In today’s edition of our digital digest, we will continue to introduce you to the peculiarities of game development and certain specific features. Earlier we covered the cycle of creating a ready-made game product from scratch, and now we’ll focus on making a mobile game with Unity Engine. From this article, you will learn about the main aspects to consider when creating a mobile game with Unity, namely: the features of mobile app creation for iOS and Android, the advantages and disadvantages of each operating system, and what is necessary for the project launch, as well as how to make it popular and commercially successful. Why choose Unity for mobile game development? Unity is undoubtedly one of the best and most popular game development platforms, and for good reason. It offers a comprehensive set of tools and features that allow developers to make high-quality 2D & 3D mobile titles.Unity’s versatility is one of its main advantages, supporting multiple platforms, including iOS and Android. In addition, it has a powerful asset store that provides mobile app developers with a large selection of various assets that can be implemented in their games. It also offers a freeware version for small studios, making it a great choice for indie developers. To back up our words with facts we suggest you check out some figures proving Unity’s leadership in the mobile games and apps global share. As of 2023, Unity holds a 30% share of the mobile gaming market with 15391 current customers. 53 of the 100 biggest revenue earners in the mobile games industry are running on Unity’s engine, with approximately $16 billion in estimated consumer spending between them in 2023 so far. It is worth noting that both small indie developers and AAA studios are making mobile games on Unity. Following we offer you a more detailed analysis of the both advantages and disadvantages of making a mobile game with Unity. Building a mobile game with Unity. Pros and cons Unity’s mobile game creation ecosystem offers its customers powerful yet user-friendly software that allows them to develop and release both 2D & 3D mobile games. The development of mobile games on Unity has a vast number of opportunities for developers to support and make a profit from their games. So, what are the main reasons most devs, indie and AAA, prefer to make games on Unity? First of all, Unity offers a huge variety of ready-made assets and plugins. This feature allows building projects faster and cheaper (which is very important for startups). Secondly, the Unity mobile dev kit has an implemented full-fledged graphic editor that offers you the possibility to create environments and locations, build up characters, and subsequently bring them to an acceptable look with the help of various specialized suitable apps. When creating a 3D Unity game, you can import 3D models from most third-party editors, which makes this part pretty much faster and easier. Therefore, Unity is perfect for developers who have not yet gathered a team but are ready to take over most of the creation processes. Advantages of the Unity Engine: The modern level of graphics can compete with most other engines. Unity is inferior to Unreal Engine in terms of capabilities, but it pleases with a standard set of post-processing effects, deferred lighting, screen space ambient occlusion, and accelerated lightmap processing. User-friendly editor and implemented tools: in a few days, even those who are just starting their career in mobile app development can learn the basics of working with Unity Engine. If you still have questions, you can find answers on one of the many websites, forums, Discord servers, and video tutorials. Even a student can create a fully functional game on Unity. The Unity mobile game engine dev kit is conditionally free of charge. Payment is charged only for the expansion of subscription packages. Also, there are usually -20% discounts on licenses available. A large community of developers, as well as a multitude of Unity-made games. Integrated Unity Asset Store where you can purchase complete code snippets, sound samples, and various assets. The ability to create photorealistic graphics for your project. Making a mobile game on Unity offers you the possibility to easily import it into any other OS and gaming platform after the release. Cons of the Unity mobile development environment: Making a game on Unity requires a certain level of coding skills. If you lack experience, get ready to learn. A lot of integrated components make the game bulky. This can be a problem because mobile device users often don’t want to download large games, and in many developing countries, people use low-cost, weak gadgets that will not be able to handle your game properly. There are no integrations with external services and libraries such as Facebook or Internet browsers, so developers must build and set it up manually, which takes additional time. The inability to add third-party physics or SpeedTree to the engine. And there is one more thing that happens to be very important. Before we move on to the tutorial of creating a mobile game on Unity, we should consider the diversity of Android and iOS app development. Mobile app development with Unity. Android and iOS specs In this piece, we don’t cover the percentage of Android-powered device users and those who prefer iPhones. We are primarily interested in the usability of mobile game development for Android and iOS with Unity Engine. The main factor that influences the choice of a mobile platform for developing your mobile app is the difference between various device models in terms of hardware characteristics and operating system versions. From this perspective, creating your mobile game on iOS has an advantage over Android in several respects: Apple produces a limited number of devices with unified quality and security standards iOS phone characteristics are similar (resolution, amount of RAM, and core configuration) iPhones use their proprietary GPU processors. This makes it much easier for game creators to optimize titles for specific Apple devices. Moreover, it simplifies support from the