Ironcode Gaming is launching a new strategy game Tower of God for Steam on 18 January . In conversation with Animationxpress, Ironcode games CEO Pallav Nawani shares “Tower of God tells the story of a man who wants to change the choices he has made in his life. He decides to climb the unconquered Tower of God to have his one wish granted. It is a casual game for everyone who plays games for relaxation.”
The gameplay comprises of match-3 game with new gameplay mechanics which is based on strategy and also includes mini-games such as hidden object, jigsaw, memory and slider. “The player plays the Match-3 game to climb up the tower. In between there are mini games to freshen up the gameplay,” Nawani added.
The game will be available to play on PC, Mac, Linux and Android. It can be bought at Steam, itch and Ironcode’s official website as well. Nawani shares that the biggest concern for him while designing the game was to introduce something new in this casual game as casual gamers have played many match-3 games over the years side by side they also kept in mind that the players can still play the game and relax.
For that they have introduced new design elements, and have modified some old concepts to present it differently. The game also has difficulty levels which allowed the players “to play endless, untimed mode, while experienced players could play tougher levels in timed or move limited mode,” he added.
They have also taken care of the fact that while playing the game the player shouldn’t get bored before the game has to introduce something new. They have focused that the game in every level is fun to play, whether it is the first level or the last. He expressed, “For design we use good old pen and paper and spreadsheets, we document using Google docs and Google spreadsheets. That allows us to easily collaborate it online. For development; we use Unity as the game engine, and Affinity Studio and Blender for art.”
They started working on the game seven months back and the initial response has been good overall. He says “we are targeting people who play games to relax. While a lot of that audience has moved to mobile, that market is oversaturated. Fortunately, there are a sufficient number of people playing games on PC, so we are targeting those.”
He believes that the Indian games market is mobile first and the only profitable way is to have IPs and use them to make quick games that are cheap to make and monetize with ads. So game developers are finding strategy games are becoming successful and thus the developers are overflowing with strategy games. To inspire the budding developers he shares an insight for a successful game development he says, “It is crucial to analyse the industry before you start making the game, make sure there is an audience for your game before you commit to developing it.”
