Ömer here with my ‘partner in crime’ Yağız, the guy who keeps things grounded whenever I start overthinking stuff. Whenever we hop on a quick meet, it somehow turns into a 5-hour marathon about the most random stuff you can imagine…
Last month, we couldn’t stop talking about ACE Games. One thing led to another, and boom, we had a full deep dive on our hands. (Un)Fortunately! 😅
Anyway, this time our curiosity got the best of us again 👉🏻Supercent
We all see them over the charts, but who really are these folks?
Let’s dive deep into their story from hypercasual to full-on Idle Arcade transition!
Supercent – Let’s Remember
Supercent was founded in 2021 in Seoul, South Korea, by Junsik Kong. But their story didn’t start like a typical “new startup” narrative.
From Day 1, they made a noise.
The studio grabbed headlines with the announcement that Netflix’s hit series Kingdom would be turned into a Mobile Game titled “Kingdom Assassin: Original Series.”
It was a top-down stealth game that quickly caught fire in Korea, climbing the charts and getting players hooked fast.
But beyond the numbers, the mission was clear: “Showing the world the power of K-Content through Gaming.”
They were quick to catch the hypercasual wave in 2021, jumping right in with hits like Art Drawing 3D and K-Games Challenge, keeping it up with the market.
K-Games Challenge was so successful that at one point it even surpassed TikTok in download numbers, helping Supercent see even greater potential in the hypercasual space.
According to AppMagic, these games together pulled in 40M downloads.
That success also sparked an investment round. In April 2022, Supercent announced a $12M funding, aimed at supporting local developers and strengthening its position in the hypercasual market.
According to AppMagic data, the release of these three titles pushed Supercent’s total downloads to 230M by the end of the year.
The titles Pizza Ready & Snake Clash, released by Supercent, have remained among the most downloaded new releases since January 2023, with only ChatGPT, Threads, and Google Gemini surpassing Pizza Ready in total downloads.
These 2 are still the studio’s flagship titles today. 🤫
At the same time, Supercent claimed the title of the most downloaded Korean publisher of 2023.
This success wasn’t limited to Korea. Considering the company’s age, it’s remarkable that such a young company made it into the top 10 publishers just 3 years after its founding — and within only 4 years, it climbed into the top 5.
Moreover, Supercent is the only Korean publisher to appear in the top 10 of global download charts. Backed by these statistics, it undoubtedly deserves the title of the fastest-growing Korean company in the global market.
Supercent’s New Direction
Supercent has evolved into a full-on Idle Arcade powerhouse.
In 2023, alongside massive hits like Burger Please, Pizza Ready, and Outlets Rush, they experimented with dozens of Idle Arcade titles, each pulling anywhere from 5 to 50 million downloads.
The result? A massive internal knowledge base and deep expertise in the genre.
Now, they’re taking everything they’ve learned from those cozy, peaceful Idle Arcade experiences and pushing it toward something new, RPG-style, hostile Idle Arcade (and maybe even survival craft) territory.
Cozy (Peaceful) Idle Arcade games create a sense of calm productivity, a kind of rhythmic flow where you build, manage, and expand within an organized little world of chaos. Think of them as micro business simulators: you start small, scale smart, and optimize endlessly. There’s no real risk of failure here; the core loop isn’t about survival, it’s about efficiency and satisfaction.
On the flip side, RPG/Hostile Idle Arcade titles shift the tone completely. The theme becomes “build, but under threat.” The player takes the role of an expansionist — constantly growing, defending, and conquering. It’s basically a simplified, mobile-friendly spin on the classic 4X formula (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate). In fact, if you’ve seen ads for 4X games lately, chances are you’ve already spotted Idle Arcade-style mechanics sneaking in.
Suuuper simple & fun version of 4X…
By far the best Playable ever???
I was always playing till the end, lol.
Aiming to make its mark in this space, Supercent doubled down on two key projects:
Supercent launched Dinosaur Universe in April’23, then quietly tested and iterated on it for nearly 11 months, refining the core metrics with each update.
Set in the Mesozoic era, the game opens with a giant T-Rex attacking the small Ornithopod controlled by the player. From there, the gameplay loop kicks in, using a joystick to move, hunt nearby dinosaurs, gather Meat and XP, and bring those resources back to your nest area.
In this ecosystem, Meat serves as the game’s soft currency, while XP drives your level progression, a simple yet addictive foundation for long-term growth.
Each dinosaur has a limited meat-carrying capacity, which resets only after you drop the collected meat back at the nest area. Players can also upgrade their dinosaur’s stats using the meat they’ve gathered, adding a satisfying layer of progression to the hunt-and-return loop.
Players can collect dinosaur eggs scattered around the map and bring them back to the nest to incubate. After some time, the hatching mechanic kicks in, and a brand-new dinosaur hatches, ready to join your prehistoric squad.