operating system. Thanks to this, owners of different iPhones have approximately the same gaming experience. Your Unity game can be easily optimized to run smoothly regardless of whether the player is using a “budget” iPhone SE or the brand-new iPhone 15. Android, on the other hand, suffers from very serious device fragmentation. The market offers a huge number of phone and tablet models from different manufacturers with different hardware parameters, GPU, and OS versions. Unity developers have to adapt their games to many combinations of devices which necessitates extensive testing of the game before the release and makes it difficult to support players using different Android-based devices. In other respects, there is no special difference in the approach to Unity-based mobile application development for iOS or Android.Once you make a game in Unity you can deploy that on many platforms without making any significant changes. However, there will be a time when you will need some part of your code only to run on some specific platform, but this issue is about building cross-platform games in general, which we will cover later on in the future. Unity mobile game creation brief tutorial The process of developing a mobile game on Unity in general hardly differs from the creation of any other game product. Those who are interested in the details of the game’s development cycle can read about it in the corresponding article. In this topic, we will only offer a short tutorial on Unity basics you need to know to start making your first mobile game. As we mentioned before, even a student can create a fully functional game on Unity. But to make this possible, there are a few simple rules to follow: Start from the basics. It’s impossible to develop even a simple Unity game from scratch without knowledge based on the theory. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. The vast Unity developers community will come in handy. It unites thousands of people who are willing to share their experiences and will gamely tackle the most issues you can face. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice from them. Invest resources in training. There are a lot of free video tutorials available to expand your knowledge of the engine and its capabilities. Also, the Unity team is constantly announcing all fresh updates on their channel and in the company blog. It is essential to realize that your further actions will largely depend on what kind of game you want to create. But, regardless of the genre and whether it’s a 2D or 3D game you’re making, the process of developing a mobile game on Unity is divided into two main stages: Building mobile game design with Unity Engine. The Unity engine itself takes care of physics, graphics, and many other technical things so that you can focus on the title concept. But you can’t work in Unity without knowledge of coding basics, so sooner or later you’ll proceed to the next step. Coding with C#. C# is a Microsoft-developed programming language that is one of the most popular programming languages worldwide, which is primarily for working with Unity Engine. Following these simple tips, it is very much possible to create a simple and functional game for mobile within a few days. But will it be popular and successful? It is not enough to create a mobile game, you also have to sell it to a prospective player. The success and popularity of the game among players are determined by a set of principles that do not depend on the engine on which your product is created. Creating a game is one thing, but selling it, engaging players, and retaining them is another. The modern mobile game industry offers a huge variety of diverse products, only a small fraction of which become really successful and popular. We offer some simple tips on how to increase the chances of your mobile game created on Unity becoming popular, successful, and profitable. Follow the trends. Your product must meet the needs and expectations of players at the time of release. Trends change every month and it often happens that when a developer starts to create a mobile game in a popular and highly demanded genre, but by the time of release the market situation changes, your game design and mechanics become outdated and the product remains unclaimed. Invest in marketing. A good marketing team will help you make your new product visible and talked about long before release, and in some cases even at the concept stage. Get people talking about your mobile game, anticipating it. Find a publisher who will take care of all marketing and sales-related issues. Yes, as a rule, publishers take a share of the profits, but they relieve the development team of many concerns, thus allowing them to concentrate directly on the game development process. We hope this entry has provided you with some answers to the basic questions that a novice mobile game developer on Unity might encounter in his career start. And a few basic tips for aspiring developers as a bonus for finishing this article. There is no need to try to implement the entire gameplay at once. It is better to start with the simplest things. For example, teach the character to move around, then teach him to shoot, then interact with objects, and so on. Art/resource creation takes more than 50% of the total time spent on game development. For startups, it is better to use free art available on the Internet buy a few ready-made sounds/models for a small amount of money from the relevant stores, or use the Unity free samples library. This not only saves time but also allows you to create a mobile game with a team of 1-3 people. Be sure that your PC/laptop has sufficient performance for comfortable work. Trying to create a Unity project on an old calculator with constant freezes will not be enjoyable. Be patient. Creating a simple mobile game on Unity may seem like a matter of 2-3 days before you start, but in reality, it takes almost a whole year from the start of work to the day when the game goes gold. Sometimes it takes even more time to hone the details than to create the core gameplay. Good luck and stay tuned!
