Gaming Startup Takes an AR Mobile Game to 200K Downloads in 30 Days
A two-founder gaming startup needed a location-aware AR game shipped before its seed runway ran thin. We took it from paper concept to live on the App Store and Google Play in 14 weeks, with a live-ops backend that drove 200K downloads in the first month.
What stood in the way
The founders had a strong game concept, a small seed round and a hard deadline: a launch window tied to a seasonal marketing push they had already committed to. They had no in-house engineers, no art pipeline and no backend. AR had to work reliably on a wide spread of mid-range Android phones as well as recent iPhones, which is where many AR titles quietly fail on surface detection, thermal throttling and battery drain.
Beyond launch, the business depended on retention. The game needed events, rewards and content drops that the founders could run themselves without a new app release every time they wanted to change something. App store review cycles made that essential, and a small team could not afford to spend its post-launch budget on engineering support.
How we solved it
We formed a compact cross-functional pod of Unity engineers, a technical artist, a backend engineer and QA, working in weekly playable builds reviewed with the founders. Scope was cut ruthlessly to one core loop done well, and every feature was judged against two questions: does it run smoothly on a three-year-old Android phone, and can the founders operate it after launch.
Cross-platform AR foundation
Unity with AR Foundation over ARKit and ARCore, with adaptive quality tiers that detect device capability at startup and scale shaders, particle counts and plane-detection frequency to keep frame rates stable.
Live-ops backend and console
A Node.js and Firebase backend with remote config, timed events, reward tables and a simple admin console, so the founders could launch seasonal events and tune the economy without shipping a build.
Performance-first art pipeline
Stylized low-poly assets built in Blender with strict polygon and texture budgets, baked lighting and shared atlases, keeping install size small enough for impulse downloads on cellular connections.
Instrumented from day one
Funnel, session and crash analytics wired in before the first playtest, giving the team real device data to prioritize fixes and giving the founders launch metrics their investors could trust.
How the Project Unfolded
Prototype and device testing
Built a rough playable AR loop and tested it across twelve target devices to confirm surface detection, performance limits and the feasibility of the core mechanic.
Core game and backend
Delivered the core loop, progression, art pass and live-ops backend in weekly playable builds, with founders playtesting every Friday and reprioritizing the backlog.
Polish, soft launch, tuning
Ran a limited soft launch, used analytics to fix onboarding drop-off and device-specific crashes, and tuned the reward economy against real retention data.
Store launch and live ops
Prepared store assets and review submissions, launched globally on both stores, and handed over runbooks so founders could run the first seasonal event themselves.
Results that mattered
The game launched on schedule, hit 200K downloads within 30 days and held a 4.6 average rating, with the seasonal campaign landing exactly as planned. Crash-free sessions stayed above 99.5% across both platforms, including the mid-range Android devices the founders had worried about most. Day-7 retention of 38% gave the team a credible story for its next funding conversation.
Because events and economy settings live in the backend, the founders have run several content drops without engineering help. We continue to support the title on a small retainer for new features, device compatibility and annual iOS and Android platform updates, while the founders focus on content and community.
Explore the Capabilities
More Success Stories
Banking & FintechUS Fintech Secures $2M+ Funding With a Generative AI Financial Modeling Platform
Retail & E-CommerceE-Commerce Platform Scales From 10K to 1M Monthly Users With Zero Downtime
Healthcare & PharmaClinic Network Automates Patient Intake and Claims Paperwork With Document AI
Have a similar challenge?
Book a free discovery call. We will map your goals and show you how we would approach it — no obligation.
Let's Build Something Extraordinary
Tell us about your project — whether it's an AI system, a game, an AR experience, or a complete platform. We'll schedule a free discovery call and show you exactly what's possible.