mind is like oh crap I have a really hard time to look at these pieces and find what I need to do next because the brown background is kind of very noisy it's not making these Pieces Pop right and so I'm my eyes are continuously swiveling from the main part to the top or to the bottom because it's a safe kind of a nice right clean area and you think it has too much contrast I think it has I wouldn't say contrast but it's overpowering right something in mind that would kind of solve this for you what what what are you seeking but there's also one more thing why is it like a chest board dark

and they're they're brown but dark brown and light brown kind of to give a contrast in uh in like to differentiate the towels it's a bit like why rows are uh alternating it's just so that you see like a little that it's not one big blur okay so maybe just tone it down and if you want to have contrast between the neighboring um uh squares just make it very subtle like it's overpowering now what I want to focus on in match three game is two TS get the next um move right away almost instantly I look at it I know where it is Roman do you feel the same same way about match the bottom the pieces themselves and the board yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so that's how I kind of think like I want to I don't want I don't want to be

keep removing the noise I just don't want noise there because I'm thinking about the next move and the second part is I'm figuring out what is the progression going on here what is my goal here right so anything that stands in my way I don't want it right so let's let's keep going and see where we get all right the okay the animation is going to the score so my score increases right uh okay you see I'm struggling to find the piece yeah you would uh desire like a hint feature or is it more that the contrast that you're highlighting the contrast is is um so first of all the um what are these um p think these are muffins yeah okay so the muffins and the

feeling beneath the pink is brown yeah and I'm like oh this is not the same p is this same piece yes it's the same piece right but don't do brown on dark brown right dark brown yeah we even noticed that while we were integrating Brown pieces that it was very hard to find we went for the cookies but because of the contrast of the board so I'm very uh yeah I I I hear you it's a very good feedback Roman you got to help me out what's the next move it's the bottom but like the piece I I don't see yeah yeah yeah yeah it's also brown right is it the brownie you were talking about yeah yeah the brownie yeah yeah yeah that that one is uh over yes okay all right make I would make those pieces a little bit bigger probably I'm not an expert in Match 3 but I observe several things that um good um match three board means it's not

necessarily in Balance but it's really the execution of the board so the pieces themselves the background the animations the micro interactions and things like that it just got to be casual it's a casual game right all right so Isabella is talking to Isabella perfect I can't wait to make it for our first order what is she talking about I already forgot what is on about that's our our first recipe all right cool Roman do you know where we are no it's the bakery yeah in the progession game I mean in the progression of the game okay I think I think still tutorial on boarding or I don't know man guys uh why did you tap on it did it ask you to tap on it I think we unlocked simple sugar cookie in the recipe book right yeah is that the point is that

what you want me to do well okay so by Design okay let's um we got a couple of minutes uh we are running three minutes over but let's let's give give you a couple of more minutes and feedback Okay match three games game I like uh I don't like to be Isabella and Isabella to to me as well right okay the first thing the second thing I already said about the match the core gam playay um make it pleasing right like I okay the timer I pleasing candy right I candy is the word I don't want to think too much everybody knows how to play match three game right this one has to be spot on it's got to be eye candy but it also means that too much of a candy means that there's going to be a lot of noise so color schemes work out

the color schemes shift things that are not important in the background the match three pieces are important put them in the in the in the front right so um the the you can actually measure this on people who uh have short um attention span you put that in front of them and they're likely like you know do three moves and they're like um okay I got to go to work or something like that right there's clearly something going on that disturbs them so the recipe I had no idea I'm completing recipe how is that connected what's going on there yeah you were learning a recipe and later on you'll uh get orders and then the recipes uh will be the level so to say of those order okay so but how do I learn the recipe well as you just did but we'll we're going to we're planning on changing the flow so you have like

micro missions to unlock recipes but in this initial version you play the level for the first time with infinite moves then you learn the recipe and then you get the actual challenges all right so one more thing that is is the recipe connected to the pieces on the matchboard at all uh so um some of the recipes introduce a modifier to the board so some recipes say oh now bombs fall out of the sky or this piece gives more score and so each recipe kind of makes the the gameplay experience different okay cool Roman any thoughts um can you take us through like you you mentioned this is like a spin to a traditional mat three is the recipe part is a spin or uh there'll be some more mechanics that are yeah well that one of the things things is of course the re so um many times in mat tree is or you have like uh handd designed

