THE CUSTOMER
Alma Littera is Lithuania’s leading publisher. For more than 20 years, it has pursued its mission of promoting both the need for, and the pleasure of, gaining knowledge through reading. Alma Littera publishes books for adults, children and teenagers along with educational and teaching books, and the best and most popular works by authors from Lithuania and all over the world. Alma Littera cooperates with publishers and copyright agencies in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Israel, US, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and many other countries.
“Kake Make” is a fictional character which first appeared in the children’s’ picture book “The Kake Make and the Elf of Mess” published by Alma Littera in 2010. This creative, inventive, joyful and quirky character soon won over children hearts – and those of the children literature critics too. In 2010 IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) made it their book of the year for younger audiences.
THE CHALLENGE
As Kake Make’s popularity grew with every new book, she rapidly found her way into action books, encyclopaedias and toy books of different sizes – currently over 30 publications. Later more branded products were created in addition to the books, including stickers, puzzles, and birthday party products – and now the Kake Make brand can be found on merchandise ranging from food and drinks to hygiene, textile products and office supplies. Since Autumn 2014, two Kake Make plays have been staged by the Lithuanian National Youth Theatre.
Kake Make is not only popular in Lithuania – other countries are getting more and more familiar with her, and copyrights of the books have already been purchased by Denmark, Latvia, Russia, South Korea, Israel, Poland, Greece and Estonia. After achieving such huge success with Kake Make, Alma Littera wanted to take the brand further and develop a monetized educational mobile game for children.
THE SOLUTION
The primary version and main base of the game was created by Tag of Joy. The server element and some additional content was added by SneakyBox. This content included:
- Player’s account synchronization –enabling players to change devices and still save their progress.
- Accessibility through different platforms – the game is now available on Google Play, App Store and Web.
- The ability for Alma Littera to send customised ads and commercials about products and events related to Kake Make.
- Easily managed promotional activation codes – to ensure that only one account will benefit from the codes in each participatory Kake Make book.
- In-apps system and implementation.
- English language choice and interface.
- Wardrobe remake – adding a lot more clothes, which prolonged children’s time spent in the game.
- New mini-games relevant to each new books content. For example: finding different objects in the room or writing letters. These mini-games were created in line with elementary school teacher recommendations.
The game has been, and is, extremely successful in helping Alma Littera promote Kake Make brand. As many as 46 per cent of Lithuanian children (3-6 y/o) downloaded this fun game in the first three months. More than 50 per cent of those who bought the latest book activated the games in the apps with the promotional activation code within one month.
TECHNOLOGIES AND TOOLS
Game engine: Unity
Frameworks and libraries: Facebook SDK, Fabric Crashlytics SKD
Backend: MVC, Entity Framework 5.5, Code First, Web API 2.0, Automapper, Structure Map
Language: C#
IDE: Visual Studio
Other tools: Git, Jenkins, HockeyApp