Back in 2019 when we released Lily’s Garden to the world, we knew we made something special. Despite the fact that the match-3 puzzle game market was already saturated, what made this game stand out from the crowd was its storyline. Players come to our games for many reasons, but we believe that what keeps them there for the long run is our narrative.
And so throughout the last 5 years, Lily’s Garden storyline became one of the main pillars of the game. Like with a favourite TV show or book, we have a distinct group of players that keep coming back to the game to find out what’s going on with their favourite characters. And within Tactile, we have a dedicated team focusing solely on producing brand new content for them. We truly believe that if you get the story right, it absorbs the players and creates an extremely devoted player base. Ultimately, this is what sets us apart, gives the game a strong personality and helps to hold players in our world.
Building new in-game story chapters and days, however, is no joke and it quite literally takes an army to do so. As a company, we follow the principles of agile and lean development in everything that we do, including in the development of our story narratives. Our Lily’s Garden story team is an extremely efficient and unique high-level team, with an incredible amount of talent. They are working on the foundation of story writing that has been cultivated at Tactile for many years.
And so to dig deeper into how the team developed such an efficient workflow over the years, connecting many different disciplines into producing new weekly content for our players, we sat down with two of our Story Directors, Saran and Chris.
Pre-production
Being a 5 year-old game, Lily’s Garden has a very established content pipeline. Every week, we release a new story day, which is a part of the overarching story chapter. Choosing the setting for each chapter is key. The great thing about how we do things here at Tactile is that ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere – we do a lot of player testing, in order to see what characters, locations and tasks are interesting to them, but we also have the entire story team pitching in with their own ideas. This enables the team to explore different game settings and go to a bunch of fun locations (most recently, Lily has been to Denmark, Australia and Germany, and will be heading to Japan next).
Once the core focal point of the story chapter is defined, the Story Director, writers and Area Art Lead meet for an initial brainstorm. They ask themselves questions like, “We’re going to this new location, what parts of it do we want to see in the game?” or “What is going to make this chapter fun and engaging?” or “What are we trying to convey with this storyline, is the focus on love, family, mystery, or something else?”. From there, they do a further breakdown of how they want to plot the story throughout individual story days. At this stage, they will also think about new characters that could enter the storyline.
“When we go to all these places in our games, it gives us a chance to do some edutainment, and that’s what makes the story so special,” says Lily’s Garden Story Director, Saran. In one of the story chapters of Lily’s Garden sister game, Penny & Flo, the characters went to Thailand and so we hired a consultant to learn more about the local culture, habits, language and people. ‘It is important for us to convey these through our stories, doing our best to honour the local culture and local environmental issues,’ adds Chris, who was the Story Director on Penny & Flo when the Thailand chapter was released. ‘For example, in the Australian storyline, we addressed the issue of reef preservation, so the focus is always on real culture, real people and real issues,” adds Saran.
The team is never just working on one story day or chapter at a time. At the time of writing, the team is wrapping up chapter 12, working on the pre-production of chapter 13 and already brainstorming ideas for upcoming chapters (which the players will get to play in late 2025 😲).
The creative process
The full cycle of creating a single story day in Lily’s Garden takes a whole month!
At any given point, every story day of the overarching chapter is at a different stage of the production pipeline. The different stages include story writing, area art and set-up, 2D and 3D art, as well as cinematic art. The game’s Story Director is like an octopus, stretching their limbs into and giving feedback to the different areas of production. This set-up enables the story team to move as fast as possible to get a new story day out to our players. The aim is always to create something that will be satisfying for the player, but also isn’t going to overwhelm the team whilst trying to produce it.
Saran has developed a bit of a ‘mad scientist’ brainstorming process over the years. When it’s time to nail down the high-level chapter ideas, she likes to use the floor, rolls of butcher’s paper, colourful pens and sticky notes to map it all out visually. She thinks about everything that will happen in a chapter and divides it into individual story days, which are kinda like episodes in a TV show. She thinks about what order of events makes most sense and draws out story map charts. It’s all about finding the right rhythm of the story.
Contrary to that, Chris, who is currently the Story Director of an upcoming project, uses a different workflow approach. Because his team is much smaller, he didn’t have a writer until very recently, and so he took advantage of the flat structure we have here at Tactile. “I would often talk to people who are available for a chat, pitch an idea to them, explain it using a whiteboard and see their reaction. Are they getting it? Do they have any feedback or ideas? And this could be absolutely anyone from Tactile, not only people from my direct team,” explains Chris. This gives people a break from their usual tasks, but also gives us the opportunity to find solutions using the internal resources we have available. Chris adds: “Nailing the tone of the game’s storyline is so important and so exposing what you’re working on to different people’s reactions and seeing how it lands is great!”
