Rich Snider

While developing Creature Capture we regularly performed play tests with kids of varying ages. During one of our classroom play tests we had half of the class play Creature Capture and the other half play Treefrog Treasure. As the kids played they started to look around at what their friends were doing and noticed that they were playing a different game. One-by-one, each of the kids that were playing Creature Capture asked to switch to “the frog game” because it looked cooler. We let them switch and within 15 minutes of the 60 minute play test everyone was playing Treefrog Treasure and no one was playing Creature Capture. And who can blame them? Which of these games looks more fun?

We loved that everyone wanted to play Treefrog Treasure, but this was pretty clear that we needed to make Creature Capture more exciting. As the lead for Creature Capture, I worked with the team to ideate and prototype some new ideas. The leading idea was to change the game to be isometric and break the creatures out of their frame of a card. This allowed us to make the creatures larger, take more attention, and more naturally react to the game state by celebrating or mourning a battle result.

We took an early prototype, with some animations, into another play test with Treefrog Treasure to see how kids responded to the change. This time, a few kids asked to switch but most of the class was content to keep playing the game they started with. This was great! We knew that if this basic prototype made such a big impact then we were on the right direction and could really compete with Treefrog with some more flashy animations.

From here we worked to make Creature Capture as flashy as we could make it. We spent much of our effort making the animations as fun as possible. For example, we added the aforementioned animations around celebrating and mourning when a battle is won or lost. We also added a lightning animation that announces the start of a battle and a victory animation at the end of a level, among others. Our improvements included hover effects for hints, an animated scoreboard at the top, and the ability for players to choose their avatar and card color.

Below are a few different images and videos showing a variety of flashy aspects we added to the game.

Creature Capture is a multiplayer game in which you play against another player or an AI. As we developed the game we put significant effort into making this experience fun and engaging. When it was ready, we started doing play tests with players challenging their friend to a duel in Creature Capture. Kids loved it! So we decided to put it to the test it against Treefrog Treasure in a play test.

Sure enough, when kids got to choose between playing against their friends in Creature Capture versus jumping around alone in Treefrog Treasure we saw most kids choosing to player Creature Capture.