Game Design — GameAnalytics

Fruit Ninja dev talks porting to VR

Learn how Halfbrick tackled VR game design challenges with Fruit Ninja VR 2, from UI adjustments to movement mechanics.

Chay Hunter

6 (more) narrative techniques to make better games

Take your game’s storytelling to the next level with six powerful techniques for immersive and memorable narratives.

Chay Hunter

Reaching a +40M playerbase: advice from Trihex Studios

Discover how Redcliff City grew to millions of players and what mobile devs can learn from its approach to community and game design.

Sarah Impey

Improving your mobile game with narrative (Pt 1)

Learn how to craft engaging game stories with characters, conflict, and change. Make your game world truly immersive!

Chay Hunter

Getting Mobile Multiplayer Right (part 2): Design, testing, and scaling

From matchmaking to scaling, here’s how to get multiplayer right on mobile.

Will Freeman

5 Simple Ways to use Level Design to Improve Player Experience

Master subtle level design techniques to guide players naturally using contrast, framing, elevation, and scale. Inspired by theme park design.

Will Freeman

Voodoo Talks Trends: How to Stay Ahead of the Game in 2021

Stay ahead in hyper-casual gaming by identifying trends, adapting mechanics, and creating viral hits with Voodoo’s expert insights.

Théophile Tabary

Adding Subtitles to Your Mobile Game – Dos and Don’ts

Improve accessibility and engagement with proper subtitles. Learn best practices for clear, readable game captions.

Sarah Impey

How to Crack the Match 3 Code? - Part 1

Explore how Match-3 games are evolving with meta layers, new mechanics, and deeper player engagement.

Om Tandon

How Voodoo Diversified and Lowered Game Product KPIs

Voodoo redefines game success by broadening KPIs beyond retention and CPI to scale hyper-casual hits.

Youssef Gasmi

Four Benefits of Hyper-Casual Games for the Gaming Industry

Discover how hyper-casual games drive fast development, lower CPIs, and inspire new genres in mobile gaming.

Joakim Achrén

Bam, Splat, Kapow: How to use Sound Effects to bring your Mobile Game to Life

Sound effects enhance gameplay, build atmosphere, and improve engagement. Learn how to use them effectively in your mobile game.

Sarah Impey

Game UX Style Guide: Why Do You Need One?

Why every game studio should invest in a UX style guide to ensure consistency, improve onboarding, and enhance player experience.

Om Tandon

How to Make a Successful Indie Game

A step-by-step guide to indie game success—market research, development, monetization, and effective marketing strategies.

Andrei Klubnikin

UX Walkthrough: Anatomy of a Usability Test in Video Games (Part-2)

Discover best practices for unbiased UX testing in game development. Learn how to avoid biases and gain real player insights for better game design.

Om Tandon

UX Walkthrough: Anatomy of a Usability Test in Video Games (Part-1)

Learn why common UX testing methods are flawed and how to conduct unbiased usability tests for better game design insights.

Om Tandon

Advanced UX Prototyping and Playtesting (Without the Code!)

Learn how to build high-fidelity UX prototypes to test and refine your game before development.

Om Tandon

Shooting for the Stars: How the devs behind Crossy Road and Shooty Skies became mobile masters

Find out how Crossy Road’s rapid development cycle and data-driven decisions helped Hipster Whale create another hit with Shooty Skies. Learn their key insights on mobile game success.

Keith Andrew

11 Tips to Speed Up your Game Design Process

Streamline your game development workflow with these 11 expert tips. Learn how to prototype efficiently, write better design documents, and iterate faster to create better games.

Nathan Lovato

Exploring Games from the Creator’s Perspective

Discover an effective process for analyzing games from a creator’s perspective. Learn how to break down mechanics, story, aesthetics, and technology to improve your own game design.

Nathan Lovato

Quit the Grind: Other Ways to “Level”

Tired of grinding in RPGs? Explore innovative leveling systems that keep gameplay fresh and engaging without repetitive battles.

Zack Wood

Game design tropes that don’t translate to VR

What are the top game design conventions that don’t currently translate well to VR? And what can you do to overcome these?

