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Customer Story

Archero

by Habby

Archero’s Evolution: From Hypercasual to Hybrid-Casual with ThinkingData

TL;DR

Archero scaled from hyper-accessible breakout to hybrid-casual mainstay with the help of ThinkingData’s ThinkingEngine. By aligning feature rollouts with player readiness, reworking monetization with real-time insights, and building a responsive LiveOps engine, Habby extended retention by 33% and lifted average LTV by 90%. This is how data makes good games great.
 

Archero Story

Archero, a rogue-lite mobile game developed by Habby, first launched as a lightweight hyper-accessible title and quickly found success globally. Topping the free charts in 21 countries. 

 
After its viral launch, Archero worked to balance mechanics and retention with monetization and expansion. Leaning into key behaviour tracking, cohorting, and event performance data, Archero transitioned into a customized hybrid casual game style.
 
Great archers need a reliable bow. ThinkingData’s ThinkingEngine gave Archero the tools to aim smarter, shoot faster, and adjust with each target hit.

Smart Feature Pacing for Retention and LTV

“We believe systems should be revealed when players need them—not before.” —Stefan Wang, Habby CEO

As Archero expanded globally, Habby faced a challenge familiar to many post-launch casual studios: how to introduce engaging systems like gear, gems, and hero upgrading without overwhelming players or hurting retention. Player behaviors vary greatly across regions and segments, leading to a need for clarity and compartmentalization of players and corresponding game mechanic pacing.

 

Using ThinkingData’s platform ThinkingEngine, Habby mapped player readiness through behavioral cohorts, localization in the US, Japan, Korea, and Europe, and real-time event tracking. This allowed for the intentional timing of feature unlocks and updates tailored to regional engagement patterns.

 

The result? A 33% increase in retention and 90% lift in average LTV, powered by best-fit progression and personalized content flow.
 
Archero gameplay screenshots of pacing mechanics

Maturing Monetization: Casual to Hybrid

After Archero penetrated the early market as a hyper-accessible title, monetization was temporarily moved to the back burner. The game grew rapidly on the strength of its core gameplay and ad-based revenue, but sustaining that growth meant needing to shift toward a deeper hybrid model without pushing away the casual players who made it a hit.
 
Habby utilized ThinkingEngines’ gaming-optimized tagging system to analyze spending behavior across player types and regions, pinpointing where friction or drop-off occurred in the purchase flow. These insights led to rolling out new monetization layers and limited-time offers, all timed to when players were the most ready.
 
A 12% early hybrid transition churn was later completely mitigated. Archero successfully transitioned from casual success to a hybrid-casual powerhouse. With monetization tuned to each player’s journey and behavior tracking to monitor trends, Archero adapted into a scalable game that can tackle new markets precisely.

“Good gameplay can create good monetization. Its not the other way around.” —Stefan Wang

Making LiveOps a Long-Term Growth Engine

As Archero matured, maintaining player interest required true novelty, not just boilerplate feature releases or monetization layers. Relevancy demands consistent, engaging content that matches evolving player expectations. Habby needed the infrastructure to move fast, iterate on the fly, and avoid the pitfalls of event fatigue and one-size-fits-all updates.
 
In LiveOps, systems and speed are what make or break continued success. ThinkingEngines LiveOps features brought the team a real-time view of how players engaged with events, content drops, and seasonal updates. Tracking participation, progression, and behavioral patterns across cohorts, Habby fine-tuned its LiveOps rhythm and experiments live when trends emerged.
  
Archero_casestudy_liveops
 
A truly agile and effective LiveOps program emerged that boosted event engagement, extended player lifecycles, and gave the team confidence to iterate without guesswork. Dozens of game modes were launched and tuned for long-term integration into the game. ThinkingData turned LiveOps into not only continued engagement but also a calculated response to reverse dips in revenue and retention. This fueled a sustained player base even beyond Archero’s largest peaks.

Data-driven results for over 6,000 games

ThinkingData has served more than 1,200 game companies, including well-known game companies such as FunPlus, SEGA, IGG, Habby, River Games, Century Games, LoadComplete, 37 Games and so on. More than 6,000 games have been integrated into ThinkingEngine.

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