Dumb Ways To Die 2: The Games
View the case- Brand
- Metro Trains
- Year
- 2014
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Automotive
- Mechanic
- Mini-Games
- Platform
- App
Objective
Metro Trains Melbourne wanted to keep the momentum of its original Dumb Ways to Die campaign alive and keep reaching young riders who tune out standard safety messaging. Rather than another PSA, the brief called for a genuinely fun, funny game for players of all ages that still carried the safety message underneath. The sequel was built to anchor a wider campaign refresh alongside new videos, social content and an updated website.
Solution
The player rides a train around a map of a cartoon city, hopping off at each stop to play a quick reflex mini-game inside a sports arena — batting away danger to keep an accident-prone character alive, whether that's playing goalie against an angry penguin, sprinting hurdles with scissors, or riding a dolphin rodeo. Between arenas the train pauses at a station for a bonus mini-game about safe behavior on the platform and in the carriage, which adds its own Safety score on top of the arena result. Clearing enough arenas unlocks new mini-games and characters on the map, and a ticket-based Dumbest of the Dumb mode rewards high scores with further unlocks; a separate Kids Mode strips out ads and in-app purchases. A session ends whenever the player wants to stop — there's no fixed finish line, just more stations to ride to.
Results
The game passed 100 million downloads across five platforms, recorded 5.5 billion in-game player deaths and 4,000 years of cumulative play time, and generated 34 million pledges from players to behave safely around trains. It also reached the No. 1 spot on App Store charts in 86 countries.
- 1
The game opens on a title screen with a Play button and automatic progress saving, then drops the player onto a map of a fictional Melbourne-styled town where arena buildings are linked by a railway line a train travels, with previously unlocked characters scattered across it.
- 2
The player picks an arena from the map; markers on each arena show up to three stars earned from previous attempts.
- 3
Choosing an arena triggers a train ride there, an interactive scene in which the player follows on-screen prompts to avoid the character coming to harm; along the way the train stops at stations modeled on real Melbourne City Loop stations (Melbourne Central, Parliament, Flinders Street, Southern Cross) for a short bonus mini-game about station safety — avoiding closing doors, the yellow line, or the tracks — which adds bonus Safety Points to the round's score.
- 4
At the arena, the player runs through a rapid sequence of mini-games, each opening with a one-line instruction and a short timer; controls vary by mini-game and include tapping, tracing, swiping, tilting the device, holding, and rubbing the screen.
- 5
Completing a mini-game in time earns 100 points plus a bonus for time remaining, and the run's results set the arena's star rating (up to three); failing kills the character in an exaggeratedly gory way and costs one of three lives, shown as cheerleader icons, with the round ending after the third loss, while an unbroken streak of successes makes the mini-games progressively faster and harder, up to a near-unbeatable pace.
- 6
Between levels the game shows video ads, and its shop sells tokens and tickets (for example, a pack of 75) or an option to remove ads.
- 7
A separate area, Dumbest of the Dumb, opens with a ticket (one given free roughly once a day) and serves up a random run of mini-games played for a high score; reaching score thresholds there unlocks new characters, up to five, who then appear on the town map.
- 8
The map holds four themed arenas — Freezerville (ice), Dumb Dome (sports), Drown Town (water), and Adrenaland (extreme stunts) — each running its own set of mini-games built around that theme.
- 9
Scores post to a leaderboard, via Game Center on iOS, while a separate Kids Mode strips out ads and microtransactions and keeps its own leaderboard.
