FlipShip

Fast-paced mobile shooter with tilt controls and color-swapping mechanics

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Creative Lead
ByteSize Games
2
Unity Engine, Javascript, Cornerstone
2011
September 27, 2011

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Description

FlipShip is an arcade-style action shooter combining tilt-based movement with a color-switching mechanic. Players guide their ship by tilting the device, while tapping the screen flips the ship’s color between two hues: you can only destroy enemies of the same color, and colliding with enemies of the opposite color means instant death. What makes the game compelling is its risk-reward system: the longer you stay in one color the higher your score multiplier climbs, but you must flip (thus resetting the multiplier and banking your points) before a mistake wipes out your unbanked score. With three ships to choose from, each with distinct speed, fire-arc and a special ability, and challenging difficulty modes, FlipShip offers an intense high-score chase wrapped in neon-vector visuals and fast-paced gameplay.

Responsibilities

I independently designed, programmed, and built every aspect of the game, including audio and VFX, while contracting an artist solely for the 2D artwork.

Notable Contributions

Developed company concept / pitch process and used it to develop initial game concept
Prototyped numerous game systems to find the core fun and reduce game scope where possible
Authored and maintained all design documentation
Programmed all game systems including the heads-up display (HUD) and user interface (UI)
Collaborated with contract artist remotely to ensure consistent art style
Created and maintained online repository of all game assets for version control
Researched and procured middleware where necessary to accelerate development without the need for additional personnel
Setup process for quickly creating builds, distributing them to testers, and incorporating feedback

Key Takeaway

Any good game can fail.

This is one of those unfortunate lessons I only completely understood in hindsight. By all accounts, FlipShip was a good game. It was highly reviewed by critics, had an average user rating over 4.5 (out of five), and was featured prominently in Apple’s ‘New and Noteworthy’ section the week of its release. It didn’t make money, however, and was one of the two financial failures that forced ByteSize Games to close its doors.

There is no guarantee of success. Any good game can fail and many do. Success in the video game industry, as in most creative endeavors, is ultimately a roll of the dice. Everything you do: making a great game, timing your release, marketing your game, generating buzz, getting good reviews, etc. helps weigh the dice in your favor, but in the end, you still have to roll the dice.

It’s very hard for a bad game to succeed, especially with the transparency in the current market. At this point, you can know basically anything you want to know about a game before purchasing or launching it. However, it’s also very hard for a good game to succeed. Even if the game is, by all accounts, great, there are a huge number of other challenges the product must face to be successful. Marketing and discoverability issues can keep your audience from finding your game. Using the wrong monetization strategy can ensure your game financially fails regardless of any other factors. Releasing your product too close to something similar can end up sinking both titles.

Shipping a financially successful game is threading a needle and failure does NOT mean your game wasn’t good. Something didn’t work. That something might be within your control or it might not. It might be something you should have known or something you couldn’t possibly. It’s very easy to hold yourself personally accountable for the failure especially when you are developing something mostly like on your own, like FlipShip. The only thing you can do is ship the best game you can, celebrate its successes, and learn from its mistakes.