The rise of Bullet Force

Do you know Bullet Force? If not, here’s a brief info about the game as it is today:

• Developer: Blayze Games, L.L.C.
• Publisher: Blayze Games, L.L.C.
• Platforms: Android, iOS, Web, PC (Steam)
• Downloads: high millions.
• Social sites: Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Forum, YouTube.

This blog post is a summary from our point of view, about how we saw and participated on the growth of the game. Unfortunately, due to unavailability of Lucas for adding more informations from his perspective, some informations may not be 100% accurate. Once he will return from his Church mission, we will try to update and extend this article with additional layer of his thoughts, goals and motivation why he started to create the game.

As you probably know, no way is direct and final success is only a result of hard work and enthusiasm. This was also case of Bullet Force.

How it all began

The story begins in the summer of 2015, when we found game Trigger Combat on Kongregate. This game was being developed by a young guy named Lucas Wilde, also known under nickname nxtboyIII.

In that time, Chrome browser stopped support of NPAPI plugin which was used by most of 3D games running in browsers in these days. Moreover, end of next important technology for running browser games - flash plugin - was not far ahead. We at PacoGames were well aware of the situationt and were looking for new games, which would replace the previous ones and bring great gaming experience to our users. The problem was, that new technologies as OpenGL or HTML5 were at the beginning of "their existence" and games in that time had to be very simple to run smoothly. Browser games were also domain of developers who did games out of love and did not care much about optimization and performance. Trigger Combat was a different. It was one of the few games which worked well already in the new environment.

Preview of Trigger Combat game. The video displays the game completely. Nothing more was there. No more maps, no other UI, no menu. Just one weapon, few AI enemies and task to kill them all. Although it looks funny today, in that time, this was one of the best and most addictive games. But most importantly - it worked and did not crash in 50% of launches, as the other games did.

First contact with Lucas

On July 16th, 2015, we contacted Lucas via his Twitter account with an interest to buy and share Trigger Combat with users of PacoGames.com. After some chatting, he decided to provide us with next version of Trigger Combat, already known as Bullet Force.

The route of Bullet Force

First version of Bullet Force took Trigger Combat as a base and brought only slightly updated map. On July 15th, 2018, one month after first contact, the game was released. Short time and few updates later, we were forced to release also a version requiring ending UnityPlayer plugin to allow players play the game with better performance. It was possible only in Firefox. If you expect immediate success at this point, whe have to disappoint you - it did not happen. Playability was not good enough, even tough the game was strongly promoted. On one hand, this was great, because we realized, that Lucas is enthusiastic about the development of the game and does it for a bigger goal. We also realized that there are already thousands of dollars invested in the game for hired 3D designers to create all the game content well optimized. All money earned from pacogames went back to the game as well. It was clear, that Lucas is going to continue.

Another month later the game was expanded with vehicles, which turned out not to be the route Lucas wants to go. Although playability went up, Lucas removed vehicles and made another version.

Next version removed vehicles and collected all till this time created content to a comprehensive whole. A player started in first map and after clearing it of enemies, he went to another. Every map was a mission. You can play this version on Bullet Force page.

Bullet Force & Multiplayer?

Next step was to think more about next improvement. Multiplayer mode was something, that the game could not miss. Lucas was doing updates nearly on daily basis for 3 long months. Thanks to simultaneously running promotion from side of PacoGames (PPC campaigns, big banners on pacogames mainpage, videos on youtube, contacting publishers for releasing or mentioning the game on their websites), number of players was growing. Needless to say, that also Lucas was doing great work with the community around the game on Twitter. Even quite big file-size (around 30% above something we consider as an unwritten limit for browser games) was not a big problem with the help of caching. At least, when there was more than few days between the game updates. Back then, Bullet Force was still matter of a browser.

Multiplayer version was a revolution. New maps, new weapons, new UI, many improvements. First multiplayer version was released on January 11, 2016 with name Bullet Force Multiplayer.

Time for mobile version?

Mobile version was being developed simultaneously with its web equivalent. It applied to the state when web version was at its limits (mainly regarding file-size). Then, while development of web version stopped, mobile version continued. After another 3 months (6 months from first release of multiplayer version in the browser and whole 1 year after first release of Bullet Force on web), the game became available on Google Play. App store and Standalone versions followed.

What is happening with browser version?

Once the game was available at other platforms with better monetization options, all focus was intended there and web version went to seclusion from the side of developer. All of that resulted in often problems with login system and losing progress in web. Current full version of the game was already so different and web so irrelevant, that fixing the issue was not on the agenda despite many requests from the game on PacoGames. What a surprise, when 2 years later, on January 2018, there was released updated brand new version of Bullet Force on 2 other gaming websites. These websites also keep currently the most recent version of the game. You can play it right now also on pacogames - check Bullet Force game.

So this has been 3 years of Bullet Force from our point of view. We see a huge player base, as well as developers that are interested about the game and how Lucas made it so famous. We hope, this article will be interesting for them and will answer their main questions.