PUZZLE HOCKEY :
MATCH 3 GAME ART PRODUCTION

Puzzle hockey successfully combines classic puzzle mechanics with addictive sports mini-games allowing gamers to feel themselves in the shoes of professional hockey players. The main goal is to build a hockey team and bring it to victory, from Starter to European league all along. In order to do so, gamers are offered many hockey players to recruit, including over 150 officially licensed NHLPA superstars.

BlueLine Studios had a development team in Vancouver and was looking for an experienced and reliable partner to create a visual part of their mobile game-hit. They reached N-iX Game & VR team and set a project scope that included 2D art production, modeling, animation and effects creation, UI design and game optimization.

During Puzzle Hockey development process N-iX Game & VR Studio resolved the following tasks:

3D modeling. N-iX team created low-poly models of hockey players, stadiums and game map leaning on BlueLine Studios references.

2D art production. Our dedicated artists performed 150+ game-stylized portraits of NHLPA superstars and 20+ team emblems so that gamers could create a hockey team of their dream.

Animation creation. Basing on real footages of hockey matches and training, we created an accurate animation of hockey players for sports mini-games.

Effects creation. Our team paid extra attention to effects creation to make gameplay more eye-pleasing and satisfying.

UI design. Leaned on a large amount of experience, N-iX team developed and implemented an intuitive and user-friendly interface that provides a smooth transition between all aspects of the game, from managing a unique hockey team to thrilling sports mini-games.

Game optimization. To make the best use of each mobile device hardware resource our team created a lightened version of unity-based shaders, geometric simplification of objects and texture compression.

Additionally, N-iX Game & VR team was responsible for porting Puzzle Hockey from iOS to Android.

N-iX Game & VR Studio completely satisfied the BlueLine Studios requirements by providing high-quality game art for Puzzle Hockey. The game was well critically acclaimed by the audience with 4.0 rating on Google Play and 3.9 on App Store. N-iX team continues to work on the project by updating the art style of the game and providing support for marketing and advertising. The Client was pleased with the delivered product and continued our cooperation on other projects.