Impact Wave
Case Study · 2024

Kadi
Interactive

Social Gaming for the Bar Floor

Bar Activation
Social Gaming
William Lawson's
22 Minutes
Avg. Session
65%
Repeat Players
Premium
Engagement Rate
A
Answer
K
Kickback
Q
Question
J
Jump
JOK
Penalty
01 / The Brief

Digitizing a beloved
tradition without
losing the room.

Kadi is a staple of Kenyan social culture — played at kiosks, barbershops, and on campus. The challenge was to bring this tactile, loud, contested card game into a branded bar environment without flattening its energy into a passive screen experience.

William Lawson's needed an activation that would hold a group of strangers together for longer than a single drink, with the brand present in every moment — but never intrusive.

"The game needed to stay social. People needed to argue with each other across a table, not stare at their phones alone."

System Architecture

Low-latency sync engine

A low-latency, mobile-to-screen sync platform where players use their phones as private controllers for a shared public game.

Core Stack Components
Next.js · React PWA
Firebase Realtime DB
Anonymous Session Auth
Custom Rule Engine
QR Node Routing
Sub-100ms Observed Latency
02 / Interaction_Ecosystem

Synchronized
Intelligence.

System_LatencySub-100ms
Firebase Session Schema
gameSession /
├─ sessionId: "ABC123"
├─ state: "lobby" | "playing"
├─ direction: "clockwise"
├─ currentPlayerIndex: 0–4
└─ players /
└─ [uid] /
name, seat, connected
cardCount // public
hand // uid-gated
03 / Implementation

Built for
real-time pubs,
not data centres.

All game state — card plays, penalty chains, direction reversals, and Niko Kadi declarations — was pushed to clients via Firebase Realtime Database with sub-100ms observed latency.

Real-time
Firebase RTDB
Auth
Anon Auth
Players
2–5 + AI Fill
Latency
< 100ms Sync

Want to bring
Kadi to your
venue?

The platform is built for multi-venue deployment and can be skinned for any brand in days.

GET IN TOUCH
Client William Lawson's · Bacardi-Martini Kenya
Role Product Strategy · Full-Stack Development
Year 2024 · Kenya Deployment
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