Mobile games are one of the most engrossing activities in the world. In this growing tech world, the use of mobile devices is no longer limited to just calling and messaging. It’s much more than that. They have become an entertainment tool, and as we are talking about entertainment here, mobile games are the giant in the field.
According to a study, the total contribution of mobile games was as enormous as 60% in the video market globally. The total revenue was $49 Billion in the last year.
The constant growth in the industry has opened many opportunities in the field. But, in reality, the process of converting a mere game idea into reality is very complex. It needs considerable time, planning, designing, and implementing. After that, you’ll have to work on it so that it enters the targeted app store.
To brief you about the whole process and help you understand it better, this guide contains everything on how to make a mobile game from scratch. Have a look through it. First, we’ll start with the steps.
Steps to Create a Mobile game
Step by step guide to building a mobile game could be as fun as the game itself for developers. By planning the game strategy properly, they ensure that there are no compromises in users’ entertainment. This guide will help you comprehend the steps better.
Choose a game idea
Firstly, get your creative mind working and choose what game idea you would like to develop. The idea should be robust to ensure the success of the app post-launch. For this, you will have to do complete market research to know about your competitors and the ones leading the industry.
Create An Attractive Game Story
An innovative and unique storyline excites the players to move further with the games as it provides a goal. Gather your ideas, build a concept, and then work towards it to provide a great game environment. Besides, bringing a story in line makes the game more engaging, keeping them hooked to it for a long time.
Prepare A Game Design Document
You will probably have to prepare a document to systematically approach your idea to move further with the planning. The document helps you keep all the necessary information in a single place, also helps you in presenting your idea to a mobile game development company. The document will include a description of all the game elements such as tools, technologies, characters, behavior, etc. So you gotta prepare it with care.
Selecting Mobile Platform
Now that you have planned the structure of your game app, you will need to select what technology works best for you. The ones that instantly come to our minds are iOS, Android, and Windows. The selection of the platform matters a lot in regards to the reach and revenue of the game.
Write Code
After the documentation part comes coding work, we have the best developers in the industry to offer the best service in the field. Our developers make sure that the codes do not have any bugs or errors. This will lead to your game being developed exactly how you imagined.
Test Your Game
After the development, there is always a test phase. Whereas we complete the test phase during the development itself. We test each and every module after the complete development.
Select The Right Monetization Strategy
Choosing the perfect monetization strategy plays a major role in receiving maximum ROI. Mostly, it has three common strategies: membership/subscription plans, in-app purchases, and in-app advertisements. For example, if you are absolutely sure that players will definitely fall in love with your game, then you can make the download paid.
Cost Factors for Mobile Game Development
Genre
The genre of the game idea plays a huge role in the overall cost of development because the type of the game results in determining the size of the game, which in turn works as a factor in overall cost.
For example, if you want to build a simple riddle-generating game, the size of the game will be small, so it reduces overall cost. On the other hand, if you want to build a game like PUBG with everything from role-playing to action, then the development cost would be huge.
For your reference, below are types and categories of games:
Type of games
- High-Level Mobile Game – Clash of Clans
- 3D Game – 3D Shooting
- Simple 2D game – Sudoku
- Mid-Level Mobile Game – Cut the Rope
- Real Money Games – MPL
- AAA Games – GTA
Category of Games
- Real money
- Card
- Puzzle
- Action
- Arcade
- Casual
- Sports
Platform Selection
Platform selection also has a big role in overall cost production. As we already know by now, the choice would be between Windows, Android, and iOS. Each of them would cost differently for the game’s development. But it’s not just the cost that it affects; it would also have an impact on the game’s overall reach.
Game Complexity
Now that the type and category of the game have been finalized, you understand what all features your game should contain. Complex games like PUBG, NFS, Fortnite require additional features like gyroscope, voice integration, etc. So, the more complex your game is, the more features it would need, and then accordingly, the cost will be decided.
Mobile Game Engine
Game engines can be called the heart of mobile games. Therefore, choosing a precise game engine is a must when we are talking about the development of a mobile game. To select the right game engine, you should consider some factors such as features, type, or category of the mobile game. There are a variety of mobile game engines available in the market that you can choose from. As every game engine is distinct, having its pros and cons, it’s better that you consult a game development company to get a game engine of your choice.
Game Development Time
Mobile game app development has a rapid development rate; therefore, the timing for the development is very important. And at the same time, besides duration, quality, design, and testing are also important. The developers need to sync the speed and quality of the project. Because as the time for the development increases, the cost of the development also increases. And, of course, you would want to launch the perfect bug-free game of yours in the market. Most of the time, the cost for testing is very low, but if there are some errors or bugs in the game, you’ll have to pay for them to be fixed.
Top 5 platforms for mobile app game development
Unity
The most lovable feature of this platform is that it is beginner-friendly. It provides various tutorials and guides for development. Unity is a cross-platform tool launched by Unity Technologies. It contains awesome 2D and 3D features. What is more, it has features to import assets from other 3D applications such as Blender. Till now, it has covered almost half of the gaming industry, so there’s no doubt that this is one of the best platforms.
Unreal Engine
This platform contains exceptional features without any requirement of programming skills. Also, it allows modifications in the game without changing codes or doing any programming. It provides an easy working interface, code-testing within the platform itself, and more.
Solar2D
Also known as Corona SDK, Solar2D is a 2D game engine providing cross-platform service using Lua scripting language. It offers various plugins, 2D features, and precise documentation with an active and supportive community. Also, one of its intriguing features includes real-time simulation allowing you to examine how your app looks after changes.
SpriteKit – 2D sprite-based games
Apple launched this platform to create 2D games, supporting Objective-C languages and Swift. The developers love this tool as it helps them produce high-quality and performance 2D projects. Read this one carefully; Apple supports this platform, so there is no need to download external sources or additional libraries. Isn’t it great? Now you can be sure that your game suits every Apple product without any extra effort.
Buildbox
If you want your game to be developed in a really short time, then Buildbox would be the perfect choice for the developers. It is fast-paced as compared to other tools as it does not require coding; there’s just image selection. It has simple steps, Import, assign a role to them, and the game will be ready.
Conclusion:
So now you must have got it all cleared about all the steps involved in developing a mobile game. You will need to put in a lot of thought and work to get your work done. And surely, you’ll get lots of barriers and challenges in your way. To bring in a rich user experience to the gamers, hire an experienced mobile game development company so that your project gets recognition, quality and helps you grow in the industry.