It takes an army
Story direction & writing
At the beginning of creating a new story day in Lily’s Garden, Saran will make a flowchart of all the tasks the players will need to complete (i.e. ‘Remove the weeds’, ‘Catch the pigeon’ or ‘Design the Hotdog Stand’ 😎). After that, the chart is passed on to the writing team, who writes the dialogue, providing context for the tasks the players must complete to move forward in the storyline. Saran will often rely on the writers for feedback, notes and involve them in new chapter brainstorming sessions.
After the dialogue is written, Saran will present the flowchart to the rest of the team and give them new tasks. All the different functions will then start working on their tasks simultaneously. The writers write, the 2D artists create story images, the 3D artists work on animations, and the implementation specialist prepares the area for work. When all of this is done and imported, the torch is handed over to the localization team on one side, and the implementation specialist on another to prepare it for the Cinematic Artists, who round things off by bringing it all together in Unity, our game language. As a side note, we translate our in-game dialogue into more than 10 languages(!), to ensure we give the best experience to our non-English speaking players as well.
Character Art
Whilst the writers write, the 2D team starts working on the 2D characters and depending on the storyline, they might need to create new characters from scratch, or add more expressions and positioning for existing characters to match the new dialogue. As mentioned previously, they will also create new story images, which are normally representing character dreams, flashbacks or memories.
Once their work is done, they hand the torch over to the 3D team. The 3D team uses the character designs created by the 2D team to then model, rig, and texture, and adds onto that by creating that character’s animations. This also allows them to breathe life into that character (for example, what does “celebration” look like for Lily vs Holly vs Luke). They also create the outfits that players can dress the main characters in. Sometimes, they also help create pets that the player can adopt in the meta layer of the game.
Area Art & Implementation
At the same time, the Area team prepares all the new area art, which includes drawing all the areas for the new location the story chapter is set in. They create everything layer by layer, object by object – and there’s many!
Our Area Implementation Specialist will then grip all the layers and move them to Unity. Their role is a little bit like the Story Director role in that it is not just one set step, but they come in at various stages of the pipeline, collaborating with different teams. When all the assets are moved, our Implementation Specialist will set up everything in Unity so that different makeover options are grouped together as a task, and set the layering of every individual item in an area so that characters may walk in front of or behind it. They are also responsible for lighting and prop effects (like how the flowers bounce after you choose them, for example). Finally, they also collaborate a lot with the Cinematic Artists – if they need a character to appear in the middle of a nearby forest, they might ask the Implementation Specialist to remove some trees so they have space, or if a character is cleaning a tower, they may ask to add a ladder. This role truly is the jack of all trades.
Cinematic Art
Bringing the story day production pipeline to an end are the Cinematic Artists (CAs). Based on Saran’s flowcharts, they make the cut scenes come to life. They take all of the 2D and 3D art, animations and dialogue, and bring those together in the scene. You can kind of think of them like puppet masters or stage directors. They have a library of animations made by the 3D team for all of our characters, but the CAs are deciding where the characters are standing, where, when, how fast, and how they move from place to place, what animations they use at which dialogue line (both for speaking and reacting characters), where and how the camera is moving, and more. ‘They come up with things that surprise even me,’ says Saran, ‘For instance, recently there was a scene where a character was embarrassed over something and they used her sneaking animation to quietly exit the conversation. It cracked me up! In chapter 12, when Luke sings, they used his shouting animations with a shaking camera, which is also hilarious. So they leave their own stamp on the story in ways like these!’
Once the CAs are done with their work, the quality assurance (QA) Game Testers come in and test everything on both the story and gameplay side of the game.
In this day-to-day flow, the team is working on 4 story days in parallel, as well as preparing for new chapters. On top of the main storyline, the team also supports all the additional features, such as the makeover events, Lily’s Memories (an in-game item collection event) and the indoor story within Lily’s Garden.
