Archer Madness

Project Context

Archer Madness was a 3D archery game built for the Facebook Instant Games platform. It supported asynchronous gameplay between Facebook friends and Messenger integration, with the goal of creating an immersive browser-based archery experience while making use of the platform's social features.

Player retention was a major part of the product strategy. Features such as Facebook sharing, Messenger bot flows and other social prompts were used to encourage players to return. Many features were designed, implemented, tested and later changed or removed based on A/B testing.

I supported development during the later stages of the game's life, including implementation of A/B tests such as Facebook shareables. I also worked on simplifying the production and distribution of Facebook shareables through an in-house Figma plugin workflow. The team consisted of two developers, an artist and a producer.

The game has since been removed from Facebook Instant Games after changes to Facebook's social policies and the company no longer supporting development.

Object-Oriented And ECS Architecture

The game used object-oriented programming alongside an entity-component-system style architecture. This made it easier to compose reusable behaviours into larger game systems while keeping rendering and gameplay logic separated.

That separation was important for a 3D browser game running inside a platform environment, where gameplay, rendering, analytics, ads and social SDK work all needed to coexist.

Figma Plugin Integration

An in-house Figma plugin workflow was used to simplify the creation and customisation of shareable content.

Instead of developers manually positioning text and visual elements such as player names, scores and friend information, designers could produce shareable layouts more directly. This reduced manual implementation work and made iteration on social content faster.

Facebook Instant Games SDK

The Facebook Instant Games SDK was used to integrate the game with Facebook and Messenger, enabling players to challenge friends and return through social flows.

The SDK also supported metrics such as session length and retention, which were important for understanding player behaviour and improving the experience over time.

Ad Integration

Ad integration was used to support monetisation. Ads could be shown at selected moments such as between rounds or after completing a game.

Analytics were used to help tune ad placement and frequency so monetisation did not overwhelm the player experience.

Messenger Integration

Messenger integration supported challenge flows, updates, notifications and reward prompts. This made the game easier to share and helped drive re-engagement through Facebook's social surfaces.

Analytics And A/B Testing

Analytics tracking was used to understand player behaviour, including session length, retention and engagement.

A/B testing was used to test areas such as difficulty, tutorials, power-ups and social sharing mechanics. The results informed which features were kept, changed or removed, allowing the team to make more data-informed decisions about player retention and user experience.