Kafi Games
Role — Product Designer
Timeline — 5 weeks
Team — 4 designers
Skills — UX research, product strategy, UI, design system, Prototyping
Context
Kafi Games is a French indie studio behind The Headliners, a co-op horror hit. Big numbers, blind studio: 30M+ organic views, 1.3M copies sold.
The catch: players live on Steam and nowhere else. No data, no emails, no feedback loop. Every release is a gamble lost in the noise, and co-op games like this get adopted fast, then dropped just as fast.
A real brief with the studio and its CEO, run during our product design training. Concept work, not shipped.
Task
A retention product built on one insight: the studio didn't have an acquisition problem, it had an attrition problem.
Retention, acquisition, and independence from Steam, in one system.
The Result
A Loyalty Hub that turns a passive audience into a returning community.
The brief seemed simple
How do you build a store when you know no one will buy? Gamers buy on Steam. Forcing direct sales was a losing battle.
The real problem
The studio owns nothing: millions of views, zero data. Half the audience plays co-op, so survival depends on the group staying.
How do we own the player relationship, outside of Steam?
Who we talked to
They trust streamers, not ads. They coordinate on Discord. They quit the moment a game feels repetitive.
Reading the signals
We grouped what we heard into themes, then mapped what players feel before they buy.
The journey
From the TikTok clip that hooked Diego to the moment repetition killed the run.
How might we?
How might we keep co-op gameplay fresh over time?
The answer wasn't in the game. It was on the website.
What we chose to solve
Eight ideas each, filtered for a 3-person studio. Two made the cut.
Wrap-Up — a Spotify-style recap. Built on ego, it gets shared. Acquisition.
Challenge Hub — daily missions, friend comparisons. A reason to log in tonight. Retention.
The flows
Both journeys mapped end to end before a single screen.
Wireframe to test
Low-fi first, tested with users, then refined.
VIsual identity
Dark UI echoing Steam and Discord, a vibrant yellow to guide the eye, Doss for impact.
The prototype
Storyboarded from the promo site to the Steam login, seamless.
The takeaway
I handled the full hi-fi production alone, nailed every pixel, and crashed the final pitch. I was so deep in the visuals I forgot to prepare the story.
An incredible design is worthless if you can't sell it. Next time, I drop the mouse earlier.
Conclusion
Three wins for Kafi: retention, acquisition, independence from Steam.
Credits
Product Designer
Charles Ardilouze