The Company
Dmitry Karasev, founder and CEO of Bytex LLC
Bytex is a company that has more than 10 years’ experience in creating and developing games for its passionate Russian-speaking fanbase. It’s our company’s mission to develop gaming projects that challenge and improve the intellectual abilities of our users. We see our games as brain fitness; they’re about not only taking a break, but also finding new friends. Bytex’s games are focused on building a tight-knit community as well as setting up various on and offline events.
We focus on enhancing players’ intelligence, and are best known for creating the legendary turn-based game Berserk-Online, which blended strategy with elements of a collectible card game. We didn’t just stop with Berserk-Online. We expanded, and Bytex also created Berserk: Rebirth and Berserk: The Cataclysm, Berserk: Evolution for the iOS, and the board game for iPad, Santiago de Cuba, which currently host 12 million users worldwide.
Source of Inspiration
So, we had a historic game in mind for a very long time. We wanted to create a CCG (Collectible Card Game) about the evolution of the Russian military. Though the premise was promising, it turned out too complicated to build. However, what we did take away from the project was the idea of a technical construction-kit puzzle game.
After making up our minds about the genre of the game, we had to choose a setting. As we’d already made a project for Wargaming, many of our developers became ardent fans of World of Tanks. If you wanted a job at Bytex, then you needed an impressive World of Tanks record—so make sure you have a high win ratio before applying! Taking our passion for the games into account, it seemed only natural that our next project would revolve around that universe. It was great because in Tank Masters we got to combine our enthusiasm for tanks with our love for history and intellectual games.
The Game
Tank Masters is best described as a technical puzzle game. Your role is that of the project leader, instructing designers and discovering what parts fit where. You start off with only a few components like blueprints, designs, and weapons, then have to use logic to combine ever-expanding individual elements into an actual tank. All parts and people are historically accurate, and you get to learn about them as you gradually unlock over 100 items.
As you progress through the game, you must use your initiative and get into the mind of an inventor to devise different schematics and parts. So once you have your schematic and designer, you create an engine. But the engine is just one component of the overall tank; there’s the hull, the cannon, chassis—all the integral components you’d expect.
Not all parts will combine—some canons only fit with specific machines. It’s your job to figure out the combinations to build them. You’re not only learning about the inner workings of legendary tanks and their makers, but you’re discovering just how all these unique parts fit together.
To really engage players in the setting, we added famous tank engineers (as game elements) and covered some of iconic WWII events that are connected with the history of tank construction. The first tank created is the MS-1. Beside the iconic light tank, players are tasked with building the T-34, IS, as well as the prototype tanks A-20, A-44 and KB-13.
The current release version of Tank Masters will only have the USSR Tech Tree with more nations to follow soon.
Technologies Applied
Client side is C#-built with the use of Unity3D (ver. 4.6), Unity UI and JSONObject, Android Immersive Mode, DOTween, Facebook, SmartLocalization, Soomla libraries. The back-end is implemented with Groovy/Grails.
The game is released for Apple iOS 7 and higher and Android 4.x. We also plan to release the game for Windows Phone and Amazon mobile devices.
What’s Next?
For the team, the next step is introducing German, US, British and French tank-building schools that will provide even more challenges for players’ engineering abilities.
Also, we’re assessing the options to release a few more technical puzzle games dedicated to the construction of various types of military machines, so be sure to stand by more great games.