Sarah Impey

How to use AI to improve your in-game voice-overs

Using AI for voice acting can help speed up your prototypes, but how well does the technology actually work?

Sarah Impey

Will people play AAA games on mobile?

AAA games are coming to mobile. But will people actually play AAA games on smaller devices? Here’s what we know.

Sarah Impey

Why you should port your mobile game to console or PC

Developing a version of your game for PC or console can help boost sales and reach more players. But is it right for your game?

Sarah Impey

9 Areas You Should Focus Your Mobile Game Development in 2024

There are a lot of topics and trends in gaming, but here are the main ones you need to pay attention to as 2024 begins.

Ronnie Bronstrøm

AI-Driven Creativity: Prototyping Games in the Digital Age

With recent advances, how exactly can developers use AI to help them develop mobile games and speed up the process?

Sarah Impey

Creating VR Experiences: Challenges and Solutions for Designers

What are the top game design conventions that don’t currently translate well to VR? And what can you do to overcome these?

Sarah Impey

Using AI to Supercharge Your Game Art Design

Not only can you create characters using AI, but it can also assist with designing textures, maps, and user interface ideas.

Chay Hunter

Generative 3D creation with AI prompts

Sloyd is launching AI text prompting in their 3D web editor. To get you up to speed, they've shared all of the details for their latest release.

Avi Latner

Kid-Focused Design: The Secret to Engaging 750M Young Gamers

PK XD has over 500 million downloads on Android alone. It gets 30 million views on YouTube every week. And their average session length is 25 minutes a session, with people playing around an hour and a half a day. So what's the secret behind their success? Here's what we know.

Sarah Impey

Creating concept art for games, with genAI

While it may not excel at everything yet, AI's prowess in concepting, storyboarding, and ideation has captured the industry's attention. Join us as we delve into the realm of GenAI, exploring its ability to create stunning concept art and assets for games.

Chay Hunter

Ship fast without regret: lessons from 15 years in mobile gaming

One of the biggest mistakes a studio or developer can make is failing to plan ahead. Teemu Haila, Co-Founder & CPO at Metaplay, talks about how launching a game with a short-term mindset can be detrimental to its long-term success and cause avoidable headaches further down the line.

Teemu Haila

How to write perfect dialogue trees for games

One of the key times players get to make a choice is during dialogue. But how exactly do you create and plan all those branching paths?

Chay Hunter

How to make your game more diverse and inclusive

When designing games, how do you make sure that your studio is doing everything to be inclusive? In this blog, we explore the key principles to consider.

Allison Bilas

How to build successful VR games as a solo developer

Building a game is no easy feat. Especially if that game is something as complex as VR. But that didn’t stop Sergio Hidalgo.

Sarah Impey

Splitting Point: how Field Trip Z got 45M players on Roblox this year

We’ve picked the brains of Janzen Madsen, founder at Splitting Point and creator of the Roblox experience ‘Field Trip Z’, to get his advice.

Sarah Impey

Among Us VR dev talks about how to create immersive worlds

Making a hit VR game is a little different from other games. You have to put the player’s experience first.

Sarah Impey

Six features that turn a hyper-casual dud into a hybrid-casual hit

As hyper-casual games begin to dwindle, devs are looking to layer in more features to increase retention. But which features work best?

Chay Hunter

Getting Mobile Multiplayer Right (Part 1): History, Genres, and Motivations

Adding multiplayer elements to your game isn't as tricky as you may think. Here's part one of our guide to getting it right.

Will Freeman

Making a puzzle game? Avoid these 5 common mistakes

What makes a great puzzle game? Better yet, what makes a bad puzzle game? We explore what common pitfuls developers should avoid when designing these games.

Jupiter Hadley

4 Key Steps to Making a Successful Hyper-Casual game

Hyper-casual games are going through incredible growth, and is still going strong. If you're new to the genre, here's how you can get started.

David Hartery

So you want to make an RPG game? Here's what you should know

Mobile gaming expert, Jupiter Hadley, puts the RPG genre under the spotlight. And shares her best tips and advice when making your own.

Jupiter Hadley

Five Mistakes to Avoid When Making A F2P Game

Priyank Badkul from Huuuge Games shares the five mistakes he learned to avoid – mistakes that can take a F2P game from a great idea to a failed product.