The dinosaurs that hatch can be viewed in the Cave section, where players can build their own team using their strongest creatures. These companion dinosaurs can be leveled up with the meat you collect, becoming stronger with every upgrade, and at certain key levels, they even gain new stats or abilities, adding depth to your squad’s progression.
Beyond the core mechanics, several progression systems help keep players engaged:
Level System: Each new level unlocks a fresh zone filled with different dinosaur species. To level up, players must defeat the dinosaurs in their current area — creating a steady rhythm of challenge and discovery.
2. Collection System: This feature fuels the player’s sense of discovery through a rewarding loop. Every new dinosaur species found is added to the collection book, with each entry containing five missions. Completing a mission grants a ruby gem, and those gems can be used to unlock reward chests, keeping exploration and progression tightly linked.
3. Raptor Buff: A short-term boost system activated by watching an ad. For five minutes, players get a powerful combo of meat gain, power, and XP boosts, giving their gameplay an instant adrenaline shot.
4. Level Pass: A 50-step, non-repeating progression system featuring two tiers — Free and VIP. Players earn free rewards as they level up, while VIP rewards unlock with a one-time VIP Pass purchase, adding an extra layer of motivation for completionists.
5. World Map: Strengthens the player’s sense of exploration, revealing new, undiscovered areas that keep players curious and motivated to push further.
6. Shop & Gacha System: Instead of collecting eggs in the wild, players can purchase eggs through a gacha system in the shop, with a chance to hatch rare and unique dinosaurs, adding that extra thrill of luck to progression.
After this long testing phase, the game reached a high level of polish. Starting in March 2024, Supercent began large-scale monetization and long-term retention tests. By August 2024, the game entered its growth phase, and its momentum started accelerating fast.
By March 2025, while Dinosaur Universe was still growing steadily, Supercent rolled out its next big project, an Idle Arcade RPG called XP Hero.
It feels like a natural continuation of everything the team learned from Dinosaur Universe, still early in testing, but already built on solid gameplay foundations.
The story kicks off with a stickman hero caught in a storm and stranded on a deserted island. In the opening scene, he finds his sword buried in the sand and notices an old man shivering nearby. To help him, the player starts chopping down a palm tree for firewood, learning the core resource-gathering mechanic that drives the rest of the game.
This opening sequence serves as a tutorial for the resource-gathering mechanic. After that, the game smoothly transitions into its core loop, battling creatures and collecting resources to survive and progress.
Once the combat system is mastered, the player builds a base, similar to the nest mechanic from Dinosaur Universe. From there, the familiar character upgrade system kicks in, letting players strengthen their hero step by step.
What truly sets XP Hero apart is its more advanced gacha system. While Dinosaur Universe focused on collecting dinosaurs, here the progression revolves around equipping your character with gear. This shift adds a much deeper layer of economy and strategy, giving players more control over how they build and optimize their hero.
Players can upgrade their weapons using collected resources or combine unused ones through the fusion system to craft higher-tier gear. As they level up, more equipment slots unlock, allowing the character to wield multiple weapons simultaneously.
Additionally, using the game’s hard currency (rubies), players can forge new weapons at the blacksmith’s workshop run by the old man from the opening scene. Lucky players might obtain rare weapons, while others can strengthen their arsenal by merging common ones into more powerful gear.
Reminds you any MMORPG upgrade systems?
Just like Dinosaur Universe, XP Hero features a collection system, quests, a level pass, and a world map. But this time, everything feels far more detailed and layered. The result is a challenging yet deeply satisfying in-game economy that rewards smart play and long-term engagement.
According to AppMagic, Dinosaur Universe has reached around 17M Downloads and generated roughly $4M in IAPs, and it’s still actively growing.
On top of that, XP Hero, with its far more complex structure and stronger monetization potential, is still in its early phase, but it’s already showing signs that it could deliver some big surprises in the coming year.
Compared to Dinosaur Universe, XP Hero is built on a much broader framework with higher monetization potential. Even though it’s still in its early stages, it could soon become one of Supercent’s most ambitious titles.
As one of South Korea’s youngest and fastest-growing studios, Supercent seems poised to stay in the spotlight with its “hostile-themed” Idle Arcade RPGs. The industry itself is clearly shifting, moving away from simple casual experiences toward deeper, more layered gameplay structures. The evolution of the Idle Arcade genre in that direction now feels almost inevitable.
Even More?
After preparing the article, we just reached out to their Director of Publishing, Seohee Kwon to ask if they’d be up for adding their 2 cents here :))
Supercent is a publisher with strong trend analysis capabilities and a proven track record of rapidly identifying shifts in the market. We have consistently incorporated elements that deliver user satisfaction, such as tactile gameplay feedback, into a wide variety of genres. We aim to strengthen the image of Supercent as a publisher that “reads the trend and creates new genres.”
Appreciate their quick reply!
🎁 Bonus: We Went All In.
While digging into this story, we ended up taking 800+ screenshots from Dinosaur Universe and XP Hero.
They were too good to keep to ourselves, so here they are:
