From Technical Debt to Technical Clarity: Kwalee's Transformation

Kwalee has been part of the mobile gaming landscape for two decades. Known for hits like Airport Security and Teacher Simulator, the UK-based studio made its mark during the hypercasual boom, growing from 10 people to more than 400 at its peak. But as the hypercasual market cooled, Kwalee’s ambitions shifted toward building longer-lasting hybrid-casual games and branching into PC and console publishing.

That shift brought a harsh reality into focus: Kwalee’s backend was holding it back. A custom-built system, originally created for basic A/B testing, had ballooned into an inefficient, expensive, and unscalable behemoth. Costs ran into the hundreds of thousands each year, sometimes exceeding the lifetime value of the games it supported, while development slowed to a crawl.

Enter Heroic Labs. With Nakama and Hiro, Kwalee found not only a modern backend solution, but also a catalyst that would fundamentally transform how its teams thought about building games.

Rethinking Architecture for Hybrid-Casual Success

When Artur Grigorjan joined in 2024, he quickly realized the company wasn’t ready to deliver hybrid-casual titles. The team had deep expertise in hypercasual games, but the shift to more complex, longer-lasting titles required different architectural approaches.

"They initially brought me on to help optimize game economy for hybrid-casual titles. But when I came in, I realized we needed to first understand how we're set up in terms of technology, product strategy, and operations." - Artur Grigorjan

Working with Heroic Labs exposed Kwalee to full-stack development principles. As teams implemented Nakama and Hiro, they learned to build client and server logic in parallel, thinking strategically about system architecture rather than just solving immediate problems. While mastering these new skills required upfront effort, it dramatically accelerated their timeline.

"What would have taken us three years to build with our own backend, Heroic allows us to build in one year. We're on track to finish everything we have planned in the next few months." - Artur Grigorjan

For a studio pivoting to hybrid-casual, this efficiency represents the difference between catching market opportunities and watching them pass by.

Reimagining Feature Development

As Kwalee’s teams mastered full-stack development, they uncovered another powerful aspect of Nakama: its modular and composable architecture. Instead of building every feature from the ground up, developers learned to think in building blocks, combining and customizing common systems for each game’s unique needs.

"The way we look at Nakama (together with Hiro) is as a modular backend framework. You combine common systems into feature systems, then customize per game. A daily bonus in one game might be seven days with basic rewards; in another, it's 30 days with progression and accumulation. Same system, completely different implementations." - Artur Grigorjan

This shift was transformational. Teams moved away from quick, temporary fixes and began asking whether problems should even exist if the architecture was designed properly. They learned to think about reusability, to separate execution from data, to understand where server authority ends and client authority begins.

Rebuilding Foundations, Restoring Confidence

Kwalee is now building the foundations for its next chapter, having completed much of the overhaul needed to compete in hybrid-casual gaming. These changes extend far beyond just technical improvements. They represent a fundamental shift in focus and company-wide clarity.

"Heroic solved scalability while giving us flexibility. Studios our size usually drown building tech and tools. Heroic lets us focus on gameplay and quality." - Artur Grigorjan

And this focus was enabled by genuine partnership. Heroic’s engineers provided hands-on support through troubleshooting, on-site visits, and working side-by-side with Kwalee during critical moments. The collaboration was formative in reshaping how Kwalee builds games.

Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, Kwalee aims to return to profitability, rebuild its publisher reputation, and launch multiple new games. Their “future tech stack” centers on Heroic Labs as the backend foundation, complemented by their LiveOps platform, core SDK, and data infrastructure. With this architecture designed to last for many more years, Kwalee is positioning itself to compete and win in the lucrative world of hybrid-casual gaming.