About
This project was a chance for me to make a simple mobile game, so I went for an endless runner. This was made in UE4 for development on Android and I learned a lot about mobile games development.
I started by purchasing a Google Play Developer license and having a look through the requirements for releasing a game on the Google Play store. I also had fun playing around with achievement and leaderboard APIs, designing an achievement list and leaderboard categories. I would go on to set up a prototype store page so a few friends could download and test the game, as well as submit new high scores.
The basic premise is that there is an endless path ahead of you, but you have to leave the path in order to earn points. So the key is to keep jumping off the track briefly, before returning without falling. Cutting corners is the easiest way to do this, but the more segments skipped at a time, the higher the reward.
My favourite system to implement was the combo rank, if the player manages to consistently earn bonus points, their rank will increase. Alternatively the player may choose to play it safe and collect coins instead, which also have their own combo system. There are also a variety of powerups which the player can pick up for a temporary bonus .
Creating the procedurally generated path was another fun aspect to the design, it started off as a simple random selector but I began adding weights to each segment type and a complexity curve so that the path becomes gradually more difficult as the run goes on.
I stopped working on this project for several reasons. One was Android SDK updates which broke the leaderboards and achievements, after a lot of investigating this turned out to be an issue on Google’s side which was very frustrating. Secondly, Google introduced a new requirement that developers must have their name and address displayed on the store page. Many home based developers took issue with this move and it really put me off releasing on this platform.
In the end these issues, as well as mobile games not really being my thing, resulted in me ending this project. I do enjoy the occasional mobile game, but I do not have a great passion for them.
This project was a great learning experience, seeing into the process of releasing a game was very interesting. I thoroughly examined the Google Play Console and also dabbled with advertisements and Google AdSense as well as the distribution of new packages to playtesters.