Xavier Agulló

In late 2018 I took part in the 3rd Socialpoint “Game Jam”. I came up with a vague idea that I wanted to implement, and I begged different developers to join my team until I met Oriol who quickly became engrossed with the concept. We ended up in second position in the contest and, while our game was not the most polished, it took the audience's hearts and piqued the company’s curiosity.

Back then I was tangled with the world release of “Word Life” but Oriol, almost single-handedly, created a prototype that was released on the store with great CPI and day 1 retention. It’s then when I joined the project which grew to 6 people in its first wild year. We tested different variations of the core mechanics, including a PVP mode, liner puzzle, merge puzzle, or even an arcade version in the likes of “Plants vs Zombies” …always with the concept of crafting and battling. Eventually the game found its way in a blend of crafting, battling and resource management.

Since CPI was an important part of this project (isn’t it for all?), I was in close contact with the Marketing department following the intricacies of user acquisition. I was able to get familiarized with new terms (IPM, CTR, CTI…) and concepts (marketing creativities, partners, attribution…).

The second year of the project was spent on iterations on the project that eventually got very good CPI and day 7 retention. But its mechanics failed to monetise and sustain players in the long term. The team kept growing in size and I passed the leadership of the project to the studio manager who championed a new pivot more inline with the incipient “merge” games.

The game was finally cancelled but I am proud that, for a long while, it was the most promising project in the company. I also want to think that we somehow inspired the later “Top Troops” which shares some concepts from merge-battle space and evolved them to the next level.