Priyank Badkul

5 Things to Consider When Designing Hyper-Casual Games

Learn to create and design hyper-casual games by including five major phases in the process to ensure success - tips from JoyPac.

Falko Böcker

Making a Hit Idle Game – Eight Lessons from Kolibri Games

Kolibri Games’ Nate Barker tells us how they made Idle Miner Tycoon a hit, and explains everything they learned along the way.

Nate Barker

A Voodoo Guide To Game Design: Keep Things Simple

Publishing Manager at Voodoo, Corentin Selz, talks about just how they keep their games simple, and why this is so important for hyper-casual titles.

Corentin Selz

Hyper-Casual Games 101: How To Get The Most Out Of Your Players

When making hyper-casual games with great next day retention, how can you make sure you get the most out of your players?

Ioana Hreninciuc

What's The Best Game Engine For You?

What's the best game engine for you? To help you choose, we're narrowed down what you need to consider in an engine when creating your game.

Jacqueline Zenn

Designing Habit-Forming Games

A player who gets used to playing your game through habit will keep coming back, and that's the key to forming a steady community of players in the long run. Here are some tips, tricks, and tactics to help make sure that you're forming games that will have players habitually coming back time and again to keep playing.

Jacqueline Zenn

Top 5 Game Engines For Beginners

Planning on creating your first game? There are hundreds of game engines to choose from, but not all of them are ideal if you're just starting out. Here are 5 game engines that are free (or low-cost), user-friendly and royalty-free, and great recommendations for any would-be developer.

Katie Greene

Our 9 Sound Design Tips to Improve your Game's Audio

We've collected some useful tips to help get your indie game's sound right on a tight budget, from the best third party libraries, to recording your own!

Nathan Lovato

Being Successful in Free to Play Games: Atelier 801 Interview

We got in touch Melanie Christin, the co-founder of Atelier 801, an independent game studio that produced the Free to Play MMO, Transformice.

Nathan Lovato

The 9 Do's and Don'ts of Game Trailers

Your game’s trailer is one of your most powerful marketing assets, and first impressions are everything, so optimising it is all-important. Here are some tips on what you should do - and not do - to provide a sizzle reel that'll have your audience salivating.

Nathan Lovato

How To Make An iMessage Game (And Why)

iMessage games are viral by nature with built-in engagement and retention mechanics. If you’re not already building for iMessage, you should be. We provide an in-depth guide as to how to create games for the burgeoning platform, as well as why it pays to be a trailblazer and be among the first on a new service.

Chay Hunter

iMessage Games: New Opportunities for 2017

At Pocket Gamer Connects 2017 in London, I presented some of the data that we’ve been observing from the latest iMessage apps. Here are my findings.

Tom Kinniburgh

3 Simple Steps To Improve Your Game’s Graphics

We have a strong tendency to judge a book by its cover. It takes but a split-second for our opinion of a website or any visual design to be tainted. Positively or negatively. Coming up with both an appealing art direction and some efficient UX design is no easy task. We some tips to improve your game's graphics.

Nathan Lovato

Squeezing more juice out of your game design!

Aim to get the most satisfying and emotional ties from your gamers by adding more juice to your game.

Nathan Lovato

How To Create Immersive Game Intros

Your game’s intro can make or break its retention. The user can decide to leave at any point, even before they get a taste of the game’s best moments. There are 2 critical parts of any creation that leave a trail in the viewer’s mind: the introduction and the conclusion. Let's look at how to create compelling intros.

GameAnalytics

What Is The Compulsion Loop?

It's not very easy to find a very compact and easy to understand explanation of the compulsion loop concept. This post attempts to detail and expand the concept, while describing the potential future opportunities that can be made by making sure to leverage this concept.

Joseph Kim

Mid-Core Success Part 1: Core Loops

Mid-core games are casual games designed for adult males with a gaming background, who have a steady income but who simply don’t have time to play anymore now that they are older. Michail Katkoff explains how to strike the perfect balance between complexity and simplicity in order to hook mid-core gamers.

Michail Katkoff