Hexa Sort Segment: Growth, Challenges, and Lessons

Hexa Sort Segment: Growth, Challenges, and Lessons from the Top 🚀 The HexaSort segment, led by Hexa Sort by Lion Studios, remains as a promising casual puzzle genre.

While other segments like Nuts & Bolts show clear signs of churn, AppMagic data suggests this one has room.

Hexa Sort: The Leader:

Hexa Sort stands as the king of the hill, leading in IAP revenue and likely Ads revenue. Its success lies in its balanced, well-planned UX, tying engagement directly to monetization:
🎮🧪 Dopamine-driven gameplay encourages positive reviews, rewarded video views, and currency use, blending monetization with user satisfaction.
💰 ⚙️ This game design drives strong monetization while maintaining engagement in controlled manner, setting it apart in the genre against copycats.

The Copycat Dilemma:

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

However, the rise of Pencil Sort Highlights New Challenges:

Pencil Sort has gained some traction with downloads recently, so obviously we have to take a look into it, to see if it introduces innovations worth noting:
📣❗ 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 feels good in many ways.
🐱✏️ Polished Presentation: Pencil Sort isn’t just a quick and dirty copycat—it brings its own look to meta, with a more quality outlook than one expected; signaling goal-setting for competition.
‼️❌ Challenges: Maybe data hasn’t matured, but Pencil Sort has a low retention profile, whilst it can sustain downloads; need to wait and see how it develops. Likely reason for downloads is in GEO strategies, and/or maybe in low CPIs / organics. They also make less IAP revenue.

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.

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

Segment Outlook:

The Hexa Sort segment still has growth potential, but staying on top will require innovation and adaptation. Pencil Sort’s gameplay and ad strategies show that challengers can raise their heads by different strategies. We’ll see in 2025 how does this segment has stickiness, as retention trends have taken a small bumb.