Flipkiss - A Game about Love

Challenge:
The idea was to create a small but different kind of matching game.

Approach:
Cuteness, a lovely story, an innovative matching game design and a social cause.

Contribution:
Executive Producer & Game Designer

Year: 2015 - Present

Summary

With a team of five I invented and launched a small but cute matching iOS game. Flipkiss was featured by Apple for “New Games We Love” in several countries like the USA, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. The game is connected to a social cause. With Flipkiss I wanted to raise awareness and funds for research for people affected by Lupus, an incurable autoimmune disease.

Flipkiss launched in October 2018

Team

Our team was composed of:

• 1 × 👨‍💻 iOS engineer (Germany 🇩🇪)
• 1 × 👩‍🎨 Illustrator (UK 🇬🇧)
• 1 × 👩‍🎤 Sound Designer (France 🇫🇷)
• 1 × 👨‍🍳 Music Composer (France 🇫🇷)
• 1 × 👨‍✈️ Producer & Designer (Germany 🇩🇪 & USA 🇺🇸)

Initial Idea & First Designs

The idea started in 2014 while I was having a shower and looking at the tiles in the bathroom.

“If I would turn one tile I could match two that have a similair mark and make them disappear… The match is a kiss… I flipped the tile… the game will be called Flipkiss!”

That’s pretty much what happened in my head. I immediately grabbed some Post-Its and Sharpies and created the first paper prototype.

Flipkiss Paper Prototype

It felt as if I was onto something. So I went straight to the computer and came up with a first design draft.

Early Designs for Flipkiss

The Journey

The idea and the designs were just the start for a journey that turned out to be longer than I thought it would be. Here are only some of the challenges that this project had to face:

• the team had to be assembled
• the story had to be created
• the matching mechanism had to be refined
• the game design needed a lot of work
• the illustration style had to be figured out
• the animations had to be created
• the sounds and the music had to be composed
• the way of publishing had to be figured out
• the localization into eight langauges

Here is a short video that shows the progress of the game:

Visual Impressions

Here are a couple of visual impressions of how the game looks like.

Social Cause

The initial idea was to raise awareness and funds for HIV. But after I met a Lupus warrior, I got to know to Lupus. As Lupus has a smaller public appearance than HIV I chose to make Lupus our cause. I contacted the Lupus Research Alliance and they welcomed our approach warm-heartedly.

Raising awareness and funds for Lupus with Flipkiss

Launch & Success

Flipkiss was launched on October 2018. Flipkiss was featured by Apple in “New Games We Love” for several countries like the USA, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain.

In the category “Puzzle” Flipkiss reached Top 10, Top 20 and Top 30 Ranks in the following countries:

• Top 10: Italy, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Egypt, Jordan, Tunesia, Portugal, Finland, Hong Kong.
• Top 20: United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium, Taiwan, Austria, Australia, Ghana, Ukrain.
• Top 30: Germany, Spain, Canada (#31), USA (#33).

“New Games We Love” and “Rank 33” in the Apple US AppStore