[Tiny Teardown] Archero 2 (Habby Games)
What you are reading is a very quick game breakdown of Archero2 by Habby Games. This deconstruction is a light review of what the game is, the systems, the monetisation, and strengths and weak
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The original Archero title is often seen as THE pioneering game in the hybrid casual genre, and Archero 2 is takes what is proven from that title, while merging learnings from Habby’s more recent titles.
The Archero audience can see that the game stays true to much of what the original is, while taking steps to up-level the experience.
The portfolio strategy of Habby is most likely to substitute Archero with the sequel, rather than compliment, the original game (hence, low maintenance/sunsetting of the original does not feel unlikely).
The game feels fresh enough for attracting and retaining lapsed users from the original (as well as attracting fresh audience).
The game plays really well and allows for shorter interactions than the original one, so predicting moderate success of the title.
GAME DESCRIPTION
Welcome to the new era of the legendary roguelike mobile game—Archero 2!
Join 200 million players in unlocking the memories of the archer!
The once-great hero has fallen into the Demon King's trap and turned into an even more powerful leader of dark forces!
As a new-generation hero, you must master every skill you acquire to embark on your mission to save the world!
Game Features:
1.Roguelike Experience 2.0: Unique skill rarity settings and more chances to choose your skills!
2.Combat Experience 2.0: Faster pace brings greater thrills!
3.Stage Design 2.0: Classic stage challenges and a brand-new countdown survival mode!
4.PvP System 2.0: One round decides the winner? NO! We have best of three, where true heroes learn from defeat to find victory!
5.Engaging Dungeons 2.0: Boss Seal Battle, Trial Tower, Gold Cave—tons of rewards await
A player who will just pick up Archero 2, will feel that it more or less resembles how you would remember the original game. It is mainly when you pick both titles up an directly compared them that the differences in quality and pacing becomes apparent. However, a risk with the title, can be that players who return to the sequel will feel it plays just as Archero.
Players have obviously already picked up on the title, and one Reddit user put out a poll to get some idea of what the community thinks of the new game. Unfortunately negative is the most answered out of the 56 answers in the poll
MARKET PERFORMANCE
Archero 2 is currently in soft launch and has been out since June 14th according to the following news article from Pocket Gamer:
While we've only just picked up on the Canada soft launch, it was previously available in Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, according to AppMagic, with the App Store version history stating it goes back as far as June 14th, 2024.
The game is already gearing up to launch, as it has started pre-registration campaigns in other territories with an expected global launch on 10th of January 2025.
CORE LOOP
Archero, is as mentioned earlier, one of the pioneers in the hybrid casual space. The game has a very intuitive core loop, utilising a one-stick control scheme where you have to stand still to activate an auto-attack against the foes. The core loop in essence is very simple:
Kill foes
Upgrade boosts along the way
Advance trough the levels
Defeat the bosses
Clear the objectives
Pass X levels
Survive for X minutes
Example: ▶ 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚝𝚞𝚋𝚎: Chapter 9: Final Boss
That core loop sits within a very well established meta and liveOps framework that Habby has perfected across the years. Anybody familiar with Habby’s titles will recognise a huge amount of proven mechanics, while the developer chose where to introduce new innovations in the genre. We will get to these later, but first we will take a look at the action phase of the game.
Let’s take a closer look at all the elements that are present when the player is playing a level. As you progress through the levels, these bullet hell-like experiences will have a lot of projectiles happening, while being able to pick up some boosts.
What you need to keep an eye on when you play is:
Your character health
Where the foes are located
Where the projectiles are coming
Where experience has been dropped (only relevant for the “survive for X minutes”-mode, as it is auto collected at the end of a normal level)
Where potential health boosts are dropped (hearts)
Where potential elixirs are dropped (from chosen boosts in a level)
You will also be able to see how much gold you have collected throughout the level, which is the titles soft currency.
The levels in general also follow an interesting sequence
Start with spinning a wheel for rewards (Ensures that “every game matters” as you will get something)
Chose which blessing to have in the level (comes with different rarities)
Meet angels with two choices (often attack / max health increase against a health recovery)
Meet a devil with one choice (and the cost is that you will lose max health)
Meet a Valkyrie (gain one blessing)
Once you have cleared the full objectives (pass levels or survive), you will move on to the next stage. The staged, at one point, will also require that you play a feature called Sky Tower, which we will get through later.
PROGRESSION
As all the titles from Habby: the main focus is on understanding the core game and the core systems. Then, throughout your user journey, you will unlock loads of systems. Archero 2 feels way more feature complete than Survivor.io was at launch, which most likely speaks to the confidence that Habby has in the title.
The game starts with few available items on the main screen (the player can see at which level most of the things are unlocked), while this amount increases across level completions. If we take a look at the difference between the first time you see the main screen to how it looks like at stage 9, we can clearly see that the game is extremely feature rich for a soft launch version.
If we take a minute to go over all the available options on the main screen, we can see that the game has everything that a live-ops ready game would have (although they are not running too much liveOps at this point in time - but the game feels ready for it):
Core progression through tasks and achievements
The above give progress in the battle pass season wrapper
Onboarding events through the carnival
Mailbox system for rewarding and highlighting
FTUE offers and core system offers
Event framework
Rich shop system
Chapter Gift Packs
Daily Shop
Gear Chest
Wish
Daily Special Packs
Weekly Special Packs
Monthly Special Packs
Diamonds
Gold
As mentioned earlier, there is another feature called the sky tower that is part of the core progression. At a chapter, you will have to pass both the level and a certain level of the sky tower (Update: they have delayed some of these dependencies, most likely because players got stuck).
