History of Match 3

The combined lifetime revenue of the big Match 3 games is $24 Bil. 🤑 and 5 Bil. downloads 🤯 on mobile. We covered the 13 years long evolution in our most longest and comprehensive episode yet 😎 looking at the top grossing games in the current charts. The overall trend of the market suggest it is an elite club as during the last 3 years there are no new games with critical scale as Laura pointed out. Space Ape Games's Chrome Valley Customs, released in 2023, being the most successful one with $40 Mil. lifetime revenue. To get a comparison, Dream Games's Royal Match was doing $20. Mil. a month 1 year after release, currently $120 Mil. per month 😅 and even King's Candy Crush is still making $80 Mil. a month, being a 13 years old game 👵. Having […]

Jakub Remiar December 19

Journal

US Only soft-launch: Top Girl scaled to $80K/Day

Top Girl by A3 Games (ehm, tap4fun 😅) scaled to $80K a day in US only a soft-launch release. Is the Japanese Idol Master genre finally coming to the West? NO NOT, it is again another, ehm, ..., read the rest here 😅 The game starts as Idol Master, and you as CEO manage a company of girls that produce music 🎵, have different abilities to increase the sales of the music itself and it is all nicely wrapped around the Idle generation mechanic, where dollars per second is the main progression of the game. Girls are given through gacha, there is a tour mechanic, which gates the upgrades, and the idle timer mechanic as you sell the new songs. And EVERYTHING is done with AI - the characters, the videos, the creatives, the "animations" 😱 . So what's next? […]

Jakub Remiar December 6

Journal

Dark War Survival by Rivergame scaled to $300K a Day

Dark War Survival by Rivergame already scaled to $300K a day 🤑 with 120K downloads a day. This is one of the craziest stories in 4X this year 😱 Get the latest here from the 4X war that rages on in the market at the top of the charts ⚔️. This is the same team that did Last War Survival (Also Top War & Top Heroes). As you see in the screenshots, not even icons were changed 😅. The key iteration here is that the Last War team took their game and put a Century Games's Whiteout Survival (their biggest rival) onboarding onto it 😵. No more gate mechanics but a shelter like idler in the FTUE with a walking dead survival theme. There is an emotional story, there is the auto-combat minigame, even with Survivor. io style input and […]

Jakub Remiar November 28

Journal

Pokemon’s Winning Formula: $4M/Day

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket has swiftly proven to be a hit since its launch on October 30th. Developed by DeNA, the title is already making waves, generating $120M+ in Revenue since its launch. Here's an analysis of what the title offers, from its nostalgic appeal to its mobile-friendly gameplay. Moreover, the monetization strategy and how upcoming events could shape the game's future. The Pokémon Company is again making bold moves in the mobile market. By releasing the “Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket” on October 30th, it seems we are witnessing a similar seismic impact on the revenue side as we saw with the Pokémon Go release in 2016. The game has been making more than $4 million a day for more than two weeks in a row. If this holds, it will make $120 million during its launch month, […]

Jakub Remiar November 21

Journal

Archero 2 global launched last week: 5th iteration

Archero 2 by Habby global launched last week and with it, the 5th iteration 😁 of the passive power progression side system. This has been iterated over 5 years from the days of Archero 1(2019). Capybara GO and Survivor.io have a more complex version of this system unlocked much later, but Archero 2 simplified it and put it into the early game, replacing the infinite "upgrade" button. Now the button is even called "gacha" 😅 as the whole thing feels like a collectible album with various rarities. In the end it is just a much more randomized and high production visualisation of the passive power 💪 progression system.It is very intriguing to see these different iterations done within the same studio and genre, launched very close to each other. Will Archero 2 compete with Capybara GO? I can't wait to […]

Jakub Remiar November 18

Journal

Pokémon TCG Pocket Past $60M

Pokémon TCG Pocket is already past $60 Mil. 🤑 2 weeks from its launch, with a stable 700K downloads per day. Developed by DeNA (The Pokémon Company International) this is your childhood nostalgia done right! Ready why 😎: The rules of the original TCG were heavily streamlined and adapted for mobile 📱, but still offer enough depth to form a healthy metagame of diverse decks. As they will add more and more mechanics through later expansions, this will just get better. And speaking about those, this is one of the main strengths of this game, as it is already running 3 events currently and the leaked Live ops pipeline is super packed, with Black Friday, mini expansion before Christmas and full new expansion by the end of January. The content treadmill won't stop anytime soon it seems 😎. The biggest […]

Jakub Remiar November 14

Journal

Pokemon TCG Pocket is making more than $5M A Day!

