Your icon is the first thing that users see in the market. It needs to represent your game creatively but effectively. In this case clarity is critical. Potential users will be using your icon to decide whether the game is worth downloading or not, so having an effective icon is very important.

You don’t need to be a professional artist (or hire one) to design an icon. It’s something you could do on your own by just keeping a few points in mind.

These are some thoughts that must go into designing a game icon whether you’re someone working for Rovio on their next game or an indie developer working on the next Super Meat Boy.

1. Make sure your icon ‘says’ what your game is about.
2. Sketch some ideas.
3. Use your main character.
4. Research and aim for better.
5. Don’t include words.
6. Keep it simple.
7. Graphical continuity is a must.

1)  Make sure your icon ‘says’ what your game is about

When we started working on the icon, we had not finalised the name for the game so that was the first thing we had to settle on. So, writing down all the key things that consist in our game really helped. Then we started eliminating words based on their priority. Once we were done with that, we came up with different combinations and finally finalized on Travelling Tribal as it was easy to remember and also conveyed what the game was actually about.

2)  Research and aim for better

Your aim must be that your icon must be better than the rest, so for this you need to be aware of what you are competing against. What we did was surf the category our game was to appear in and printed out a list of icons that we liked. The aim was to make sure our icons looked as professional and stood out more among them. We went through other categories and noted points that we liked about certain icons and the techniques they used to stand out from the crowd.

Research what the competition is doing.

The idea is not to copy the exact style but to use a few techniques. Have something you can compare against so that you know the context in which your icon will appear.

3)  Sketch some ideas

Keep that sketchbook handy.

Well, I’ve been saying this since my first article. You must always have a sketchbook and a pencil with you. So now you’ve checked out the competition, you have a list of words that the icon must ‘say’, so the best way to start designing is to sharpen that pencil and start sketching. Your aim must be to generate as many ideas as possible, and with plenty of variety.

Travelling Tribal is a 2D game in which players control a tribal character and help him travel around the world. This is done while avoiding all the obstacles that come along the way from evil tribal twins to giant bees! So with all these characters we weren’t sure which to include in the icon and which ones to not. This brings me to my next point.

4)  Use your Main Character

Let your protagonist be featured.

People instantly associate the game with the main character, so use it! There are exceptions like Temple Run which has an idol as its icon, but their aim was to convey the word ‘temple’ through the icon which was pretty clear. Also, there are cases where you have several main characters. If they use the same template but have different costumes, use the default one. If there are different characters, choose only one. Don’t include many and make the icon cluttered! While viewing on the phone/tablet the icon appears very small, so the components of the icon must be easily recognizable. If your character isn’t small and compact, try using just the character’s face rather than the whole body.

5)  Don’t include words

Well this is something very basic, but people tend to make this mistake pretty often. Using words in your app icon simply says that you were too lazy to come up with a cool graphic that would represent your game so you just wrote down the name. Text on the icon just looks cheap and boring. The name of the game is right next to the icon , and what it does is what you write in the description. Don’t try to cramp all that up in the icon. As a rule I never use words on the icon. It may look okay in a larger size, but once you scale it down it looks really ugly- don’t forget that you’re designing an icon (the word icon comes from the Greek word εἰκών eikōn meaning “image”).

6)  Keep it simple…but don’t forget to detail

Leaving off words is one way to keep it simple, but in general you ought to make sure your design isn’t too complicated. Icons are very small and if you try to fit too much into a small space you’ll end up with an icon that’s illegible and easy to ignore. Strong yet simple shapes and lines will do more for your icon than highly illustrative designs. There can be a few things that you can add to your icon. If you are trying to establish a brand, then including a logo on the icon would be a good idea. If it’s a free version, having “FREE” written would attract people. If your game has two versions – one normal and one HD – you could have a banner saying that too.  In case it’s a sequel, consider using the same icon with an additional “2” written on it. Whatever it may be, choose VERY CAREFULLY. Make sure it does not look cluttered with the logo, FREE sign, HD sign and “2” which can shift the focus from the main character.

In our case, since our main character was a Tribal, we avoided using all the power ups that he has, or the obstacles he faces along the way. We just included the main character. If he’s travelling, there is no need to include the flag of every country on the icon!

