Kotagames’ Felix Ramli Shares his Recipe for Great Feature Phone Games

During the Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon, Felix Ramli, the director of feature phone game developer Kotagames and also the founder of Indonesian video game developer training center GameLevelOne.com, shared his insights into what makes a feature phone game great. He said that there are three main elements to look out for:

1. Fun Factor

You need to consider a number of different factors to make the games fun.

• You need to ensure a fast loading time between pages. Felix said it is recommended to keep each page’s size to 50Kb tops. In developing countries where there are lots of feature phone users, there are often problems with the 2G/GPRS data reception – and it’s not that fast to begin with. If a game page is bigger than 50Kb, it’ll take longer to proceed in the game and you will lose users.

• Make sure to have interesting storylines to let the users feel more engaged in the game. Users love to project themselves into fun games.

• You also have to create special in-game events from time to time such as a tournament or bazaar. It is recommended that the events have some special graphics in it, and can reward users with special prizes such as double experience points [1] or rare virtual items.

• Don’t make any endings for the game. You want the users to play them as long as possible and earn money.

• The fifth and final tip for injecting more fun is the social factor. Your games must be able to let users interact with other people inside the game. (More on this below).

2. Social Interactions