User retention is one of the core metrics for measuring a game’s success, as it helps you understand a game’s level of fun! In addition, higher retention means higher product engagement and thus, stronger LTV. Archero uses a variety of systems and techniques to continuously engage and retain players.
Archero is a F2P Mobile hypercasual roguelike released in 2019 by Habby. The core game sees players fight through dungeons, obtaining different combinations of skills on each attempt. Dungeons award loot which players use to equip and power up their characters for subsequent runs!
Player retention is achieved through four key areas: gameplay, a clear metagame with numerous goals, generosity, and social elements.
Gameplay
The gameplay is the hook: helping acquire users and retain them in the short term.
Design
Firstly, Archero’s hypercausual design and simple control scheme lead to a more mainstream audience than the usual roguelike dungeon crawler, likely leading to lower CPIs and stronger early-game retention.
The game is portrait and playable with a single thumb – the perfect combination for a mobile game.
Skill-based and in-depth gameplay
Despite the game’s high degree of accessibility, the gameplay is in-depth with a high skill ceiling. It’s really easy to understand when you are playing well, consistently dodging enemies’ attacks and quickly beating rooms, and it feels good!
The game’s variety of enemies and their combinations lead to a continuous stream of novel experiences and challenges to overcome. These make you feel like you are improving, and that there is more room to grow and learn! This is an essential part of creating a fun UX.
Uncertainty
Roguelike games use uncertainty to encourage repeat attempts. Each run is different, so you feel the next one may be that lucky run where the RNG pieces all fall into place. Archero achieves this through two systems:
Firstly, its use of different room sequences throughout the run. Each run consists of between 10-50 rooms. The rooms are pre-designed but placed in different orders on each attempt. This subtle change makes each run feel unique and vary in difficulty. Some runs will feel harder than others when you get a particularly tough room early on!
The second way is through the ability choices given to the player on each run. Each hero level-up lets you choose between three random power-ups. Some abilities are very obviously better than others: some double your damage output by multiplying the number of projectiles you shoot; others make you shoot an arrow behind you, tickling the entrance wall. Whether you get that S-Tier ability or not can determine a run’s success, so gives you a juicy helping of dopamine when you’re lucky enough to find one!
Level-Up System
I always find the beginning of RPGs the most fun part. Each early level for your character comes by quickly, providing meaningful upgrades and choices that make your character more unique and powerful.
MOBAs like League of Legends took this system and compressed it into each game, allowing you to enjoy the most fun part about levelling a character on every playthrough!
Archero borrows this system but compresses it even further into a 5-10 minute, mobile-game-sized experience. Every run you get to enjoy the experience of buffing up your hero and watching the numbers go up!
Goals/Metagame
After you’re reeled in by the gameplay, Archero’s clear metagame and session-ing mechanics keep you coming back for more. These systems are gradually layered on as you mature, providing clear progression paths by creating multiple short and mid-term goals.
Short Term
Goals that can be achieved quickly are crucial in building a high engagement game, as they break up longer-term goals and provide you with the immediate feeling of progress. Humans are not great at looking long-term (which is why Social Media is taking over!), so we need instant feedback for our actions!
Daily Systems and Rewards
Daily systems provide clear structure and incentives for your daily log-ins. By doing this, you encourage users to engage with more features, increase their daily playtime and encourage daily and repeat session-ing.
- Daily Tasks – the game presents you with a list of fairly easy-to-complete tasks each day, designed to give you clear direction and engage core game features.
Tasks provide XP, progressing the chest bar at the top, allowing you to open chests as you reach them. These are unlocked very 2-3 challenges, so come by pretty quick! It’s also the system that fuels Arhcero’s Battle Pass progression.
The game gets you engaged with this through a ‘login to the game’ task each day, essentially an autocomplete task, which draws your attention to the system through a red dot notification on the daily task icon. - Daily Log-In Rewards – each day you can grab a free gift. This is a pretty classic system in games and works well as creates a positive feedback loop with opening your game as you are immediately rewarded for your decision to open the app. The system shows 7-days of rewards in advance, with a juicier Day 7 reward as a mid-term goal.
