An introduction to Subway Runner

    Subway Run is a touchscreen-based endless runner game for iOS and Android, developed by Kiloo and Sybo. The game has been available on iOS since May 2012 and has been downloaded over 130 million times on iOS, Android and Amazon as of 2013, with 26.5 million daily active users. kiloo plans to reach a total of 250 million downloads in 2013 and has already exceeded 500 million downloads, with the number of downloads currently rising.

    In Subway Run, players will take on the role of Jake, a kid, and evade the police and hounds as he navigates through three tracks and oncoming trains. The player will have to dodge obstacles and police officers while earning as many coins as possible. Once you have earned a certain amount of coins, you can buy props and characters. The game is also extremely easy to play, as you can control Jake's movement by swiping your finger left and right.

    There are also magnets, flying backpacks, double score, sneakers and skateboards, of which skateboards can be activated by double tapping the screen and can be purchased in the shop. Super Treasure Chests can be earned after completing a number of daily challenges in a row or by completing achievements. Opening a Treasure Chest will earn gold, single use items, medals, characters, etc., but the prize limit is higher than for Treasure Chests. In-game, users can complete achievements to score a higher multiplier per coin up to a maximum of 30x. Upgrading to the maximum multiplier and still completing achievements will result in a Super Treasure Chest. In the game, users can complete daily challenges to collect letters that appear in the game to earn gold rewards. Players completing four daily challenges in a row will then receive a Super Treasure Chest each day they complete the challenge.

    After a brief overview of the gameplay, let's take a look at what factors have contributed to the success of Subway Runner.

    One of the game's co-developers is Danish studio Sybo, which worked with Kiloo on Bullet Time in 2011, and Møller says, "Sybo handled the internal development of the game, while we took care of the rest, including the user interface, social features, database and server content ". When the game's development costs paid off, the two companies, Sybo and Kiloo, then split 50/50 and shared ownership of the IP.

    Møller emphasises that the value of updates was also a big factor in the game's success. I think we are pushing the game to the top with updates," he says. Currently, the game is basically updated once a month. "We missed an update in September and found that the retention rate dropped rapidly".

    Given the successful results of the first co-production, Kiloo intends to optimise and refine the initiative again. The 50-strong company will continue to develop five new games with an in-house development team based on Unity tools, in collaboration with teams based in the US, Canada and Denmark, with plans to release two or three games with different titles in 2013. We don't want to be a big developer. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't get our co-developers to relocate to another city." By being flexible in this way they have created a partnership of companies that produce freemium games.