Prior to attending PGConnects London, I released a new game called “Paka Paka” (Swahili for “Cat Cat”).
It’s a game about recognizing animal sounds. It fits my platform perfectly. It is fun for both kids and adults, it’s easily localized to most/all languages, it’s easy to understand and it’s nice to look at. With the bonus impression stage, it’s also a good ice breaker. Who doesn’t want to see their friend attempt to make a Rhinoceros noise!?
Basic gameplay and grunt work (pun intended)
The gameplay mechanics and database design were relatively simple to code. At its core, Paka Paka is basically a quiz game.
- Get a question
- Click an answer,
- Score points if you’re right
Of course, in this situation, the questions are the sounds and the “answers” are the animals themselves. I created the backend in a fairly generic way so it will be easier to add these “Quiz” style games to the platform in the future.
The majority of the work for this game was in collecting the assets. Ensuring the images had the proper resolution and licensing to be used in a commercial setting. Cropping the images and optimizing their file size for faster load times also took a bit of time.
Cleaning up the sounds was also a quite a lot of manual work. I gathered the sounds from various sources so it was necessary to trim them, normalize their loudness and optimize their file size to ensure a fast consistent experience. Insects were very quiet initially and things like a baboon were really loud. Luckily I found a tool to process the loudness and file sizes in bulk.
I designed both the frontend and backend so that it will be quite easy to add new content. I’ve also written an algorithm to reduce duplication of sounds. You should hear every sound in the game before getting duplicates (assuming you are logged in). If you are reading this and don’t have an account, create one!
Flipping the script
In the last round of the game, there is a “bonus stage” where all players are given a picture of an animal and asked to do their best impression. The other players then judge whether or not it was close or if they gave a good effort. That way you can be WAY off and embarrass yourself a bit but still score some points.
I’ve made this bonus stage configurable when creating the game as you need to be able to actually hear the other players. Playing this game remotely with strangers isn’t yet properly supported as I am not recording any audio.
I play tested this game with my colleagues at RoCo and everyone was holding their phones close to their mouths when making the animal sounds. I guess I either need to implement that and store the audio for playback.. or put in a note that Nothing is being recorded.
Someone even asked how I got past the microphone consent that iOS has 😅. Personally, I’m not sure I want any ridiculous recordings of me trying to sound like a giraffe floating around the internet… Adding in the audio storage is not at the top of my priority list.
Try it out
That about wraps it up for this game. Please give Paka Paka a try. Let me know if there are some good animals you want me to add.