- Daily Ads – there are a few different daily ads systems, but two are pretty generous and get you engaged with some core mechanics. The first is the game’s ‘Supply Pack’, which provides you with hard currency (gems) and a hero shard (only 10 watches to get 300 gems for the Obsidian Chest!).
The second system is a ‘Free Draw’ at the golden chest, which contains items required for character progression. This free golden chest can provide pretty meaningful upgrades early on! (Both of these are also daily tasks. - Clan log-in rewards and tasks – once you mature a bit in the game, you unlock Archero’s guild feature, ‘Clans’. Opening you up to claiming a small reward each day (also a daily task) and completing Clan Tasks, which provide you with additional goals and rewards.
Weekly Systems and Rewards
The weekly systems are fairly similar to the daily systems but operate on, well you guessed it, a weekly timeframe. The systems give the user some mid-term goals, encouraging consistent engagement throughout the week.
- Weekly Tasks – like daily tasks, but on a separate reward track, providing stronger rewards but not progressing the battle pass. These offer mid-term goals that can be completed in a few days provided the user has consistent levels of product engagement. They present some additional meaning for your actions once you are done with the daily tasks.
- Weekly Obsidian Chest – claim an obsidian chest every 7 days. This feature is crucial for long-term progression as it is the main way for F2P users to get high-tier items! Early on, it is a reasonable mid-term goal as provides strong incremental progress to your character’s gear. It also feels pretty generous as 300 gems are around $3-4!
Talent, Hero and Gear Progression
Archero has myriad ways to power up your heroes and ultimately, one of your long-term goals is to complete and maximally upgrade these systems. However, in the short term, these systems provide positive feedback loops for engaging with the game’s core loop. The sheer quantity of items, talents and characters provides you with an endless number of ways to progress AND frequent enough power upgrades to feel like all your actions are meaningful.
Despite what could be an overwhelming amount of choice, the game does well with upgrade cost increases, their overall stat improvements and signposting when upgrades can be bought, that decision-making is without much headache.
Talent System
Delivered in a slot-machine fashion, talents are randomly awarded and levelled up when you purchase a talent upgrade. At least, that is the user’s perception – there is actually little variation in what talents you receive, with most upgrade trees following a pre-defined path.
Regardless, the slot machine nature of the talents combined with the large incremental boost to your power in the early stages of the game, lead to you wanting to upgrade this as much as possible early on. I found myself playing just that one extra game so I can afford another crank on the lever.
Hero System
Archero features over 20 unique heroes, each with its own ability. These heroes can be levelled up, increasing their stats for future runs. Heroes can be purchased through soft and hard currency, and directly through IAP, ranging from $10-30.
This system’s short-term goals are simple. The first is the hero level-up system, adding another way to increase your attack/hp stats and gain unique abilities! These stat increases are clearly visible on the equipment screen, giving you a clear visualisation of progress.
Additionally, you can unlock two heroes for soft currency. These are priced at points obtainable within your first two weeks of gameplay, so act as meaningful short-term goals.
Finally, heroes provide global buffs for your entire roster of heroes at certain milestone-level upgrades. This mechanic is more of a long-term goal, incentivising hero collection and completionism.
Gear System
The gear system is Archero’s gacha system and the core behind your mid to long-term progression but is also a meaningful catalyst for your early-game engagement. Gear can be obtained freely through playing levels and opening the free chests, but progression can be sped up through spending hard currency on opening extra Obsidian chests.
There are 8 starter gear slots, consisting of weapons, armour, jewellery, and familiars. Here we have the gear system’s first short-term goal: finding an item for each of the 8 slots! Each item you equip provides a significant incremental upgrade to your power early on, as well as visual indicators by altering the appearance of your character. This is a strong enough feedback loop to encourage you to grind runs or log in each day to get your free chest, giving you an extra chance at getting your next equipment upgrade.
Furthermore, gear can be levelled-up to increase its stat attributes. Gear is upgraded by spending soft currency and scrolls. These upgrades come in thick and fast in the beginning, leading to each log-in or game having a meaningful impact on your overall progress.
The system delivers clear and satisfying visual feedback through the increasing aggregate scores of your Attack/HP numbers on the equipment screen.
