Review Radar #8 is back with 15 games!

Review Radar #8 📡 is back with 15 games that we already covered on the two & a half gamers podcast in last 3 months, as we keep them on our "radar" 😅. Get the latest status updates from big names such as RiverGame, Century Games, tap4fun, Habby, Dream Games, KRAFTON Inc., Grand Games, Hungry Studio, Rollic, King 😎. So the winner's 🏆 bracket -Triple match continues to scale on amazingly high revenue 🤑 per download, with its new casual approach to hidden object. Dark War Survival is scaling up as expected of Rivergame's new 4X games. Royal Kingdom is going bananas after one of the biggest celebrity campaigns in mobile gaming 👀. Block Blast is still hitting new record heights with its download volumes, 31,4 Mil. for the last 30 days 😱. Both Goods Puzzle, Blossom Sort and Magic […]

Jakub Remiar June 6

Journal

Century Games into Match-3 Arena: 4X Giant to Crack the Puzzle Code?

You may know Century Games as the leader of 4X genre with Whiteout Survival ❄️ and now Kingshot, but did you know that they are actively going into casual Match3 genre? The most difficult thing for successful companies is to diversify into different genres, where they are not that strong. If we exclude 4X, Century games is actively trying to push into casual with Match 3 being just the most common attempt. There are also games from Sort genre, Merge genre and even Farming genre 👨‍🌾, where Century already did $300 Mil. revenue with Family Farm Seaside and Family Farm Adventure. So why Match3? Because 4X is the biggest genre category on mobile doing $1,2 Bil. a month 😲 and Puzzle is right in the 3rd place going neck to neck with RPG making $800 Mil. a month, so its […]

Jakub Remiar June 4

Journal

Biggest Mobile Games by DAU?

Do you know which mobile games are the biggest by 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐔𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐬? And I mean really big 👀 😁 Felix always jokes (or not?🤣) on our podcast that Block Blast has the biggest DAU of all mobile games (17 Mil.), but this isn't event close to the the actual biggest games on the market. Roblox having 90 Mil. is of course the biggest, but realistically it is a game ecosystem platform rather than a specific game. Which leaves the throne to Garena Free Fire 👑. This battle royal phenomenon is currently celebrating its 8th anniversary. It had its peak DAU 150 Mil. 😱 in June 2021. Then we have Clash Royale, which despite its user size being around 10% bigger (45 Mil.) than Clash of Clans makes around 50% monthly revenue of what Clans does 🤔. So what pattern […]

Jakub Remiar June 4

Journal

Difference between deterministic and random level based puzzlers?

Warning ☢️ Heavy Game Design post ahead. Do you know the difference between deterministic and random level based puzzlers? 🤔 In the current market we see more and more successful puzzle games following a completely different level design paradigm than your usual Candy Crush or Royal Match 👑. Puzzlers with their dominating sub-genres such as Match3 or Blast were always the masters of randomness, where difficulty was created using random or semi-random algorithms. You still need to do the level objectives, which are fixed, such as clearing certain items or collecting something from a generator, but the "candies" or tokens that you get to match varies with each playthrough. This randomness introduces a layer of chance, where even a well-planned strategy can be "sabotaged" by an unlucky arrangement or boosted by a fortunate 🍀 cascade of matches. Deterministic level-based puzzlers […]

Jakub Remiar May 29

Journal

Lands of Jail passed $250K a day, after 2 months from launch.

Lands of Jail already passed $250K 🤑 a day in revenue after 2 months from launch. What is this prison themed game about ??? 🤔 The game is clearly following a Century Games 4X template of Idle Core first and then 4X map later. You start the game as jail warden, which later operates a force labor toy factory in the jail itself 😅 - that is the idle part modeled after Frozen City. There are some "flavor" mechanics added into the gameplay to spice it up, such as jail rebellion, similarly how Kingshot added the occasional enemy units invasion. In the auto combat based level saga you are capturing prisoner "villains", which you then collect in a sticker album style fashion, giving you boosts to your whole facility. Our narrator character gets captured around 1 hour mark (as always […]

Jakub Remiar May 27

Journal

Rollic’s Color Block Jam scaled past $500K in IAP

Rollic's Color Block Jam 🟥, continues to scale past $500K in IAP 🤑 revenue only and 200K downloads a day. What new features have they added recently to continue this monster growth? 🕵 The team is adding a standard "level based puzzler" systems such as: ◾ 2 Pre-level boosters (Time + Rocket) ◾ 1 new booster during gameplay (Rocket from previous step) ◾ 5 steps streak mechanic, which ties this all together giving you those 2 boosters as you win in a rowAs the new king of Hybrid-casual puzzlers, even Color Block Jam is no exception to its continuous evolution towards going full casual. These latest features that they added are a clear sign of that direction. As the game is currently more and more driven by IAP 💸 revenue instead of Ad revenue, this ratio will now get even […]

Jakub Remiar May 26

Journal

Top Steam Games that can go Mobile!

