Creating Crossy Colours with Kristan Halls
Lindsay Schardon (Zenva)
May 3, 2016 in Success Stories

Below we catch up with Crossy Colours Creator Kristan Halls to talk about his application and how our Phaser courses helped him release his first game, Crossy Colours.
What tools and technologies did you use to create Crossy Colours?
I used a Macbook Air so I could create for all platforms and my test devices are a Samsung S5 and iPad Mini. I’m using Unity pro to create and code the game and Xcode to build for ios. I’ve played a little with Maya to create characters which may be a later addition to my game. Zenva courses and the Unity manual/forums have come very useful to me.
What Zenva courses have you taken and how has it helped you?
I am yet to properly complete a full course but the main one that led me to the creation of Crossy Colours was The Complete Mobile Game Development Course – Platinum Edition. This course gave me tutorials for so many different game types that it allowed me to nail down the basics and also to search for answers to some of my harder questions. The Course also helped with ideas towards the game and provided any easy reference for any code or issues that arose. Reading other comments/answers attached to the course were a good insight.
I also browsed through other Phaser courses available on Zenva.
What is your background before coming to Zenva?
I am a 30yr old Electrician with no previous knowledge or experience towards game development, minimal programming knowledge or experience but a huge will to learn. Almost 6 years ago after seeing a lot of hype about the successful app industry I decided I wanted to try be part of that and began my journey. With limited knowledge I had to start with something easy and with the help of an app website and some hard work by myself I released a localized App to a limited market called “Speed Camera Alert Adelaide”. This was basically just a learning step that years later has helped me greatly. Then after many. many, many different ideas later I finally decided to create a game. That’s where while looking for tutorials/courses I found Zenva and that has led me to the creation of Crossy Colours.

What was the deciding factor to enroll in Zenva?
The fact I got heaps of tutorials with great content for a very low price. I was happy to spend that amount to receive so much help.
What do you plan to do next?
My main concentration at the moment is to promote/advertise my game as much as possible to make it a hit in the app store. I have high hopes that it could be an addictive game that attracts millions of downloads. Updates for the game are already in the pipeline. I’d like to incorporate characters and different gameplay in future versions. And ultimately my plans are to release more games! I am also thinking of writing a tutorial of all the problems I’ve encountered along the way as I found it hard to find the correct solution to some answers.
What advice would you give to other students that are taking Zenva courses?
Always keep trying to achieve your goal. No matter how hard it may seem or how long it takes there is always a way for you to succeed.
Interested in creating your own games? Check out the Phaser Mini-Degree & the Unity Game Development Mini-Degree.