We were not joking when we said it takes an army to build new story content for Lily’s Garden – and our amazing team has been releasing a new story day every week for the past 5 years! The Story Director role is crucial in ensuring we can keep to this production timeline. Chris elaborates: “In our work, we create value when the players play our game – and in order to get new content out to players, we must stay lean as a team. Our focus is on not overproducing content. We produce less and get it out to players fast, so that we can get their feedback, reflect on it, learn and grow.” Releasing one story day per week might seem like a lot for such a small team to produce, but it’s doing the reps and keeping sharp that makes the process better and more optimised over time.
Releasing new content is also made easier with a great story foundation like Lily’s. It gives an opportunity to show how the characters change, grow and evolve over time, and how they handle new situations. The Story Director’s role is to always find new things to do in the world of Lily’s Garden, how to bring in new characters, but also develop old relationships (Holly and Lily, Luke and Regina 👀) and re-use older characters.
Breaking silos
Whilst Saran inherited a very well set-up system on Lily’s Garden, there’s always room for improvement.
These days, when she’s getting ready for the new story chapter, Saran will bring together all the individual area leads (for 2D art, 3D art, narrative, Area art & cinematics), present the rough plan for the story and ask for the team’s input. This is an extremely important part of the team’s creative process. Here’s the top reasons why:
👉 It enables them to catch things up front, which would be too difficult to implement in the game. For example, the area specialist is helpful on the technical side, as they will flag ideas that will be too difficult to set-up.
👉 For the creative process itself, it’s great to have more hands-on feedback, as well as more feedback from different people. Someone might also have more insight into the locations where the story is going, so involving them in developing the chapter’s narrative is crucial.
👉 It helps to prevent the team working in silos and contributes to getting everyone onboard! The Story Director and individual area leads will still be the main decision makers, but it’s important to have more opinions and fresh ideas on the table. It also builds trust and communication skills.
👉 Engaging more people into the creative process means that everyone has a real impact on the development of the game’s storyline. That is the first step to getting the story to live in everyone’s heads and to get people to talk and think about it. For Chris, it’s one of the most rewarding things when someone from his team, who is not a writer, comes up with a narrative suggestion because they have been following the story.
👉 Sharing ideas and tech between different teams enables innovation. For example in an upcoming project, players will be able to control characters and move them around the space, which would not have been possible without great cross-team collaboration.
About the co-authors
Saran Walker is our Lily’s Garden Story Director. She started her career in gaming in sunny California, working as a Writer at Pixelberry Studios. From there, she went on to manage their editorial team, which ultimately led her to her current role in story direction. In her free time she loves to sew, paint and go to the movies.
Chris Lovick is a veteran Game Director in the industry, coming all the way from Canada. Since he joined the company 3 years ago (at the time of writing), he supported in directing many of our projects, most notably Lily’s Garden sister game Peny & Flo, and more recently a brand new project (currently in development 🤫).
Welcome, Norberto!
We are proud to announce that Norberto Degara has joined Tactile’s leadership team as our very first Chief of Data Analytics.
Originally from Spain, Norberto brings with him over 20 years of experience in data science, along with vast experience in leadership and building analytics teams.
“Norberto’s high expertise and solid experience within the field of Data Analytics will have a tremendous impact on how we utilise data going forward and be a key to the development of the business. I am looking very much forward to working closely with Norberto going forward,” says Tactile CEO & co-founder, Asbjoern Soendergaard.
“I am very excited to join this very talented group of people to push forward our data analytics efforts and support our amazing existing and upcoming new games”, says Norberto. “Also, I am very impressed with the high quality of our games, our very advanced tech and data processing capabilities and I am very happy to have the opportunity to have an impact in such an agile and dynamic company.”
Norberto also brings with him a strong international experience, having studied and worked in Spain, Germany, UK, USA and Belgium. He has been in the gaming industry since 2020, kicking-off his career at Socialpoint in Barcelona, and later working as senior director of data analytics at Zynga.
We asked Norberto to share a fun-fact about himself: “I loved arcade machines when I was a kid and spent many hours playing and watching how other people played; I never thought that I would have the opportunity to help develop games and that’s why I enjoy this industry so much!”
Norberto, we’re so happy to have you join our Tactile team! We’re excited about the times ahead.
Written by Murad Musakaev, Producer and Head of Studio in Cyprus
When it comes to the role of a Game Producer, that title can mean different things depending on the company: at some companies, it means “project manager”, in others “product specialist”, for some even “game designer”. Even inside Tactile, we define the role a bit differently depending on the project and team. But we agree on the core focus: building a robust production pipeline.
We all know the importance of innovation and creativity in games but the structured approach to production is equally vital. But what exactly does a game production pipeline look like?