In today’s edition of our digital digest, we will continue to introduce you to the peculiarities of game development and certain specific features. Earlier we covered the cycle of creating a ready-made game product from scratch, and now we’ll focus on making a mobile game with Unity Engine. From this article, you will learn about the main aspects to consider when creating a mobile game with Unity, namely: the features of mobile app creation for iOS and Android, the advantages and disadvantages of each operating system, and what is necessary for the project launch, as well as how to make it popular and commercially successful. Why choose Unity for mobile game development? Unity is undoubtedly one of the best and most popular game development platforms, and for good reason. It offers a comprehensive set of tools and features that allow developers to make high-quality 2D & 3D mobile titles.Unity’s versatility is one of its main advantages, supporting multiple platforms, including iOS and Android. In addition, it has a powerful asset store that provides mobile app developers with a large selection of various assets that can be implemented in their games. It also offers a freeware version for small studios, making it a great choice for indie developers. To back up our words with facts we suggest you check out some figures proving Unity’s leadership in the mobile games and apps global share. As of 2023, Unity holds a 30% share of the mobile gaming market with 15391 current customers. 53 of the 100 biggest revenue earners in the mobile games industry are running on Unity’s engine, with approximately $16 billion in estimated consumer spending between them in 2023 so far. It is worth noting that both small indie developers and AAA studios are making mobile games on Unity. Following we offer you a more detailed analysis of the both advantages and disadvantages of making a mobile game with Unity. Building a mobile game with Unity. Pros and cons Unity’s mobile game creation ecosystem offers its customers powerful yet user-friendly software that allows them to develop and release both 2D & 3D mobile games. The development of mobile games on Unity has a vast number of opportunities for developers to support and make a profit from their games. So, what are the main reasons most devs, indie and AAA, prefer to make games on Unity? First of all, Unity offers a huge variety of ready-made assets and plugins. This feature allows building projects faster and cheaper (which is very important for startups). Secondly, the Unity mobile dev kit has an implemented full-fledged graphic editor that offers you the possibility to create environments and locations, build up characters, and subsequently bring them to an acceptable look with the help of various specialized suitable apps. When creating a 3D Unity game, you can import 3D models from most third-party editors, which makes this part pretty much faster and easier. Therefore, Unity is perfect for developers who have not yet gathered a team but are ready to take over most of the creation processes. Advantages of the Unity Engine: The modern level of graphics can compete with most other engines. Unity is inferior to Unreal Engine in terms of capabilities, but it pleases with a standard set of post-processing effects, deferred lighting, screen space ambient occlusion, and accelerated lightmap processing. User-friendly editor and implemented tools: in a few days, even those who are just starting their career in mobile app development can learn the basics of working with Unity Engine. If you still have questions, you can find answers on one of the many websites, forums, Discord servers, and video tutorials. Even a student can create a fully functional game on Unity. The Unity mobile game engine dev kit is conditionally free of charge. Payment is charged only for the expansion of subscription packages. Also, there are usually -20% discounts on licenses available. A large community of developers, as well as a multitude of Unity-made games. Integrated Unity Asset Store where you can purchase complete code snippets, sound samples, and various assets. The ability to create photorealistic graphics for your project. Making a mobile game on Unity offers you the possibility to easily import it into any other OS and gaming platform after the release. Cons of the Unity mobile development environment: Making a game on Unity requires a certain level of coding skills. If you lack experience, get ready to learn. A lot of integrated components make the game bulky. This can be a problem because mobile device users often don’t want to download large games, and in many developing countries, people use low-cost, weak gadgets that will not be able to handle your game properly. There are no integrations with external services and libraries such as Facebook or Internet browsers, so developers must build and set it up manually, which takes additional time. The inability to add third-party physics or SpeedTree to the engine. And there is one more thing that happens to be very important. Before we move on to the tutorial of creating a mobile game on Unity, we should consider the diversity of Android and iOS app development. Mobile app development with Unity. Android and iOS specs In this piece, we don’t cover the percentage of Android-powered device users and those who prefer iPhones. We are primarily interested in the usability of mobile game development for Android and iOS with Unity Engine. The main factor that influences the choice of a mobile platform for developing your mobile app is the difference between various device models in terms of hardware characteristics and operating system versions. From this perspective, creating your mobile game on iOS has an advantage over Android in several respects: Apple produces a limited number of devices with unified quality and security standards iOS phone characteristics are similar (resolution, amount of RAM, and core configuration) iPhones use their proprietary GPU processors. This makes it much easier for game creators to optimize titles for specific Apple devices. Moreover, it simplifies support from the operating system. Thanks to this, owners of different iPhones have approximately the same gaming experience. Your Unity game can be easily optimized to run smoothly regardless of whether the player is using a “budget” iPhone SE or the brand-new iPhone 15. Android, on the other hand, suffers from very serious device fragmentation. The market offers a huge number of phone and tablet models from different manufacturers with different hardware