EverMerge released on mobile in 2020 and has since gone on to become a successful title in the merge-3 genre, but hit games don’t just come out of nowhere. In this article we take a deep dive into the world of EverMerge and the development process.
Sergey Neskin (pictured below) CEO of Neskin Games studios tells us about small beginnings and the main challenges the team faced when building EverMerge from scratch. Not only do we explore the creation of the game but also how LiveOps is handled and how the game has evolved over the past two years.
What’s EverMerge all about?
At the core of EverMerge is merge-3 gameplay combined with an expedition in a fairy-tale setting. One of the key differences from the first wave of competitors is a single game board instead of levels, monetisation through a worker limit (shout-out to Clash of Clans), and a more densely packed gaming session with short- and medium-term goals in the form of quests, events, and other activities.
The setting of EverMerge is based on world-famous fairy tales, myths, legends, and folklore. The player restores and awakens a magical world from a slumber caused by a mysterious fog, and discovers characters such as Sleeping Beauty, Merlin, Snow White, Paul Bunyan, and Alice in Wonderland.
Analytical services like GameRefinery and AppMagic consider the whole merge-3 genre to be divided into EverMerge-like and MergeDragons-like projects, because all successful games there are either descendants of EverMerge’s or MergeDragons’ core game design principles.
It wasn’t a startup in a mum’s garage from Silicon Valley it was a startup from an old soviet factory
We started our journey from a small office inside of an old soviet factory, where, long ago, musical instruments had been made. Occasionally, plaster was falling from the ceiling onto our keyboard, but nothing could distract us from our main goal — building games. We were meticulously analysing successes and failures of both our own and competitors’ products, sometimes staying up at work until 2AM and on weekends.
With each game we released in the merge-3 genre, our ambitious goals of conquering the world seemed more realistic. In Gemcrafter, we’ve made a bold experiment and combined merge-3 gameplay with a meta-game in the form of a saga with levels similar to the popular Candy Crush Saga at the time. Experiments with gameplay complexity, key features, and monetisation approach continued, and two years later, we released the more ambitious Robin Hood Legends with a female Robin Hood.
Each subsequent project gave us an excellent opportunity to observe players’ behavior, draw conclusions from it, and develop new hypotheses, some of which we’ve tried in existing products, while more revolutionary ones were saved for later. EverMerge is a successful implementation of hypotheses gathered over years of experimentation.
The four main ideas were:
- Fit most of the gameplay onto a single game board, allowing users to explore it by uncovering the fog.
- Use a monetisation model that has proven to be successful in other titles: two workers and timers, which create limitations for building pieces, objects, castles.
- Find a setting that is easy to understand and relate to — we’ve settled on a fairy-tale world based on fairy tales, myths, legends, and folklore.
- Provide players with dozens of gaming objectives within a session, so there is always something to do in the game. Rich and lengthy gaming sessions are one of the essential parts of EverMerge.
Many thanks to our publisher, Big Fish Games, for believing in the EverMerge and scaling it with complete dedication, without any compromises or half-measures.
It wasn’t easy to believe the metrics we saw during the soft launch. At first, we thought there was an error in the analytics or that we got lucky with a “golden cohort”. But soon we realised that unusual numbers don’t fade away, and we have created a hit. And here came the fear of making a mistake while scaling, missing out on success.
The Role of LiveOps in EverMerge
The first serious challenge that we faced during the development of EverMerge was the fact that all players (during the soft launch) were spending on average more than 2 hours per day in the game. The release was planned in six months, but we needed much more game content for such an engagement.
So we’ve decided to delay the release for an additional six months and add maximum gameplay broadness for players who would progress faster than others with the help of LiveOps. When different game studios talk about LiveOps, they mean completely different things, which depend on the specific game, its design, and genre.
In our case, we’re talking about game events and gameplay modifiers available to players from a few days to a whole month. They represent unique stories on separate islands, new gameplay mechanics, and seasonal functional changes in gameplay. The goal is to diversify and shake up the usual gameplay process.
I would not have believed, if someone had told me what scale LiveOps will eventually get in EverMerge. About 10 game events can take place in one month, overlapping each other. This shapes a giant annual calendar, where game events are planned month-to-month with the right timing (so players won’t get bored).
Currently, the EverMerge calendar consists of the following:
- Seasonal events – The longest, lasts up to 30 days. They allow players to earn a new resource — clover, which unlocks space on Emerald Isle, along with rewards.
- Main events – Last for 3-4 days, include different mechanics for players to earn points and progress. For example, feed all the game characters as hard as possible.
- Short-term events – Last for 1-2 days, small modifiers that encourage a certain tactic. For example, opening chests is more profitable now and gives a significant bonus.
