A couple weeks ago, we shared our Cherry Picked philosophy to game design. We listed out five questions that guide our development. Since we hadn’t formalized this set before starting on our next game, we thought it would be fun to revisit our current game lineup and fill in the answers for each game. We hope this reveals our design insight and can help aspiring designers analyze the key points of their own games.
Cherry Picked Games now has four titles under our belts. It’s a diverse catalog, to say the least. Switching between genres and themes helps keep us engaged and excited, both for the new games and the old. What it doesn’t help with is creating a clear niche for gamers to associate with our brand. We’re not an RPG publisher or “the drinking game dudes”. So, we have to be consistent in our approach to games. There’s a Cherry Picked style that’s been cultivated over the years. We want people to have expectations about our games that go beyond simple mechanics or illustrative styles.
Satya Nadella preaches “customer-obsession” to his employees. He proclaims, “the core of our business must be the curiosity and desire to meet a customer’s unarticulated and unmet needs with great technology.” The word “unarticulated” strikes a note with us while we’re deep in Far Away’s iterative design and playtesting phases. We receive a lot of feedback. All of it is recorded and considered. However, the data only goes so far. Feedback often misses the root problem and directly addressing it may work against the player experience.
