Editor’s note: Ville Vesterinen, CEO of Grey Area, is a founder of ArcticStartup
It’s been a while since we’ve heard any news out of their Helsinki office, but Grey Area is back with a new title launched today – this time a tactical card game dubbed Hero Hunt. The gameplay is straightforward, the graphics are nicely designed, and the game has eaten up a good chunk of my morning since Grey Area CEO Ville Vesterinen passed the link my way.
As a card game developed for mobile, it seems to succeed at its goals. Hero Hunt lets players battle through the campaign mode to release captured Heroes you can add to your collection, or lets players battle against each other in PVP matches. Winning gives you more cards, which you can use either as characters in battle, or to add more skills to your current cards’ stats.
Speaking to Vesterinen, he says they’re well aware there are a lot of tactical card games in the app store, but there was a lot of potential for them to enter the market given the fact that most mobile card games are close to incomprehensible to use. “We thought that we would love to see a card game that is really beautiful and easy to get into, but at the same time there is the tactical depth,” says Vesterinen.
Grey Area’s previous game, Shadow Cities, was first launched back in 2010 and was unique for it’s location-based MMORPG gameplay – players had to physically move around their city to attack and defend their turf. The company then raised a € 1.9m in Series A led by Index Ventures while the game developed a cult-like following – but didn’t see the traction needed to keep the game afloat, and eventually shut down the servers in October of 2013.
“User Experience” and “Ease to get into” were some topics brought up over and over in our conversation, and when asked Vesterinen agrees that these points were something they learned with Shadow Cities.
“It had a massive following, people absolutely loved it, but it wasn’t for everyone. It was so new, and so special if you will. Over the years that we’ve been working in this space we learned the importance of user experience on any mobile handset. So you need to be super easy and fun, quick to dip in to the game, short play sessions, but at the same time you need the depth to keep on playing,” says Vesterinen.
Hero Hunt can be downloaded for iOS here.
