Idle Wild West Tycoon

Idle Wild West Tycoon - Elevated!

Inspiration

For this particular hackathon, we were inspired to see what we could do to make our existing game even more mobile-friendly, and improve the progression!

What it does

Players build up their resources as they explore a vast western frontier filled with puzzles, quest, and challenges - unlocking and upgrading buildings and tools on a mission to repair the broken down train.

How we elevated it

1) We added a perspective switch from 3rd person to 1st when approaching points of interest, people, and signs, making it easier for mobile players to interact and progress through the world, and enticing players to see secret areas that you must work to gain access to. 2) We added new areas to unlock that you can only get to by progressing, making for really satisfying unlocks. For example, you must upgrade your axe before you can enter the mines and find the auto miner. This wasn't available before this update. We're teasing future areas that you'll need to work to unlock, the like Valley of the Unicorns. Seeing locked off areas and then progressing your character so you can reach those areas has been very rewarding to players. 3) Additional Leaderboards. Before we only had a cash leaderboard, and a time-spent leaderboard. We have added Leaderboards for Wood Collected, Rocks Collected, Gold Collected, and others, and have noticed players enjoying working to grab a spot. 4) Resources earn faster. We noticed players enjoy not having to wait long to see their progress, so we increased the frequency of resource payouts, so you can watch your numbers increasing every few seconds, rather than needing to wait 30 seconds or more.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are thrilled that, for the first time, we have a world that is doing exceptionally well in mobile! Within one month of implementing improvements, we were able to hit ALL of our mobile milestone rewards!

What we learned

We've been learning typescript and using it to better all of our worlds.

What's next for Idle Wild West

We've been releasing new quests to keep players returning as we work towards bringing the game out of early access. We've got a spider attack in the works that will encourage players to upgrade their axe even more so they can save Spirit Village! All this is working to continue building on an already very satisfying progression system!