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Sharing Success with Facebook Gameroom

October 23, 2017 in Technology | 4 min. read
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Gameroom is Facebook’s new PC gaming desktop app dedicated solely to gamers for easily discovering, sharing, and playing the games they love. With personalized recommendations, Gameroom allows players to constantly discover new and exciting games based on their interests and previous games played. By leveraging Facebook’s vast expertise in social tools, players can manage their permissions and notifications, save shortcuts to their favorite titles, and chat with other players.

For games like Wartide: Heroes of Atlantis, where social interaction is at the heart of the experience, Gameroom is the new best place to play.

Bringing Wartide to Gameroom

For Wartide, Outact envisioned a mid-core strategy game that was more approachable, intuitive and engaging for players than what they had seen within the genre. Many strategy games simply reward the player for investing time, rather than developing a specific strategy to tackle in-depth challenges and discover creative solutions. The studio set out to create a unique experience where players feel they control their own destiny, armed with various options for winning each battle.

In addition to this ambitious, unique approach to the strategy genre, social mechanics were crucial to gameplay design in Wartide. Players can cooperate with one another to defeat enemies, as well as fight one another to climb PvP ranking ladders. The gameplay and community within Wartide is cross-platform, allowing players to play at home via Facebook Gameroom, then seamlessly continue the adventure on their mobile devices while on the go. The game also allows players to share battle replays in-game and on social media via Unity’s Everyplay. This facilitates a tight-knit community, where players help each other, develop new strategies, and show off their power and ideas, both inside and outside the game.

Reaching Facebook’s 2-Billion Active Users

Over the summer, Facebook announced it reached 2-billion monthly active users! Via Gameroom, this vast social network now opens a big door for players to discover, share and build communities around the games they love. And since Wartide’s social features are an integral part of its design and game experience, it’s a perfect fit for Gameroom.

To add to the natural fit for Wartide, Unity’s partnership with Gameroom gives Unity developers additional tools to leverage when gaining support for the platform. Outact was able to work closely with the Gameroom developer-relations team to address technical concerns. UI/UX design is always a challenge for bringing games to new platforms, ensuring the play experience is smooth and suitable for a wide variety of PC screen sizes. Throughout the integration, the Gameroom team was on hand to help Outact optimize and get the most out of their Unity-built game.

Unity’s Gameroom Integration Helps Ensure a Smooth Launch

In addition to finding a home on PC with Facebook Gameroom, Wartide: Heroes of Atlantis will be available on iOS and Android because Wartide was designed from the ground up to seamlessly launch on any platform, allowing players to enjoy the game however and whenever they want. The cross-platform capacity Unity provides enabled Outact to focus on the actual gameplay, and to not worry about the platform support. Additionally, the huge library of third-party plugins from the Unity Asset Store allowed them to save critical development time. Unity also works perfectly with Jenkins, Outact’s CI and build release tool, in both their Windows and Mac farms. Every time Outact pushes a new build, they literally only need to press a button and the build is ready for all platforms.

Wartide: Heroes of Atlantis was featured in the Made with Unity showcase at Unite Austin, Unity’s premier developer conference, earlier this month.

“We believe Gameroom is a rising platform, given how light but sophisticated it is, and how many potential players it can reach within Facebook’s network of 2-billion users. Unity’s seamless Gameroom integration, of course, is the preliminary condition of all these.”

– Xiang Shen, Founder at Outact, Inc.

<em>Wartide: Heroes of Atlantis</em> featured in the Unite Austin Made With Unity Showcase

Publish on Gameroom for a chance to be featured!

Unity has partnered with Facebook Gameroom to bring this exclusive opportunity to Unity developers. Publish on Gameroom by October 31 and earn a chance to be featured by Facebook, putting your game in front of their 2-billion users! Learn more about the promotion here: https://unity3d.com/offer/facebook-gameroom

About Wartide: Heroes of Atlantis

Wartide is a tactical online game where players summon heroes, recruit troops, battle against intruders, and forge alliances to destroy their common enemies. Wartide’s unique pre-battle deployment gives players options for creating different formations with their army, plan their every move, and reclaim the long-lost throne of Atlantis! Learn more about Wartide on Unity Connect!

About Outact, Inc.

Founded in 2014, Outact is an independent game studio that comprises veteran developers who have decades of experience building AAA-quality online games on multiple platforms. Learn more about Outact on Unity Connect!

October 23, 2017 in Technology | 4 min. read

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