Rapid Prototyping works for Cascadia Games on the iPhone

"Rapid Prototyping" is a phrase we hear a lot in the games industry. In many ways, it is the Holy Grail of game development. Everyone using it loves it, and those who aren't are envious of those who are. Traditionally, the phrase has applied to the creation of big studio games with multi-million dollar budgets. However, with the growth of casual and mobile games, studios are using it to create a series of small-sized games aimed at the same target market.

Enter Cascadia Games, a small group of independent game developers located in Portland, Oregon. The company launched their first iPhone game, Mini Shogi, in April. Since then, they've followed up with four other board games for the iPhone: Mini Chess, Mini Makruk, Mini Shatranj, and Xeno Sola. All five games were built with Torque 2D for the iPhone:




Cascadia Games Owner Chris Jorgensen is no stranger to GarageGames.com. I asked him several months ago to jot down some development notes as he's been creating these "mini" games. He finally had some time to take a breather and reflect on his game development process with the community. Enjoy!

Can you describe your games in a little more detail?

Mini Chess, Mini Makruk, Mini Shatranj, and Mini Shogi are all chess variants played on a 5x6 chess board. They are respectively twists on Western chess, Thai chess, Persian chess, and Japanese chess. They are all built off of the same chess engine. Mini Chess and Mini Shogi are a little bit bigger. Mini Chess has four art themes, Mini Shogi has five art themes, whereas the other two have a single theme each. All have their own music meant to highlight their nationality. I'm particularly fond of the Persian and Japanese music!

In Xeno Sola, a player places tiles next to previously played tiles. Each tile has a subsection of a module of a space station. The goal is to build as many complete modules as possible before all the tiles have been played. Up to four players can take turns building their own modules or sabotaging others' modules.



The original Mini Chess version for the PC had Makruk and Shatranj built in, but Cascadia games split it into three games.

What inspired you to make these games?

Cascadia Games is a family business. There are four of us so far: myself and the "Art Department," which consists of Erhan Ergenekan, Kourtney Jorgensen, and Katie Jorgensen. Kourtney is my sister and Katie is my wife. The company is named after the Republic of Cascadia: a future nation comprised of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia after they have seceded from their respective countries. I thought associating an independent game company with an often satirical movement for political independence was unique.

The idea of creating these games was to learn the ropes of indie game development: how to finish a game, how to get reviewed, how to market a game, etc. It was less inspiration and more a conscious decision to get a return on work already done. We had three PC games completed. I knew that we could take the experience and feedback gained from those games and make quality ports for the iPhone. Mini Chess for the PC had the ability to play Makruk and Shatranj already, but I didn't think that ability would add value to a potential iPhone app buyer. Splitting it into three games, with two at a lower price, had several advantages. First, it tripled the time my games would spend at the top of the "Latest Releases" list. Second, it tripled the amount of web exposure in terms of forum posts, app aggregate sites, blogs, links, and so forth. Finally, it was a way to test the waters and see if there truly was an under-served market for these chess variants.

I would love to complete a game with a larger scope, but I don't think we're ready for that yet. We have twice tried to do a Star Control style game, Xeno Versus, and have twice hit a complexity barrier that has been too hard to cross. The number of things to test and tweak quickly blows up and that reward-to-effort ratio goes down proportionately. Plus, when folks are working for an unknown amount of sales revenue it's hard to stay motivated. We had no idea what the revenue potential was for the iPhone. So I thought a few quick successes would educate us about the whole process and give us some small victories to keep the interest up.

What makes your games unique from others in the AppStore?

There aren't any other Shatranj or Makruk games. There's a single competitor for Mini Shogi. Xeno Sola is in a class of its own. Beyond that, I would say for that $1-$3 a buyer gets a focused, polished piece of software. These games aren't being made with the intent of a quick buck. That's arguably rare in the AppStore. The goal is to establish Cascadia Games as a reputable company and to associate our name with quality.



The idea of creating these games was to learn the ropes of indie game development: how to finish a game, how to get reviewed, how to market a game.

How did knowing you would create a series affect how you developed the games?

