Dumb Ways To Die 2: The Games
View the case- Brand
- Dumb Ways To Die
- Year
- 2014
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Mini-Games
- Platform
- App
- Agency
- McCann Melbourne
- With
- Cut+Run
- With
- DIVISION
- With
- Machine Molle?
- With
- AKQA
- With
- WPP Open X
- With
- Ogilvy
Objective
Metro Trains wanted to keep the momentum of its 2012 "Dumb Ways to Die" campaign going, holding teens' attention on rail safety with a format they'd choose to open rather than another scare-tactic video. With the original game already a global hit, the brief for the sequel was to scale that engagement and build the safety message directly into play rather than around it.
Solution
Players pick one of the dumb, cartoonish characters and hop a train that shuttles them between themed arenas — Freezerville, Dumb Dome, Drown Town and more. Inside each arena they run a gauntlet of quick three-lives challenges, tapping, swiping, tilting and rubbing the screen, and come out with a score and a star rating. The train itself sometimes pulls into a station modelled on real Melbourne stops, triggering a bonus mini-game about staying safe on the platform. Clear enough of these and a ticket opens Dumbest of the Dumb, a mashup arena pulling challenges from everywhere, with new characters unlocked as a reward.
Results
Across five platforms, the game passed 100 million downloads, logged 34 million safety pledges, notched 5.5 billion in-game deaths and racked up 4,000 years of cumulative play time. It also hit #1 on App Store charts in 86 countries.
- 1
The player opens a free map of themed arenas (Freezerville, Dumb Dome, Drown Town, later Adrenaland and others), with unlocked dumb cartoon characters wandering between the buildings.
- 2
Selecting an arena sends the player on a train first: the ride stops between recreations of real Melbourne City Loop stations, triggering short rail-safety bonus games worth 1 to 100 points, such as pulling careless characters back from a yellow platform line before an oncoming train hits them.
- 3
Inside an arena, the player runs a gauntlet of back-to-back mini-games with three lives, each round a few seconds long with an on-screen instruction and a timer that speeds up the longer the player survives; inputs vary per round — single taps, multi-finger tap bursts, swipes, circular rubbing motions, held aim, and device tilt.
- 4
Arenas each carry their own set of mini-games: Drown Town's are water-themed (water-ski jumps, dolphin rodeo, tapping a swim race), Freezerville's are winter-themed and sometimes reward not touching the screen at all, and Dumb Dome parodies track-and-field events like hurdles and pole vaulting.
- 5
A failed input kills the character on screen in a slapstick way and costs one of the three lives; losing all three ends the run.
- 6
Each completed run shows a total score and a star rating up to three, encouraging replays of the same arena for a better result.
- 7
Runs earn tickets, which the player starts with about ten of and replenishes through a bonus wheel, a daily grant, or a purchase; spending a ticket enters the featured "Dumbest of the Dumb" arena, which strings together mixed mini-games from every arena in one high-score competition.
- 8
Scoring in the featured arena unlocks new characters, who then appear wandering the map and can be tapped to trigger another comic death animation.
- 9
Players can pledge allegiance to a character, joining that character's team for weekly team leaderboards, and can tap a pledge button promising "I solemnly swear not to do dumb stuff around trains," which adds to the campaign's running tally of pledges.
- 10
Moving between arenas shows a video ad, and the in-game store offers ad removal, token bundles, or a paid ad-free, purchase-free kids mode.
