How We Built Sawit Operation: Snake With a Local Twist
Sawit Operation is a free pixel-art snake game for Android, designed and published by Soluease. You steer a bulldozer through an oil palm plantation: every hectare you clear grows the line of palms behind you, and crashing into it ends the run. This post walks through the decisions behind the game, from the theme to how it pays for itself.
Why make another snake game?
Snake is one of the few game ideas almost everyone already understands. That was the point. We wanted quick runs anyone can play with one swipe, so a new player could start without a tutorial and still find a reason to come back after a week.
Starting from a familiar loop meant our effort went into two things: a theme that feels fresh, and progression that keeps runs from feeling the same.
Giving a classic a local theme
Oil palm, or sawit, is part of the everyday landscape across Indonesia and Malaysia, and it maps neatly onto snake. The snake becomes a bulldozer, and its growing tail becomes a row of palms planted behind it as you clear the plantation hectare by hectare.
The hazards come from the same world. Each zone adds its own:
- Forest Edge: orangutans to steer around.
- The village at dusk: an inspector follows your trail.
- Peat Swamp: fires spread across the map.
Permits let you bulldoze straight through an obstacle, which turns a likely crash into a decision about when to spend one.
Short runs, long-term goals
A snake run can end in seconds, so we split rewards into two layers.
Within a run, cash pickups build a combo up to x5, and gold money is worth five times as much as normal cash. Skilled play pays off immediately.
Between runs, upgrades such as Starting Permits, Cash Magnet and Combo Time carry over. Even a short, unlucky run earns something toward the next one, which is what makes "one more try" feel worth it.
A reason to come back every day
The Daily Challenge gives every player the same map, with Google Play Games leaderboards for the daily and all-time best. Because the map is identical, the leaderboard is fair: it measures skill, not luck.
Around that sit the smaller habits that bring players back: 8 achievements, a 7-day Daily Gift, a tutorial for first-timers, and 6 bulldozer skins, including a 24K Gold bulldozer with a glitter trail.
How a free game pays for itself
Sawit Operation is free to download. It earns money in two ways:
- Optional rewarded ads, served by Google AdMob. Players choose to watch one to continue a run, double their profit or collect free cash.
- In-app purchases: a Starter Pack, cash packs, and Remove Ads.
The rule we follow is that an ad should feel like an offer, not a toll. The most useful moment is right after a crash, when continuing the run is worth something to the player.
Where it is now
Sawit Operation is published on Google Play, rated for everyone (3+), with over 1,000 downloads. Download it on Google Play or see the project page.
What we would tell anyone building a casual game
- Start from a loop people already know, then make the theme your own.
- Put progression between runs, not only within them, so short sessions still feel productive.
- Make ads a choice the player benefits from.
- Give players a fair daily reason to return: the same map and the same leaderboard for everyone.
Planning a game for your studio or your brand? See our game development services or get in touch.