Hero Squad

8SEC had spent years pioneering hyper-casual: thin, disposable loops built for a quick viral spike and ad monetization. Shipped back-to-back with Idle Army in 2021, Hero Squad pushed past that model's limits into what became the studio's Hybrid Casual approach.

The idea was to keep hyper-casual's easy pick-up-and-play accessibility and broad acquisition funnel, but layer in the deeper meta-progression, IAP monetization, and retention mechanics of a mid-core game, building titles designed to sustain a large install base over a long lifecycle instead of a short spike.

The concept itself took shape as a reaction to Archero, the top-down roguelike shooter dominating the charts at the time. Instead of controlling a single hero, we built the game around a squad — multiple units, each with a distinct weapon and playstyle, fighting through levels together. That one shift did a lot of work at once: squad composition added strategic depth, a full squad mowing through enemies gave the game visual spectacle, and collecting and upgrading units created a natural monetization hook, all while keeping sessions short enough to stay pick-up-and-play.

The concept started the hyper-casual way: rapid-testing hooks before committing to scope. Hero Squad's hook was an accessible squad-building loop, collecting and upgrading a roster of heroes, kept simple enough for a hyper-casual audience to pick up instantly. The core loop stayed simple by design: pick a squad, fight through a level, earn rewards, upgrade, repeat — depth came from squad composition, not loop complexity.

The hybrid-casual step was layering real depth underneath that hook once it proved out. The first version let players carry upgrades across levels and pick new units at random, and it worked, but retention was flat. The breakthrough was the Squad Lottery: a roguelike twist that hands players a fresh random squad at the start of every level. Betting that the excitement of discovery would beat the comfort of optimization paid off — D1 retention jumped from 25% to 38%.

Level design went through the same tightening. Early levels were complex and exploration-heavy, and players got lost. We stripped that back to a room-based system — clear arenas, enemy waves, boss rooms, linear flow — trading exploration for more action per second and better playtime.

Monetization was layered in deliberately, not bolted on: a lootbox system for unit collection, a soft/hard dual-currency economy with tuned sinks, an in-app shop, and constant A/B testing across ad frequency, price points, and bundle composition. We targeted a 50/50 split between IAP and ad revenue — healthier than the 80%+ ad-reliance typical of hybrid-casual games — and DARPPU rose to $7 with that pass alone.

Post-launch, live ops kept the game alive: new units, level packs, and seasonal content with exclusive heroes gave players a reason to keep coming back. Day-7 retention climbed from 12% to 17% as a result.

Marketing stayed in-house at 8SEC starting with Trivia.io, and Hero Squad ran on the same setup: game designers and marketing artists in the same room, producing hundreds of video ads, interactive endcards, and playable ads ourselves rather than through a publisher.

One of the more distinctive results was the "portal" creative: a squad of soldiers running through a multiplier portal and quadrupling on screen — simple, satisfying, hard to scroll past. It dropped iOS US CPI from $1 to $0.6 at scale, and the format proved influential enough that other studios picked it up; portal-style creatives are still common in mobile game ads today.

We then folded the mechanic back into the game itself as a playable mode — the same idea that was crushing it in ads, built directly into the core loop. That single move pushed Day-7 retention from 12% to 17%, a clean example of marketing and game design feeding each other instead of working in silos.

Getting there took iteration: soft-launch testing, then rounds of live-ops tuning on retention and monetization loops based on real player data, refining the concept toward a shape that could sustain a large install base rather than fade after launch. The prototype core loop took two weeks to prove out; from there it was a straight progression, each version solving one specific problem.

The result was 12 million downloads and $10M in revenue generated, sustained across a large, engaged install base, one of 8SEC's highest-grossing titles and, alongside Idle Army, proof that the Hybrid Casual bet paid off.