
Softlaunch Sonar #8 - Exploring the Latest Game Releases & Innovations
Jakub and Felix discuss the latest trends in mobile gaming, focusing on new game releases, soft launches, and the impact of monetization strategies.
We explore unique gameplay concepts, particularly in the match-3 genre, and analyze the role of intellectual property in game development.
The conversation also touches on future predictions for mobile gaming and the challenges developers face in a competitive market.
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This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric
Youtube: https://youtu.be/g04p176ZrDg
Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-2um8eguhf-c~H9idcxM271mnPzdWbipg
Chapters
00:00 Emerging Trends in Mobile Gaming
12:17 The Evolution of Merge Games
15:27 AI and Waifu Games: A New Frontier
18:16 Unique Gameplay Mechanics in New Titles
21:28 Family Farm Match: A New Take on Match-3
24:23 Exploring the Alpha of a New Pirate Game
27:28 Supercell's Latest Innovations
29:22 The Rise of User-Generated Content in Gaming
30:37 Marketability of New Games
31:46 Trends in Game Development
33:11 Emerging Game Concepts
34:37 The Match-3 Game Landscape
37:15 Innovations in Game Mechanics
40:12 RPGs and Their Appeal
42:33 The Future of Game Genres
45:46 The Impact of IP in Gaming
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Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
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Takeaways
Homa is scaling rapidly with IAP-driven games.
Soft launches are crucial for user acquisition.
The merge genre is facing intense competition.
Unique gameplay concepts can differentiate new games.
Match-3 games continue to dominate the market.
IP can significantly influence a game's success.
The mobile gaming landscape is evolving with new mechanics.
Developers must adapt to changing player preferences.
Monetization strategies are key to sustaining games.
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Full Transcript
This one is called Shop and Goblins, soft launch January 27th. Both the Throne of Roses and War Hunt for Survival was soft launch February 14th and 26th.
But Shop and Goblins is super unique because you go into a shop and you're the shopkeeper, actually. And people come to your shop and then you need to appraise their items.
I thought like, oh, didn't we saw this somewhere?
Like Match Factory?
Is this like 3D match or something?
No.
So they took this kind of a physics-based gameplay that looks like 3D match. And we're rolling the dice Mate drops Knowledge made of gold and ice Felix with ads Making those coins rise Jackup designs Worlds chasing the skies We're the two and a half gamers The midnight crew Talking UA adverts And game design too Matej, Felix, Shacko Bringing the insight We're rocking those vibes Till the early daylight Matej, UA Master eyes on the prize Tracking data through the Cyberspace skies Felix acts dollars Like a wizard in disguise Jackups, crafting realms us to the highs.
Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick, got your back.
Ads are beautiful, they light the way. Click it fast, don't delay.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh hello hello this is two and a half gamers your unusual it's two gamers today huh yeah because uh matthew is on a ua secondment finding users initi. And he'll be back in a week.
No, he's at GDC. Anyway, so it's just you and me today.
And what are we going to be talking about today? As usual, we're going to be having a lot of fun because we're going to talk about new games. That is true.
That we see in our sonar, as per usual. And Q-Sounds, Soft Launch Sonar.
Yeah, Soft Launch Sonar that's on the table. Actually, I even brought up a dead game into the mix.
So that's going to be a wild card. You can tell me which one of the games I'll be talking about is already dead.
And yeah, lots of interesting gameplay. I think I, yeah, some sections were switched.
So we don't really foreshadow that strong which game is which. But I guess let's start and get to it.
Because there's a lot of cover. Soft launch Sonar is quite good.
Because usually with soft launches, you need UA, right? There we go. This is good because this episode is actually sponsored to you by PVX Partners, non-equity dilutive UA funding.
All you have to do is go to pvx.com. You plug into a bunch of stuff.
We actually did an episode with them. And it was actually quite interesting to hear about how they actually, yeah, basically calculate if they can fund you or not.
But basically, all you have to do is just plug in your data. They have a look.
And then money in your account quite easily within two weeks. So, yeah, PVX Partners, thank you so much for sponsoring us.
Not as good ad read as Matye usually does, but, you know, considering I've never launched a UA campaign, I think it's
quite good. Let's get back to this
exciting episode.
Let's go.
Let's go there.
Okay, so first game's on the list.
This is actually a little bit of a cheat
because
this is DC Dark Legion
from FunPlus. This is the fighter game? Nope.
This is a squad-based RPG 4X. Oh.
Yeah. So this actually launched already today.
So I guess by the time you're hearing us, it's already a few days after Global Launch. Because I had it on the soft launch list for quite some time, but I was just pretty much went into Global Launch anyway.
