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 Features
Postmortem: Gamevil's Nom 2
What Went Wrong
1.
Lack of Smoothness
Regardless of everything else, it would have been great if the character’s movement was a bit smoother. However, this was not an easy job for us due to file size limitations, so the character’s movement had to be simple and straightforward. We had to rely on only 2-3 frames of animations for the completed game.
Regular users will have no idea why Nom’s movement is stiff because they do not know about the frame limitations. As the mobile platform evolves I hope that Nom’s movement will be smoother and even see his muscles move!
2.
Omission
2 years have passed since the launch of Nom, but game developers such as me still have to struggle with mobile hardware, because of memory size limitations. As time goes on, people will expect many more features, and new games will also have to compete with innovative games as well. Therefore, I needed to use a lot of memory on more images and sounds.
Less important features had to be omitted based on an importance ranking. This happens in every project, but what makes the difference is that we need to achieve better quality than before. We have to derive a better gaming experience by omitting the less important features and emphasizing the important ones.
3.
Too Hot?
“Hot” is a good word that expresses the user experience of Nom. It really stimulates users with non-stop action, and once the user starts playing the game it becomes irresistible. Some people say that their eyes hurt because the game is so fast. However, this actually was all calculated while I was designing the game.
   
4.
Disallowing Two Sounds
Currently, it is difficult to have two sounds play simultaneously in different channels in Korean mobile games. What that means is that the game can only have background music or sound effects play separately, and cannot have them play at the same time. In Nom, the background music plays until Nom encounters the earthworm and defeats it, the music pauses, the sound effect plays, and then the music is resumed. Since Nom’s background music was simple and had short repeated phrases, it dealt with this issue much better.
However, in Nom 2 , it was hard to cut the melody in short pieces, so we sacrificed short sound effects and just had the background music loop. Also, one of the reasons why we did it this way was because we had more obstacles and monsters in Nom 2 than in Nom. If we had the background music and sound effects repeat after one another other it might have been very awkward, and would have sounded like a scratched CD skipping. Despite that, we have maintained important sound effects that occur when Nom jumps to change the screen dimension. This was possible because the music changes when the dimension changes.
5.
How about Nom 3?
After the success of Nom, I put everything that I could imagine into Nom 2. The limits of my imagination were space and aliens. In movies, mysterious events always conclude with aliens. This method was also often used in the famous TV show “The X-Files.” An unusual incident occurs, and the conclusion is that it was done by aliens. It is obvious that if space and aliens are used, then there are not many subjects that can be used on the next version.
People often ask me, “Since space is used in Nom 2, what are you going to have in Nom 3?” I have also always asked this same question to myself. I now have the answer and am currently working on the design for Nom 3.
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