Case study: Landover
A game inspired by Catan available on mobile and web platforms
- Mobile development
- Staff augmentation
Project information
Description
As one of the few video games developed on Flutter, Landover is for Catan enthusiasts who will compete for Victory points.
Industry
Gaming
Client
Landover
Release
2022
The Client
It’s all about the strategy
Landover is a video game inspired by Settlers of Catan and its expansion packs, Cities & Knights and Seafarers. The game improves upon Catan through simpler mechanics and taking advantage of being a fully digital product while staying true to the overall concept, adapted to be a mobile and web-friendly game.
The game is for 1 to 4 players competing for the most Victory Points. The game is played on a variety of maps, each one calling for different strategies. You can choose to play custom games on user-created maps with all your friends or play ranked games against random opponents to see how well you stack up against the competition.
The game starts with each player placing one village and one city on the board. Players then take turns rolling the dice, gathering resources, and building up their colonies. Players must choose between expanding quickly, upgrading their technology & culture, or fortifying their military. If you expand your empire too quickly, your cities are in danger of being raided by other players or destroyed by barbarians.
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Process and challenges
The client wanted to build a cross-platform game that could work on Android and iOS devices, as well as web browsers. The game needed to support real-time updates, native performance, and provide the same experience for multiple devices running the game.
We decided to use Flutter for the front-end of the application, developing interfaces that could adapt to both web and mobile devices.
For the backend we decided to use Firebase, leveraging its out-of-the-box real-time capabilities, and using cloud functions to implement the logic behind the game behavior and state.
The Firebase services used were:
Auth, Firestore, Cloud Functions, App Distribution, Hosting, Remote Config, Dynamic Links and Analytics.
Construction
The biggest challenge was architecting the whole backend of the app, which has been tested thoroughly and needed to manage the source of truth for each instance of the game.
Organization
The team developed strong ownership of the project using Kanban boards to organize the different stages, analyze and schedule the timeframes, and distribute each assignment to their responsible owners. As a staff augmentation team, this is an extra effort besides all the hard technical work the developer's team put their hands on.
Innovation
This was the first time the team developed a videogame using Flutter, so the whole process was an unexplored area and included creating one codebase for multiple devices with different dimensions and providing the same level of user experience in all of them.
How we did it
Testing
The kickoff of the working process took place by testing each starting point of the game and making it work effectively. Then the team added new features and started working on the web version.
Backend
The backend development was substantial due to its complex and huge data that needed to be organized. Our team did flawless work by architecting the brain of the project. TypeScript and Node were the tools used in this instance.
Launching
An agile version was released to production as an open beta (0.1) to get the feedback of people who wanted to test it and work on the features and functions to accomplish what Landover is today.
Flutter development
We decided to use Flutter as it allowed us to develop the game on both mobile and web platforms using the same codebase.
Our expertise in Flutter allowed us to develop a game with all its complexity as it’s unlikely to choose this technology for videogames developments.
First, we developed the mobile version, and after identifying with the client that there was a player audience for the web, it took only a couple of weeks to complete it.
This technology brought a friendly UI that worked with a wide amount of components and widgets.
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Results
Landover is one of the few video games developed on Flutter. Its mobile and web version allows players to subscribe to Premium and competitive games with exclusive player Ranking.
Our team won a grant from the Uruguayan Government to participate in the biggest game developers' conference in the world ‘Game Developers Conference’ (GDC) in California, to exhibit and show how to play the game.
Landover assures an exciting and competitive adventure achieving +19000 monthly players.