How to make a hyper casual game?
If you are serious about attempting to create your own hyper casual mobile game, you have come to the right place!
Even though these are among the simplest games to make and play, there are of course lots of little things to consider and know ahead of time, to save future headaches and make the development go as smooth and fast as possible.
One of the most important aspects to consider, is the choice of game engine that will be adopted for this task. A game engine is software that allows the creation of video games, and offers some tools that are required for the task, including but not limited to rendering (drawing) images on your screen, playing sound, processing game physics (objects falling with gravity, or hitting each other), controlling all of the different elements of a game, and so much more!
As you can expect, there are a lot of different game engines available, and they have their own pros and cons, and some are better suited for a few specific tasks. In order to create hyper casual games, below are some of the most common.
Unity - https://unity.com/
Previously known as Unity 3D, this is probably one of the most used game engines nowadays. Allowing the creation of both 2D and 3D games, and providing so many useful tools to make the process easy, as well as a very active community, this is surely one of the best options out there.
One of the most useful features is that the editor is very powerful, but still very accessible for other members besides developers. This means that everyone can contribute with building levels, experimenting with different objects already present in the game, and so much more!
It creates high-performance, high-quality video games, and supports exporting to a wide range of platforms - Android and iOS included, but also PC, web, and even consoles!
Another very important aspect is that using Unity is completely free for students and small companies, so it really provides a great opportunity to get started in this market.
Unreal Engine - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/
Unreal Engine is also very famous, mostly because historically it powered such games as Unreal Tournament or Deus Ex. The new versions support developing games for mobile platforms also, and of course you can expect some beautiful, high-quality graphics to be produced!
It features lots of game-building tools immediately available, as well as plenty of existing assets that you can use to make a great game very easily.
Another positive point is that it is also free to use for students and startups, unless your game makes more than 1 million US dollars, in which case you will have to pay a 5% fee - a very good problem to have, it seems!
Lumberyard - https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/
Lumberyard is the game engine from Amazon, which can be a great advantage if you consider that Amazon is powering so many online services these days with their Amazon Web Services range of cloud tools. If you are building a game that will require intensive network features, it might be very appealing to have a look at this one.
Plenty of tools are available to build polished game experiences, and exporting to multiple platforms is supported as well.
This one is also free to use at will!
As you can see, there are plenty of options to choose from! If it seems hard to pick, one suggestion is to have a look at their websites and case studies or portfolios, will provide a good idea of what kinds of games are possible to create with them.
If you made it this far, you probably are determined to get to working on your new hyper casual game! By now you might have selected what tools you are going to use, but of course tools alone will not create anything! You will need to use and command them to execute exactly what you intend to create.
In the future we should cover the subject of ideas for a hyper casual game, kinds of controls and levels, but for now we’re focusing mostly on getting started with the tools and creating something!
The next step is learning how a game engine works, what it does, and what you can do with it. As was covered in the previous post, game engines are a software tool that handle much of the heavy lifting necessary to create a game and run it efficiently (such things like memory management, rendering image, playing audio, or detecting user input), so that you don’t need to worry about any of that. Great, right? This means you can focus on what matters the most: your great idea for a project that you will enjoy and love showing to friends and family.
So, you have launched your game engine of choice and maybe it looks scary, with so many buttons and menus in there, and a huge blank space… Fret not, because this is exactly how everyone starts game dev, and in no time you will be comfortable with your tools to create something new and fresh.
The best way to get going at this point is to search for some video tutorials covering the basics of your game engine of choice. Luckily for you, there’s already plenty of content online that you can use to learn the necessary basics to get started and moving!
Below you can find a few suggestions that will help you get on your way building your first hyper casual game.
You are encouraged to search for more as well! As mentioned you will find so many videos online covering your tool of choice, and possibly some of them might be closer to your own game idea. Having a look at different videos and tutorials will definitely help you speed up the development and quickly get your project to run ;) This, by the way, is one of the best sources of motivation that you can get at this stage: getting the simple things to work, images to appear on screen, characters running, items spawning, all those little pieces that together you will call your own game in the future! In no time, and with some of these elements together showing on your mobile screen, you will be really proud of what you’ve accomplished, and surely will want to show it to the whole world to play!
As usual, stay tuned for additional content to get you on the right track to create the hyper casual successes of the future!