Squad Busters: Radical Changes On A Quest For Lasting Success

Jakub Remiar takes us through Supercell’s latest changes to Squad Busters and what to expect next from the game. Supercell released a new update for Squad Busters with key changes impacting its core gameplay design The update saw the game revenue spike however those levels are turning to normal now Supercell released its sixth global hit, Squad Busters, on May 29th and has since gone on to pass $50 million in revenue. Now that the game has been out for a few months, the team's approach to LiveOps will be crucial for its future. Supercell released a new update for the game, which may appear to be the usual content update for some, but rest assured, there's more happening beneath the surface. In this guest article, game design expert Jakub Remiar digs deep into Squad Busters' latest update and its potential impact. […]

Jakub Remiar August 22

Journal

Supercell’s Squad Busters: A Major Update

All of the consumables including MEGAs, 3 types of keys, and rerolls were removed from the game 😱 Baseline revenue of around $250K a day increased to $500K during the update. The DAU that was on the decline now finally stabilized at around 1,5 Million DAU and is slightly increasing. Here is a summary of what you need to know 😎:All of the consumables were considered “pay to win”, by the community as they gave players, who use them a really big competitive advantage over other players ⚔. All of the MEGAs were turned into actual character skins together with the introduction of new cosmetic-only currency-style tickets. The game now puts much more emphasis on cosmetics with the introduction of Super Rare skins 💎, which have their own emotes.The Lucky Find 🍀 comeback mechanic was iterated, now it gives a random […]

Jakub Remiar August 21

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August 13th: Stormgate Launches into F2P Early Access

Stormgate from Frost Giant Studios, Inc. launches into F2P early access next week on the 13th of August. It is one of the last stands of the Real Time Strategy genre on PC 🖥. We got to talk with Tim Morten, Production Director & CEO, about its development, business model, and future roadmap 😎.The business model of Stormgate is similar to StarCraft's 2 F2P transition in 2017. Players can play the competitive part of the game completely free (including custom maps! 😁) and they can buy more single-player & coop content such as additional heroes together with corresponding cosmetics with one-time purchases. Additionally, there will be much more content added from each category later this year.RTS was always the cradle of multiple other genres such as MOBA, Tower Defense, etc. which were all done in the map editor of these […]

Jakub Remiar August 15

Journal

Soft-launch Sonar #5

13 brand new soft-launched games with no particular filter 😅 There are games from a lot of big players in the market such as FunPlus, tap4fun, SYBO, Century Games, Voodoo, Playrix, KRAFTON Inc., Rollic, 37Games. Come check out what we caught this time 😎 Empires And Magic by 37Games Bugtopia by 37Games Dark and Darker Mobile by KRAFTON Brawly by Century Games DotDot Blast by Century Games Roomscapes by Playrix Octopus Feast by Rollic Drop Sort JellyFish by VooDoo Subway Surfers City by SYBO Tavern Legend by Tap4Fun Mist Survival by FunPlus The trend of 4X companies from the East diversifying into casual categories continues, as seen with Merge Episodes, DotDot Blast, and Coin Pusher. I'm expecting many more games to follow as the UA know-how, from the giant 4X creative teams 💡 will be utilized in casual. This can […]

Jakub Remiar August 2

Journal

Testing R.I.S.E. Pre-Alpha, The New Game from Supercell

We tested R.I.S.E. pre-alpha, the new game from Supercell, which is the reboot of Clash Heroes. You could play for 3 hours each day over the weekend and I must say we were positively surprised by the amount of innovation in the game 😁.Before playing the game I was concerned that another Action RPG on Supercell portfolio, where there is Mo.co already 🤔, would end up competing against each other, similarly to Squad Busters vs Flood Rush. But R.I.S.E. is a Coop Rogue-lite Action RPG with extraction elements! 😱 You heard it right. Let me pinpoint the biggest differentiators.Even though the build was very early production, you could see the idea they were going for. Players are matched before every floor (level) into 3 man parties consisting of 6 different heroes. During the gameplay as they clear the level ⚔ […]

Jakub Remiar August 1

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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