Minion Rush
About the game
- Company: Gameloft
- Genre: Runner
- Release Date: June 2013
- Downloads: 1000+ million
(50 million just in the first 30 days) - Size at release: 96MB (at release)
- Distinctions: BAFTA Kids Award 2013
Selected for Apple’s “Best of 2013”
About my work
After spending a year and a half in China and a few months working for a trading consultancy agency (don’t
ask) I came back to “Gameloft Barcelona”. While I was gone the industry had changed completely. Game teams
were much bigger and, more importantly, the business model shifted from “Paid” to “free-to-play”. It was then
that I landed on a very special project, “Despicable Me: Minion Rush”.
I joined the team during development, just after the game underwent a radical pivot from 2D to 3D. It was the
first time I was not leading the design of a game, instead I joined a team of 6 designers. Some of my
contributions were the design of mini-games (“The Moon”, “Fluffy the Unicorn”...), a lot of level design and
most notably the design and coordination of the first Liveops event (The so-called “Special Missions”). I’m
also proud of that time where I reverse-engineered the content files and found a way to reskin levels which
saved literally hundreds of man-hours to the level designers.
The game had low ARPU (Average Revenue per User) which is now widely accepted as an endemic condition for
runner games. However, due to brand strength and game quality, we had a gigantic stream of organic users and
the game became a solid money making machine.
It was an honor to work on that team back then, we felt we were making history (if anything, the history of
F2P).
Download it for iOS
Download it for Android
What I learned
- How to work under the supervision of a Design Lead (fortunately a competent one!).
- How to work effectively in a big development team (between 30-40 people).
- How freemium works, despite “Minion Rush” being a lite version of it.
What I'm proud of
- Being a solid link between the high level design of the core team and the development trenches.
- The design of the Liveop events, which boosted greatly the game revenues.
- Contributing to a top level game in multiple fields including, UI, balancing, levels and systems design.
+ The game had plenty of delighters and even losing triggered funny animations.
+ One of the monetisation venues was the sale of costumes.
+ The moon mini-game was one of my best contributions.
+ I’m also proud of designing and coordinating the “Special Missions”
+ Here are some obstacles documentation I made for the level design team.
+ We made a cool proposal for a new game in the series …but it never happened!
Special thanks: Alexander Chiveli, Alexandru Adam, Alice Lavedrine, Ando Roose, Baptiste Dubessay, Beniamin Durski, Bojan Pantelic, Camila Dalence, Carlos Martínez Alvarez, Carlos Navarrete, Cristian Iordache, Cristian Iordache, David Llort, David Mayola, Deniss Nikolajev, Diego Barragán, Emanuel Costan, Fabio Dalla Costa, Ferran Mestres, Francisco Vega, Francisco Viloria, Gerard Gine, Guillem Reig, Igor Ivinski, Iván Lobón Herrera, Javier Barnés, Jordi Granados, José David Tuero, José María Rodríguez, Julián Pérez, Julio César, Luca Vezzaro, Manu Ruiz, Martina Witjaksana, Miguel Angel Rubio, Miguel Borham, Mihai Sebea, Nicolás Martín, Paco Jover, Pedro Martín, Ricardo Vargas, Roc Alabern, Roi Veiga Novás, Ruth Martínez, Saul Gascón, Sergi Díaz, Sergi Lluch, Sergi Mestra, Tatsugoro Kawakami, Toni Sala, Victor Ortiz, Victor Ruiz, Yasser Bushara.
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