7 years ago Guns of Boom was released to global launch.
A mobile f2p shooter with emphasis on easy controls and bright cartoonish style, 100M+ downloads.🚀🐄💥 I was there, as part of the team making the final push possible.
Shooter genre on mobile already had some notable games at that time: thriving slow-paced tactical shooters, as well as shooters tailored for the tastes of lesser audiences. The goal of Guns of Boom was daring: to build an accessible and appealing shooter for everybody. Fast, but simple. With complex core mechanics, but without gloomy hardcore vibes.
🚩At the beginning of 2017 GoB already had polished core gameplay and good tech. But the question was: is it enough? Is the game really standing up to be a hit? In terms of advanced gameplay, player motivation, and UX there were uncertainties. COD and PUBG weren’t released yet, so it was a new frontier without clearly defined rules and expectations.
🎯The challenge
The project team got four months to pump up and change everything that can make a difference. It was a final leap of faith before the release. The team was scaled up for the challenge: lots of skillful people were transferred here to do the job.
🛸What I did there
I was transferred to GoB as well to provide strategic game design vision (for the release, for upcoming updates through the 2 years), then pitch it to the stakeholders and help the team with implementing it to the game.
🚧Preparations
Played dozens of shooters, gathered reference data (scaling of the economy, stats progression)
Made around 7 concepts of GD vision (loops & meta)
💡What we did to make it happen
– Invested a lot in diverse gunplay
– Introduced perks and abilities
– Ways to make different builds of equipment
– X2 number of weapons in the game, without forcing the player to buy everything to progress
– Game economy became considerably “cheaper” and more accessible for the player
– LvL-bracket based matchmaking, to make gameplay different during the progression through the content
– All interfaces were recreated anew, in a more creative and bright style
– All economy was revamped from scratch
– Offers system for monetization (just because we could)
📈In parallel we worked on a plan for the upcoming two years of development and live ops. I was busy with scaling gameplay loops and meta, but we worked on advanced gameplay and new game modes (e.g. CTF, KotH, Payload) as well. I was quite pragmatic about improving the core gameplay at that time, but the members of the GD team didn’t let me get away with it (special kudos to Kirill Sablin for his passion for the subject). Actually there were lots of great people who contributed to GoB’s success like A LOT. And I am really grateful to them!
In the end, Guns of Boom became a bright hit with tens of millions of players. Still, years passed, and now the market got new hits that got the spotlight. But I will always remember how actually we got to the current point in the mobile shooters genre story. 😌💥
