Case study · React Native to Expo migration
Chouic: three mobile apps moved to Expo in one month
Chouic publishes mobile games for couples and groups of friends, played by millions. Lezo migrated three of its React Native apps to Expo in one month; the Chouic team then migrated a fourth app on its own, with the method and tooling handed over.
- Client
- Chouic, mobile game studio in Nantes, France
- Engagement
- 3 iOS and Android apps migrated in 1 month
- Afterwards
- A 4th app migrated by the Chouic team
01The client
A studio making games for couples and friends
Chouic is a studio from Nantes that makes mobile apps and board games. Its apps (couple quizzes, truth or dare, party games) bring together millions of players: Action ou Vérité (Truth or Dare) alone has passed 30 million downloads.
Design, development, question writing and marketing are all done in-house, by a team running several apps side by side.
Mobile game and board game studio · NantesSome Chouic apps
- LovBirdz
- Action ou Vérité
- Spiky
- Koopla
02Challenge
Ageing apps that kept the team busy
Over the years, Chouic built up a portfolio of React Native apps that still had to be maintained. Each app had its own native setup, so every maintenance task was multiplied by the number of apps.
Fragile builds
One tooling or dependency update was enough to break an iOS or Android build, and fixing it came before anything else.
Postponed upgrades
Upgrading React Native meant reworking the native code of every app: a project that kept being pushed back.
Tedious releases
Signing, versioning and submitting each app to two stores took manual steps, repeated across the whole portfolio.
Less time for the games
Time spent maintaining what existed was missing for evolving the games: new modes, new questions, new features.
03What Lezo did
Three apps migrated in one month, one at a time
Lezo migrated the apps one after the other, each released before moving on to the next. Players simply received an update of the app they already had installed.
- Migrated by Lezo
- Migrated by the Chouic team
App 1
Migrated by Lezo
App 2
Migrated by Lezo
App 3
Migrated by Lezo
App 4
Migrated by the Chouic team
Illustration of the schedule: the length of each step varied from app to app.
- 01
One assessment per app
Native dependencies, configuration, signing and release: for each app, what moves to Expo as is and what needs adapting.
- 02
A migration validated app by app
Native configuration turned into plugins, dependencies replaced or adapted, builds and submissions through EAS. Each app is checked on its key flows before the next one.
- 03
A method handed over
The choices, steps and migration tooling are documented and reusable: the Chouic team applied them on its own to a fourth app.
04Results
Lighter maintenance and time back for new features
Chouic reports a productivity gain and lower maintenance costs for its apps. The time freed up goes back into evolving the games.
- apps migrated by Lezo
- 3
- for all three migrations
- 1 month
- app then migrated by the Chouic team on its own
- +1
- 01
A productivity gain
Builds and submissions run through EAS: fewer manual steps, no more reliance on one particular machine.
- 02
Lower maintenance costs
Native folders are generated from configuration, and upgrades follow the Expo SDK.
- 03
New features again
The team spends its time evolving its games again instead of repairing their builds.
05
Why this engagement worked
Migrating several apps from the same publisher lets the work compound: the first migration sets the method, the next ones reuse it. That is how three migrations fit in one month, and how the Chouic team then led the fourth without Lezo.
Are your React Native apps taking up too much of your time?
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