The $100 asset that we rewrote completely — and that paid off

Our first contract game for the publisher was a match-3, Clash of Diamonds. To move fast we bought a match-3 engine on the Unity Asset Store for $100.

By release, almost none of the original code was left. The template was fine for a demo, but not for a live game with 100 levels, payments and social features. I rewrote it, carried over the integrations we had built for Steam Defense — payments, Facebook login, friends — and we tuned the levels in playtests with our office neighbours. The game took a couple of months.

The numbers are what made this a lesson. Steam Defense, our own flagship, had cost us around $150k. The match-3 cost roughly $6k, about $10k with integrations. Clash of Diamonds and its sibling Curse of the Pharaoh each passed a million installs and more than a million dollars in revenue for the publisher.

Two lessons:

• A bought component is a head start, not a solution. Budget for owning it — in our case, rewriting it.
• A small, proven genre executed well can beat an ambitious original. Check the market before you spend a year on a game.