Pokemon TCG Pocket is killing it 🤩 still doing more than $5 Mil. 🤑 a day! I had to pull out my old cards from the "childhood box" to confirm that a lot of them are now in the mobile game using the exact OG illustrations 😁. Couldn't be more happy to play again with these familiar faces 😊. The DeNA team did a great job by streamlining the original physical Trading Card Game rules. Instead of 60 cards you now only have 20 cards in your whole deck. Energy system was again simplified. Similarly how Hearthstone removed the lands as it was streamlining Magic the Gathering gameplay, Pocket also removed energy cards out of the deck and made it an automatic resource that is constantly given to you each round regardless of your cards. If you go for double […]

Jakub Remiar November 11

Journal

My Supermarket Simulator 3D by Game District is the winner

My Supermarket Simulator 3D by Game District is the winner 🏆 of the Supermarket mobile race with 20 Mil. downloads for last month still doing around 600K 😱 downloads and $50K revenue a day. Why did it won? Out of all the supermarket games 🛒 (as this whole trend is based on a successful PC game on Steam) it has the most polish, most smooth tutorial and even ads some of its own on top of the original concept. Hard work did really payed off here 💪. We covered the first big mobile port in May and despite launching only in July, the Game District team was able to come on top. There is much clearer meta progression with goods 🛍️ ordered into milestone unlocks through license categories and even an automation of gameplay as you can hire your own […]

Jakub Remiar November 8

Journal

Supercell ran the 2nd Beta test for Project R.I.S.E

Supercell ran the 2nd Beta test for Project R.I.S.E. during last weekend and there were some major changes 🤩 done to the core of the game from the 1st test, that we saw during July this year. Get the latest run down here 😎 The biggest change is the perk selection as it is going be asynchronous, meaning you don't need to wait ⏳ for other players to choose and the game won't stop during this time as in previous version. Each player now has their own pool to chose from, which is affected by their overall progression. Perks now cost elixir giving it a strategic choice, with the possibility to save it between floors. This is a great change as it removed a lot of friction and unlocked more metagame options to affect the perk pools 😁.Heroes got a […]

Jakub Remiar November 6

Journal

Hexa Sort is crushing it with $15M A Month

Hexa Sort by Lion Studios is really crushing it with around $15 Mil. a month 🤑 and around 3,5 Mil downloads a month. We had it on our radar for some time, but it seems it reached a record scale just this month, kudos to the team 😎 Why is it so successful? The core gameplay is very unique, as it basically created its own sorting sub-genre in a very crowded segment. The core is deliberately design to have long level ⌛ times as users can hop in and out of the level at any point, no time or moves pressure. Only space on the board is the main fail state mechanic. If you can't put additional hexes on the board that is full you lose 😵. The other important fact is that new hexes spawn only in trio, so […]

Jakub Remiar October 30

Journal

Soft-launch Sonar #6

Soft-launch Sonar #6 📡 is back with 15 brand new soft launched games with no particular filter 😅. There are games from a lot of big players in the market such as MY.GAMES, tap4fun, Rollic, Wooga, Habby, Lion Studios, Supercent, Kwalee, CrazyLabs & Estoty Riga LLC. Come check out what we caught this time 😎. MY.GAMES continues some bold iterations with a combat version of Hexasort - Hex Heroes. This is done in the same manner as Empires & Puzzles took match3 gameplay and put it into a puzzle 🧩 RPG combat. Also, there is an iteration on Clash Quest - Castle Duels with merging elements and Bounty Buddies, which is taking notes from Rumble Heroes. Looks very similar to the newest Supercell soft-launched title R.I.S.E, just single-player.Wooga is stepping again out of its comfort zone trying its meta with […]

Jakub Remiar October 22

Journal

Balatro makes $40K a day as a premium game!

Balatro is currently doing $40K a day 🤑 on mobile as a premium game! as it launched there on Sep. 26th. Already past $1,8 Mil. in less than a month and 300K+ downloads. We couldn't ignore this design masterpiece so here is the rundown 😎Originally published by Playstack & developed by Localthunk, Balatro was released on Feb. 20th on Steam as a premium game for $14.99. With more than 44K reviews and a 97% positive rating currently, it is one of this year's big indie hits. In August PC Gamer reported that it already sold past 2 Mil. copies, which we can assume is then around $30 Mil. !!! 💰. Then it launched now on mobile for $9.99, in pretty much identical condition as the PC. Now it is literally #2 on mobile premium grossing charts, right behind Minecraft. The […]

Jakub Remiar October 17

Jakub Remiar

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