Onrizon Social Games

Goal

Many of the games in Onrizon’s portfolio were originally built in HTML5 and designed for browser-based play. As mobile gaming took off, the team migrated several titles to mobile with a cross-platform framework, but the user experience wasn’t as smooth as they hoped it would be and they knew they needed to invest in another solution.

Why Flutter?

Once the Onrizon team found themselves spending more time troubleshooting their existing apps than developing new ones, they decided it was time to migrate.

They decided to start with one of their most popular games, StopotS. The team experimented with a few cross-platform frameworks, but found many didn’t offer enough customization for their game’s UI. The team then decided to build a few prototypes with Flutter to see if they could achieve the quality they wanted.

As developers with backgrounds in web technologies like JavaScript and React, they were initially skeptical about learning a new language. However, they both found Dart was easy to learn, especially with the documentation on flutter.dev and the support of Google and the Flutter community. They decided to move ahead with Flutter for the relaunch of StopotS.

Their solution

The team began rewriting StopotS with Flutter, leaning on the many ready-to-use widgets to get started quickly. Resources like animations and page transitions are supported out of the box, without a need for third-party packages, allowing Onrizon to focus on the truly unique elements of their game.

As a game, StopotS isn’t limited to following system UI patterns, so it was important to them to have the same look and feel on different platforms. The single codebase sped up the development process and helped them guarantee the same quality on both iOS and Android.

Flutter also made it much easier to upgrade versions or add packages, which had been a real challenge in the past. With Flutter, they no longer have to rely on outdated SDKs supported by third-party packages, but can use first-party packages like the Google Mobile Ads Flutter plugin and the latest SDKs to help them monetize their game.

“If you're a web developer, don't be afraid to learn Dart. It's a great language with the perfect synergy for building apps. As JavaScript developers, it was quite familiar and easy to learn.”

- HENRIQUE MOREIRA, CEO, Onrizon

Results

Using Firebase to measure their performance, they discovered that their earnings from banner and interstitial ads increased by over 100% from the previous version. Their user rating also improved, from an average of 4.28 to 4.58, all within one year

Based on this success, Onrizon has begun to migrate the rest of their game catalogue to Flutter starting with Gartic.io, a popular drawing and guessing game, which saw many of the same benefits as StopotS.The team intends to build any future games in Flutter from the start.