Why Boomlagoon is ditching casual games for Spirit Hunter’s card-slinging wizard

Forest animals and a treasure-hoarding monster helped Boomlagoon survive its first few years in the notoriously difficult mobile-games market. But now it’s hoping a blue-haired wizard can conjure up a new recipe for success.

Until recently, the Finnish developer focused on creating casual mobile games. It made sense: Boomlagoon’s founders used to work at Rovio, the company behind the mega-popular Angry Birds franchise. As an independent studio, Boomlagoon wanted to take that character-driven approach and apply it to free-to-play games. Its first release was Noble Nutlings in 2013. The game featured a trio of squirrels building homemade racing karts. In 2014, the developers released Monsu, an endless runner with cards that act as power-ups.

But with Spirit Hunter (available now for iOS devices), Boomlagoon is going after a slightly different demographic: the midcore audience. Midcore is a term developers use to talk about players who want games that have a bit more meat to them. For Boomlagoon, this means creating games that people can play for years — a kind of longevity its previous projects didn’t have.

Above: Sliding cards onto the battlefield activates their spells.

Image Credit: Giancarlo Valdes/GamesBeat

Leaving casual games behind

Going after the midcore crowd sounds like a sudden shift given the success of Noble Nutlings (over 2 million downloads) and Monsu (about 4 million downloads). But according to Boomlagoon chief product officer Olli Laesvirta, moving to midcore was just the direction the studio was naturally heading in.

“Noble Nutlings was a nice game, but it didn’t have the complexity that’s required for free-to-play games. So in a sense, Noble Nutlings could’ve been a premium game — you could only purchase one kind of item in that [game],” said Laesvirta in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. “And Monsu was more of a typical platformer, and it had deep progression mechanics and also the card-collecting aspect … . Then we just continued on that road.”

Spirit Hunter combines role-playing mechanics with collectible cards. You play as a mage who must repel an invading horde of beasts by sealing spirit gates around the world. But instead of selecting spells from a menu, the game’s hero uses a deck of cards, where each card represents a different spell (like a fireball or a poisonous fog). Crafting more cards and better gear is crucial to keeping up with Spirit Hunter’s huge variety of demons.

One of the reasons Boomlagoon made an action-RPG (aside from having designers who love Japanese role-playing games) is that the genre isn’t as crowded as others are in the App Store.

“We looked at a lot of different things. RPG is a really cool genre in itself in the sense that it’s not so clearly dominated in the mobile market as, for example, real-time strategy games,” said Laesvirta. “That’s why we felt [making an] RPG would be cool. And also, our character-driven approach fits really well into that genre.”

Above: Some of the developers from Boomlagoon.

Image Credit: Boomlagoon

Carving their own path

Boomlagoon opened its doors in 2012, the same year Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga shot up the top-grossing charts — those games still have a vice-like grip to this day. At the time, the freemium business model was uncharted territory for the new studio (Rovio was still selling Angry Birds games at premium price points when Boomlagoon’s founders left). But instead of chasing the leaders by adding yet another RTS or match-3 puzzle game to the App Store pile, Boomlagoon focused on creating new and different experiences.

The strategy seems to have worked out. Spirit Hunter is the developer’s most ambitious game yet, and it’s another example of the company’s willingness to experiment and innovate with different genres.

Above: Spirit Hunter’s unnamed hero.

Image Credit: Boomlagoon

“For us, it’s really important to always bring something new because it doesn’t make much sense to [try to] beat the current masters in their own categories,” said Boomlagoon chief executive Antti Stén. “For example, when we go into midcore, we really want to bring something that looks like [it’s from] us, something new that players haven’t seen before. Like with Spirit Hunter, it’s a new kind of game. I don’t think there’s anything like that in the market right now.”

The studio believes players are always looking for new types of mobile games. And its agility — which Stén said is one of the company’s “biggest assets” — helps it deliver those kinds of games every year. Boomlagoon has 13 employees, with one team handling content updates for Spirit Hunter while another is working on an unannounced project. They’re not too concerned with trying to usurp the mobile-game throne.

“It’s definitely a tough market. The games that are in the top-grossing [charts] have been there for a while,” said Laesvirta. “But there are changes every now and again, and of course that’s what we’re aiming for — to penetrate that ceiling. But if you look beyond the top 10 grossing games, there are big business opportunities beyond that [too].”