Artifex Mundi on why casual developers should consider its Spark engine for HOPA games
Unity and Unreal might be the big names in the game engine market, but there are plenty of other specialist solutions.
One such as the Spark Casual Engine from Polish developer Artifex Mundi.
It's designed specifically to speed the production of 2D casual games, notably hidden object and puzzle adventures.
We got in touch with product manager Mariusz Szynalik to find out more.
Pocket Gamer: Can you explain why you decide to create an engine specifically for the creation of point and click and hidden object games?
Mariusz Szynalik: We designed the engine and tools to be able to prototype and iterate hidden object/puzzle adventure (HOPA) games quickly. The engine enabled us to do this kind of game very quickly on multiple platforms.
After the engine was mature enough we decided that we would try to licensing it. Currently there is around six games in development by external studios.
What are the technical reasons that engines such as Unreal, Unity or GameMaker aren't good for making such games?
In case of Unreal and Unity, the main disadvantage is that these engines are designed for 3D games. You can create 2D game - many do, but it could be hard.
I personally don't know GameMaker in depth so I'm unable to give you good comparison but because of the fact GameMaker is aimed at novice developers, you can expect problems trying to implement some of the mechanics needed in HOPA games.
One feature that can be important to some developers is that you don't need to be a programmer or have one onboard to create HOPA game.
All the important blocks are already in the engine and you just need to build a game using it. Of course currently it's limited to HOPA and point-and-click games, but some quite interesting stuff can be done without single line of code.
When was the first version released and how has the engine developed since then?
Internally we developed the engine from June 2010. Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek was the first game done on the engine (the game was made side by side with the engine).
The first 'public' release of the engine was on February 2012.
The main changes from earlier releases are new platforms supported by the engine, and overall performance and stability fixes. Currently our technology supports Windows, OSX, iOS, Android (with Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet), Windows RT.
What are the key areas you're focusing on for future versions?
The engine development is tightly related with our company future.
We think that engine good technology for mobile and casual games; especially the editor enables us to create high quality games.
So we are trying to make game that will be different from what we did until now. And the engine should change accordingly - to the general purpose 2D engine, not only limited to HOPA games.
How quickly can developers can up-and-running using Spark?
It depends, but we've seen developers who were able to create prototype gameplay within two weeks, almost from the scratch and without any help.
In the other hand we were able to build a copy of our earlier game Joan Jade and the Gates of Xibalba (that was not done using Spark) in just two months with one guy.
We needed to make iOS version and it turned out that it was be easier to build the game again in Spark than to mess with the old code.
What's the licensing model?
We license the engine per SKU. The license for each SKU, PC/Mac (treated as one), iOS and Android is $3,000. But we usually offer some discounts.
The interesting and noteworthy part is that we made our engine available for free for testing, evaluating and non-commercial use.
As long as you don't release the game you can play around and build your game for free. After developers is ready to release the game we need to sign the license.
What's the reaction been?
Quite positive I think.
The first game that was done by external studio was Dark Heritage: Guardians of Hope. It's now working on another game and there are more studios - currently all of them European - working on HOPA games using Spark.
Thanks to Mariusz for his time.
You can find out more about Spark Casual Engine here.