Special Interview with Yunus Ayyıldız: Introducing his new game Rop
Yunus Ayyıldız is known as the developer of three popular games – Joinz, twelve and Pop to Save. Now once again the Turkish game developer receives deserved attention for his newest game, Rop, which quickly after its publishing date made it to the Recommended Games List at Apple Store.
Rop was firstly published for iOS (Apple Store, $1.99) and is expected soon to be released for Android devices as well.
In a special interview for Etohum, Yunus talked about his vision as a game developer and shared his plans for the future.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I was born in 1986 in Trabzon, Turkey. Now I’m living in Ankara. I graduated at Middle East Technical University where I am currently pursuing my MBA in Game Technologies. I’ve been developing games for about three years now and I am publishing them under the name gamebra.in.
How did you start developing games?
I have always been interested in puzzle styled games. When I was young, I was really enjoying games from the Far East, because they are really good at this.
Before becoming a developer, I dealt with graphic design for a while. After I met with flash games and saw puzzle style games, I immediately thought “I can do this!” and I started developing myself.
Afterwards, I quit my job and started working at ODTÜ TECH ATOM accelerating center. In the beginning, I was developing games for FATİH Project and after some time I thought that I am ready and started developing games for the mobile market.
To this date I’ve developed Pop to Save (free on Google Play), Joinz (itunes, Google Play), twelve: hardest puzzle (free on Google Play) and Rop. Pop to Save earned a prize from Microsoft Turkey. Joinz got into the global recommended list of Canadian publisher Noodlecake and earned a Crystal Pixel special jury award.
I also developed twelve: hardest puzzle episode, which was nominated for the IMGA Meaningful GamePlay award, but couldn't win it.
Can you tell us about the developing process of Rop?
I was thinking about the reasons why Joinz and twelve did not get too much attention and I thought that maybe the problem was the starting point.
So, I started thinking about simple ideas and tried to develop a different mechanics for the core of the game, which was an interesting elastic rope. So, the starting point was this rope which led to 106 days of work to create Rop.
Working in the accelerating center is important too. I meet lots of people who ask for ideas and I am always showing my projects to them. They criticize the games with an open heart and I know one thing for sure: if they like my creation, it is ready for the market.
How many people have downloaded Rop to date?
I didn’t think that success will come this fast, but people like it and in 6 days about 40 thousand user downloaded Rop.
I know that this number will slowly decrease, which is the reason why I am working on the second part of the game. This will be a re-boost for the game.
What are your plans for the future?
I developed many mechanics for Rop but published just one of them. So, I’m working with the other mechanics as an expansion pack.
Every developer dreams about entering the PC game market and I have dreams about this too. Sure, I have lots of things to learn and, in order to get the right experience, I have to work hard. But I’m not in a hurry, I have patience.