Every year, we get together to remember and offer our gratitude to those who have sacrificed their lives in the war zone for our country’s freedom from British rule. While we pay tribute to the fallen, it is important to note that as many as 87,000 Indian soldiers lost their lives in World War II (commissioned by British India against German Nazis). Post World War II, India emerged as the world’s fourth-largest industrial power and its increased political, economic and military influence in the world paved the way for India’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. Paying homage to the World War II heroes, Teapot Games recently launched World War II-era air combat flight simulator game War Dogs: Air Combat Flight Simulator WW II which featured 24 warplanes from the five major powers of the time- USA, Germany, UK, Japan and Russia.
The game features a diverse range of aeroplanes that were used in the great war; right from dogfighters to dive-bombers to torpedo-bombers and long-range heavy-bombers.
Its been around six years since the studio stepped foot in the gaming developing sphere and including this game, the studio has already breathed life into 10 games so far. They have also gone on to win the Indie Game of the year award for NASSCOM GDC in 2015.
The studio is run by a team of three people and they work with external teams for art, audio (music, sound fx, voice), and quality assurance/testing.
“We have secured more than 10 million downloads across all platforms and the number is growing every day!,” revealed Teapot Games founder and managing partner Satish Chandra in a conversation with AnimationXpress.
The game is live on Google Play(Android) and App Store(iOS)and it has both single and multiplayer campaigns. Single-player campaigns lead the player through the five major theatres of war-battle of Britain, North Africa, Pearl Harbor, Russia and finally the Japanese Isles.
”The Multiplayer features a 4 VS 4 arena-style battles where players can deploy their aircraft and try to down as many enemy aircraft as possible while destroying enemy ground assets before the clock runs out” Chandra added.
On learning that the studio had launched another army-specific game titled Enemy Waters, we probed him about the recurring theme. Chandra answered, “The core impetus for our last game, Enemy Waters was that there isn’t any game on mobile that focuses on the cat and mouse chase we see between submarines and battleships in naval combat movies like (Das Boot, Enemy Below, and Run Silent Run Deep). We set out to recreate that specific aspect of naval warfare in our game. Similarly, for War Dogs, we felt that there weren’t any air combat games on mobile that explore the full range of WW2 aerial warfare. Most mobile air combat games are arcade-style and don’t offer genuine dogfighting experience. At the same time, we don’t want to overcomplicate things for players who may be new to the genre, so we had both simulation and arcade controls that the player can choose from. This sets War Dogs apart from its contemporaries on mobile.”
Their games have mostly made use of inorganic real-world models (ships, submarines, or aircraft) since it becomes easier for the studio to provide blueprints, dimensions, number of LODs, and polycount limits to their external team of 3D modellers. He also shared while designing a game, a designer should also focus on the target audience for the game and it should go through a prototype phase and must play-test it as early as possible and external players. The monetisation plan for the game has to be developed in the pre-production stage itself and mustn’t delegate it to a later period in the development life cycle.
Indie prize showcase at Casual Connect, London, May, 2019
The studio initiated the pre-production work for the game in July of 2017. They almost took two years from pre-production to final release of the game.
“We typically three to six months in pre-production, working on the Prototype and refining the core game mechanics. After that we design Art pipeline, creating a roadmap as to what assets have to be created in what order,” he added.
Since the studio creates games by targeting the global market (not limited to Indian market), however, it becomes difficult for them to acquire support from respective storefronts for featuring them on a global scale which has become the biggest challenge for them. They have managed to mitigate this problem by cross-promotion within their games and also optimized their store listings to maximize their reach.
For further plans of the studio, he shared, “plans to make another flight simulation game in the lines of our 2015 hit, Avion flight Simulator. We also have plans to make a train simulator game as well- we do have a trick up our sleeve to differentiate ourselves from hundreds of other train simulator games out there.”
The game has already received a positive response and secured a rating of 4.4/5 on Google play with 800+ reviews and the studio is aiming to hit one million downloads with War Dogs: Air Combat Flight Simulator WW II before the year ends. As Independence Day is here, we hope the game War Dogs : Air Combat Flight Simulator WW II takes players through the history corridors of World War 2. So, this independence day, you can celebrate by being a fighter pilot!
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