Rocket Games
Role: Creative Director
Rocket Games was a small independent game studio that grew to be a major player in the mobile casino industry. Beginning as a small four-person team with very limited resources, we had to follow a careful strategy of building low-cost games and iterating over many launches.
Art had a critical role supporting our product strategy through repackaging game content. When wrapped in new themes and branding, a single slot machine could be released multiple times. With a quickly expanding presence in the app stores, we were able to quickly learn about the market and release successful games without costly advertising.
This process lead to the consequential release of Viva Slots Vegas and our acquisition by Penn National.
Each app was released with unique names and logos that helped them look distinct from each other in the app stores and helped us understand what themes and play styles resonated most with our audience.
We often changed more than just an app’s branding. The user interface, individual machines and sounds were often reworked to help content feel new and exciting.
It was routine to prepare subtle variations of each game’s marketing materials and app icons. Tests were easy to conduct and sometimes yielded substantial increases of installs.
A benefit of reusing content was extra time to make improvements. Our games were built on very tight budgets, but when an upcomming release was already 80% built, we could afford to revise art, animations and designs. The quality of our games increased with every release.
*Artwork examples include designs and paintings by myself, David Alegre, Dan Howard, and more.
