Case study
Development of a browser game

Crosswords

Browser crossword puzzle game

Customer country

Development timeline

Budget

Team

Ukraine

January 2014 → March 2014 = 90 days

$4 000

8 experts

1 game designer
1 manager
3 engineers
3 artists

Vision

Crosswords Planet is a full-screen flash puzzle game offering topic-based crosswords.

Designed for social media platforms VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.

The player is encouraged to solve topic-based crosswords in various categories:
• cars;
• food;
• music;
• money;
• movies;
• animals;
• fairy tales;
• celebrities;
• astronomy;
• Geography;
• architecture and design.

The player is awarded stars for solving the crossword puzzle. A new category opens after using a booster or accumulating the required number of stars.

Each word comes with an image. The game generates profit through the purchase of internal gaming currency for the boosters.

Penguin v1

Penguin redesign

Development

It took a total of 90 days to develop.

Over this time we
• Did voice acting.
• Developed a CMS.
• Redesigned the game.
• Made the settings menu.
• Integrated VKontakte API and Odnoklassniki API.
• Used social media advertising to promote the game.
• Implemented using the on-screen and physical keyboard.
• Implemented 12 game categories with 50 crosswords in each.
• Introduced profit generating through internal gaming currency.
• Introduced a social panel featuring ratings and statuses of friends.
• Prepared a game for changing background during holiday sales: Halloween, New Year, Christmas.
• Implemented the feature of sending invitations to friends: the player is awarded coins for every player they bring.

Posters v1

Final posters

Game mechanics

Boosters

• see the topic;
• see part of the image;
• see vowels - for long words;
• see a random letter - for short words.

Bonuses

Players get bonuses for:
• inviting friends;
• playing the game every day;
• reporting errors in the game.

Ask a friend

Make a post with the current question in the crossword puzzle.

Internal currency

Boosters are purchased using the internal currency of the game.

Result

• The total number of installations on all platforms reached 500K+.
• Over the first week after the launch, there were 1000+ players online daily.
• The game Crosswords Planet was developed and introduced to social media platforms Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki.