Aurion KGF: The beginning of the end (Part 1)

Black Friday at Kiro’o Games…

In normal companies, Friday afternoon is usually a bit of a slower pace. Well, we had a “Black Friday” at the studio a few weeks ago, and we're not talking about sales.

While we were living our (already very complicated) lives on the last work, Olivier Madiba, our super, mega, hyperactive, hardworking, tireless Boss of infinite motivation, arrives (Hades atmosphere, TENET theme music in the background) and tells us with a serious and motivated grin:

--- “Meeting now in the big room, it will only take 20 minutes”.

2 hours later… We were still there and not ready to move. Our phones filled with 100 messages from our beloved threatening us with breakups because of the romantic dinner getting cold😅.

--- “…so, you understand why Aurion KGF must become stratospheric.” he left us… Finishing the presentation.

As a little reminder; we had already embarked on a job to include cooking mechanics, multiplayer gameplay and add more skills to the heroes, you see?

Alright, back to the meeting. The whole studio has been following carefully and we were starting to see the challenge ahead of us: We have to remaster the main gameplay in less than 2 months.

What you like in milk, you don't necessarily like it in yogurt.

Why do we have to remaster the main gameplay? For several reasons! But the main one is this: In a standard paid game (on console or PC), gamers allocate a test window of 1 to 4 hours to a game, within which they determine if the game is enjoyable or not. For a mobile free game, that window of testing is cut down to 15 minutes or less.

The current version of Aurion KGF needs a minimum of 1 hour to amaze the players, and we lose them after 25 minutes of trying out the game. We need to rework the beginning of the game and its mechanics; removing all points of frustration and the slow learning curve.

And indeed, it would be nice to quickly add cooking mechanics and multiplayer gameplay to the game. But, if we can’t get the basic formula of the in-game combat to be more addictive, then adding more features will not make it.

We must create a game that makes us addicted by its combat system.

Want to fly? Start by walking… on water.

Even if the whole team agreed with the (hyperactive, ever-motivated, etc.) CEO's feedback we still had major concerns:

KGF is 2 years of codes that we now have to edit in 2 months… without crunching 😅.
We have a new team of developers who are still finding their bearings.😢
We have a new team of developers who are still finding their bearings.😢

Honestly, at this point, it seems like mission impossible even Tom Cruise, with all his acrobatics, wouldn't make it... But we have no choice, we go for it like the Knights of the Zodiac. But the mystery remains whole in our heads:

HOW DO WE GET OUT OF SUCH A SITUATION?

TO BE CONTINUED…

Follow Us