It might sound like a contradiction, but don’t forget to include some detail on your icon designs. Simplicity here doesn’t mean being plain. Add a little bit of shadow here and a highlight there. Spend time on your gradients, pick out a delicious texture for the background, and add some love and attention to the bevel or emboss. Don’t be afraid to zoom right in to the pixel level and make sure it looks perfect and well formed. No pixel should be out of place. At such a small size the difference between a beautiful icon and a crappy one can be one out of place pixel. Also, just because you’ve put in all this effort for the icon, don’t be afraid to scrap a few effects for the smaller icon size, because a few effects get pixelated. Have a detailed large icon that people would see when they come to your page, but also a simplified smaller version that looks crisp on the phone’s menu screen.

With Travelling Tribal, even when we’d decided on the basic approach, I spent a lot of time playing with the details. I made improvements like:

• Cleaning up the pixels from the background to make it sharper when it’s small.
• Playing with the character’s features.
• Choosing the right shade for the background so that the main character could be clearly defined.

7)  Graphical continuity is a must

Your icon is the first promise you make to the user. It says

• I am of “x” quality.
• You will do “this” in my game.

If people see a high-quality 3D character in the icon, but your game is actually a 2D game, people may get irritated. If the icon is a 2D character in HD but the game isn’t, that can irritate people too. Be honest. It’s better to have fewer downloads than have a huge number of downloads with people giving you 1-star and abusing you in the comments. The only way to ensure your users don’t feel cheated is to make sure the graphics within the game match the icon. Lying can make some really fun games unenjoyable.

Soon, I’m going to be sharing our first teaser trailer for the game along with a lot of wallpapers up for download. Here are a few screenshots of the teaser, so stay tuned.

Have you applied these tips to your icon design? Share your images in the comments below.

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

So you think you can be a game developer?

Well, getting the concept ready for your game was just the beginning. Like I said in my previous article, you have not started a game till you have something that you can actually play!!

So, now that you’ve got a working prototype ready. How do you decide whether it is something that you’d want to commit to for the next few months, of if it isn’t working and you need to come up with something else?

Here are some points you need to keep in mind, once you’ve started developing your game.

1. Make sure the core mechanics are fun.
2. Choose good partners (or work alone as long as you can).
3. Test it among your target audience.
4. Factor the boring things into your plan.
5. Have realistic deadlines.

1)      Make sure the core mechanics are fun

So, if someone asks, “what does the user do in your game” and your answer is ‘hey they can do ANYTHING they want!”, your users are back to playing Minecraft.

Don’t be too ambitious about your first project. Make sure the core mechanics are fun to play around with because ultimately these core mechanics are what will drive your game. Try not to do everything at once.

While you are prototyping, it is possible that you discover a mechanic that is more fun than your original idea. Consider making that your new core mechanic, because this is what your player will be doing the most while playing your game. Make sure that you put in enough thought into it.

2)      Choose good partners (or work alone as long as you can)

I’d read somewhere that “finding a good game-making partner is like dating in a lot of ways.” A programmer and an artist combination is not going to work out smoothly all of the time. There are a lot of things to consider like mutual interest, experience, and timing. Like a romantic relationship, you don’t want to be the one who is giving his 100% while the other isn’t as dedicated. Try to sit down and talk things out. Try to see that the other person is equally excited about the game because it is really difficult if one of your partners drops out towards the end of the project or isn’t equally passionate towards it.

All sides of game development don’t always see eye to eye.

Also, try looking for an artist towards the end of your project, rather than having someone from the beginning. Consider working with placeholder content for the major part of your development process because an artist would much rather contribute to a project that is ready and is just missing art. Also, you cannot be sure about the artwork required for the game until its final stages.

For example, towards the beginning of my game, there was a hot-air balloon that flew across the screen that my character crashed into and would die. Later on I replaced that with this really quirky bee cartoon. In terms of code there wasn’t much that was required to be done, but if I had an artist redo such things throughout the development process, he’d get really irritated. Try to get hold of an artist towards the end.

3)      Test it among your target audience

Like I said at the beginning. Make sure your core mechanics are fun to play with. Once you have your core mechanics ready, try to test it out on your target audience. Try looking for people in your immediate circle during the initial stages and get feedback from them. Make sure you consider their feedback, and also try to see their reactions while playing your game. See if they are finding it difficult to grasp the basics of the game or not. Make sure to test on a regular basis, mostly when you make a major development in the game. Try to get as much feedback as possible. Compare it with your previous versions. People might not always like the updated version, and consider going back and correcting your mistake. If there is something that the users are finding hard to understand, consider changing it or scrapping it in some cases.

