Create a game good enough to succeed on its own merits.

Make the gameplay sufficiently rewarding to encourage 5+ minutes of gameplay per session.

Introduce a new audience to the DWTD brand.

Given the spread of ages of the audience for Dumb Ways to Die, the game needed to be easy to pick up and play, but sufficiently challenging to engage all players for extended periods of time. Creating a series of ever-increasingly difficult microgames using the characters allowed us to achieve this.

Over 50 million people are now playing the game worldwide, and via the game platform over 18 million pledges to be safe around trains have been made. Within five weeks of launch, it became the No.1 app in 18 countries including Australia, the US and the UK. Up against the likes of Candy Crush and Tetris Blitz, this game about rail safety became the most popular game in the world.

Ads within the app provide Metro Trains with an additional revenue stream to fund further rail safety activity in the future. This ad campaign is effectively paying for itself.