• POLITICS
  • SCIENCE
    • Astronomy
    • Physics
    • Biology
    • Geology
    • Environment
    • Medicine and Health
    • Sociology
    • Psychology
  • MOVIES & TV SHOWS
  • TECHNOLOGY
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Virtual Reality
    • Bionics
    • Nanotechnology
    • Engineering
    • Robotics
    • Space Exploration
    • Transport
    • Industry and Service
  • GADGETS
    • Mobile Devices
    • Wearables
    • Consoles
    • Hi-Tech
  • GEEK CULTURE
    • Gaming
    • Comics
    • Thingamajigs
  • MUSIC
  • SOFTWARE
    • APPS
      • Android
      • iOS
      • Windows
  • HARDWARE
  • CARS
  • REVIEWS
  • Advertise
  • Geek Reply Jobs
  • Contact Us
Geek Reply
  • HOME
  • Editorials
  • Geek Squad
  • GeekReply Jobs
  • Contact Us
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Google+

  • LinkedIn

  • RSS

Conventions

Stomp And Destroy In Tiny Titans – PAX Aus 2015

Stomp And Destroy In Tiny Titans – PAX Aus 2015
blank
Rhiannon Nee
November 9, 2015

There’s something uniquely satisfying about games where you play as the monster, stomping, crashing, destroying everything in your path. Australian indie team Terran Studios has captured that feeling in their mobile destruction-fest Tiny Titans. Players guide their monster through a city, trying to destroy as much as they can before being shot down by the police or having their time run out. I spoke with Michael Breen, managing director, and Tim Schmidt, technical director, about Tiny Titans.

“We did an in-house game jam when we first started the company, just to give us some ideas,” Schmidt says. “We liked this idea, so we went with it. We also wanted to go with something small-scale, since we’d just started the company, we wanted to make sure we had all our processes right. Although, we were aiming for three months and it ended up being eight months because we just kept adding ideas to the game.”

All of those ideas came together to form Tiny Titans as it is now. “It’s a mobile destruction game. Basically, you need to destroy as much of the city as you can before the timer runs out,” Schmidt says. “Destroying buildings will give you more time, so you have to aim for buildings as much as you can. But the cops are always going to be chasing you, so you need to take out the cops as much as you can too.”

Tiny Titans PAX Aus

Schmidt says they decided to keep any kind of gore out of the game because they wanted their target audience to be kids. “Because kids are our target market, we’ve also gone for an ethical monetisation plan. That way, kids aren’t going to be bugging their parents to get them to buy stuff all the time. There is the opportunity to spend money if you want to, but we’ve made it so it’s not necessary at all. You get coins from multiple different areas, there’s buildings you can destroy to get coins, and there’s also an achievement system that will give you coins and that will unlock some of the skins.”

Essentially, there’s nothing in Tiny Titans that can’t be unlocked by simply playing the game. It also has rewarded ads, which is a system many mobile developers are starting to adopt. Rather than forcing players to sit through ads, the game asks the player if they would like to watch an ad in exchange for some kind of in-game reward – in the case of Tiny Titans, watching an ad will give the player some coins. Coins are then used to unlock things in the game.

“The parents that we’ve had play it, who’ve had their kids play it, have had a great response,” Schmidt says. “They all really seem to be enjoying it. We’d only just released it and weren’t sure what people were going to think, so that’s really good.”

I asked Schmidt what he thought about the way mobile games and “freemium” games often get a bad rap. “I can definitely understand that,” he says. “It comes down to the game itself, obviously. The developer needs to make money, otherwise they can’t keep making games. But you’ve got to find practical ways to doing it. That’s why we’ve got the rewarded ads in there – it’s an easy way for us to get into it without annoying anyone.”

Tiny Titans PAX Aus 2015 screenshot

Schmidt says Terran Studios has been conscious of the fact that choosing children as their target market means they need to show extra restraint when it comes to in-game transactions. “With the target market we’re going for, it’s not very ethical to exploit that. So that’s why we’ve got the model we’ve got… We never wanted there to be a paywall.”

“Everything just unlocks as you play,” Breen says. “I think it averages out to around three hours of play to unlock each titan. It also adds to the replayability, which is something not a lot of mobile games have. Each titan has its own abilities – some charge ahead, some are stationary. The unicorn shoots rainbows.”

Currently, Tiny Titans is only available on Android. Terran is working on finishing the iOS version, which they believe will be ready in approximately five weeks. “We want to make sure we test everything properly – we don’t want to give people a broken game,” Breen says.

Terran prioritised Android over iOS in this case because they knew they could get the game released more quickly via Google Play than via Apple’s App Store. “We uploaded the morning of PAX, and it only takes a couple of hours for it to go through on Google Play. It takes about a week on the App Store. Plus, we all happen to have Samsung phones, so we can test it.”

Breen says they had originally planned to make a game for PC rather than for mobile because they had missed the mobile boom. But the growth in the mobile sector in South America and Asia convinced them to turn to mobile development. “They’re now getting that mobile boom, so the market has exploded.”

