New Match-3: Block Genre?

Is Block 🟥 the new Match3?

Block Blast by Hungry Studio continues to scale past 1,2 Million downloads a day 🤑 its the 11th most downloaded App on all of the stores and 2nd most downloaded game after Garena FF for last month. On the other side Color Block Jam by Rollic did $12 Mil. in IAP 💰 revenue last month.

We have already covered Block Blast on two & a half gamers podcast in January, but since then it has aggressively grown its active users by nearly 40% 😱. And the giant market appeal of this core gameplay (which stems from Tetris) is starting to be very obvious. In June it should comfortably hit 500 Mil. lifetime downloads 🏆.

Interestingly, the next game in the genre charts based on downloads is Color Block Jam, which is still heavily monetized by IAPs. Making $420K and 250K downloads a day, a signature Rollic puzzle Hybrid. Then there is just nobody else. The nearest game is Qblock, which suddenly started scaling its downloads but still makes only 10% of what Block Blast does 😅 and no IAP revenue. The spike is probably driven by Block Blast itself. This means there is still space for IAP-driven iterations, which are already happening.

We have seen Cube Busters by Spyke Games being soft-launched last month, which is definitely aiming for IAP iteration of Block Blast. Even before there was Rovio Entertainment’s Angry Birds Block Quest, another shot at the IAP take, which got taken down in the meantime. I think we are looking at a new puzzle sub-genre that could join the 2 main biggest ones – Match 3 & Click to Match 😎.