The Coherence of Game Style and Animations

Animations are the key ingredients of any game. The simple, but quite complex definition of animation is: the process of creating continuous motions in the game character and changing illusions of a game to make the users believe that they are playing in a real world. Animations cover almost all visual effects of game including characters, objects, visual theme, cinematic, etc.

A game is compared with a real life world just because of animations. They are the animations which maintain the belief of users with the game, its characters and objects. But, you know what!? Animations not only delight users, they create engagement and retention. If done right, animations that are properly synced with the game style, provides a characteristic feel for the game that connects to its visual identity permanently.

Game style!!! Yes, Game style. The style of game or as per your point of view; game style is a mixture of mind blowing characters, eye-candy environment, impressive character motions, challenging game situations, etc.

Now, let’s elaborate the coherence of Game Style and Animations via some beautiful as well as popular mobile game illustrations.

Subway Surfer v/s Temple Run

Temple Run comes with natural looking visuals giving you a feel of Indiana Jones while Subway Surfer possesses cartoonish and cheerful visuals that fill you with joviality. Temple Run characters have a serious look whereas characters in Subway Surfer are cuter enough to win your heart.

Subway Surfer and Temple Run both have a same concept like endless running and passing through obstacles, but Subway Surfer is more popular than Temple Run. The reason is game style and animations of Subway Surfer are more inspiring than Temple Run.

Real Racing 3 v/s Asphalt 8

No doubt, Real racing 3 is good at everything including its presentations, graphics, different city levels, numerous cars together on your small screen, and the most important: sharp looking car models. But game style of Asphalt 8 is something that throws realism on your small screen device. Dazzling particle effects, destructible environments, and lens glare all are assembled in Asphalt 8 to create a master art style.

Racing Moto v/s Lane Splitter

Racing moto is a simple 2d like, but a 3d-ish game. The only animation within Real racing is: the bike is trying to pass on the traffic full of cars and reach the goal. Lane Splitter includes much more than Racing Moto. Its graphics are 2d, but animations are truly inspiring and challenging. In Lane Splitter, the lanes are changing along with flashing lights aside. Also, the traffic is interesting as it includes cars and big trucks as well to stick your bike on the way.

All the games are money guzzlers. But some of them are still walking on the way of success, while some are fighting to win the battle. The winning games are known for their realism, animations and game style which are probably absent in other games.

Trending Art Styles For Mobile Games

Mobile game art is acquired from the roots of PC and console games. Initially, when games were pushed for mobiles, many restrictions like low powered interface, thumb-sized screen, less memory, etc. stood as a barrier between mobile game developers and high quality games. These barriers boosted up the creativity of developers which resulted into representation of new ways of thinking for art in mobile games. The mobile has triggered a total renaissance in game art design and various method (new and old) are being employed to get aesthetically pleasing experience.

Let us go through some hot and ongoing form of game art development in the market for mobile.

Low poly Art:

Low poly art is all about creating 3d models using low number of polygons. It is a today’s design trend. In low poly art, designers represent first a polygon mesh of a model in 3d graphics, minimizing the number of polygons by using sharp surfaces with geometrical shapes, and at the end, beautifying the model with interesting textures and colours, to make them look real. If we see it technically, reducing the number of polygons in a mesh does give the model a soothing effect, but if we look artistic wise, Low poly is something more than that.

Pixel Art:

Pixel art refers to placement of pixels to create a sprite and fill it with limited palette of colours. Pixel is 2d art. If you are the one grew up playing the games from Nintendo, you will better understand how a model made in pixel art looks like. The character in Nintendo is a 2d character looks like made of so many legos and doesn’t seem real like we see in today’s game.

 

Cardboard Art

Anything which is made up of cardboard is a cardboard art. Cardboard art is far away from realism. It doesn’t seem real, no matter how much you try to make it. Cardboard art is used to make the objects look unreal. Today in games, it is used in rare cases. You might find some light brown coloured objects look like made up of cardboard. You can combine low poly art with cardboard art to create a cardboard object for mobile games. It’s simply work like you can make mesh of any object and fill cardboard colours in it to make it look like made of cardboard.

Voxels

 

Voxel is a three-dimensional cube used to create objects for virtual world. It is also considered as an amalgamation of “volume” and “pixel”. In gaming world, Voxel is known as the pixel art of 3d games. So, basically voxel is a depth of pixels. Objects with voxel art are made up of hundreds or thousands of cubes. Minecraft is a great example to illustrate the objects of voxel art. To sum up Voxels can be defined as basic 3D models with pixelated textures.

Programmatic art

 

Programmatic art is not used to create an object, model, or any environment. It is used to create effects of any object like the sparkle arises when the bomb blasts. Bomb is an object. When this object blasts, it creates the yellow or orange coloured sparkles. Those effects are programmatic arts. Bombs are also there in your favourite game Candy Crush Saga. On exchanging it with a candy, a sparkle arises destroying other candies of same colour. That sparkle is most likely a form of programmatic art. Today, game engines are preloaded with programmatic art, so one can easily create such effects in its games. But if you are not satisfied with preloaded effects of programmatic art in your game engine, you can create your own if you are an Open GL expert.

With these trendy mobile game art styles, creating models for games has become a more fun for game developers. These trendy styles are just a new way of applying old techniques. Models were also created for PC and consoles; today, they are created for mobile games where openness gives a big space for innovation.

Make Your Game Perfect With a Soft Launch. Save Huge On Marketing

Soft launch helps you gather vital information on how the users get interact with your app, which areas attract them most and how you could improve them before official release. It fills confidence in you to enter the app market with battle-tested game app. It maximizes the exposure of your app and gives a push to revenue model attached with the app. Ok now, it’s enough to tell about what Soft Launch can do and let’s proceed for what exactly it is? And how one could implement such?

What is Soft Launch?

Simply, soft launch means opening up your app in front of a small group or audience before releasing it officially. It is one type of testing that allows you to monitor your game more closely. Of course, testing helps you to do so, but during testing process, some issues like bugs, device compatibility, glitches, or other general functions go unnoticed. Soft launch sheds light on such issues.

Soft launch: Nuts and Bolts

The meaning itself illuminates the purpose of Soft Launch. Basically, it gives you an access towards a small group of testers; they would be your close friends or a group of your social networking sites. At one end, they will use your game and on another end, you will become able to pick up the insights via their usage, thoughts and experience with your game app.

The group is your own, so they will be brutally honest to give you a proper feedback. Their feedback is the answer of your question: whether to launch the game or not or go for any further development process.

Another four advantages of Soft launch are:

– Evaluating Success Factors
– Evaluating Problem areas
– Measuring User Responses
– Modifying Essentials to Make a Plea in Greatest Segments

How to Make a Move on Soft Launch?

Before moving on a Soft Launch, you have to decide first, which areas you want to test like virality, user experience, user retention, monetization, etc.  After that, take a step forward and select your test market. A similar test market ensures the accurate results of your testing. For example, if you have plans to launch your game in the USA, then your audience must belong from the same country. Audience from China don’t let you meet with comparable results.

During your soft launch process, you have to keep tracking two most important data: 1. User Acquisition and 2. User Experience. User acquisition is necessary for app marketing efforts during official launch of an app while user experience is important to get answers of questions involved with game design, game development and gameplay. Take help from an outside partner for user acquisition tracking and in-app analytics for tracking user experience.

At last, analyze the information deeply when your soft launch comes to an end. Notify the areas where changes are must. Next, apply whatever you have learned from your analysis or studies. Make necessary updates that enable your app to meet the challenges played by users or to deliver excellent user experience.