Battle Pass
Battle Passes (BP) are becoming ubiquitous in all walks of gaming following their success in multiplayer games like Fortnite. Their rise to popularity comes thanks to their strong value proposition and framing: perceived as a player-first monetisation model. Battle Passes change the acronym P2W from Pay 2 Win to Play 2 Win.
Like all good BP systems, Archero’s compensates you for your engagement with a steady stream of rewards.
The BP is tied with the daily task system. Daily tasks reward XP, which is used to progress through the daily task chest bar and later that same XP gets used to progress your battle pass.
This is OK but seems disjoint and is not well signposted to users. You are taught that these tasks increase your daily task chest bar, not your progression in the BP. As a result, for the new user, Archero’s battle pass feels like a system of random rewards delivered at arbitrary time intervals.
Usually, the feedback loop for BP progression is clear, with objectives in the same section as the reward track, rather than 3 clicks away. The game could benefit from a shortcut to the daily tasks screen from the BP screen and from reducing the visual noise around the XP icon and progress bar on the BP screen.
Hero Patrol
The Hero Petrol is an idle mechanic taken from games like AFK Arena, rewarding you for taking time off the game with soft currency and XP that scale per minute. You can store up to 72 hours’ worth of earnings.
This is a very clever casual game mechanic, as it frames periods of inactivity in a positive light. Every time you log in you are immediately rewarded with a decent supply of soft currency that can be used to progress your gear, talent and heroes.
This, combined with the daily log-in rewards, helps build a strong log-in reward loop, helping to increase the probability of a user opening Archero when they use their phone. This type of thing is key; encouraging and rewarding frequent check-ins is fundamental for increasing product engagement and short to long-term retention.
Achievements
The achievement system sits in the same place as daily/weekly tasks. The system rewards you with hard currency for reaching certain milestones, e.g., beating a Chapter or upgrading your talents X number of times.
This system doesn’t drive your short-term engagement/goals but acts as more positive reinforcement for your activity.
Stage Rewards
Alongside achievement rewards for beating stages, you are given ‘stage rewards’, which are essentially just the same thing but with better loot and a more visually pleasing reward track.
Their placement above the ‘Play’ button and just below the chapter artwork is prime real estate, so they do a much better job in signposting the user to their next step in the campaign.
Again, Archero uses rewards to build a strong feedback loop for your campaign progression.
Long Term
All the above short-term goals and systems are great for making you feel good in the moment, but it’s crucial to have long-term goals too, in order to provide a meaningful playing experience. A mountain in the distance is an essential motivator, otherwise, what’s the point?!
All successful games do this: multiplayer games do this through skill-based ranking systems, esports, and honing your skills to the point of being able to crush your opposition; single-player games achieve this through campaigns, character progression and completionism.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, this is where the game falls short.
Campaign
One of the most obvious long-term motivators in Archero is the Chapter system (campaign). At the point of writing, the game features 40 chapters in two different modes, Normal and Hero mode, leading to a total of 80 chapters. This is an absolutely huge amount of content! For context, I have been playing for the last 3-4 weeks and only beaten 6 and 3 of the chapters in Normal and Hero mode, respectively.
Unfortunately, there is no strong reason – outside of the sake of completionism – to beat the entire campaign because:
- Late chapters unlock no additional game modes or content
- Limited social reward
- No overarching compelling storyline
That’s not to say there is no reason! Completing higher-tier stages awards higher-tier loot that allows you to beat higher-tier stages that award higher-tier loot that allows you to beat higher-tier stages that award higher-tier loot… so yeah, the loop is there, but it is missing a clear and desirable goal.
Heroes/Gear System
The second, better system is the gear and heroes in the game.
Gear initially comes in four rarities, common (grey) to epic (purple). This is taught to the user through random drops in levels and the chest system in the store. A very clear long-term goal is obtaining maxed-out epic items. These provide your character with the highest stat boosts, helping you achieve the highest damage output possible with the strongest defence.
There are over 20 heroes in the game. A great number are unobtainable as a free user, as require IAPs, and a lot are obtainable through soft/hard currencies. Obtaining these heroes is quite fun as they look cool and have a unique gameplay ability, however, the ability is mostly quite lacklustre, applying some familiar skill you can find in any run.
