Hibox is a 6 person studio based in China. Their latest mobile title, Pick Me Up, is a hybrid-casual idle simulation game.
Together with Supersonic, the Hibox team took their first hybrid-casual game from prototype with potential to huge hit. Here’s how they did it.
A new road to success
Hibox was initially inspired by the other successful idle simulation games where players are responsible for running and growing businesses, unlocking new locations and tasks as they do. But the Hibox team wanted to take this concept in a new direction: ride sharing.
For Pick Me Up, Hibox combined the fun of idle simulation gameplay loops with the engaging world of growing and running your own taxi service business. Players gain control of a taxi and need to pick up passengers across their city, earning money they can use to unlock new areas, buy upgrades for their car, and grow their business.
However, Hibox ran into a challenge. While their theme and core gameplay loop were proving to be highly marketable, they were unsure how to effectively monetize and scale a hybrid-casual title. For help, they turned to Supersonic.
Creating a better player experience and UI
The first thing that the Supersonic team highlighted was the need for a new UI and art style. While the game was fun and engaging, there was plenty of room for improvement when it came to the player experience.
The Supersonic team recommended Hibox redefine the visual focus of the UI. At the early stages of the game, players were presented with a ton of icons and information on the screen at once. While this helped to show all the tasks users could complete, it had the downside of often being overwhelming.
The Supersonic team began optimizing the UI by stripping back these icons, instead putting the focus on teaching gameplay through visual clues, like lighting up where players needed to pick up passengers. Stripping back the UI also had the benefit of allowing Hibox to give players more to look forward to - instead of seeing all the unlockables from the start, unlocks were progressively revealed.
Driving retention and playtime
The next place the team from Supersonic turned their attention was the gameplay. Idle games, by nature, can be repetitive. To combat this, developers need to find new ways to keep players engaged while they wait for the tasks they assign to be completed. The Supersonic team recommended a tactic they had seen work in another of their hybrid-casual games, Trash Tycoon, where players need to be actively tapping on upgrades for them to complete.
In Pick Me Up, this was applied to boosters. If players want to speed up their vehicles, they tap on them. This helped to reduce the repetitiveness of the gameplay and boost engagement, resulting in a significant D7 APPU increase of 20%.
Deepening gameplay to support hybridization
The original gameplay loop of Pick Me Up was clearly fun to players, but it wasn’t deep enough to support a hybrid-casual monetization model. Meaning, there wasn’t enough content to drive players to watch RVs or make IAPs.
Supersonic’s team recommended Hibox add new gameplay elements to deepen the game’s content. One of the mechanics they had seen work particularly well in other Supersonic idle hybrid titles was decision making mechanics. Players responded well to the control and role-playing of these mechanics, helping to immerse them and get invested in the games’ world.
To make the most of this new gameplay mechanic, the team from Supersonic suggested Hibox add a new progression mechanic on top of the existing one in the game (where players unlock new areas by earning in-game currency). This new mechanic was a star rating system, inspired by similar real-life ridesharing review systems. Players can raise their rating by choosing the correct option from a decision tree that’s related to their passengers - for example, players can choose what conversation topic they want to chat to their passengers about. Players with higher ratings receive a boost to their in-app currency earnings.
The result of this change was huge for retention and playtime, boosting D0 playtime by 12%.
Together with the Supersonic team, Hibox then set out to deepen the content beyond gameplay mechanics, also adding new maps, levels, and IAP offers to drive players to convert. Other content changes include special celebrity NPCs only available through watching rewarded videos. In these bonus encounters, players pick up celebrities in their taxis and earn extra in-app currency for picking them up and conversing with them.
With all these changes to gameplay, progression, and content, Pick Me Up saw a dramatic increase in revenue. D0 ARPU rose 26%, D7 ARPU rose 12%, and the IAP revenue split reached 19% on Android and 23% on iOS.
Coming soon
Even though Pick Me Up has proven to be a hit, that hasn’t stopped Supersonic and Hibox from continually working on the game. Future updates and new features are still in the roadmap, with new limited time events soon to be added.
Everything’s possible with a great partner
Supersonic and Hibox’s partnership were foundational to the success of Pick Me Up. Thanks to Hibox’s dedication to quickly and comprehensively iterating and improving the game according to Supersonic’s recommendation, the duo was able to turn a good idea into a great game. Supersonic and HiBox look forward to the continued success of Pick Me Up and their partnership as they continue to create and iterate hybrid hits.
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