I’ll take you behind the scenes of how we tackle things on a game like Penny & Flo, where my role as a producer revolves around three core pillars: level production, live-ops features, and story production (not every game in our portfolio has a big focus on narrative, but when it does, it’s a beast worth taming). Each of these pillars is crucial for creating games that engage players, grow and stay relevant in the dynamic field of free-to-play mobile gaming.
This article is a journey through our pipelines. Spoiler: it’s not only about concrete things like the right tools and accurate estimations but also about concepts like collaboration, transparent communication flow and flexibility of planning. Whether you’re in the industry or simply curious about how things work behind the scenes, this article will offer insights into the game production based on my experience at Tactile (which means it’s not a “one size fits all” guide 😉).
The First Pillar: Level Production
Unlike, i.e. stories, level production is at the heart of any game in our Tactile portfolio, no matter if it’s a match-3, line connector, bubble shooter or blast puzzle. Most of our games passed the 10,000 levels line and for some of them, like Lily’s Garden and Penny & Flo, the new releases happen each week (for LG it has been over 5 years of weekly releases with not a single week skipped, can you imagine that?).
Those levels keep the majority of players coming back for more, with decorations and stories taking 2nd and 3rd place as the core retention mechanics. And those levels also serve as a foundation for most of the live-ops features. But creating levels isn’t just about slapping a couple of new layouts together and calling it a day. It’s a continuous process that requires both creativity and a data-driven approach.
My job as a producer is to ensure the level design pipeline runs smoothly and aligns with both player expectations and business goals. This involves balancing creativity with efficiency, ensuring that the level designers have enough creative freedom while following the timeline. At Tactile, we use quantitative and qualitative analyses, prioritizing player feedback and data-driven insights to optimize the designs, mechanics and difficulty curves of our levels. This means that the levels we produce aren’t static, they evolve based on how our players interact with the game. In over 3 years that I spent in Tactile, my level design team reviewed the set of initial levels dozens of times, every time finding room for improvement.
Our level production pipeline is highly iterative. A typical cycle looks something like this:
- Concept: The level designers come up with ideas for new levels/mechanics. This phase is where creativity shines as designers experiment with new layouts, mechanics, board pieces.
- Prototype: Once the concept is approved by a stakeholder (usually by a product specialist but in some cases by producer) and the new piece is drawn, implemented in code and tested, designers move to the prototyping stage, where levels are created in the game engine but are still subject to changes.
- Test: At this stage, the levels undergo meticulous testing. Feedback is collected and necessary adjustments are made to ensure the levels are fun and well-balanced.
- Release: Once all changes are applied and the levels meet our quality standards, they’re released to the players. The team starts to monitor the performance.
- Iteration: Based on the analytics data, the levels are fine-tuned. This may involve changing the layout, adjusting the difficulty, redesigning a board piece or even scrapping it if it does not work well.
And this is without mentioning A/B tests, funnel adjustments and balancing a handful of metrics designed specifically for levels!
The levels are the be-all and end-all for games like Penny & Flo. Without engaging and well-designed levels, even the best game mechanics or storylines will struggle to keep players. One of the challenges here is to achieve smooth collaboration as there are quite a few teams involved in this process, sometimes across time zones: level designers, developers, QA, product specialists, data scientists, user research and player care managers. We’ve developed a robust communication flow, supported by tools like Jira, Confluence, Slack and our own internal dashboards, that allows these teams to work in sync.
And a pro tip: make sure that you have a shared understanding of your work glossary. In our case, we had so many definitions of the same concept (power pieces, boosters, bonuses, power ups, board pieces…), that we had to start a dedicated Confluence page where we align on how we call things. However, players don’t have that and keep referring to them in their own way 😆
The Second Pillar: Live-Ops Features
If levels are the heart of our game, live-ops features are the bloodstream that keeps players pumped and engaged. While a player might spend hours beating a difficult level and put the game away for the day, it is those time-limited tournaments and challenges that keep them engaged and coming back for the reward day after day. Our live-ops support has many forms: from seasonal events with limited time to participate to more routine things like daily challenges or leaderboards.
My role as a producer in the live-ops field is all about the balance. Working side to side with the product team, we ensure a consistent stream of fun, varied content that aligns with player expectations and market trends. These features, of course, should also serve the business purposes, keeping engagement, retention and LTV on the desired level, pushing it to new heights. And all this should hit the market in the right moment 🤪
To achieve all that, we follow an iterative cycle (do you see the emerging pattern here? 👀):
- Concept: Ideas for events and live-ops features often come from various teams: marketing, product, and even community feedback. Then the concept is assessed by the product team to see how it fits our games.