4)      Factor the boring things into your plan

At some point you’ll suddenly realize that there’s all this stuff that you never thought about while you were prototyping or during your planning stage. This includes menus, save/load options, pause screens, screen transitions. I had always imagined that game making would be this process where you create this really awesome world or mechanic, play around with it, and basically I am the god there. If you say the gravity is 15, it’s 15! However, a lot of the game making process is tedious and downright unfun. These are the kind of things companies hire interns to do!

But try to make sure you have factored these things into your plan and have allotted enough time. If your menu screen looks boring, or dull, it just spoils the first impression of the game. A nice ‘splash screen’ does wonders to make a game feel legitimate. You’ll realise that a lot of this boring stuff is what makes the game feel complete!

5)      Have realistic deadlines

Have a realistic deadline and work towards it. Plan out your day properly so that you have enough time for coding as well as sketching. Make sure you stick to the deadlines. Start off with giving yourself daily deadlines and see how you’ve done towards the end of the week. If something was missed, try to complete it during the weekends. But make sure you don’t get stuck on one thing throughout. If there is something you’ve gotten stuck on, try to move on to the next thing and get back to it on the weekend. It is always important to keep moving forward.

Well, that’s all for the development stage guidelines. In my next article, I plan on covering a few important points on how to get started with designing the logo for your game.

If you’ve recently started working on your first game. Let us know what you would like to read, or how you found this article in the comments below.

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”  –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Well , we’ve been working on our game for over two months, and after browsing through hundreds of webpages, I feel its finally time for me to share my experiences and knowledge with other indie game developers.

In the series of articles I’ll be writing, I’m going to share everything that I have learned from my experience as an indie game developer. I’m going to cover everything an indie developer needs to know while working on a game.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an indie developer or someone as big as gameloft. There are three basic things you need to keep in mind while working on your game.

Marketing, Graphics, Programming.

Things like coming up with a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a website and reviews all fall under marketing.

Graphics covers things like the artwork you use, the game design, the logo, the icon, feature images, etc.

And programming, of course, covers all the coding behind the game.

I’m going to share my experiences in all these fields in my coming articles. And I’ll be giving you tips on how to move on from one phase in the development process to another.

So here are a few steps that will help you arrive at a concept for your next big game:

1. Select your target audience
2. Finalize a color scheme or theme for the game
3. Get a concept screen shot ready
4. Research
5. Prototype

1) Select your target audience

Now I know we all design games “for everyone,” or for “all age groups” and that’s great. But it is important for you to ask, ‘What is my target age group?’

This can be basically broken down to three categories:

• 8 to 12-year-olds
• 13 to 18-year-olds
• 18 and above

Now before you start designing for any of these age groups, it’s really important to understand each one of them. It is important to understand that each of these age groups turns to gaming with a different objective, and looks for different things in a game.

8 to 12-year-olds

Kids at this age are just getting introduced to gaming, and just starting to learn how it all works. Maybe they require the help of their parents to download a game from the store in the initial stages but they soon get the idea and are out there surfing the market. Kids in this age group are called “tweens” by marketers. Put more simply, most are teen wannabes. As many exasperated parents can tell you, tweens want to emulate the hot teen fashions, music, and language. Younger children are attracted by animation, cartoon figures, sounds and other special effects.

Use bright colors and eye catching graphics for this group. Children of this age group respond really well to bright colors and the game icon and screen shots play a really important role so use bright colors and eye-catching graphics for this group.

They may not necessarily read the game description or go through the permissions required. But once the game is downloaded, they are very quick to abandon it and move on to another game if it wasn’t what they ‘expected’ it to be. Of course, they do not take the time to even uninstall the game, and it’s up to their parents to go through the mess and uninstall unused games taking up precious space on the disc.

13- to 18-year-olds

Kids at this age range from somewhat grown up to almost grown up and they’re more sophisticated. They’ve moved on from the flashy graphics and effects they liked when they were younger. They still pay a lot of attention to detail, so having a good set of graphics is extremely important, but teens in this age group slowly start to appreciate more minimal forms of design as they grow up.