But what really interests players in EverMerge are adventures with fresh stories, characters, and different game economies on separate islands, which range from simple to very elaborate.
Adventure events have added Disco Party, The Tale of Knights of the Round Table, The Mad Tea Party from “Alice in Wonderland”, and many other stories to the EverMerge world. Every day players choose whether they want to stay in the familiar and peaceful classic world of EverMerge or embark on a new and exciting adventure.
LiveOps is the vital and crucial part of the game, and through it has been created one of the most important EverMerge pillars — there’s always something to do.
The release of EverMerge and how the game has changed over two years
Many developers imagine that the most difficult moment in their work is before the game’s release — they need to make every effort to finish what they’ve started. And after the release, everything will go smoothly, while you may rest in a hammock. But in reality, if your game is a service, there are still many exciting challenges ahead.
When the game was officially launched, we focused on scaling because this product now needed much more game content than before. Users continued to play an average of 2 hours a day, and this has not changed to this moment. Pre-made content literally was melting right in front of our eyes, especially for the loyal and paying audience.
When you have users that play so much, you need to create a great lot of content. If a player is left without new features, they lose interest, and if the developer “didn’t make it in time”, users will go for another game where they’ll hope to find better care.
We had to completely change the approach within our team, build new processes, and redistribute roles to move forward boldly and quickly. The studio has grown from 15 people to 40+. It was a difficult but necessary stage where we adapted to the reality of success.
In our next step, we have created an expansion with Mystic Isle and added the new possibility of collecting fantastic creatures. We wanted to expand the gameplay and give the EverMerge audience a fresh experience. Now the game had a new goal: not only to unlock characters, build castles and restore the magical world, but also to tame and breed phoenixes, chupacabras, pegasuses, and unicorns.
After that, we’ve prepared the second main island in the game — Paradise Cove, for those who have advanced far. In addition, over two years the team constantly improved various aspects of EverMerge, reinvented all tutorials, and, of course, added numerous new events. During this course, our studio grew to 80+ people.
We try to remain a small team; each employee has a significant impact, making EverMerge or the company itself better in some way. In fact, games are only moved forward by people who are willing to knock down any walls on the way to make an interesting game. You can see those kinds of people right away. There are specialists who can have a desk, and they’ll just do their “9 to 5 job”. And there are certain individuals who will not rest on that.
Main challenges in creating EverMerge and experience that we got out of it
Keeping in mind game balance and player’s motivation –
The game should not be too difficult, and it should not be too easy. There must be discomfort in order for it to be successful. Part of this discomfort can be reduced, but you should “hate the game to love it”. It’s all the same as in human relationships: you cannot love a person who does not create any displeasure for you and only provides 100% ease.
That’s why you can’t allow the player to “buy comfort” by removing all the frustration with in-game purchases. You can reduce them when what’s good for game design aligns with what’s good for monetization. But if you completely remove the headache, the player will immediately leave, because we are attracted to challenges, that can’t be solved entirely, and games that contain ambiguity and unpredictability.
Mixing genres to create a broader gameplay –
In EverMerge, many players have been playing for more than a year, more than two years. They are our top priority, and we’re constantly making new content and trying to deliver a new kind of experience. It’s impossible to play the same exact thing, over and over again, for years, it has to change. Free-to-play game is a service, and we have an unspoken agreement with users to provide top-notch entertainment that won’t get boring or outdated.
For this purpose, EverMerge once established a whole calendar of different events and gameplay modifiers (as mentioned above), and now our RnD (research and development) department combines genres and creates new game mechanics. That’s how Submarine-type events have been created, collectible fantasy creatures on Mystic Isle, boosters, and more is coming soon.
Meta-game: uniting all the components and taking them to a new level –
Properly done, a meta-game consolidates core mechanics, game economy, and balance in such a way to create additional meaning and value for the player. That’s where the long term game’s objectives emerge — the reason why the player goes through a game loop over and over again. In a few years, the role of a meta-game in merge-genre will dramatically increase. This is the second layer, which, in the case of merge-3, will be much more interesting and deeper than the core gameplay.
I mean, okay, you’re already merging pieces on the game board. But something more intriguing should be happening in the meta-game: space colonisation, sim game, character relationship developing, PvE battles. There should be huge goals and achievements. After all, you are always engaged in merging and collecting resources for something, to achieve great beyond.
We observe that there is already a new audience being shaped, which wants to see mid-core projects in the merge-genre, and a more complex extension on top of core mechanics. That’s what the future of merge-3 games is all about.
We will be releasing a second part discussion with Sergey Neskin about the future of merge genre later this month. So stay tuned.
Edited by Paige Cook
