Building Games That Players Actually Remember
Most mobile games get forgotten in about three days. We spend our time figuring out why some stick around instead. No magic formulas here—just years of watching what works and what doesn't on real devices with real people.
Practical development grounded in player behaviourWhat Usually Goes Wrong
Players Leave After Two Sessions
You've built something functional, maybe even clever. But retention drops off a cliff after day two. The onboarding felt fine to you, but players are hitting friction you didn't notice during testing.
Performance Issues on Older Devices
Works perfectly on your test phone. Completely different story on a three-year-old Android running the game alongside twelve other apps. Memory leaks, frame drops, crashes—and you don't find out until reviews start coming in.
Monetisation That Feels Pushy
Finding the line between sustainable revenue and annoying your audience is tricky. Too aggressive and players uninstall. Too gentle and you can't support ongoing development. Most teams guess and hope.
Updates Break More Than They Fix
You add a new feature. Suddenly something unrelated stops working. Testing caught the obvious bugs, but the interactions between systems weren't on anyone's radar until it shipped.
How We Actually Handle It
Early Prototype Testing With Strangers
We put rough builds in front of people who've never seen the game before—usually within the first few weeks. Watching someone struggle with what seemed obvious tells you more than a hundred internal playtests. We adjust based on where confusion actually shows up, not where we think it might.
Device Lab With Real-World Hardware
Our testing shelf has phones from 2019 through 2025, across different price points and manufacturers. We run builds on devices with full storage, low battery, poor connectivity. If it runs smoothly on a budget phone from three years ago, you're probably in good shape.
Gradual Monetisation Introduction
Start with one simple, valuable purchase option. Watch how players interact with it over a few weeks. Add more only when you understand their spending patterns and preferences. We've seen this approach build more sustainable revenue than front-loading everything at launch.
Regression Testing Before Every Release
Boring but essential. We run through core gameplay loops, check save systems, verify UI across screen sizes. Takes time, but catching a progression-blocking bug before release beats explaining it to frustrated players afterward.
Who Actually Does This Work
Small team, varied backgrounds. We've worked on games that succeeded and games that didn't—both taught us plenty about what matters during development.
Practical Experience Over Theory
We've shipped games that got hundreds of thousands of downloads. We've also shipped games that flopped within weeks. The difference usually came down to understanding player behaviour early and adapting quickly.
Our approach involves regular testing with people outside the development bubble, careful performance monitoring across device ranges, and honest assessment of what's working versus what we wish was working.
Development cycles typically run six to nine months for new projects, with ongoing support extending well beyond launch. We're looking at autumn 2025 start dates for new collaborations.
Saskia Thornbury
Lead Game DesignerSpent five years in mobile before joining us. Good at spotting when systems feel unnecessarily complex and finding simpler alternatives that players understand immediately.
Eirlys Prydderch
Technical LeadHandles architecture and performance optimization. Has strong opinions about memory management and will absolutely argue about the best way to handle asset loading.
Branwen Kilgarriff
Player Experience SpecialistRuns our testing sessions and analyses player behaviour data. Usually the first person to say "this doesn't work" when something feels off during development.