18 years old and older

This group consists of grown-ups who are much less likely to spend more than one or two hours of their day on your game. They usually get into gaming in between activities like traveling or in the middle of a boring meeting. So, they look for a game that is not time-consuming. That means if it takes one hour (literally) for a weapon to get delivered from the base to the troops, they are quickly going to move on to some other game!

2) Finalize a color scheme or theme for the game

Once you have a target age group in mind, finding the appropriate color scheme and having a mood board isn’t too difficult.

The following colors are associated with certain qualities or emotions:

Red – excitement, strength, sex, passion, speed, danger.
Blue – (listed as the most popular color) trust, reliability, belonging, coolness.
Yellow – warmth, sunshine, cheer, happiness
Orange – playfulness, warmth, vibrant
Green – nature, fresh, cool, growth, abundance
Purple – royal, spirituality, dignity
Pink – soft, sweet, nurture, security
White – pure, virginal, clean, youthful, mild.
Black – sophistication, elegant, seductive, mystery
Gold – prestige, expensive
Silver – prestige, cold, scientific

Try to implement the colors you choose in your graphics and posters as much as possible because your app icon needs to stand out from the rest for someone casually scrolling through the market to click it.

3) Get a concept screen shot ready

OK, so now you’ve decided on your target age group and have also figured out a color scheme for your game. Now let’s move on to the most important part: Getting a concept screen shot ready.

To do this, all you need to do is to open up a sketch book, and start sketching ideas.

It is not important for the very first idea to be the perfect one. But don’t stop scribbling no matter what happens because ideas will flow through your head as you sketch. A blank piece of paper will not limit your imagination. You can sketch anything, from the main character you would like to include in your game to a screen shot of how the game would look while playing.

I make sure that even when I am not coding, I always have a sketchbook with me to scribble down ideas that come to my head. You could probably get a great way of designing your home-screen while watching an episode of Masterchef. So, make sure that you have your sketchbook with you at all times.

Try to put down as much detail as possible, from menu buttons to the pause screen. The more detail you think in, the better. There are a lot of amazing games out there that would be on the top charts if they just had a set of better graphics and UI. So spend as much time as you can sketching. Try to fit it into your schedule. I spend around 2-3 hours on sketching, while coding for only 6-8 hours. It’s really important to fit sketching into your schedule.

I also prefer to keep a notebook with me while playing other people’s games. Not to copy but to analyse and note down my own original ideas. I got this idea of adding a hidden level while playing an old DOS game called DAVE that I loved to play when I was a kid. It could be that you had this great idea while doing something, and then because you forgot to make a note of it, it slipped past you, and then you recall it 2-3 months afterwards when implementing it into the game would be a huge pain.

4) Research

Your research should cover everything. Keep yourself updated about the latest devices out there. If you’re developing for Android, then go online, and check out the latest devices in the market, and also a list of popular ones. Make sure to test your game with them in mind and make your game compatible for those devices. It’s really annoying to players when a game works fine on a mobile phone, but crashes on their tab or does not scale properly! Try looking through other open-sourced games for references at points where you do get stuck and look online for code snippets with common problems such as the “Rate me” pop-up or a Twitter follow button. These are basic things that take up a lot of time to code if done from scratch.

5) Prototype

Remember, all of this was to ‘prepare’ you to start developing your game. You have not started the game until there is something you have in your hand that you can actually PLAY!

Prototype first with whatever is available. As you prototype, your ideas improve and sometimes you stumble upon a better idea. Either way, I usually find it difficult to figure out what I want to commit to until I actually start making something. So make something!

Now that everything is finalized, you should get a set of placeholder content ready first. And start with the basic framework of the game. Try to set up your basic classes, get the game loop running, start off with drawing a single sprite on the canvas and move forward from there. Make sure to implement all the classes step by step, and do not add everything at once, because at this point it would take up a lot of time to debug the code and figure out what went wrong in case the game crashes.

Also, you should make multiple copies of code. What I try to do is to make a copy of my project and start working on that every day when I turn on eclipse. This creates a kind of a checkpoint for me. That way if I’ve been coding for three days and I realize that my game crashes at the score of 3,000, I can just check it against the previous code and get things sorted out much more quickly. And there’s no harm doing so because projects do not take up much space.

In my next article, I will be going into a bit more in detail on the development process. After that, I’ll move on to some graphics stuff.

Let me know if you found these tips useful in the comments below.

Always remember:

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” –Walt Disney

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.