Redesigning new-player progression and matchmaking difficulty to lift D7 retention by 2 points

What is Hitwicket?

Hitwicket Superstars is a multiplayer cricket strategy game on mobile with 15M+ players. You build a squad, play matches against other players ball by ball, and climb leagues together with your alliance.

The problem

New players were winning, but they weren't feeling anything.

Our D7 retention was lagging. Players dropped off before experiencing the real magic of the game because the first 7 days lacked emotional stakes. 3 things were killing the excitement...

• 1. Predictability

  Matches felt flat. You either won easily or lost badly.

• 2. No Narrative

  There was no "story" to the matches—just numbers going up.

• 3. Scale

  Hand-crafting 150 unique, dramatic matches for every user was impossible.

What's the goal?

Player goal

Turn the onboarding phase into a sports movie: bridge the gap between "playing a game" and "feeling the pressure of a real sport."

Business goal

Lift D7 retention by keeping new players through their first week, without hand-building 150+ levels to do it.

The core loop

What I owned

As the game designer on it, I designed for how a match feels, not just how its numbers add up.

I owned the design of the difficulty rigs, the narrative templates, the opponent squad generator and the level configurator, and prototyped the generator's logic in a Jupyter notebook.

I treated the level design as a narrative problem, not just a math one. I asked...

"How can we code 'nervousness'?" "Can a system act like a movie director?"

Key design decisions

With this mindset, there were 3 pivotal systems that transformed the early game.

• 01 The "Close Matches Rigs"

  Dynamic difficulty, ball by ball. I designed a system that reads the match at the start of every over and sets the next balls' difficulty from the required run rate. It builds pressure (tougher balls), then opens a "hero moment" (easier ones), so a new player's match stays close and winnable. Guardrails: it targets a 95% win rate for onboarding, the fixed-outcome lock only applies in the first 30 matches, and after 155 matches players move to normal league matchmaking.

  Rig	Required run rate	The deck	How it feels
  Rig 1	≥ 16	🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢	"Hope" — high-scoring chances keep them in the game.
  Rig 2	14 – 16	🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟡	"Momentum" — still easy, with slight variation.
  Rig 3	12 – 14	🟢🟢🟢🟢🟡🟡	"Flow" — the standard good over for a skilled player.
  Rig 4	10 – 12	🟢🟢🟡🟡🟡🔴	"Balanced" — the turning point. One mistake can cost a wicket.
  Rig 5	8 – 10	🟢🟡🟡🔴🔴🔴	"Pressure" — the system starts fighting back.
  Rig 6	6 – 8	🟡🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴	"The Wall" — almost no loose deliveries. Forces defence.
  Rig 7	< 6	🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴🔴	"Panic" — maximum difficulty. Every ball is a risk.

• 02 Narrative Templates

  Shifting focus from Difficulty to Emotion. Instead of just "Easy/Medium/Hard," I designed emotional archetypes. The Comeback: You start losing, then the system hands you momentum. The Trap: Starts easy, suddenly gets hard, ends with a nail-biter. Tug of War: Constant back-and-forth tension.

  Overs	What the player feels	What the system does	Rigs used
  1 – 3	"Uh oh, this is tricky."	High run rate: early wickets forced to create doubt.	4, 5, 6, 7
  4 – 7	"I'm getting back in it."	Relief: run rate drops to a manageable 8–12.	3, 4, 5, 6
  8	"I can actually do this!"	Momentum shift: an easy over to boost confidence.	1, 2, 3, 4
  9 – 10	"Holy cow, so close!"	Clutch finish: a scripted tight win.	All (1 – 7)

• 03 The opponent squad generator

  Infinite Opponents, Perfect Balance. To support 150+ matches, I designed a generator that builds opponent squads on demand, and prototyped its logic in a Jupyter notebook. Logic: It pulls from 4 Player Tiers (C to S) and adjusts the Power Ratio (e.g., 1.4x bowler strength for "Survival" levels). Result: Opponents that feel distinct and "human" without manual entry.

Built to be configured

An internal tool that let us build levels in seconds

I designed a modular Level Configurator that allowed us to "plug and play" match variables. This turned a complex backend system into a 30-second task for designers.

What did I learn?

This project taught me that emotions can be engineered.

Moving from static level design to systems thinking showed that you don't need randomness to create excitement, you just need the right rules.

The design docs

• Systems specAutomated Levels System
• Systems specClose Match Rigs
• Tool documentationLineup Generator