Automation in Game Development

Our final GameUp Africa meetup of the year delivered an inspiring and deeply insightful deep dive into two essential sides of game creation: automation in game development and visual storytelling through cutscenes. With presentations from Peter Achimugu, Game Developer at Maliyo Games, and Charisma Standley, 2D Artist on Safari City, the session wrapped up 2025 on a powerful note.

If you missed it, this recap will walk you through the key lessons, tools, and workflows shared — so you still get the full experience.

Peter Achimugu: Automation in Game Development

Our first speaker, Peter Achimugu, Game Developer at Maliyo Games, delivered a comprehensive walkthrough of how automation supports large-scale mobile game production—especially in a content-heavy title like Safari City.

Peter grounded the talk by defining automation as the use of tools or scripts to handle repetitive or manual tasks in coding, testing, asset creation, deployment, and more. By reducing human intervention in routine processes, automation:

improves efficiency,
reduces errors,
ensures consistency,
and enables teams to scale their work smoothly.

To illustrate the principles of automation, Peter compared it—humorously and surprisingly accurately—to Shaun the Sheep: a master at designing clever systems to get more done with less effort.

Why Automation Matters in a Modern Studio

Peter highlighted that automation in game development becomes essential when building a live, evolving game:

Cost Efficiency: Less manual labour means time saved, faster updates, and more stable production.

Speed: Automated iteration allows developers to test multiple configurations quickly without editing hundreds of values manually.

Consistency: As a game grows, automated systems prevent errors that slip in when humans manually tweak large sets of data.

Scalability: Once a system is automated—like creating scriptable objects or generating levels—it can handle hundreds more without extra work.

Cost Efficiency: Less manual labour means time saved, faster updates, and more stable production.

How Safari City Uses Automation in Game Development

Peter broke down real examples from Safari City:

1. Automated Dialogue, Tags & Collections

Safari City contains thousands of individual entries—characters, hobbies, lines of dialogue, quest descriptions, task metadata, and more.
All of this content lives in spreadsheets that the team updates dynamically.

A custom automation script:

reads new spreadsheet entries,
creates corresponding scriptable objects,
names and sorts them,
and populates all attributes with a single click.

This eliminated the old workflow where developers manually copied and pasted every line of text into Unity—an enormous time-saver.

2. Automated Match-3 Level Generation

Although designers maintain artistic control over the level layout, automation powers:

target configuration (moves, time limits, goals),
drop frequency for tiles,
and structural generation of the board.

Developers input key parameters, and the system handles the rest—saving hours while ensuring balanced, high-quality level design.

Best Practices and Challenges

Peter closed with foundational advice:

Start small—automate the processes that cause the most friction.
Document as you go—future teammates will rely on it.
Review and refine—game projects evolve, and so must automation tools.
Avoid over-automation—not everything that can be automated should be.

He also noted common challenges: maintenance, tool compatibility, onboarding new team members, and the ever-present temptation to automate everything.

Missed the meetup? You can still catch the replay on Maliyo Games’ YouTube channel.

🎥 Subscribe and watch the full recording on the Maliyo Games YouTube channel

Charisma Standley: Safari City’s Cutscene Design

Our second speaker, Charisma Standley, took us from engineering to artistry with an insightful walkthrough of how cutscenes are created for Safari City. A 2D artist with a background in animation character design, children’s book illustration, and comic art, Charisma has become a key part of the game’s visual storytelling.

What Cutscenes Do in Safari City

Cutscenes in Safari City act as non-interactive storytelling moments that:

move the plot forward,
reveal character emotions and intentions,
and provide breathing space between gameplay loops.

Charisma described them as “comic-style story snapshots”—simple, expressive, and built to communicate quickly without slowing the player down.

From Script to Sketch

The process begins with a narrative script from the writer. Charisma meets with the writer to understand character motivations and emotional beats before moving into rough sketches.

Key steps include:

Establishing shots that show where a scene takes place, like a newly renovated building.
Simplified shapes and values to communicate lighting and mood quickly.
Fast, readable composition—high detail isn’t the goal, clarity is.

Refinement: Backgrounds, Color & Characters

After sketching:

Backgrounds are painted using broad shapes and no unnecessary detail.
Color correction is reviewed with the art lead to ensure consistency with earlier episodes.
Characters are added, carrying more detail and expressive poses to convey emotion clearly.

Charisma also layers assets intelligently in Photoshop so animation becomes easier later—for example, keeping tables, chairs, and foreground objects separate from characters.

Adding “Comic Flair”

Multicons—small emojis or expressive graphics—help exaggerate reactions when facial detail isn’t visible.
They make the scene more dynamic without creating extra frames.

Animating in Unity

Assets are exported as PNG layers and brought into Unity.
Although early animation days were “terrifying,” as Charisma humorously admitted, she now uses Unity’s Timeline editor to animate:

panel movements,
transitions,
character shifts,
and visual effects.

The result? Smooth, engaging, and emotionally rich cutscenes like the Episode 4 sequence she showcased during the meetup.

Join us for MaliyoCON 2025

Maliyo Games has announced MaliyoCON 2025, Africa’s first developer-led mobile games conference, happening December 11, 2025, in Lagos, Nigeria.

Expect:

Hands-on workshops
Funding, publishing & scaling sessions
Game showcases
Networking with publishers, investors & tool providers
A spotlight on GameUp Africa alumni

🔗 Register here: https://www.maliyo.com/conference/

Don’t miss this historic moment for Africa’s game development industry.

✨ That wraps up our October GameUp Africa Meetup recap. Stay tuned for November’s session, and keep building, learning, and leveling up with the community.

Thank You For an Amazing Year!

Thank you for being part of the GameUp Africa community in 2025. Thank you for learning with us, sharing with us, building with us, and showing up month after month.

We’re proud of every creator in this community.

We’ll see you again in February 2026. Until then—enjoy the holidays, and merry Christmas! 🎄