Game Design Series: 2. Genesis of the Alex series.

I was searching for ideas and inspiration for my next game, and I wanted it to be this next big thing, completely original and trailblazing, but nothing was seeming right. 

I happened to be in a kids bookstore as my daughter needed some new books. I was rummaging through various books and that’s when I stumbled upon this unique book. In one of the pages in the book there was a chair and the child had to figure out what was wrong with the chair and then select the right solution to fix it. Basically this chair was missing a leg and the child had to circle the leg option in the book as the correct answer. 

I had an epiphany right there in that children’s book for my next game idea. This was the inception of the trendsetting app Alex the Handyman, and the creation of our much loved character Alex. 

In my vision of the game, the child is presented with a problem in a house and they have to solve it to make the residents happy, for eg there’s a fire in the kitchen, and the child has to select the fire extinguisher from the tool box to extinguish the fire, or if the tap is leaking, the child has to select the spanner from the toolset to fix the tap. 

The game was filled with various such cute problem solving activities and interactions. Alex the Handyman got phenomenally popular and it was in the top rankings for several weeks. App Store editors featured it worldwide and kids absolutely loved it. In fact a lot of eminent app companies went on and replicated this game; and while I cannot do anything about that, I can only give myself credit for creating this inspirational game.

Here is a video of the current version of the app which is modified from the original idea but still retains the original essence and nuances for kids delight!