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By Flipline Matt, June 28, 2024 10:58 am

 
We hope everyone has been enjoying Papa’s Paleteria To Go!

We usually don’t have many drawings from the development of our games, but for Paleteria, we created a lot of sketches while planning how the game would work. We thought it would be fun to do a special edition of Flipline Rewind, sharing some of these early sketches to give everyone a small peek into what goes into the game development process. Click each of the sketches below to see a larger version!
 

Build Station

 
Initially, we thought the paleta molds would be upside-down, meaning you’d add the top layer first, then the middle, and finally the bottom, which is how real ice pop molds are usually set up. Many of our sketches show the paletas and molds this way. One of our main concerns was how what you see on the ticket matches what the customer holds in the end. If you were adding fillings upside-down, they would need to appear upside-down on the ticket too, so everything would be flipped when the customer held it! Ultimately, we decided it was more important for the paleta to stay right-side-up at the Build Station, so Papa Louie has specially-made molds with tubes and channels for the fillings.

Layering Paletas

 
We also had to decide how we wanted the paletas to look once they were made, as this would guide the design of the layering system and all the components needed to achieve the final appearance. You’ll see in these sketches that the paletas are still shown upside-down, as we hadn’t yet rotated the molds. Early on, we decided to always have three fillings, rather than keeping it open-ended like Bakeria’s pies.

Topping Station

 
We wanted to do something different with the toppings for Paleteria: Instead of just adding shakers and drizzles across the entire pop, we wanted players to be able to change the angle of the toppings being added. We had seen some great examples of fancy paletas decorated this way, and we wanted to capture that look for this game. This, of course, introduced new challenges, especially regarding the hands-on experience. Instead of dragging food left and right to pour toppings evenly, the “precision” part of the gameplay would involve dragging the paleta to the correct angle before adding the topping. Some initial sketches had the paleta suspended above, where you would dunk it into a bin below. When we decided to move the paleta into a falling “waterfall” of toppings instead, we needed to come up with a way to choose the topping first.

Drizzles

 
Drizzles were tricky to figure out, especially when we were thinking of dunking the paleta into round bins below. We brainstormed a bunch of ideas for nozzles and revolving sprayers, but streams drizzling downwards made the most sense. We sketched out how the drizzles might interact with the top edge of the paleta, and ultimately wanted it to ribbon across the whole surface.

Tickets and Rotations

 
We spent a lot of time thinking about how to make topping angles and rotations clear on the ticket. Originally the paleta was upside-down in the Build Station, and upside-down on the Topping Station if we were dunking it into bins. Should we make the rotation symbols relate to how the paleta looks right-side-up when the customer is holding it? Or also make them upside-down since the paleta is built that way? When we decided the paleta on the Topping Station would be sideways, we had the symbols relate to that position, and also made them look a bit like arrows so it was clear how to angle them. We also needed a natural way for molds to transition to this sideways rotation so players could keep track of what they were working on, so we had the molds turn sideways on the Chill Station once you add them to the freezer.

There were many other adjustments made as we worked on the game, but this provides just a glimpse into the planning stages before we begin programming or designing the final assets used in the game!
  
Papa’s Paleteria To Go! is available on iOS and Android!
 
                

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By Flipline Matt, February 20, 2024 12:05 pm

Hey Everyone!

This week, we wanted to share an update on how development is going with Papa’s Paleteria To Go, and we’re thrilled to say that we’re in the middle of final playtesting right now!

What does this mean exactly? While we do plenty of playtesting as we’re working on the game, this final round of testing is where we play through the entire game and figure out if there’s anything we missed or anything that needs adjustments, and then fix those issues before submitting it to the app stores.

This first involves making sure everything works correctly on a variety of screen sizes, and testing on both slower devices and more powerful ones to see what needs to be optimized. After that, we test touch-screen and multi-touch controls at various sizes, and then it’s on to the final playthrough of the entire game. We make sure all the ingredients and customers are unlocking at the correct times, make adjustments to scoring and pacing, and test all of the Specials, mini-games, and stickers. We’ll work on fixing any issues as we go, and making sure everything is playing smoothly before preparing the final version of the game.

This time around, we’ve had to deal with issues with our development tools and new phone devices (which are thankfully fixed now!), so the process has taken a bit longer. To make sure all of the issues are fixed, we’ve also had to test the game on a whopping 14 devices this time, so it’s been a bit more time-consuming.

When we’re finished with final playtesting, we’ll then have to wait a bit for each of the app stores to review the game, and see if there are any adjustments they need. This part of the process can take a while, but as soon as we have a release date available, we’ll post about it right away on the blog!

We’re working hard to get the game to everyone as soon as possible, and we can’t wait until you can all play Papa’s Paleteria To Go!

Be sure to check back here for more Sneak Peeks of Papa’s Paleteria To Go!