How to Develop a Smartphone Game from the Scratch?

Gaming for smartphones has expanded its market coverage like a wildfire. From horror to survival, gaming apps are being downloaded by millions of people every month. Now, developers are also seeing games as an opportunity to make good money. Ways such as in-app purchases, premium subscriptions, or app prices are providing game developers good income if the game has potential. Now, how to build a game that has enough potential to grow in the market? Thats the question we will answer here.

Furthermore, we are discussing how to design a smooth game development process from scratch. We will discuss every crucial element of the game development process from developing an idea to marketing the app. If you think your questions can be answered in this blog, stick with us until the end!

Process of developing a smartphone game

Without further ado, lets go through each step to prepare the proper game development process design.

1. An idea

Every process begins with an idea. Now it all depends on what users like to play. Take PUBG for example. When it came into the market, it influenced millions of players instantly and grew with an unmatchable speed.

With such popularity, it became evident that multiplayer survival games were the future. Thus, expert on-demand gaming app developers from many prestigious organizations released survival co-op and multiplayer games with various concepts. These games are also defined under the Battle Royale category.

Now, the message is, that you need to find an idea that you think users will love. It can be a zombie killer storyline or a superhero team-up. Its all about how creative and influencing you can get.

2. Prepare the budget

Now, the entire game development process is divided into three parts-

• Pre-development
• During the development
• Post-development

Now, the pre-development budget planning includes tasks like preparing a budget for hiring, technology expenses, API costs, time investments, platform-specific or hybrid app development frameworks that you are using, and more. During the development, costs such as game testing occur. Once the game development process is done, game marketing and publishing take the main share of costs. It has to be understood that without a good marketing strategy, the success of the smartphone game that you developed can be considered compromised. Your budget will have the following elements influencing it-

• No. of people working on the process
• No. of hours consumed in the development
• Maintenance of the gaming app
• Any modifications or updates
• Gaming app marketing platforms
• Target operating systems
• Target countries where you will publish the game
• Licensing costs, etc.

3. Build the prototype

It is always ideal to build a prototype first to have an idea of the final product that you are going to get. You can use any easy gaming framework to conceptualize the prototype. Now, there are many low-end development frameworks that will let you build the gaming app without the least requirements of manual coding. You can also skip the prototyping phase and begin the development of the actual game, especially if you are building a small game.

4. Test your game properly

With each phase that you finish developing, test it to make sure that there is no error or glitch left in the game. The glitch can ruin all the progress of the player and spoil their experience. The QA team should be instructed to explore the game through every possible way of playing it to find all the possible bugs.

5. Market the app on multiple platforms

If your budget allows, you should always go for the omnichannel marketing strategy. Omnichannel marketing strategies include advertising the game on print media, audio-video media, and the internet. It helps you in covering more markets. Moreover, you can also use social media marketing techniques like hiring influencers or advertising the game on huge pages and groups to attract as many people as possible to your game.

Some marketing strategies like using hashtags to expand your reach might not even cost you anything. Its always a good idea to build a social media presence from the moment you finalize the idea as it takes time to grow social media platforms originally. Moreover, you also require a regular routine of posting interesting content to grow your social media outreach as well.

6. Update and maintain games regularly

The job is not over even after the game is published. The main work is making sure it remains interesting and playable for users. Thus, it is always a good idea to bring new ideas occasionally and update the game to give players new experiences. It keeps the curiosity and fun alive. Moreover, as technologies evolve and new OS versions or devices get released in the market, your gaming app has to keep up. Thus, make sure you maintain it and update it regularly to make it suitable for new OS or devices.

Well, thats it for the process of developing a gaming app from scratch. Hopefully, it was useful. Until next time, Happy Programming!