This Christmas fight like a Bastard

 I find it hard to believe that I am finally writing this particular blog entry. A blog entry about the release of our first mobile game GLADIATOR BASTARDS! I am also pretty excited with the game! It has fast paced action, it is has responsible controls via virtual controls (which is quite an achivement considering that this game is played by touch screen) and a twist of crude humour. I think it is safe to say that it is at least the best finnish made tournament fighting game. To our knowledge, Elfmania was the previous one.

Oh man! It took us a little under couple of years to create this tournament fighting game from scratch. You might think that it is pretty long time to spend on one mobile game and basically it is, but keep in mind that almost everything that we did was learned during the progress. Creating assets, graphics, sound, Play- and app-store integration, Game Center integration, Everyplay integration, localization, Unity analytics, legal stuff and lots of other things that I don't even remember anymore takes a lot of time. Especially if you have not done it before.

But when the game is released it does necessarily mean it is completed. Gladiator Bastards has some new upcoming features to look for. These include:

• Character based leaderboards
• Ability to buy oneself back into lost match
• Extra characters
• Extra weaponry
• Network matches

Also we are working on iOS release which has been frozen since last summer because we wanted to focus on one ecosystem at the time.

If we had to do start all over again I think we would not probably do a fighting game but something easier and more lowkey. It is not a great idea to pick an action genre this hard and established, then squeeze it to a mobile device where people mostly play some candy and bird tapping games :) But what is done is done and I am proud for what we have achieved!

It has also been a pleasure to get to know a lot of people of industry and learn the business from scratch. It is interesting to realise how much mobile games and business has changed only within these two years. I am sure the field will look completely different after another two years!

Oh yeah and I have to mention that we had quite some problems with the censorship at Google and on Facebook. First of all our advertisement campaing included pictures and video of a warrior lady with open and rather huge cleveage. That is a no-no on Play store videos and pics and on Facebook ads. However chopping up people in pieces with gallons of blood is perfectly okay :D Also we had problem with a the name GLADIATOR BASTARDS when entering ad campaigns to Facebook. apparently on their view the word Bastard refers to a certain group of people in a negative way. Well, it kinda does but these Bastards are tough fighters! Included at the bottom is censored wignette from banned facebook campaign.

I'd like to thank everyone involved with the project: Seppo, Joni, Pauliina, Eva, Riku, Matti, Simo, Sami, Jussi, Tommi, Marko, Timo, Anu, Jenni and everyone that has supported us on this enormous endeaveour! And remember: this christmas fight like a bastard!