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The hobbyist and the Asset Store – success with Stealth

September 30, 2014 in Games | 3 min. read
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Set yourself a goal. You have a year to make a game by working on your own in your spare time. How far can you get?

After 15 months, Nicolas Liatti, who works for Allegorithmic (the makers of Substance) as a COO, published his hobbyist game Stealth to the App Store with some success. He spent just 2-3 hours every day working on it.

“I learnt Unity by following the tutorials and, of course, I used Unity Answers. I know how to make a game, I know the basics, but I’d no knowledge of C# when I got my hands on Unity, and I’m not a programmer.”

You may have already guessed that Stealth is a stealth game. Nicolas grew up with Metal Gear Solid. He couldn’t find anything like it on mobile today, and wanted to try and prototype something to see what it would look like.

“Initially, I spent about 2-3 months refining the mechanics of the game, just using cubes as placeholders until I was satisfied. When I’d got it that far, I went to the Asset Store to find the art, music and animations I needed so I could make my game.”

In fact, almost all the assets in Nicolas’ game are taken straight from the Asset Store. Amongst other things, he used a Mixamo character for his protagonist and a few Manufactura K4 bundles for the environments.

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“Creating a unified look and feel for the game was the challenge. I’m not an artist, so actually I didn’t touch the meshes at all. I just tweaked my shaders and, of course, I used Substance software on some of the textures. I’m very happy with the result. It cost me almost nothing to make the game. Around $500 on assets, and I had all I needed!”

In his professional life, Nicolas also uses the Asset Store for prototyping and to impress clients:

“I love Unity, and I think the Asset Store is one of the things that makes it great. For a few bucks you can make a prototype that looks really good. At Allegorithmic we’re making a small game for a client. We found the clothes and animations we needed for the prototype in the Asset Store, along with some other fantastic props. When they saw what we could pull off in just two days they said, fine go ahead and make it.”

Stealth has attracted some very positive reviews from AppSpy and Touch Arcade, drawing favourable comparisons with games that have much higher production values and mammoth budgets. The gamers who’ve left feedback on the App Store have also given it top marks.

Nicolas’ next step is to publish to Android and add Unity Everyplay game replays. “I just clicked the Android build option and the game worked. I’ve had to spend a couple of days adapting a few things, but it’s really not been a big deal.”

Best of luck Nicolas!

September 30, 2014 in Games | 3 min. read

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