Hexa Sort Puzzle Segment: Growth, Challenges, and Lessons

The Hexa Sort sub-segment, led by Hexa Sort by Lion Studios, remains as a promising, yet still small, Casual Puzzle / Sort Puzzle sub-segment.

This article dives deep into one of the interesting phenomena’s which were spotted in 2024: the Hexa Sort game and the sub-segment it has formalized (/is giving inspiration for). The article discusses trends as well as future opportunities for this particular sub-segment.

Note: This article has data from AppMagic, Hexa Sort and its competitors.

State of the Hexa Sort Puzzle Segment

Hexa Sort: The Leader

Hexa Sort stands as the king of the hill, leading in IAP revenue and Ads revenue. Its success lies in balanced, well-planned UX, tying engagement with monetization:

🔹 Dopamine-driven gameplay encourages positive reviews, rewarded video views, and currency use, blending monetization with satisfaction.

🔹 This game design drives strong monetization while maintaining engagement, setting it apart in the genre against copycats.

Hexa Sort and its competitors; Revenue (Source: AppMagic).

The Copycat Dilemma

Unlike the declining Nuts & Bolts segment, where excessive copycats have churned retention and revenue across the whole segment, affecting also the top games, Hexa Sort’s dominance has protected its segment.

However, the rise and fall of Pencil Sort Highlights New Opportunities — and challenges.

Hexa Sort and its competitors; Downloads (Source: AppMagic).

Pencil Sort did for a while gain traction with downloads recently, so obviously I had to take a look to see did it introduce innovations worth noting:

What I Learned and Spotted from Pencil Sort:

🔹 Ad Integration: Pencil Sort ensures ads are made more transparent, keeping users notified, unlike Hexa Sort’s passive approach. This feels kind of positive vs. negative.

🔹 Faster Gameplay: Pencil Sort’s uninterrupted sorting mechanics provide a dynamic, flow-state experience, appealing to players seeking quicker engagement. This felt good in many ways.

🔹 Polished Presentation: Pencil Sort isn’t just a quick and dirty copycat — it brings its own look to meta, with more quality outlook than one expected; signaling goal-setting for competition.

🔺 Challenges: Pencil Sort has low retention profile, due to which downloads seems to be churned after its brightest months. Likely reason for downloads is in GEO strategies, and/or maybe in low CPIs / organics. They also make less IAP revenue.

So, given above points, guess Hexa Sort is still what consumers prefer as an entertainment most, whilst others struggle with following it with their variations. I still found Pencil Sort as a nice take, given the above points.

Opportunities for Hexa Sort:

Staying ahead, Hexa Sort could benchmark features from its challengers:

🔹 Optimized Ads: More transparent placements could boost monetization without disrupting UX.

🔹 Faster Mechanics: Speedier options or modes can attract variety of players seeking quicker gameplay. I’m not sure will it be consumer-favored, but it did really feel good.

And, competitors could benchmark Hexa Sort, as the case goes.

Where else the segment could go? Here’s a list of what usually Puzzle games do follow:

🔹 Theme-Driven Depth: Exploration and builder metas, offering e.g., meaningful collections and progression.

🔹 Narrative-Meta: Take cues from Gardenscapes and Lily’s Garden. Add narrative-driven meta with personalization elements, creating a world that players can invest in.

🔹 Merge Inspiration: Inspired by e.g., Travel Town and Gossip Harbor, integrate customer-serving core and narrative-building elements to boost engagement.

More about Merge Games segment and predictions for it here (https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/the-next-billion-dollar-merge-games):

Note: These ideas above are ideas / suggestions I’ve taken from my article about Screw Puzzle segment here (https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/12-thinking-about-making-a-screw):

Sub-Segment of Sort Puzzle

Hexa Sort Segment is a sub-segment under a Sort Puzzle segment, which is a segment that seems to be overall growing. I might in the future analyse it, if found interest — but, for now, I wanted to dive deeper into a sub-segment of this segment.

Sort Puzzle segment; Revenue (Source: AppMagic).

Hexa Sort Sub-Segment Outlook

The Hexa Sort segment still has growth potential, but staying on top will require innovation and adaptation even for Hexa Sort as a game.

Pencil Sort’s gameplay and ad strategies show that challengers can raise their heads by different strategies — even for while — whilst they still have ways to find innovation that takes over in contributing actual growth for the segment.

We’ll see in 2025 how does this segment has stickiness.