Candy Crush Solitaire by King

Candy Crush Solitaire by King had it global launch two weeks ago (Feb.6th). Looking at the numbers the game did just $260K in revenue on 3 Mil. downloads in that time. This doesn’t seem like the result King was looking for? why is this happening? 🤔

Compared to competitors, and there are many, there is one major change in core gameplay, where players can store 1 extra card as another “connecting” card, instead of just linear connecting of all the cards on the board. This gives them much more tactical gameplay ⚔️, where they can save this card for later, when they run out of their current chain to immediately start the next one. Because of predominantly older female players, this seems like a step too far into the puzzle, strategic depth direction, which makes the game much more niche, as difficulty needs to be balanced around this additional “helping” mechanic.

Looking at the current state of top puzzlers, which are all following the cookie cutter Royal Match event metagame, CC Solitaire is having much less aggressive approach. By level 50, I encountered around 2-3 events, where as in Royal Match 👑 events meta you are constantly bombarded 💣 by repeating combo of 4 events that once completed reset again based on player progression. This is all done toward driving the player to play the main level saga as much as possible through use of very short timers, real time competing players or event objectives that are different than the level objectives.

Lastly, even though King had the opening salvo into the genre this year, there are 3 more prominent games in soft launch that are going to launch soon, not making CPIs for King easier. On top of this, Solitaire Grand Harvest by Playtika is making stable $600K a day revenue and it is not going anywhere without a fight. Join us as we talk about all of this with Matej 🦩 & Felix 😎.

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