Ukrainian Gaming Success: Playdoku Developer Burny Games
Played Playdoku already? Meet the developer behind – Burny Games.
Google Awards & Global Acclaim – CEO Anatolii Henis shares the backstory with us.
Burny’s inspiring founding story, evolution, top titles, innovative approaches, and more.
Burny Team: 55
HQ: Kyiv, Ukraine
Top Title: Playdoku
Genre: Logic Puzzle
Tech: Unity & PlayFab Backend
Hey, isn’t their logo just great? The eyes…
What’s Burny’s founding story?
Our journey began officially on March 1, 2022. It was meant to be a significant milestone for our team, but it coincided with the outbreak of a full-scale war. This unexpected turn dampened our spirits, yet it was a pivotal moment. We faced a choice: succumb to demotivation or channel all our energies into building a resilient Ukrainian business. We chose the latter. Our initial releases were crafted amidst checkpoints and shelters across Ukraine. We fought not just for our projects but for the safety of each team member, laying the groundwork for Burny Games with unwavering faith in our vision.
How has Burny Games evolved over the past two years?
Over these two years, we have set new benchmarks across the board. Our team’s mantra has become “top-notch daily” – a commitment to surpassing ourselves each day. Whether in technical processes, organizational strategies, marketing, or team dynamics, this dedication is reflected in our products.
How about your top titles?
We created six games, 2 of which resonated with over 8 million users. Each game is a result of experimentation and innovation. For instance, when developing Playdoku, we explored various concepts, leading to the creation of an engaging “coloring feature with colored figures.” This idea later spawned Block Brush.
What is the main focus at Burny?
Quality is paramount for us. When conceiving Colorwood Sort, we observed a lack of “inspiring” games in the market. This realization propelled us to create a visually appealing and accessible game that addressed issues faced by players with visual impairments. Our focus remains on crafting games that prioritize quality over quantity.
Playdoku
Playdoku is a challenging puzzle game with daily exercises to keep your brain sharp. Players match “polyominoes” by building squares on the field, “solving puzzles, and earning points”. The game was released on July 12, 2022. Its success is largely based on the first project that the team worked on even before the formation of Burny Games – “Super Cooker”.
On it, we created the technical architecture, CMS, and DLC system, which we now use in new projects. Playdoku became a game that we perfected. This is evidenced even by the “Best User Experience” award from Google, received in October 2023.
At first, Playdoku was just about scoring and breaking records, but we quickly realized the need to improve user retention and session length. This led to the creation of Journey mode, which divides gameplay into levels with different objectives to achieve. We have created small challenges for players to solve, which helped to increase the average retention rate by 50%.
Colorwood Sort
Colorwood Sort is an addictive game. The player has to sort the blocks according to the corresponding colors. Here we focused not only on the design but also on the atmosphere in the middle of the game, which should bring the color to life with the help of tactile vibrations. We created a pleasant concept with a wooden theme and supplemented it with special symbols. By the way, such symbols allow people who do not distinguish colors to play. This project is the embodiment of all the top-notch experiences of each team member. Colorwood’s soft launch took place on the 29th of December 2023, and presented the world with a cool and high-quality game in its genre.
We chose an interesting and difficult niche of mobile block puzzles, which attracted each of us. There are internal tournaments within the team for the number of completed levels in a week, and the numbers are really impressive. Just for the record, the tournament was all fun and games – it didn’t mess with our workflow!
How about Burny’s Tech?
Developing products that we love and play ourselves motivates the team to be efficient and constantly improve our projects. We are very meticulous and demanding about ourselves and the products we create. We use a huge number of software tools in our work. Talking about the tech stack, we use the Unity game engine for the front end. We have developed a modular architecture that is shared among all our games. It helps us to reduce time to market and share successful features between games pretty fast.
We use PlayFab as a backend, but we plan to switch to our in-house backend solution. We started the migration process recently, and it is going well. I will share more details about this experience in the Burny Games’ blog soon.
We are focused on constant improvement and use of various technologies that help us optimize and automate most processes, which significantly affects the quality and speed of project releases. For example: we created Playdoku in 27 weeks, and Colorwood Sort in 9!
Also, the opinion of players helps to better understand their needs, improve games, and be at the top. We continuously track the sentiment expressed in players’ reviews, which is an effective tool for immediate reactions. Our players, both fans and critics, quickly express any dissatisfaction with updates. We had multiple cases when positive feedback directly influenced our decision to adjust the mechanics in Playdoku, showcasing the impact of this valuable feedback channel.
What is your take on AI?
Our team is a massive fan of the AI products. Our toolkit includes AI GitHub Copilot, which we actively utilize, alongside the occasional use of ChatGPT and Gemini for tasks such as architecture brainstorming, debugging, and data visualization and analysis. Additionally, we are actively exploring other large language models (LLMs) to enhance our HR processes and automate some phases of the game development lifecycle.
We are focused on the performance of each specialist, so we are constantly looking for solutions that will help us to implement this. Everyone in the team has access to the necessary resources and training, and we are always open to unlocking everyone’s potential. This also affects the recruiting process. It is worth noting that we have a rather special approach to selecting people for the team. Let’s take our Unity team as an example. Right from the start, we are not just after any programmers. We are on the lookout for real ENGINEERS. The kind who do not just write code but take care of everything from beginning to end. They are not just about making things work. They ensure everything’s top-notch, meeting our high standards before anything reaches our players. And if they need to step outside the usual, like using more than just Unity, that is perfect. We are all for it and provide whatever’s needed. We value people who dare to step up, take charge, and think like engineers.
Any innovative approaches?
It is worth mentioning our data-driven approach. Everything we do is backed up with numbers. For every process, we gather data to support what we are seeing. But we do not stop at just the usual stats and figures. We dig deeper, finding connections others might miss. It is all about going beyond the basics to deeply understand what is happening.
We often discuss the value of ‘soft’ strategies in running a successful and efficient business, like transparency and ensuring every team member understands our company’s mission. These aspects are crucial to us, and we take them seriously. However, it is essential to recognize that the gaming industry faces challenges, with many companies experiencing downsizing or project cancellations. Despite this, we are expanding our product portfolio, hiring new talent, and consistently rolling out updates on schedule. Moreover, the freedom to create and test unique games allows us to innovate, explore new ideas, and iterate quickly, focusing on what works best.
What’s next for Burny?
Two years ago, we decided to turn our company into a unicorn. Ever since, we have been relentlessly exploring strategies to reach this significant business challenge. This goal can be decomposed into smaller tasks assigned to skilled and experienced professionals. That is exactly our approach. For instance, we consciously chose to dive into the highly competitive mobile block puzzle market after thoroughly analyzing our competitors and learning from their experiences. We realized we had something unique to offer, which could be our edge. Now, Playdoku stands among the top games in top-tier countries, proving that our strategy is on the right track.
Burny Games may be in its early days, but many ambitious plans are becoming exciting challenges. Now we invite everyone to play cool games made in Ukraine!
