Squad Rivals: Classic Arcade Game with Pixel Art
Squad Rivals is an engaging mobile game by BroadbandTV Corporation developed in cooperation with N-iX Game and VR Studio. The game features hundreds of characters, including famous YouTubers and streamers, distinctive pixel art, and rich gameplay. N-iX team has been responsible for full-cycle game development from game design and prototyping to art production and game release.
Canada
Gaming
June 2017 - October 2018
Unity, PlayFab
Game Development, Game Art Production
Features
Engaging action-packed mobile game
Classic arcade gameplay
Unique pixel art
A massive number of characters
Numerous game modes and levels across the city
Objectives
BroadbandTV Corporation provided the initial game design and required full-cycle development. Our main task was to gather an expert team of designers, game artists, programmers, and testers to come up with a holistic game vision, generate ideas for game art, make a prototype and proceed to production.
The unique feature of the game is the usage of characters based on real-life YouTube stars teaming with the players to take down the Greedy Corp.
Workflow
The team cooperated tightly with the client to finalize the game concept and produce a detailed game design document. Afterwards, our pixel artist started working on the visual style of the game and the characters. Also, we developed the prototype to test the gameplay.
The team used Unity as the main technology and PlayFab for the back-end. Since there are a lot of characters, we implemented palette swapping (changing colours in the same sprite) which allowed us to create more characters by reusing existing assets.
The game has retro pixel graphics, which posed many difficulties for an artist who had to work with a very restricted palette and perform a lot of precise work.
During the production phase, the team had to make a lot of changes due to the constantly evolving design, which extended the project duration but ensured achieving the client’s objectives.
Value delivered
- Classic arcade gameplay with hundreds of characters and tons of player-levelling
- A mobile game for iOS and Android
- Engaging gameplay with numerous game modes and levels across the city
- Unique retro pixel art visual style
- PlayFab synchronization that allows making new settings, changing the balance, difficulty, rewards, and other elements without updating the client.
Let’s Illuminate Games
Let’s discuss your project and develop a common vision.
N-iX artists then take over and convert raw ideas into breathtaking visual content. We always give our creative best in line with the chosen style and genre.
