Hey Roterra™ puzzle game fans! Today we are going to take you behind the scenes for some reflections on developing this top rated puzzle game. For this article, we spoke with Jesse, Rob, Sara, and Matt at Dig-iT! Games® to hear some thoughts and experiences while working to complete Roterra. The game has now been played in over 80 countries worldwide with new player exploring the puzzling adventures of Angelica everyday.
What was your favorite moment during development?
Hitting milestones during development is always something to be celebrated! According to Matt, hitting milestones and seeing the game as it was progressing was something that always felt good.
“The release milestones were very good moments. I enjoyed seeing how far the release versions had come compared to the initial MVP version from before the project entered full production.” - Jesse
For Sara, digitally building her levels in Unity when the game was far enough along was her favorite moment during development. She loved being able to see her levels come to life from paper!
Rob enjoyed the process of using real-time lighting that required significant awareness of geometry counts. Development had completed a series of optimizations and shader developments that allowed for the most desired look proposed in early prototyping. Did you know that Roterra uses only one light source in the game?
What did you learn during development?
As far as learning experiences, Jesse became much better at using quaternions due to the fact that both the cubes and the world can rotate in Roterra. What is a quaternion you ask. In mathematics, the quaternions are a number system that extends the complex numbers. They were first described by Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space(source: Wikipedia) Because the world of Roterra can be flipping in any direction keeping everything organized in the 3D puzzle space was very important in our design. Rolling over the side of the world was not in the original design.
“I learned a lot about the importance of having a focused vision and design goal, and how everything needs to be iterated on, no matter how seemingly small and insignificant it seems to be.” – Matt
Rob reports that he learned more about adjusting to changing performance limits and understanding the time necessary for common artist tricks to be feasible in the game environment. Unlike many popular puzzle game for mobile we stretched the boundaries with the sheer size of the levels we were delivering to our players.
Although Sara did not do any of the core development work, she is proud to have learned how to use the almighty SourceTree! Sara wore multiple hast throughout the development process including adding some Roterra monuments in our rivers and valleys. Have you seen her rock spiders and the structures that drew inspiration from Harry Potter in the caves?
How did the Roterra development experience differ from other games you’ve worked on?
This was the first commercial game production for Rob . He shared that the smaller team required effective communication for us to make our deadlines and minimize rework. Reviews by users such as "Brill Graphics" are a great reflection on the work the artists delivered to the game while constrained by the mobile environment.
Jesse's past included creating action games, so this was a nice change of pace. Working on a relaxing puzzle game that does not have a fail state was something he enjoyed! He also developed numerous educational games with Dig-iT! Games.
“It was a game with a larger scope and development time than anything I worked on before.” – Matt
Roterra was the first big commercial game that Sara has worked on, while the previous games she has been apart at Dig-iT! Games were for education purposes. In Roterra, she said that different elements of the game matter more and others are held to a higher expectation.
Featured User Review
It took a lot of time and effort for our team to make Roterra the amazing puzzle game players love to play. What encourages us to come back and perhaps launch a sequel are the top reviews that we receive from the community. Today we are sharing one from "Shirelass" located in the United Kingdom.
Amazingly beautiful
For such a simple idea of a character finding her path to return to her castle, it is a complex and extremely clever game. It combines the beauty and the charm of monument valley and the logic of a chessboard. I’m on level ten, each level becomes more difficult. I have to put it down sometimes out of frustration, but on returning the solution can be figured out. Thank you for a thoroughly enjoyable brilliant game!
