XXX, Sweat and Pixels: How We Made a Game Without a Publisher or Gamedev Experience and Reached the Top!

What the talk is about

Myla Mishchenko tells how the Holy Water team, with no publisher and no prior gamedev experience, built the mobile interactive story game My Fantasy and grew from a handful of people to over seventy in two years. She describes the game's starting state: outdated art, technical problems with scripts and content, weak narrative and chaotic processes. She then covers the fixes: custom tools for writers, improved art, new features (including playing from another character's point of view), A/B tests and writing guides. She also discusses how the Western audience differs, how paid choices are built by raising tension in the plot, and mistakes made, such as launching a feature without testing. Useful for narrative designers, game designers and teams making visual novels or mobile games without a publisher.