This is a translation from the Chinese news site Game Teahouse.

Recently, WeChat mini-games launched its 16th issue of the best creative mini-games. Among them is a simulated business mini-game "Swipe-in Subway" by Muyou Games. This Cocos Creator built game challenges players to build and operate subways in China and provides players with a very strategic subway operation experience.

This simulation game comes with a very classic type of gameplay, and the subway theme is unique. WeChat game group invited Muyou Technology's producer, Li Chungeng, to share his experience on the project, their creative design, game design, and how they built commercial appeal.

Background On The Company

Headquartered in Beijing, China, Muyou Technology was established in 2014. Early on, it focused on the development and distribution of card games. Currently, their biggest IP mobile game, "Wulongyuan," is being tested and is expected to be launched this year. From their experience in card games, the entire team at Muyou Technology has accumulated a lot of research and development in simulation games, which helped them in the strategic design of " Swipe-in Subway."

In May 2019, Muyou Technology began to open up to casual games. It established a Guangzhou branch to focus on the development and distribution of casual games. At present, Muyou Technology has released more than ten mini games and added them to various channels such as WeChat, mobile QQ, Toutiao, OV, and so on. Its mini-game products include the creative mini-game " Swipe-in Subway," the strategy-building mini-game "Bringing a Fairy To Play," and the more popular puzzle-solving mini-game. "Double Thinking." “Swipe-in Subway” has accumulated 20+ million users.

Building the game

Li Chungeng admitted that when the project " Swipe-in Subway" was set up, the team saw the simulated business game had good income potential and long-term operations. After determining the gameplay, the team began to find the right theme. Looking for scenes close to life, the team found that doing subway themes can resonate with gamers living in big cities. Its development became more consistent with the team's genes of good strategy card games. Development in October last year and the WeChat mini-game was launched in early January this year. Since it's release, "Swipe-in Subway" currently has a cumulative userbase that has exceeded 10 million.

In terms of creativity, the most appreciative part of the game is the strategic gameplay that has been added to the subway lines. In the game, different development strategies have different effects, such as the types of passengers, the types of facilities, and the walking routes of passengers. This creates strategic uses of the types of facilities that are arranged according to specific routes.

For example, passengers will encounter accidents in the subway, such as encountering thieves, mothers holding crying children, and the need to interact with them. Such daily situations can resonate with players. After discovering the thief, the player can choose to watch the surveillance camera to call the police and prohibit the thief from destroying people's day.

In general, compared with traditional simulation business games, " Swipe-in Subway " is more strategic. It requires players to think and make strategic arrangements, which makes it more replayable.

It took more than a month from researching the use of "swipe cards". For their effort and the excellent quality in the game, they were selected by WeChat as a creative mini game award winner. WeChat officially gave the game some advertising traffic, an increase in royalties, and promotion on their WeChat time capsule (blog post).

Bringing Iconic Scenes To Gamers

" Swipe-in Subway" not only inserts strategy by creatively having gamers construct, operate, and bring joy to their passenger in the subway, but also truly brings the subway routes and landmark buildings found in the famous cities in China. It has also become a feature of the game. The first thing players encounter when entering the game is Metro Line 1 in Beijing. After expanding the subway stations such as "Xidan" and "Forbidden City," players will be exposed to the construction of more facilities in the station, such as toilets, vending machines, elevators, and other commonly used subway station facilities.

At present, the subway lines in the game are simplified and abstracted to a certain extent according to the actual maps of China's two biggest cities, Beijing and Guangzhou. The buildings on the map are drawn according to the landmark buildings of the city. The first cities that the team intends to launch include the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

Li Chungeng said that the team has further map development plans, including maps outside the mainland like Hong Kong and Taipei launching in the future. The team also is looking at ways to build and operate high-speed rail between cities.

Finding New Ways To Make Revenue

In the design, the team decided to use rewarded ads by first focusing on resource acquisition acceleration. The game adds social sharing incentives where passenger flow increases and investment promotion effects increase, by forwarding the game to the chat group. After using your sharing incentives, you can also get increased customer flow and investment support by watching the advertisements. Also, watching certain advertisements every day can complete daily tasks for extra gold rewards.

Li Chungeng said that the APP version of this game is scheduled to launch this month. The amount of work has been adjusted, stretching the player's development time to a slower pace and optimizing the art. They may also add In-app purchases but are still researching if this is needed.

Muyou Technology entered the field of mini-games last year and used WeChat mini-games as its starting point. Li Chungeng said that the WeChat mini-game platform has the largest amount of users, so it's easy to get the most valuable user feedback from it. In addition to WeChat, the volume of the Toutiao platform has also risen sharply. Among them, the Douyin mini game has the fastest rise, mainly because of the advantages of video distribution and being gamer-centric.

From the perspective of Muyou Technology on which platform they used (WeChat, Toutiao, Baidu, Mobile QQ, and OV), the traffic of these larger small game platforms will overlap. Still, there are some differences in the user group, which requires the publisher to do a cost assessment. The team felt that if the time and cost to port the game was well-matched, they might wish to add another platform. The audience using mobile QQ is younger, but there are more women in the number of WeChat players, and female users are more active with these types of simulation games.

With the versatility of Cocos Creator, they can choose which platforms to choose from with less effort than other game engines and allow for more decision making on where to add the game, not the how.

Talking about the future of simulation management gameplay, Li Chungeng said that simulation management games are a long-lasting category. There are things in line with human nature. The collection and construction are the essential pursuits and preferences of human beings. For these games to succeed, they must match the attributes of gamers and must have a broad enough audience. Whether we can make an excellent product depends mainly on what kind of theme used for packaging. He believes that the simulation business category will never grow old, and there are always opportunities in the future.

At present, the Muyou team has seen many players' suggestions and feedback from the WeChat game developer background. The team is accelerating the update of the game soon. These include updates on the content of the city map, expansion of gameplay, deepening of the development line, and continuously optimize the product experience.

Muyou's Future

Li Chungeng said that the current mobile game business at Muyou will still be working more on their native casual game business. Still, the team will continue to work hard in the mini-app casual game business, and it will explore the distribution of mini-app casual games for the future.

The Muyou team believes that there are new opportunities in the mini-app game market. WeChat small games have just started to grow in the traffic business, and now they see these mini games will usher in new opportunities for the future. 

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