parameters, GPU, and OS versions. Unity developers have to adapt their games to many combinations of devices which necessitates extensive testing of the game before the release and makes it difficult to support players using different Android-based devices. In other respects, there is no special difference in the approach to Unity-based mobile application development for iOS or Android.Once you make a game in Unity you can deploy that on many platforms without making any significant changes. However, there will be a time when you will need some part of your code only to run on some specific platform, but this issue is about building cross-platform games in general, which we will cover later on in the future. Unity mobile game creation brief tutorial The process of developing a mobile game on Unity in general hardly differs from the creation of any other game product. Those who are interested in the details of the game’s development cycle can read about it in the corresponding article. In this topic, we will only offer a short tutorial on Unity basics you need to know to start making your first mobile game. As we mentioned before, even a student can create a fully functional game on Unity. But to make this possible, there are a few simple rules to follow: Start from the basics. It’s impossible to develop even a simple Unity game from scratch without knowledge based on the theory. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. The vast Unity developers community will come in handy. It unites thousands of people who are willing to share their experiences and will gamely tackle the most issues you can face. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice from them. Invest resources in training. There are a lot of free video tutorials available to expand your knowledge of the engine and its capabilities. Also, the Unity team is constantly announcing all fresh updates on their channel and in the company blog. It is essential to realize that your further actions will largely depend on what kind of game you want to create. But, regardless of the genre and whether it’s a 2D or 3D game you’re making, the process of developing a mobile game on Unity is divided into two main stages: Building mobile game design with Unity Engine. The Unity engine itself takes care of physics, graphics, and many other technical things so that you can focus on the title concept. But you can’t work in Unity without knowledge of coding basics, so sooner or later you’ll proceed to the next step. Coding with C#. C# is a Microsoft-developed programming language that is one of the most popular programming languages worldwide, which is primarily for working with Unity Engine. Following these simple tips, it is very much possible to create a simple and functional game for mobile within a few days. But will it be popular and successful? It is not enough to create a mobile game, you also have to sell it to a prospective player. The success and popularity of the game among players are determined by a set of principles that do not depend on the engine on which your product is created. Creating a game is one thing, but selling it, engaging players, and retaining them is another. The modern mobile game industry offers a huge variety of diverse products, only a small fraction of which become really successful and popular. We offer some simple tips on how to increase the chances of your mobile game created on Unity becoming popular, successful, and profitable. Follow the trends. Your product must meet the needs and expectations of players at the time of release. Trends change every month and it often happens that when a developer starts to create a mobile game in a popular and highly demanded genre, but by the time of release the market situation changes, your game design and mechanics become outdated and the product remains unclaimed. Invest in marketing. A good marketing team will help you make your new product visible and talked about long before release, and in some cases even at the concept stage. Get people talking about your mobile game, anticipating it. Find a publisher who will take care of all marketing and sales-related issues. Yes, as a rule, publishers take a share of the profits, but they relieve the development team of many concerns, thus allowing them to concentrate directly on the game development process. We hope this entry has provided you with some answers to the basic questions that a novice mobile game developer on Unity might encounter in his career start. And a few basic tips for aspiring developers as a bonus for finishing this article. There is no need to try to implement the entire gameplay at once. It is better to start with the simplest things. For example, teach the character to move around, then teach him to shoot, then interact with objects, and so on. Art/resource creation takes more than 50% of the total time spent on game development. For startups, it is better to use free art available on the Internet buy a few ready-made sounds/models for a small amount of money from the relevant stores, or use the Unity free samples library. This not only saves time but also allows you to create a mobile game with a team of 1-3 people. Be sure that your PC/laptop has sufficient performance for comfortable work. Trying to create a Unity project on an old calculator with constant freezes will not be enjoyable. Be patient. Creating a simple mobile game on Unity may seem like a matter of 2-3 days before you start, but in reality, it takes almost a whole year from the start of work to the day when the game goes gold. Sometimes it takes even more time to hone the details than to create the core gameplay. Good luck and stay tuned!
You can expect it to take anywhere from 6 months to 18 months from start to finish. Furthermore, there is much more variety when it comes to mobile games of big caliber, as more complex games often require bigger teams and project management. Unity surveys also report that indie developers are increasingly able to create and launch games in as little as one year and do so while working fewer hours. This is partly due to the use of off-the-shelf assets to prototype ideas, as well as the use of other tools to streamline production processes.
The most popular mobile game genres made on Unity Engine are: Arcade > 63m downloads Action > 61,5m downloads Puzzle 35,5m downloads Adventure > 31,8m downloads Casual > 23,9m downloads Strategy > 20,2m downloads
The most popular mobile Unity games are: Alto’s Adventure Among Us Monument Valley 2 Crossy Road Reigns Hitman Sniper Hearthstone Axie Infinity
