Hyper-Casual Mobile Game with Ad Mediation, Remote Config and A/B Tests
Build and publish a hyper-casual mobile game the way publishers expect: a tight core loop, rewarded and interstitial ads through mediation, remote config for tuning, and A/B tests on retention and ad revenue. A beginner-friendly game development final year project that teaches the business side of mobile games with real store data.
Beginner
Achievable by one student in a semester with familiar tools.1 semester · 2 students
7 to ship
3 optional extrasSuggested stack
What you should ship
- A hyper-casual game with a one-touch core loop, at least 30 levels or an endless mode, and sessions under two minutes.
- Ad integration through a mediation SDK with rewarded ads (for example continue after failing) and interstitials, with frequency caps and no ads in the first sessions.
- Remote config for difficulty, ad frequency and reward values so tuning happens without a new build.
- An analytics event plan (level start, fail, complete, ad shown, reward claimed) implemented and documented, with a funnel from install to level 10.
- At least one A/B test run on real players, such as interstitial frequency or starting difficulty, with day-1 retention and ad revenue per user compared between groups.
- The game published on Google Play (closed or open testing is acceptable) with a store listing, screenshots and a privacy policy.
- A short marketability test: two store icons or video creatives compared on click-through using a small ad budget or store listing experiments.
If you have time left
- A small in-app purchase (remove ads) using Google Play Billing or RevenueCat.
- Localised store listing and in-game text in Urdu and one more language.
- A second prototype built in two weeks and tested against the first, the way publishers test many ideas quickly.
The problem: students make games, not game businesses
Many CS students want to make mobile games, and many build a nice prototype. Very few learn how the market actually works. Hyper-casual games are funded by advertising and live or die on a few numbers: cost to acquire a player, day-1 retention, session length and ad revenue per user. Publishers test prototypes on these metrics within days and drop most of them.
Pakistan has a real mobile game industry, with studios in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad publishing casual games worldwide. Graduates who understand ads, remote config, analytics and A/B testing, not just game code, are much more useful to those studios and to themselves as indie developers.
What already exists and the gap
- Voodoo, SayGames and Homa are hyper-casual publishers that test prototypes from outside studios on marketability and retention.
- AppLovin MAX and Unity LevelPlay are ad mediation platforms that run auctions between ad networks for each ad slot.
- Firebase Remote Config and A/B Testing let developers change parameters and run experiments without shipping new builds.
The tools exist and are free to start with. The gap is in student projects: most stop at a playable build with no data, no monetisation and no store presence. This project closes that gap by treating the game as a product with measurable outcomes.
What you build
A small game with a single touch mechanic (stack, dodge, slice, sort, merge) and short levels. Around it, the production layer: ad mediation with rewarded and interstitial placements, remote config values for everything you might tune, an analytics event plan, and an A/B test on a real audience. You publish the game on Google Play, recruit players through friends, communities and a small ad budget, and report the results.
The technically interesting part
The engineering here is in the plumbing and the data. Ads must never block the game loop, must fail gracefully without a connection, and must respect frequency caps and first-session rules. Remote config values need defaults in the build and must be fetched without delaying start-up. Your analytics events must be consistent enough to build a funnel you can trust.
The interesting analysis is the A/B test: with a small number of players, can you detect a difference at all? Calculate the sample size you would need, report what you actually saw with confidence intervals, and say plainly if the result is inconclusive. That honesty is worth more marks than a fake win.
How to evaluate it
- Core loop: median session length and levels per session from analytics.
- Retention: day-1 retention from the Play Console or Firebase for your install cohort.
- Monetisation: ad impressions per user, rewarded ad opt-in rate and estimated revenue per daily active user.
- Experiment: results of at least one A/B test with the number of users per group and confidence intervals.
- Stability: crash-free users percentage from the Play Console.
Suggested plan
- Weeks 1 to 2: study published hyper-casual games, pick one mechanic, paper prototype.
- Weeks 3 to 5: core loop and first 10 levels; playtest with 10 people.
- Weeks 6 to 7: analytics events, remote config and ad mediation in test mode.
- Weeks 8 to 9: store listing, privacy policy, closed testing release.
- Weeks 10 to 12: recruit players, run the A/B test and creative test.
- Weeks 13 to 14: analysis, report and demo.
Path to a product
Two realistic routes. Pitch the game and its metrics to a hyper-casual publisher, which funds user acquisition in exchange for a revenue share if the numbers are good. Or keep it as your own title and grow organically while shipping more prototypes. Either way, the skills and the data become a strong portfolio for a job at a mobile game studio.
Scope warning
Do not build a large content game, multiplayer, custom ad networks or a backend of your own. Do not use copyrighted art or clone a popular game closely. Do not click your own ads or ask friends to, which will get the ad account banned.
Learn what you need on Sefism
- Unity Learn: Junior Programmer Pathway : the basics of building a game in Unity.
- How To Market A Game : store pages, creatives and finding players.
- Firebase Documentation : Remote Config, Analytics and A/B Testing.
- Google Play Billing : for the remove-ads purchase if you add it.
- Data analytics roadmap : funnels, retention and reading an A/B test.
Get help with this idea
Publishing a game with real players is a great FYP, but ad policies and store reviews take longer than students expect. Bring your proposal and we can agree the scope, pick a stack your team can finish with, and design an evaluation your panel will respect. You build it; we help you make the calls.
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