levels and then also this frustrating part that some levels are very hard to beat and the other ones yeah and what I really liked was the concept of match Masters is like one board and that you're kind of competing with each other and I wanted to bring that experience into a uh single player kind of experience instead of a comp competition one where modifiers and other aspects bring life to the game board so that's kind of what we're going for is a a static game board where the modifiers and the yeah the the adjustments to to the game play causes the difference in levels I see cool anything else what was this dialogue window that you just had and you had with the first level that was the mode you mean the mode was it the mode yeah yeah I see I'm not sure if a player especially for the first time player

needs CH most he too much yeah I would say like if there's a Twist don't delay it right just focus on the twist in the first five 10 minutes what is the hook right um if there's a Twist on the match three and it's really hooking because you're gonna play this game over any other match three game give it to me make me understand it right away make sure that I want it right so test that out if that hook actually works right because you're putting a spin on a match three but you really don't need to validate the match three you got to fix the board visually but there's really nothing specific going on um that you're introducing that is new right there is that other part that you want to focus on and figure it out if it if people are interested in that and how to hook them into it I say

like there's no bad mechanic there's just bad execution in my opinion like if there's always a good mechanic just have to figure out how to deliver that mechanic in such way that it hooks people it's fun right W without the word actually fun twisting into something like every game has to be fun right no it's just every mechanic is fun in a way in its own way the execution makes it connected to the audience right and sometimes you know you see this like oh you know you worked on something and two years later somebody comes up with this is my game this literally they stole my game and what happens is no no they just make the execution better they have the same mechanic just better execution right so they connect to the target audience where you wanted to connect but you didn't because you didn't find a way right so I I would

probably work on that mostly yeah uh we uh we used the initial uh two or three levels yeah uh to to kind of get you into Match Tree and we're in uh going to introduce a tutorial sequence also so that people that are not familiar with it also have a good first user experience and then you immediately learn like a modifier recipe and then we try to kind of engage like oh and this is something on top of it right so not to overwhelm the player but uh yeah so so we hear you we we want to introduce it as quickly as possible but also try to kind of avoid uh from the start being like oh here's M three and here's the twist you know like ah yeah all right cool guys um we're running out of time we're overtime by the way but any final words can we come back in a couple of months from now for sure for sure man awesome for

sure yeah I'm just uh yeah we're just looking forward to uh seeing how people are going to experience the game and we want to thank you guys for your time people want to give you feedback how do they do that they can reach out to us on LinkedIn and uh we would love to add them to the closed bait uh the closed testing okay awesome man I wish you good luck um let's keep in touch but thank you very much for being on the show and letting us play your game thank you all the best guys cheers ciao Roman we're over tonight hangout is over yeah I I wonder if people like the show maybe if you can leave a comment maybe there are already a lot of comments play these games come play them well it's your job yeah I'm I'm too much hardcore in the the regular casual stuff but this uh I love this I love doing

this just um the word games for me um I don't know man there's something about that still connects with me because I speak English man like my naturally my language is Slovakian right I I use English because I a lot of people around me in Slovak I have no bloody clue what is like to talk in English every day right I still connect but there needs to be some way that it makes me hang out in that game in a game like that right the match three awesome man that's my like toilet game all the time always man and there's a good story love uh I'm not goingon to promote games here but I love couple you match three uh rarely rarely D I mostly like hyper casual yeah yeah they're really good in terms of

getting to a point and hooking people right I was so surprised that you're reading all of this stuff like I'm a player that skips yeah but also depends on the audience right just I'm you know professionally broken I got to read the story because the story is sometimes important sometimes is not it's just a filler sometimes but there's some to it right if you don't make me read too much then I kind of like it if you force me to read something and the story is like ah like I'm like why did you put it here yeah yeah yeah absolutely I'm sure this is also can be checked lud right Luda I need to learn learn the rules but like the visual aspect and for four people team like fantastic work yeah yeah would love to play uh uh together let's see how that works yeah yeah yeah without me knowing rules all right man all right do you have any final

words um yeah again thanks for joining uh if you liked it please share subscribe um I was me I'm so so focused on these games and our guests that I don't even know if somebody's watching and we're still live oh so zoned out total gamer man but anyways uh let's uh let's see how it goes um people like this um if you want us to play your game send us a message on LinkedIn U either me or Roman and we're going to do our next one and thank you streamyard for sponsoring um not sponsoring not sponsoring but providing the tech for free this is awesome yeah cool stuff man all right cool see you in the next one see you soon all right on the next one thank you very much goodbye