“Dungeon Crash” is the ultimate fantasy role playing game that’s equally addicting and interactive. From Firefly Games Inc. and development team, Pitaya, the free mobile game for Android and Apple catapults players into a battle against evil orcs, elves, goblins and dragons in an effort to restore order to the Kingdom of Berman.
Users are challenged to recruit, train and assemble a lineup of heroes to journey through dungeons, plains, an ice winter land, lava mountains and other perilous locales inhabited by powerful monsters. Peace and prosperity can only be restored to the kingdom by locking the evil forces back into the dungeons.
The game features revolutionary mechanics with more than 60 underground dungeons and endless treasures to collect. There’s more than 40 hero characters to build a team with including warriors, mages and healers who can be equipped with hundreds of weapons variations, armor and strength attributes. The “Dungeon Crash” campaign storyline features more than 100 quests to complete.
Firefly Games’ Zi Li – known for her designing and producing of award-winning games including “Dissonance,” “Leviathan,” “Epic Knights,” “Paralect,” and “MiraLab” – served as producer for “Dungeon Crash.”
“Dungeon Crash welcomes players who like RPG games with simple and unique gameplay,” she said. “It is designed for casual and mid-core players who like RPG games. But it also has lots of hardcore players because of its deep gameplay. Players always have the next goal in the game. The main goal of the game is to collect the best team of warriors, mages and healers.”
The game is ripe with interactive features, a component that’s yielded high popularity and success. “Every feature is interactive,” Li said. “Players can enter instant battles to become more powerful or keep upgrading their heroes and gear. The most interesting part is interacting with other players. Players can send gifts to each other, visit friends, visit other players’ kingdoms, chat with other players, make guilds, help friends fight against other enemies, and so on.”
Li said among the game’s most popular features are its Arena and Labyrinth modes. Arena pits player versus player head-to-head to get position on the leaderboard, while the Labyrinth feature is for finding hidden treasure to cash in for rewards.
Characters are comprised of differing tiers of heroes ranging from Uncommon, Unique, Epic, Legendary and Mythical. “Mythical heroes are the best in the game,” Li said. “Every player is trying to collect Mythical heroes. There will be a better tier in the future – Celestial. Players will see the Celestial heroes soon in the future updates.”
Li’s task as producer requires her to ensure the game runs as hitch-free as possible and to implement improvements based on data analysis. She liaisons between the game’s development staff and upper stakeholders including the publisher – Firefly – and its executive staff. She develops and maintains schedules and budgets, oversees art, design and technical development and ensures timely delivery of production milestones. After the game is ready to roll out, Li handles quality assurance testing, beta testing, focus groups and localization.
“As the producer, Zi was unequivocally leading and critical to the project, as she was in charge of supervising the production team to ensure the smooth execution of the work in a time and cost effective manner,” said Michael Zhang, founder and CEO of Firefly Games Inc. “Needless to say, this was an immense workload that is liable to overwhelm anybody unprepared for it; however, being the seasoned professional that she is, Zi remained undaunted and was committed to making “Dungeon Crash” the best that it could possibly be.”
Working with the different extensions behind the game’s creation, Li communicates ideas and player feedback with the designer. She submits bug fixes to programmers and tracks customer support for any in-games issues that players experience. She coordinates with the community manager for ongoing game updates, tracks budgeting for the marketing department and works with the product manager for continual ways to improve the game.
“Each team works closely together. I’m the bridge between each team,” Li said.
The bridging is anything but easy though. Li’s role includes creative mandates as well, from artwork for promotional purposes to design principals. Her background is befitting for producing. She received an MFA in Interactive Media & Games from USC and before that, Li earned a Bachelor degree in Engineering at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. She’s the perfect blend for game design: the mind of a scientifically cultivated engineer with the knowledge, skills and abilities of an artist, specifically in animation, filmmaking and even painting.
“In order to make it efficient, I need to balance these two types of mindset,” Li said. “Sometimes we adjust the feature based on data and do less subjective design. For example, some in-game events need more attention in digging into data so that we can adjust them to better fit players’ need.”
In less than a year’s time since releasing, “Dungeon Crash” sold on the Google Play Store and iOS App Store in more than 100 countries. It has more than a million downloads and was voted by Google Play as the Top Developer’s Game.
The commercial aspects make it an analytical, data-driven directive where Li observes player behavior and how to push development based on data. Li says there are plans for the release of updated versions, which will build upon and enhance the user experience.
“There is a lot we can do with the game and want to share with players,” she said. “The goal is to keep this game running for years and offer long-term fun experience for players.”
As is stands, “Dungeon Crash” has certainly found a strong following that’s predicated largely behind the stalwart efforts of Li and the entire team behind its creation. “You can hardly get bored by playing this game. When you are familiar with the gameplay, you can hang out with friends, building your own community and find more potential of gameplay by interacting with other players,” said Li. “It has a lot more than its designed gameplay.”
For more on “Dungeon Crash,” join its Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/DungeonCrash
Visit the game’s official forum here: http://forums.fireflygames.com
And check out more from Firefly Games: http://fireflygames.com