The initial chess engine was developed over three months, with Mini Chess for the PC as the first game built with it. That project was mostly a lesson in designing a functional board game with an intelligent AI, then wrapping a TorqueScript interface around that existing prompt-based game. Mini Shogi was the first attempt to expand chess into something more generic. When time came to port to the iPhone, I ported Mini Shogi first because it had become the easiest template to work with. Once it was complete, I converted it back into Mini Chess. I then stripped that project down to make Mini Makruk and Mini Shatranj.

Knowing you are developing multiple games off one codebase changes how you design things. The intent from the beginning was to have a flexible codebase capable of playing more than just chess. As I coded things, if any part of the code became tedious to work with, I would rewrite it. That made things a bit slower when I first started expanding the Mini Shogi code into more of a template, but the end result was the ability to create Mini Makruk and Mini Shatranj in literally an evening apiece. So the biggest effect was more patience early on with the knowledge that the extra work would pay off.

The strategy was to keep things consistent. File names stayed the same from game to game. Tools (Photoshop, Visual Studio, Xcode, Notepad++) stayed the same. The only changes made were those to make things simpler and smaller. The great part about this is that improvements invented with a newer game can be carried backward to the older games. Additionally, I was able to develop a routine and a mental checklist of what needed to be done. Time-wise, porting Mini Shogi to the iPhone took under a week. Recreating Mini Chess took about the same. And then, as I said earlier, the improvements paid off and I was able to put together Mini Makruk and Mini Shatranj in a matter of hours.

What did you learn with this development process?

The biggest lesson learned was to stay disciplined and not expand the scope with each game. In fact, I went the opposite. Trimming down a game to its core is a great way to ensure it will be completed and polished. Furthermore, going through the process of "rapid iteration" gave me a great feel for when to write a flexible piece of code and when to slap on a Band-Aid.



"Knowing you are developing multiple games off one codebase changes how you design things. The intent from the beginning was to have a flexible codebase capable of playing more than just chess." - Chris Jorgensen, Owner of Cascadia Games

If you had to do it all again, what would you do differently?

Two things: trusting my instincts more and trusting my code less. As far as instincts go, occasionally I would ignore a thought such as, "I really should program things this way" or "I really should add this feature," only to end up following that instinct after wasting time doing "easier" alternatives. As far as my code goes, I wish I had been more thorough with the testing early on. I had to do more retroactive fixes than I would have liked. And there are still some minor quirks in Mini Chess and Mini Shogi that I didn't iron out until I developed Mini Shatranj.

How successful has your strategy been?

There has been an interesting halving effect with each release. The approximate ratio is for every 10 Mini Shogi sold, 5 Mini Chess are sold, 3 Mini Shatranj are sold, and 1 Mini Makruk is sold. On the one hand, had we just released Mini Shogi we would have missed out on that additional revenue. On the other hand, it shows that you can only stretch out a series so far without adding in a major innovation. Getting the simple games released early, however, allowed us to have a bit of money coming in while we worked on Xeno Sola, which needed much more time to develop.

The strategy has been successful enough that I plan on trying it again with a sibling project for Xeno Sola. The thought right now is another tile game with a different rule set and theme. Xeno Sola is easily our biggest money maker already. Even if the halving trend holds true with this game, it would still be a welcome source of revenue. As long as each game remains unique, there won't be a big threat of self-competition.

What can we expect to see next from Cascadia Games?

We're just going to keep growing and iterating. The Art Department has added another Jorgensen (Cassidy) and is hard at work on the next chess game. It will feature paper cutout style artwork and looks a bit like if South Park were converted into a Japanese kids show. The plan is an adventure game with chess puzzles as stages in a bigger world. It's looking awesome. I might foray into the world of networked multiplayer with that one as well. No promises though.

At some point, we will develop a game that utilizes the TGB Kart Kit. This will come after an update to the kit, which will add some requested features, simplify adding content, and sync it up with the newest version of Torque 2D for the iPhone. We're still discussing themes and how to keep the scope manageable.

Finally, I need to do a bit of in-house cleaning. The number of products (6) plus the number of people working on them (5) is starting to approach the scale where I need to improve how I track projects and money. I would like to get a new system in place before we grow too much more.

Or if all else fails, we'll just focus our efforts on leading the Cascadian Revolution!




Thanks, Chris, for doing an interview with me. We at GarageGames appreciate not only the time and effort you've spent on your games, but also on your 3rd party development and general good community involvement. Keep us informed of future Cascadia game progress!

For more stories like this, check out GarageGames' Developer Interview series.