Survive the virus
mobile game app
The lockdown period gave me inspiration for a mobile game idea. During the month of May in Dubai, social distancing rules were very strict; COVID-19 cases were quickly rising, and restrictions were made to stay isolated from each other. The situation made me speculate: what would happen if the virus couldn’t be contained, and spread in a more extreme manner? Could this be a good idea for a video game? I quickly began doing research on programming, and I started an introductory course to learn the basics of C#. At first, it was difficult for me to understand all different concepts, so I contacted a friend who has some experience in this field. He told me that my idea would be successful, and that he was glad to help me implement it.
01
Basic Mechanics
Shortly after, we began to program the game’s basic mechanics on Unity. However, we lacked a lot of knowledge in 3D modeling and level designing, which is why I hired 2 amateur artists that I met online as well as 2 other programmers. Throughout June and July, I took the official responsibility of becoming the team’s leader. As the project director, I organized daily zoom meetings and gave out tasks to each member of the team.
02
Buildings and asset design
Since the app was a role-playing game, we had to design a miniture city with all the different assets that come with it. One major asset that I found useful later in my career was designing the buildings. We used Blender and Sketchup to design most of the assets. these softwares share many similar features with CADing softwares such as Solidworks and AutoCAD which allowed me to further improve when using them.
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03
Marketing strategies
I later bought the rights for a web domain and I started designing the game’s website. In July, I gave my “company” the name of Rocks Studios and contacted a lawyer to make the team official. I created a company email and worked on the game’s social media accounts. I also made a 2-minute trailer for the game and thought of many marketing techniques, such as giving away 50% of the game’s revenue to COVID relief funds, since the game itself revolved around the virus.