The reception to Tiny Titans has been very positive, Schmidt says. “We haven’t had a single complaint, and we’ve had people coming back, asking for more free stuff and characters.”

“I keep getting a lot of kids dragging their parents back to keep playing,” Breen says. “The best reception to get is the fact that kids don’t give the phone back, which helps our motivation to keep developing. We wanted to target kids, and obviously they’re going to be harsh critics if it’s bad, but they just keep coming back.”

“And a lot of people who are coming by, who at first are like ‘nah, this isn’t my thing,’ give it a second and then they want to download it,” Schmidt says.  That positive response can be a powerful force for indie developers.

After Tiny Titans has reached all mobile platforms, Terran Studios plans to release more characters and maps for people to use.

Post Views: 521
W3Schools
Related ItemsIndieindie gamesPAXPAX AusTiny Titans
Conventions
November 9, 2015
blank
Rhiannon Nee @rhineesalvador

Rhiannon likes video games and she likes writing, so she decided to combine them. As well as writing about video games, she also belts out the occasional science fiction or fantasy story, edits videos, and eats strawberry oreos. In that order.

Related ItemsIndieindie gamesPAXPAX AusTiny Titans

More in Conventions

Transylvania Comic Con

Transylvania Comic Con kicks off in exactly two weeks

Matt DavisOctober 4, 2019
Read More
Transylvania ComicCon

Less than three weeks to go until Transylvania ComicCon

Violet LittleSeptember 30, 2019
Read More
mmorpg

The 5 best MMORPG games you can play right now

Matt DavisFebruary 28, 2019
Read More
Brony

The Brony Fandom has an Image Problem

Ule LopezFebruary 19, 2018
Read More
Expo

GG Expo: The First eSports Convention Announced

Ule LopezOctober 24, 2017
Read More
blank

New York Comic Con has Video Game Demos Too, Ya Know

Aaron GreenbaumOctober 10, 2017
Read More
blank

NYCC Panelists Have Sound Advice on Writing Characters with Disabilities

Aaron GreenbaumOctober 9, 2017
Read More
blank

Marvel Ends NYCC with Panel Announcing Marvel HQ Youtube Channel

Aaron GreenbaumOctober 9, 2017
Read More
blank

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Will Fight Aliens in Outer Space During Season Five

Aaron GreenbaumOctober 7, 2017
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • Comments

  • blank
    Orlando Bloom and David Harbour Share the Gran Turismo movie’s first trailer
    GamingJanuary 5, 2023
  • blank
    The highlight of the PSVR2 demo at CES was Horizon Call of the Mountain
    GamingJanuary 5, 2023
  • blank
    For Years, Sony Has Been Developing an Accessibility Controller for the PS5
    GamingJanuary 5, 2023
  • blank
    Remake of Silent Hill 2 Dev is “Very Safe” with Any Changes
    GadgetsJanuary 5, 2023
  • blank
    iPhone 14 – 10 LEAKED Features!
    GadgetsJanuary 20, 2022
  • Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac
    Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac- It can surely save the day
    ReviewsSeptember 26, 2019
  • blank
    PS5 in its Actual Size Seen Being Installed in Dubai
    ConsolesFebruary 1, 2023
  • blank
    According to a Digital Foundry Analysis, Dead Space PS5 is the “best-in-class” game
    ConsolesFebruary 1, 2023
  • blank
    Steel Seed, a stealth action game, has a moody PS5 announcement trailer
    GamingFebruary 1, 2023
  • blank
    On the first anniversary, Dying Light 2 Support is Detailed and the Dying Light Series Ships 30 Million
    ConsolesFebruary 1, 2023
  • blank
    Ule || TSR says:

    That is far from the intention in this article. Especially…

  • blank
    Romuska Palo Ur Laputa says:

    Most of the characters became unlikable and regressed backwards, the…

  • blank
    reversalmushroom says:

    Lauren Faust has not been part of My Little Pony…

  • blank
    reversalmushroom says:

    Like what?

Geek Reply

Greetings techies! We are Geek Reply, a website whose main goal is to bring you all the latest news and updates from within the industry and beyond. What can you expect to find here?

Professional journalism coupled with expository writing for the most part, but we also give our honest opinion or throw in a pinch of humor for good measure when we deem it necessary. Our team is comprised of enthusiasts from across a wide variety of fields ranging from smartphone junkies to camera nerds, and everything in between. But perhaps you were looking for your daily dose of science news or hoping to read about the latest apps. If that’s the case, don’t worry, you came to the right place.

GeekReply Secured with GeekReply Scured
Nintendo Switch GeekReply

Copyright © 2022 GeekReply - Webdesign & Marketing - iPublicitate

Indie Racing Takes Off With Vector 36 – PAX Aus 2015
Star Ocean 5 “Star Ocean Program” Announced, First Episode Airing This Week