As an example, in the image below, you can see to the right that the player will have to pass chapter level 11 AND clear sky tower floor 75 in order to progress to the next chapter. A very brute force way to get players to interact with other features in the game (also, easy to get lost in the current form as it is not always clear on session start that you should play Sky Tower to progress)
Sky Tower itself is a five-stage challenge where you also get harder challenges every so often. You need tickets to partake in the tower (you gain a ticket for a passed level, but if you lose, you will start using up your tickets).
EVENTS
The events in the current format are, as mentioned, quite basic or static, although there are a lot of them.
BATTLE PASS
Overall, one of the most prominent features (takes up most of the top bar on the main menu), is the battle pass. The season spans a 28 day window, and you make progress in the season through completing daily and weekly objectives. The objectives themselves also give reward for progress outside of the season, so the season is a longer term wrapper that acts as additional incentive for the player. The season also has two different price points to unlock premium rewards whee the main value prop for the lower price point is an artefact while the higher price point has shards to unlock another character). Keep in mind that the character can be bought directly as well for those who do not want to progress through the battle pass.
The balancing of the pass feels very linear where you do regular progress by just completing your daily/weekly objectives, which on their own are very easy to do. Hence, Archero 2 tries most likely to have a very wide funnel to ensure that they have a high share of battle pass finishers (and for those who are impatient, tiers can be skipped).
ARENA
The arena is a core feature which has a seasonal wrapper tied to it. You start at bronze and at the end of the week your rank will be determined, which will lead to demotion or promotion for the next week. There are four tiers in general (Bronze, Gold, Diamond, Master) and you have escalating rewards for each group.
You will be granted rewards daily through the mailbox depending on your rank (coins and scrolls).
SEAL BATTLE
The seal battle can be played twice per day, and playing twice also gives a guaranteed reward of a wishing coin and 100 gems, so easy and rewarding already to include in your daily play pattern.
The gameplay is a survivor mode for 2 minutes where you will attack a boss
Your score will accumulate across games throughout the period.
Each boss lasts for 7 days and in total, the season lasts for 28 days
Main rewards of interest is that each battle gives character shards and wishing coins
CARNIVAL
The Carnival I event is the first you encounter during your onboarding journey. You will eventually unlock Carnival II and they live next to each other (both events are balanced extremely hard to ensure that the highly engaged users are getting bought it (and potentially convert during the runtime of these onboarding events:
Carnival I main rewards (epic and S type gear). Task types:
Open obsidian chests
Login x days
Clear chapters
Reach player level
Equip gear
Reach gear level X
Defeat X minions
Obtain gold
Obtain x Gems
Open Chromatic Chests
Carnival Phase 2 has the same task types as the first one, but the requirements are obviously much higher and the main rewards are different (Character and artefact).
MONSTER INVASION
The monster invasion event is part of the guild event, where you need to score 800k in total per day to get all the rewards. Clearing out all the rewards gives character shards as the main drop, and the event is very easy, making it a part of an engaged users daily play pattern without any bigger issues.
MONETIZATION
The game is a hybrid-casual title just as the predecessor: you can make in-app purchases through a myriad of different options, or you can watch rewarded videos in the game (there are plenty of options to watch videos so in the game).
As you start playing the game, you will encounter the starter packs early on (called Newbie Packs) which comes at three different price points, which allows the higher spender to find value at higher price points.
The newbie packs maintain throughout your user journey, but the higher price points will be removed if you do not convert early enough.
You will also see that you will get temporary offers when you level up, but as we will see further down in the shop, you will also have chapter packs that are always available in the shop.
On the main screen, you have a button available (that also have a 20 gem daily gift to create a habit of visiting this screen) that showcases all the permanent and temporary privilege cards.
Permanent
Ad free experience
Massive daily drip of diamonds (800 per day)
30 day
Daily drip of diamonds (400)
Hunting boosts: quick hunt / energy increase / AFK rewards
Gold cave attempts +2
Seal battle challenge attempts
As mentioned just above, each time a chapter is cleared, a permanent offer is introduced in the shop. The price points starts low and then increases as you unlock chapters. These packs are better than the base packs, but not necessarily
As most games nowadays, you obviously have premium battle passes that gives additional rewards throughout your season progress if you decide to convert.
These comes with two options:
Small Price point: $9.99
Main reward: Artefact throughout and 1000 gems at the end
Big price point: $29.99
Main reward: Character shards throughout and 3000 gems at the end
An interesting take is that you are able to buy the character itself directly for IAP if you are not willing to go through the grind of the season pass. That comes with two benefits: (1) price anchoring for those who want to understand the value of converting on the offer (2) catchup for those who come in late and are not able to close out the season pass.
We are ending this part on monetisation on the rewarded ad placements. As can be seen in the video below, there are plenty options to watch rewarded videos for rewards (the video is not covering all the options).
▶ 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚝𝚞𝚋𝚎: Rewarded Video Placements
Shop
Daily special pack
Weekly special pack
Monthly special pack
Gold
Event retries
Purchase energy
Quick Hunt
One can say that in general, the value of the ad options feels relatively low given that the developer will be cautious to have any impact on their IAP business. The layering of ad options after engagement (e.g., event retry rather than on the first level) is a nice way to hide the ad options for those who find them relevant.
ENDING NOTES
In sum, the game is clearly a better version of the original, and after playing it, once can understand why the developer is marketing this game so strongly as being the better version (and in effect, the original Archero killer).
The game as it stands today has loads of potential to both migrate active users, but also to re-activate the user base who churned from Archero, so hopefully we see a successful global release.