Steam Scanner #1 📡 aka "Full Steam Ahead" 🚂 is a new podcast segment, where we look at latest Steam games, that could translate well into mobile soon. Similarly how we saw games like Supermarket Simulator. Come check 12 new games that we found 😎 ▪️ Starting the list with Schedule I, which is the biggest game of Steam Q1 2025. This drug empire simulator could continue on the Supermarket trend, but with a much "different" twist 😅. ▪️ R.E.P.O., being another Q1 success, continues the trend of coop scary games like Lethal Company. ▪️ Staying in the first person view then we have FlyKnight, an old school RPG dungeon crawler, with interesting insect visuals. (ehm, CPI 😅). ▪️ Nubby's Number Factory could really elevate the plinko style genre, through rogue lite mechanics that work so well on mobile. ▪️ […]

Jakub Remiar May 22

Journal

Century Games’s Kingshot just passed $1M a Day

Century Games's Kingshot just passed $1 Mil. a day 🤑 in revenue in less than 3 months from launch, scaling downloads to 200K a day. Do you know on which game it based its onboarding? 🕵 There is a Steam PC game called Thronefall, by a tiny indie studio called Grizzly Games 🐻. Released for $12,99 in October 2024, to a great player reception, currently having nearly 20K reviews with 96% positive rating. It sold around 600K units for $4.1 Mil. revenue. Currently it gets around 500 daily active players. Its a Tower Defense, where you control you King in order to build your base during the day, steer your forces and defend against enemies during the night. So what happened here???Because in the current 4X market, where the big players are all up to standard from product perspective, the […]

Jakub Remiar May 21

Journal

PlaySimple’s Word Search Explorer makes $163K a day in Ad Revenue

PlaySimple Games's Word Search Explorer is doing $163K a day in ad revenue 🤑, which is more than the current word category IAP leader NYT Games: Word, Number, Logic 👀 (which makes $150K a day) What is the catch? Looking at these games even though their overall daily revenue is similar, the difference is of course the volume of installs they are pulling in. Word Search Explorer is doing more than 200K install a day, while the NYT game is doing barely 20K. So there is a 10x difference here 😵. Oh, but Jakub, that is bad traffic. No its not. Even though the NYT one is mostly US downloads, Word Search Explorer is doing more than 30K only US installs a day + the other countries on top. It also wins on current Daily Active Users of 3,3 Mil […]

Jakub Remiar May 20

Journal

How to utilize your in-game friends lists with “Social helper” mechanics?

Warning ☢️ Heavy Game Design post ahead. Do you know how to utilize your in-game friends lists with "Social helper" mechanics? 🤝 This mechanic, which essentially means borrow a friend's character for 1 battle per day 😅, is a popular social feature in many F2P mobile RPGs, mainly gacha games. It is used to encourage friend interaction and mitigate difficulty spikes without breaking game balance. Top games such as Monster strike, Genshin Impact, AFK Arena, Summoners War or Fate/ Grand Order all have it.Game designers use this system because it smooths out difficulty spikes 📈 without trivializing challenge. For newer players, borrowing a strong character helps clear tough content while still requiring a balanced strategy. For veterans, it offers flexibility in team comps or a way to test units they don’t own. It’s a lightweight form of power 💪 sharing […]

Jakub Remiar May 14

Journal

Supercell’s Squad Buster is releasing a major pivot update

Supercell's Squad Buster is releasing a major pivot update tomorrow, what is new and will it be enough to avoid getting busted? 😅 ▪️ Heroes introduced as the new paradigm for the game. They act as the holder of your other squad units that are fusing, now called "squaddies"▪️ 4 New heroes added - Archer Queen, Barbarian King, Mortis, Royale King▪️ Heroes have their own powers that you need to aim, passive traits, and their own turbo boost▪️ You still need to level up squaddies in the meta. You also choose 2 at the start of the match.▪️ Squaddies fuse together if you have 2 instead of 3 as before.▪️ As they fuse, Squaddies unlock powers for your heroes during gameplay▪️ Heroes and squaddies have factions, which produce synergies.▪️ You still attack even if you 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐄!!!▪️ If your hero loses […]

Jakub Remiar May 12

Journal

Gacha Accessibility Range?

Warning ☢️ Heavy Game Design podcast ahead. Do you know the main difference between the 3 most common Gacha (lootbox) types on the market? 🤔 ▪️ 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐝 𝐓𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐚 (𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯, 𝘙𝘢𝘪𝘥, 𝘚𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘳'𝘴 𝘞𝘢𝘳)This is the initial setup introduced in Japan. Monster strike already passed $8 Bill. lifetime revenue with it. Tokens can consume only few of their duplicates. The key is to upgrade all of their other progression vectors such as skill trees, equipment, skills, level, etc. Low rarity characters are used as upgrade fuel. Collection number dramatically increases through the lifecycle of the game into hundreds or thousands. 🎰 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺: Best characters are extremely hard to get and are dropped from timed exclusive drop pools.💰 𝘙𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦: Characterized by spiky revenue, that jumps always with a new content release and then goes down dramatically until the next content drop. 👀 […]

Jakub Remiar May 7

Jakub Remiar

Login to enjoy full advantages

Go Premium!

Enjoy the full advantage of the premium access.

Stop following

Cancel subscription