Rooftop Paws.
An endless runner across city rooftops, starring a street cat.
- Client
- Lantern Games
- Platform
- iOS, Android
- Timeline
- 10 weeks
- Year
- 2024
- downloads
- 8.1M
- from idea to launch
- 10 weeks
- day-7 retention
- 19%
An endless runner for Lantern Games, built to fill a two-minute gap. We went from prototype to global launch in ten weeks, and we still run its seasonal content and balancing.
The challenge
Lantern had a release slot ten weeks away and a one-line brief: a runner people pick up without a tutorial. The genre is crowded, so the game had to feel right in the first five seconds or not at all.
What we did
We spent the first two weeks on nothing but the jump. Once the cat felt good to control, we built the city around it from modular rooftop pieces, so new districts can ship without new code. Difficulty ramps on a curve tuned from the first soft-launch market.
The outcome
Rooftop Paws shipped on schedule and has passed eight million downloads. Nearly one in five players is still running a week after installing, and a new district arrives every season.
Scope
- Prototyping
- Game design
- Unity
- Seasonal content
Colour palette
- #BFE2F0
- #F08A24
- #C8553D
- #F0E2CF
- #7F8FB5
What made the difference.
- 01
The jump came first
Two weeks of tuning arc, hang time and landing before a single rooftop was drawn.
- 02
A city made of parts
Rooftops, gaps and obstacles snap together from a kit, which is how four districts shipped in the first year.
- 03
Soft launch, hard data
Three weeks in one market shaped the difficulty curve everyone else plays.
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