Tennis Heroes is a silly tennis game for mobile.
It was created to see the capabilities of a small team in mobile game creation.
I was the game designer, illustrator and animator. There was 1 react native developer, a tester, product owner, product manager and iteration manager.
Education
The first thing i needed to do is educate myself and the team on gamification and monetization. I did a few online courses and and read a few books and put together a few presentations and educated the team.
Ideation
We started with a brain storming session with ideas for what the game could be and features it could have. Then we voted on our favourite ideas and i begun concepting.
I worked closely with the developer to make sure what i was designing would be possible.
Original designs with perspective were more difficult to build so we went for a top down view with no perspective.
Early ideas
Originally the idea was to create a tournament game where you progress through various tennis matches, while earning money, upgrading your rackets and character. We later decided to keep it simpler and to give it more of a social angle.
Monetisation
This was an attempt at creating a currency / XP / levels system. As the scope of the project decreased this became alot simpler.
Idea for a boss level
Weather concept
Mystery box earthquake
Simple tournament feature
We ended with a game where it appears like you match with another person, and play them in the game. When you win, you collect money so you can buy more characters.
Sample animations were given and I created sprite sheets where needed.
Testing round 1
We found from the testing that some users had trouble learning the controls, and other users said the AI was to easy to beat.
We decided to ad in another dynamic of stamina, so your character would slow down as you played and you could top up your stamina if you tapped a strawberry (if you had any available).
Release
After a few more weeks of development, trouble shooting, illustrating and animating, we had finished version 1. It took about 1 month to get it on the the app stores for iOS.
Outcome
Overall the project was a success. As a small group we showed we could create a mobile game very quickly. We learnt a lot and is many things i would have done differently, such as keeping it super simple and nailing the game mechanics.
The company soon sold and it was decided to not do a fast follow with improvements and new features.