How did Azur Games get past 10 Billion installs?

How did Azur Games get past 10 Billion installs 😱? And how is their newly launched Hybrid casual title, Slime Castle scaling past $30K IAP a day? We got to talk to 🎮Sergey Marcinkiewicz, a Publishing Manager and head of Studio 😎.Sergey shared a lot 💡 about some of the unique strategies of Azur, such as launching Hyper casual (Not Hybrid!) games with a focus on long-term Roas and retention targets. Games that were rejected by other publishers were successfully scaled in Azur's portfolio 📈. Because of this "flexible" publishing strategy, Azur got an edge in different than "mainstream" markets.Slime Castle, which is published by Azur is actually developed by RedTail Games, a developer from China. It is a very clever iteration of Doodle Magic, (the rogue-lite tower defense without a road) which we talked about during our Christmas prophecy […]

Jakub Remiar August 1

Journal

Zenless Zone Zero by miHoYo: $50M in 3 Weeks

Zenless Zone Zero by miHoYo already went past $50 Million in the first 3 weeks 🤑 Just on mobile with more than 12 Million Downloads, still doing around $1 Million a day on mobile only. How does it compare to the other portfolio titles? We see the winning formula of miHoYo being in use here again, where the tried and tested metagame gacha progression is the same as with Genshin and HSR. Again as with HSR, there is a different core gameplay, where here we have a fast-paced visceral hack-and-slash style points combat ⚔. What could go wrong here? It seems not everything is going according to the plan.The combat itself is the biggest highlight of the game, but it is unfortunately buried under loads of additional loops, that don't add that much value to the overall power progression. The […]

Jakub Remiar August 1

Journal

Chrome Valley Customs: Male Match 3 Audience

Chrome Valley Customs by Space Ape Games is one year old and still dominates the male Match 3 audience. Already behind $35 Mil. 🤑 and 14 Mil. downloads, we are joined by Dmitry Gubanenkov to live review the game 😎.The core gameplay is a match3 puzzle, but the metagame is a story-based restoration of vintage cars 🚗. And this fantasy is executed perfectly. During onboarding you are restoring 🛠️ cars much more time than playing match3.Usually, match3 games have a 70% female audience. This game however has a 70% male audience proving an underserved niche. Truck Star from Century Games is already following this same use case with the Trucks theme 🚛.🦩 Matej Lancaric also talks about UA strategy, where the game used rapper Xzibit from the TV show 📺 Pimp My Ride to integrate into the creatives successfully. Thanks, […]

Jakub Remiar July 29

Journal

What Does R.I.S.E Mean for Supercell’s Action RPG Strategy?

Supercell went five years without a game making it to global launch. The studio pulled no punches when it came to killing games, but the team eventually broke this streak with the release of Squad Busters on May 29th. The launch was quickly followed up with another game announcement from Supercell in the form of Project R.I.S.E, a game built from the ashes of Clash Heroes. R.I.S.E is intended to be a new multiplayer action-focused RPG game, which sounds familiar because Supercell is working on another action RPG, mo.co. It doesn’t end there, either, since the studio invested in Phantom Gamelabs, which is also currently working on an action looter shooter game, Riftbusters. Are all of these games going to create competition among themselves and end up cannibalizing each other, or is Supercell looking to dominate the genre? After recently getting […]

Jakub Remiar July 16

Journal

Game Analysis: The Evolution of Idle RPG Systems

“AFK Journey launched with great commercial success this year already passing $30 million on mobile” “AFK Journey pushes the Idle RPG genre into its next evolution by simplifying its core features and clearing a lot of UI management Lilith Games, the creators of AFK Arena, expanded upon the game's universe this year with a new title, AFK Journey. The game launched on March 28th and got off to a flying start, hitting $2 million in its debut week. So, what makes AFK Journey stand out among the crowd? Game design expert Jakub Remiar examines the game's features and systems to explore what was improved upon from AFK Arena and how it pushes Idle RPG to the next level. AFK Journey launched with great commercial success this year, already passing $30 million on mobile. It was the long-awaited successor to AFK Arena from Lilith Games. […]

Jakub Remiar May 28

Journal

Game Analysis: The Evolution of Squad Busters

Supercell’s Squad Busters is currently in soft launch with a global release at the end of the month but many changes happened throughout previous beta builds Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen has previously stated that the studio has killed over 30 games with Squad Busters being the 6th game to launch globally Supercell’s Squad Busters is currently in soft launch and already has a global release date set for May 29th. The game will mark Supercell’s sixth release after numerous other titles never made it to launch due to the high standards the studio sets. Supercell's Squad Busters is set to make its global debut on May 29th. This marks a significant milestone as it's the first game to be globally launched after Brawl Stars, which was introduced six years ago. It's worth noting that many games in the Supercell portfolio […]

Jakub Remiar May 2

Journal

Exploring Rivergame’s Last War UA Scaling Strategy

How does a game earn $2 million and 200k downloads a day? "Rivergame’s Last War is the latest evolution of a product that has been adapting to the current user acquisition market conditions" "Last War is currently doing $2.8 million in revenue a day and continues to scale up" Efficient user acquisition is the challenge facing every attempt to successfully scale a game. What once worked like magic may not work at all now, and developers are having to adjust to the changing UA landscape and make changes to their games for any chance of success. Speaking of which, Rivergame’s survival game Last War has managed to achieve over $2 million a day in revenue and around 200k downloads a day. But how is this possible, and what strategy was used? Rivergame’s Last War is the latest evolution of a product that […]

Jakub Remiar April 3

Jakub Remiar