About Games United

Founded in 2021 in Turkey, Games United has quickly become a successful games studio in the mobile space. Games United stands apart by not just creating games but crafting experiences that integrate art, coding, psychology, ap and storytelling.

The company's motto, "Game is Beyond Gaming!" encapsulates its philosophy of game design. The studio focuses on casual games that appeal to a broad audience, designed to be accessible for all types of players. 

Merging AI with artists

Games United was experiencing tremendous success with their flagship game Merge Park. Players loved the addictive gameplay which revolved around crafting unique parks with item merging and exploration. Day 1 retention rate exceeding 40%, with players demanding more content each day.

Facing the challenge of scaling content while maintaining consistent visual identity, Games United turned to Layer’s AI tools for a solution. The goal was to maintain creative control while enhancing their in-house artists ability to create multiple assets at one time. Layer's tools provided a powerful key feature: customized asset generation that matches a specific style or theme.

The style training feature of Layer played a pivotal role in addressing Games United's needs. By grouping high-quality assets together for style training, artists could train the AI to recognize and replicate the unique style of Merge Park. This freed up resources drastically, allowing Games United to focus on other critical aspects of development.

With only a limited set of initial assets, Games United utilized a creative solution using AI. They generated additional compatible assets from the small set, which were then recycled back into the training process. This technique expanded their asset pool, enabling the creation of multiple game environments.

If you have a specific style or theme for a game, Layer can learn your specific style, enabling the creation of similar or compatible assets. This ensures that your game has a consistent aesthetic and user experience.
_{‍Production Team, Games United}

Supercharged style training 

The collaboration of Layer’s AI tools and the Games United art team began with creating independent styles for each required use case. For example, the team began training sets for in-game categories such as bags, currency, objects, and terrain.

Once a style is trained, the studio could use the Layer canvas to create variations out of trained styles. Multiple styles were trained per different use cases in the same game - giving artists a deep pool to select and optimize from. While AI training sounds challenging, the process is very straightforward once assets are formatted according to the guidelines. 

During the bulk asset creation stage, Layer streamlines the process by generating numerous assets that adhere to the established style guide. This is particularly useful in large-scale projects that require a high volume of stylistically consistent assets.
_{‍Production Team, Games United}

Terrain

References were prepared in order to make the preliminary preparation of contents such as road, railing or landscaping in Merge Park’s existing ground assets. Artists drew 6 lands, 6 maps, and also had some existing assets in the same style. The team trained one for terrains and created new map items within a week.

Example style inputs

Example style outputs

Game interface

Using prompts like Wooden frame, nature details with flowers, sharp corner, soft colors, gold frame with column, the Games United team created all of the artwork and screen designs for exclusive content, in-game offers and shop screens.

Example UI style inputs

Example UI outputs

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Game components

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Final outputs in Merge Park

Forging ahead with AI

The simplicity of next-gen platforms like Layer means that game artists can quickly adopt the tools, making it an accessible part of their workflows. Just a small investment of time can unlock significant efficiencies, a benefit that Games United has capitalized on. This ease of use, combined with strong support from Layer's team, means that even those with limited technical expertise can quickly become asset creators.

By having 'styles' that are pre-approved by an art director and then executed via AI, Games United ensures that the output is not only high in quality but also aligns with the game’s brand. 

This empowers any team member, not just artists, to participate in the creation and refinement of assets. 

In our case, we use artist time actually to use the styles and polish the assets to deliver. We did some math and realized that the team's productivity was 240% of what it was before, Layer has become a backbone of our demanding art pipeline.
_{‍Production Team, Games United}