Bundimal Rush was one of three games developed by Mini Mammoth Games in their first 3 months. these were intended as an exploration of the Casual Mobile game medium and a discovery process for the various norms established by others withn the market.

My Role on the project

For Bundimal Rush, I was the Lead designer of the three man team. Working with the Artist Tamra Lynch and programmer Tyler Marcelis, I focused on refining the gameplay and visual style to create a sticky, enjoyable game for our customers.

In addition, I was charged with managing the project to ensure it was completed on schedule and that it fulfilled all of its goals for the company. Bundimal Rush wasnt a standard development for Mini Mammoth Games. It was a pilot and a test of the market we were stepping into. With these early games we had to try and incorporate as many facets of the Casual Games market as we could so that we could learn and iterate on those things in future products. It was my responsibility to ensure that happened with Bundimal Rush.

Gameplay and the Sorting Economy

Throughout development I focused on creating a game that channeled some of the best elements of other puzzle games. However, this didnt quite hit with our target market.

After some time, I began work on the ‘sorting economy’ and the experience started to click. Bundimal Rush wasnt a traditional puzzle game, but instead drew on the quick decision making inherent in games like Tetris. The sorting economy was all about managing how much time players had to actually sort each bundimal to the correct filter. To find the best middle value for this(about 2 seconds) I had to test the game over and over while working out how the level contributed to and effected this metric.

Bundimal Rush was intended as a short project, so i never got to fully explore this dimension of it’s design, but i hope to revisit it again in the future.

Mobile Development

Working on mobile games is always an interesting experience. The barrier to entry is so low for the products that it gives you alot of experience with the entire development pipeline from inception to product ship and post release, but its also an incredibly complex market to design for. Mobile users expect certain things in their products, and if they dont get them they drop the product incredibly quickly, regardless of its cost or lack thereof. Overall, I am happy for the experience, but it can be quite rough all the way through for new developers.