Game Name: Icy Bounce
Developers: Igor Barakaiev, Dima Karaush, and Sasha Sereda
Release Date: January 20, 2018
Platforms: App Store (iPhone® & iPad®), Google Play, and Amazon Store
Website: https://icybounce.com/
Languages: English, Deutsch, Español, Português, Français, Русский, Polski, Kiswahili, ภาษาไทย, tiếng Việt, 日本語, 中文, 한국어
Features
- Free-to-play
- 32 unique characters (and much more coming!)
- 5 unique locations!
- Interplanetary company that delivers you new characters
- Free (FREE!) gifts
- A lot of quests that will keep you engaged
- Increasing difficulty with sinking, splitting, and floating blocks
Media
Here is the link to the Google Drive folder containing media (screenshots, previews, etc) for Icy Bounce: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1USyVZfednV31KsiVGM5wSoWhhTUOxQWQ?usp=sharing
Tell us about yourself, your app’s unique features, and your inspiration for creating this app.
Dr. Penguin Studio is a team of high school students. We started from a Global Game Jam as two programmers and in two days we created a game with the same basic idea as Icy Bounce, but otherwise much more primitive and simple. We quickly noticed how the audience really liked it and figured out that it would be a good idea to continue working on the game. After a few months of developing the game on-and-off, the original idea evolved into jumping over sinking blocks and, in the middle of the summer, I invited another friend to the team as a 3D designer to improve the graphics. As a result, in 9 months, we made a freemium game that performed really well in beta testing and was enjoyable to all kinds of people. We are proud to release it worldwide soon, especially since the game was made with zero investments. Additionally, I got a full scholarship at a private school in the United States and met people from around the globe who helped me translate the game to 10 different languages.
Describe your app.
Icy Bounce is an endless arcade jumper where the player will jump across sinking blocks, win new characters, and beat friends’ records in a beautifully-designed low poly world. There are 32 unique characters in 5 different locations, including Dr. Penguin, Astronauts, Elvis the Pheasant, Pirate Walrus, and others. Player can get them either by paying 100 coins for the lootbox (which is designed as a SpaceY rocket that travels through space and randomly delivers characters from different planets) or for $0.99 if players don't want to wait. Coins can be obtained by either jumping on yellow blocks, opening free gifts every 3 hours, completing 3 quests per day, or watching a video ad for 20 coins. To make the experience more social, we included Game Center and Google Play Services integration with a global leaderboard and 15 achievements, as well as Facebook integration so that players can see the scores of their friends who also play the game.
Who is Dr. Penguin and why did he create the Studio?
Dr. Penguin is a penguin scientist who is so smart that he developed jetpack to fly but forgot how to swim. The character quickly became the symbol of the game and we decided that the team should be called after him.
Is the game free-to-play?
Yes. Furthermore, it does not even throw ads at people when they don’t want them. Even though it would be nice to ultimately earn money from the game, it was not our priority when developing Icy Bounce. Instead, our goal was to reach as many people as possible and to see that they actually like the game and share it with friends. This is probably why it took us almost 10 months in total (with some small breaks). Even colours in our games are not random, they are all carefully picked to harmonize with each other. I wanted to make it as good as possible. And I hope we reached the goal :)
The graphics are really good. How did you achieve that?
The graphics was inspired by Monument Valley’s water and by awesome low poly arts by Timothy J. Reynolds. Unfortunately, we are team of 15 years old kids with not a lot of experience in creating masterpieces, so we tried to create simple yet appealing low polygonal graphics, something like Crossy Road but beyond voxels (3d pixels).
What did you want to achieve?
Perhaps our biggest inspiration was Crossy Road. This is why a lot of elements in the game may look the same, such as panels in restart menu, the monetization model, the press kit, etc. However, we did not intend to copy Crossy Road; instead, we challenged ourselves to create an engaging game that people will like to play and share with their friends, and we reverse engineered Crossy Road to understand why it was so popular. We also wanted the game to be available globally, so asked my international friends at Phillips Academy to translate the game to 8 more languages. Meanwhile, Arabic and German are coming in a future update! Subscribe to @dr.penguinstudio and to @igorbarakaiev on Instagram to stay tuned!
Credits
Igor Barakaiev: Game Design, Project Management, Marketing, Programming, Interface, Sound Effects
Dmitriy Karaush: Programming, Co-Game Design, Website
Sasha Sereda: 3D models
Contact
Instagram: @igorbarakaiev or @dr.penguinstudio
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