Simon Platt

Creative work is at the heart of what we do as a games developer and publisher. Every fortnight, we have Creative Wednesdays, an event across all our locations worldwide where we play games and share updates with our teams.

Inside the Success is where our hypercasual experts do a deep-dive into Kwalee’s chart-topping successes, dissecting the game’s production post-release – from development to marketing. Learn how our games are such a success for free!

Fun fact: Build Your Vehicle was a concept that existed way back in May 2021. But it never made the cut after the tests showed very poor results… until the project was resurrected a year later. Normally, our philosophy is to fail fast; test, prototype, and ship quickly when the data is convincing and move on when it doesn’t. So what changed in a year?

In the business of Hyper Casual games, it’s important to create experiences with truly global appeal. We at Kwalee have enjoyed many worldwide hits, but none have encapsulated this principle better than Draw it. 

Launched in 2019, Draw it has been downloaded more than 100 million times and continues to perform very well. 

The concept of Airport Security was realised after one of the designers thought about the experience of being a mall security guard, highlighting what the themes, the concepts, and the mechanics would be like. The design team brainstormed ideas on how it would translate to a Hyper Casual experience and set the rights and wrongs of the games they researched.

And that’s when the premise arrived – the player is an Airport Security Officer in charge of inspecting passengers. Here’s what it took to turn the game into a chart-topping success.

Hypersims — a term we aptly use as a shorthand for “Hyper Casual Simulation games” — are a relatively new subgenre of games in the Hyper Casual market. But of course, the concept of simulation games isn’t new at all.