Evolution of Wire Defuser

Video games development process is not always clear. Occasionally, finished video game doesn‘t look anything like the original idea. This rule is also true with mobile games. Many of us think that mobile video games are easier to make and the thought process behind it is narrow. Not long ago, our team of Lithuania’s game developers SneakyBox released new game called Wire Defuser on iOS and Android devices which is perfect example of game development brainstorm and how the original idea can change over the development process.

Wire Defuser is as old as SneakyBox itself. It was one of the first game concepts we had. We always talked about how cool it would be to add this or that to the game, but never actually got around to do it because of other projects. We're glad we found the time, though.

Wire Defuser is a fast-paced puzzle game about defusing bombs. Every level presents a new chain of buttons and switches, each executable with different screen interaction. If the player manages to get through the chain in time he defuses the bomb.

Changes in design

Early art style is not always the one which stays. Wire Defuser was no exception.

First there was this:

When we look back in time, first Wire Defuser art style was closer to what we wanted to see than the later ones. First image had everything we needed to start our development. It was simple, yet clear. This art style given us a opportunity to be productive in creative process and was suitable enough to test game mechanics. Levels was easy to create with this simple art style.

Still, after game mechanics were created we thought that we would like to add some more flavor to our game and this art just couldn’t quite hit the mark we were aiming for. But… as a prototype it was awesome.

So next up came these:

We loved the idea to add some 3D features, but 3D artstyle just wasn’t working. Most of the time these buttons were uncomfortable in later game levels so we decided that we should stick with the original concept and tweak it a bit.First, Wire Defuser came to Windows Phone platform. We choose this platform because we were familiar with it. In early days we already launched our other game to Windows Store - Never Future. Never Future results were great so we thought we should give this platform another go.

Defuser was uploaded into the store with the idea in mind that we will still work on this game in the future and testing the game in small market (comparing with iTunes or Google Play) audience was a great option. We could see how people reacted to the game and what was far from perfect and needed to be fixed.

To our surprise, people not only loved the game, but we got a fair amount of press coverage. Biggest Windows Phone related news site Windows Central wrote about Defuser and the traffic skyrocketed for a few days.

We felt like we hooked something cool with Windows version, so we didn’t want to instantly move to another project. The ideas about even more advanced Defuser game were shooting left and right. This is why we decided to update game even more with our iOS and Android versions. Our team didn’t want to go far from Windows version art style. We felt it matched the game. The team wanted to see some grunge as well as have fun characters in it. And now we have all that. We thought that this games deserves publishing that we at the time wasn’t capable of achieving. We found publishers that helped us a lot. After starting working with BulkyPix development process went more smoothly and way faster. Publishers gave us some constructive criticism about art style and monetization models. You can say that they made us a checklist and by following their lead we done game exactly as we wanted it to be. We started seeing our goals more clearly and publishers helped us to meet them.

Looking back you still find some things to tweak. But launching the game is also important. Deadlines from publishers are hard to meet and sometimes you have to let it go and go with what you got. We had some more ideas after our game launched. I guess this is natural for any game developer. But hey… nobody said we can’t do Wire Defuser 2.