The real long-term motivator is the buffs they provide to all heroes and the element of completionism. For instance, the hero Urasil provides a +40 attack boost to all heroes when Urasil reaches Level 20. As such, obtaining and levelling all heroes is essential when maximising your stats and progress.
Why do we care about this? Well by becoming more powerful we can get further in the campaign! And that there is why I churned, as I did not care enough about the campaign to care enough about upgrading my heroes/gear.
Generosity
In F2P gaming, users are very resistant to aggressive monetisation models that use paywalls and consistent and in-your-face offer advertisements. Creating a strong first impression built on generosity is essential for building user retention and fostering community.
Archero uses generous seeding: it gives the users very clear and frequent means of earning free stuff that has a significant incremental impact to their character’s strength. This sacrifices some short-term revenue for better retention, hoping to yield stronger returns in the long term.
The system gradually tapers back its generosity, but by this point, you should be hooked and enjoying the game, with habits/feedback loops in place to drive engagement with the features that lead to monetisation.
The game feels generous through the features spoken about in the preceding sections:
- Achievements
- Campaign Milestone Rewards
- Daily Log-in Rewards
- Daily/Weekly Task Rewards
- Battle Pass
- Free Chests
- Talent System
- Pity timers on chests
- Hero Patrol
Social Elements
Building experiences a user would want to share with friends or the community is a great way of building long-term engagement and improving your k-factor. This is often achieved in games through guild-like systems and, PvP/Co-op game modes.
Archero users all three of these systems, but without much integration into the early/mid-game core-gameplay loop.
Co-op
I love playing games with friends – the reason I’ve played League of Legends for the last 11 years is that I played consistently with the same group of friends.
Archero has a ‘Hero Duo’ Liveops event that can be played 10 times a day, in which you can choose to play with a friend or matchmake with a random. You both play a standard level, gaining similar power-ups while competing for points.
The problem with this mode is that it is outside of the core loop: it does not help with campaign progression, and it isn’t clear whether its rewards are exclusive or substantial enough to encourage engagement with the feature. It would work far better if you could complete campaign missions with a friend, but likely cause some balancing problems.
PvP
In a similar vein to the Co-Op system, the PvP mode is a separate Liveops event that can be played 10 times a day. The problem is once more that it is outside of the core loop of the game.
Furthermore, the PvP system is pay-to-play! It costs hard currency to enter, rewarding you with 50-80% additional hard currency if you win. If you lose, well, you don’t get it back!
This is a problem early on as you expect to lose more than 50% of games! On average and by assuming a 50% win rate, you will lose hard currency by playing this game mode.
The win rate in PvP may be higher than 50% due to the use of bots, which may explain why it only awards 50-80% of the hard currency. However, this remains enough to put you off from playing the mode as loss aversion is a stronger motivator than the chance of a positive ROI.
Clans
Archero’s Clan system is its take on Guilds. These allow you to group up with over 30 other users to take on events, gain rewards and level up your clan. It provides a chat system, where you can ask questions or request item donations from other clan members and an additional task system, like the daily rewards, to encourage engagement with the clan feature.
Like most guild implementations, the system faces problems with user inactivity in both social interaction and events, leading to a dead clan experience for the average early game user. To get into a clan with engaged users, you have to go out of your way to find/create a clan or invest a lot of time in the game progressing your account.
Closing Notes
Archero provides a fantastic example of ways to create strong early-game retention, slowly layering on generously seeded reward systems to invoke a consistent feeling of meaningful short-term progression. The problems arise in its ability to deliver a compelling mountain in the distance due to a lack of incentive to beat the campaign and weak early-game social elements.
Ultimately, the game is a great experience that can provide a wealth of learning! I’d wholeheartedly recommend checking it out for yourself.
If you enjoyed this content, you may also like this breakdown of Archero’s in-game store. The game does make millions, and this is the way they do it.
How Archero Makes Money – F2P Store Analysis
Additionally, here’s another interesting article on Archero!
https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2019/8/9/why-archero-banked-25m-but-leaves-25m-hanging-hlx9n