- Design & Prototype: Once a concept is approved, we work closely with game designers and developers to integrate the feature into the game. Whether it’s a family tournament, a limited-time event or a completely new game mode, each of them needs to be carefully balanced to ensure it’s both fun and achievable but challenging enough to keep the attention.
- Testing: For live-ops, this involves not just the tests of functionality, mechanics, rewards and difficulty, but also development of test cases and automations for future validations.
- Launch: After testing, the live-ops feature goes live. This is the critical stage where we closely monitor player feedback and metrics to ensure that the feature is hitting its goals – whether that’s engagement, retention, or revenue generation.
- Iteration: Live-ops rely heavily on data-driven decision-making. Every event or feature we roll out is analyzed in terms of player engagement, session length and revenue impact, and these insights go right back into the live-ops loop to inform future events.
One of the main challenges I already mentioned is timing. You can’t postpone New Year’s Eve or Halloween. Unlike levels, which can be developed at a steady pace, live-ops work is real-time. New events and features must be designed, tested, and launched in sync with specific dates, such as holidays or major game updates. A small hiccup can delay an entire event and lead to missed opportunities, not to mention unhappy players.
The Third Pillar: Story Production
When it comes to some of our games, particularly titles like Penny & Flo or Lily’s Garden, story production isn’t just a cherry on top. The stories we make keep players coming back for more, always wishing we can do more than one per week. But producing a captivating and engaging story that evolves over time is no walk in the park – it requires continuous collaboration between story director, writers, 2D and 3D character artists, animators, area artists and set-up specialists, cinematic artists, translators, QA, developers, and product and user research teams (imagine all the steps to this complex process!)
And just like with level design and live-ops, Tactile treats story production as an iterative process. It’s crucial to tailor a well-structured narrative but it also needs to be flexible enough to adapt to changes in player behavior, feedback, and market trends. For example, when we started a “Grand Thai Hotel” season of Penny & Flo, one of our main characters, Penny, was in the middle of a love triangle, so we analyzed player choices and behavior in some of the story tasks to pivot accordingly.
It’s a topic for a separate article but to put it short, we face these phases:
- Concept: The story director and writers brainstorm the overarching narrative, outlining key story plots, characters and their development that will happen in this season. This is not just about the story, but also about the setting, style of decorations, outfit design references and much, much more.
- Pre-production: Once the basic narrative structure is set, the director and writers develop individual story beats, while the art team starts to work on characters and area sketches in parallel. There are so many nitty-gritty details to it: aligning character animations with the story tone, matching dialogue pacing with gameplay flow as each story task requires a specific number of levels to be completed, making sure the visuals resonate emotionally with players… The list goes on.
- Implementation & Testing: The disciplines branch out and go deeper, and then come together again when cinematic artists will be piecing the story together in editor. The challenge here is to make sure that story sequences don’t break the player’s immersion, look interesting and fresh enough, but also don’t take unreasonable efforts to produce. For example, cutscenes should not be too long or intrusive, and dialogue pacing must feel natural, even when spread over several tasks. We call this dance of balance “cinematic excellence”.
- Player Feedback & Iteration: Just like with levels and live-ops, data plays a significant role in shaping our narrative decisions. We look at chapter ratings each week, analyze completion rates and decoration choices, sync with user support and UX teams. If a particular plot twist doesn’t resonate or feels like it’s slowing down progression, we adjust accordingly.
As a producer at Tactile, my role extends beyond just managing timelines and deliverables. It’s about making sure that these three pillars – level production, live-ops features and stories – work harmoniously and create the best possible experience for our players.
Whether it’s adjusting a level’s difficulty, tweaking a live event or modifying a story, game production is an agile and constantly evolving process. The magic happens when all three pillars align perfectly and “click”, but here’s the harsh truth: no matter how robust your pipelines are, challenges will arise as not everything is in your control. Whether it’s an unexpected bug, shifting market trends or the complexities of team communication, being adaptable is key (or one of the keys at least, as I wrote here).
As with anything in game production, it’s not about avoiding mistakes – it’s about learning from them, adapting quickly and keeping the data at the forefront of your decisions. And if you ever find yourself struggling to keep all these pillars balanced, just remember – even the most well-organized pipelines require an occasional adjustment 😉