Game Design Process

A while back, we gave you some tid-bits of info on our background and character design processes. Now that you’re all (hopefully!) familiar with the gameplay on your iOS devices, we thought we’d give you another sneak peek on how we brought the art assets together to formulate an enjoyable gaming experience. After all, tap and swipe game mechanics and double rainbows don’t just appear from thin air. Well, maybe the rainbows do…

All aspects of Nimbus’ gameplay are the result of countless hours and thoughtful decision making by our game designers. We begin the game design process by brainstorming and researching what type of game we want to make, which usually stems from, well, what games we like playing. After scrapping our original idea of an “endless runner” style game with Nimbus, we eventually landed on the idea of an experience with multiple levels in various worlds. We figured this would allow for more replay, additions of new worlds down the road and would enable us to use simple, consistent mechanics. Adjustments in layout of game elements (such as hotdogs and sunflowers…ya know, typical) as well as speed, work to increase the difficulty in later levels and worlds. We bet you thought in World 1 “This is too easy!”. Well, get back to us after World 5… This helps make Negative Nimbus a game that kids, adults, and cloud-lovers of all ages can really enjoy and be challenged by.

Once we figured out the overall gameplay direction, we had to get down to the nitty-gritty. Everything from how to utilize points to importance of multipliers to how to unlock new content is all a thought-out decision. And these decisions are not made on whims. We save our whim decisions for other things around CloudKid…like that potato sack race – that was a bad idea. We do everything from researching what works (and doesn’t work) in other games, to lots and lots (and lots!) of play testing. All of this helped us make informed choices in order to make the best game we possibly could.

We hope you can feel all the love that went into Nimbus’ game design. We’re always more than happy to hear your feedback as well! In the meantime, happy raining!

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