Context

When I began at RDX Works in February 2024, they were six months into a project to launch an onboarding game. Working alongside digital studio ustwo, they already had character designs, rough story outlines and some lofty goals:

  • 50,000 Radix Wallet downloads

  • Increased transactions on the Radix Network

  • Improved awareness of Radix

  • Launch in late July.

I wasn’t starting from scratch. Plenty of work had already been done and I had lots of materials to get up to speed on.

Planning

Before I arrived, ustwo and the internal Radix team developed brand principles, voice and tone guides, and broad outlines for the first six levels of the game. So I had a good idea of the goal, and how we wanted the game to look and feel.

Here’s how I broke up the project and in my head:

  • Analyse successful onboarding/educational games to see what works and what doesn’t work.

  • Collaborate with devs and product owners to confirm requirements and ascertain technical possibilities

  • Create first version of game alongside product designer to ensure visuals and content align.

  • Test the product with users.

  • Iterate based on feedback. Do more testing. Do more iteration.

  • Deliver a final product and keep iterating post-launch.

The process

First draft (1)

As always, it begins with a blank page. I used the pre-existing outlines for each game level as scaffolding to build a narrative. And I had to definitely include some key touchpoints to achieve Radix’s strategic objectives. Otherwise, I was free to create a small world based on the Jetty character. I gave the purple otter a backstory, an accent and its own personal motivations.

First steps into production (2)

Moving from a Google Doc to GitHub, I put the first draft of the game into HTML script so they appeared on screens*, as they would for the user. Now I could see how it would look live, and work with the product designers to make it look like a real game.

Iterating (3)

As always, iteration is key. Without huge amounts of budget for testing, I put the call out to my Radix colleagues. With a product designer, we tested the first version of the game on eight people and collected their feedback. From there, we made improvements and repeated the process multiple times.

*See below for more details on the challenge this presented.

Overcoming challenges

Very few projects ever run to completion without the odd bump along the road. RadQuest was no different.

As always, it was difficult at the time. But I learnt the art of negotiation and the importance of coming up with quick solutions that will quickly unpick the problem.

On the left are some of the challenges I faced and how I solved them.

Outcomes and stats

RadQuest launched on time the results – visually and in terms of our original goals – were amazing. In the first week:

  • 60,000 Radix Wallet downloads.

  • 200,000 RadQuest users.

  • 4.2m transactions on the Radix Network.

  • 1.15m XRD volume of real-world trading for in-game items.

It was a steep learning curve, creating a mobile game without any prior experience. But it achieved what we wanted it to, and attracted more people to the product.