So we're just going to briefly talk about it. So I think this is the first time that we see that very heavily branded 4X enters
the game. If it's even...
Age of
Empires? Come on.
Age of Empires is Age of Empires.
Let's leave it where it is
for it to die.
But yeah, this
seems quite interesting.
So actually, if you look into
the game, there's this...
Where is it?
Fallout shelter-like kind of a view where the city panel or like the city is basically in Fallout Cell Shelter like Ant Farm, similar to High CZ Hero as we looked at. Like, I guess it's the new layout of like better city because instead of like 3d You have more focus.
Isometric map.
You rather have like the ant farm thing, which is this then. So that's there.
There's, of course, all the DC-branded characters, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, and all these other guys, I guess. Joker, yeah, you know the drill.
So that's there. On top of it, I think, yeah, there seems to be some kind of a mini-map, not even, like, the big map.
And there's the combat, which is, like, squad-based RPG. Nothing fancy to it.
This is basically AFK Arena. You see it.
It's not even turn-based. It's just real-time automated combat, so nothing, again, new to it.
But I think I had a better image somewhere here later in a different video. Yeah, here, where one of the YouTubers is explaining how world map works.
Because if you at it this basically looks like the radar function like our famous balloon where at some point it kind of goes up and like now you have the world map you need to complete these quests which are easing you into the 4x gameplay on the big kind of marching armies map which I haven't saw yet so hopefully this works as i think it works otherwise yeah the forex part is a little bit doubtful but i guess it's probably forex we'll see we'll definitely keep that in mind as we are very keen on like how the forex genre evolves and there will be also a lot of forexes today on the menu but uh yeah why is there there so many Forexes going into the market right now? Hmm? Why is there so many Forexes going into the market? Because everybody sees the giant numbers that last war and Whiteout Survivor is pulling. I would guess so.
But, you know, I don't think so. Honestly, like, it's a nice attempt.
But I don't think so. This stands a chance.
because you know i don't think so these honestly like it's a nice attempt but i don't think so this stands a chance because you know what we're missing here you know what's missing no our favorite fake onboarding minigame ah right well you haven't shown any of the gameplay yet so i don't know but yeah there's the trick
card that instead of a fake onboarding mini game and fake creators they will have the dc ip the question if it's strong enough which i highly doubt probably not my guess is this is joining edge of empire's mobile but whatever yeah let's have a look yeah and this was soft launch september 20 at 2024.
I'm just saying.
Not a long soft launch, didn't it?
Not that much, yeah.
Pretty pretty. Yeah, and this was soft launch September 20th, 2024.
I'm just saying.
Okay.
Not a long soft launch, did it?
Not that much, yeah.
Pretty, pretty short one.
Okay.
This is an interesting one.
I like it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Simple.
Guess who this is?
This game is called Bold Stack.
I came.
No.
Falcon. One more tip.
Voodoo. Homa.
Ah, Homa. This was launched on February 3rd, and it uses an iteration of the stacking or sorting, probably, gameplay of Nutsort, actually from Triple Dot, if you remember.
Yeah, that looks exactly like it. Yeah, but there's an iteration because if you look here, this is more close to those like water puzzle games where you have like the liquids kind of running over and stuff like that.
Shorts, colorwood swords. Yeah, like all these other ones, even like magic swords.
But this, if you look at it, there's a big difference there because there's always pretty much the goal objectives that you need to fulfill. Because in the, let's say, base sorting games, you just need to put the colors in order.
Here you need to put the colors on top and then they disappear like in Hexasort so there's a little bit of a twist there it's not really not sort kind of a one to one clone there's an iteration so that's interesting and my guess is and this is a wild guess again because All in the Hole is currently scaling so much. Okay.
So what I wanted to say here is that what I think will happen probably because HOMA is already scaling all in whole in crazy scale, like 300k in IP a day. That probably guys in HOMA will be also aiming for a heavy IP driven puzzler with this, not an ad based game.
So that's my guess here, but again
we'll see. But nonetheless
it's an interesting iteration, not just like one
to one copy.
Okay, continuing forward.
So
this game I wasn't able to
find gameplay,
just the trailer, but I think trailer is is enough and what do we have here so i saw metacore yeah and it's match but is it the upgraded match which basically this is not match this is merch oh merch sorry merch yeah so they had previously they had the other soft launch game called merch plaza which we covered before uh this is called sugar works merch joy literally looks like uh can't decrush ip from wish can't help it really with a bit of royal match meta yeah yeah so the difference again just by looking at this screen you can see that it seems it's a level based merge or I would think so don't know or some kind of like progression of the board and then there's yeah royal match kind of kingdom not even renovating just building kind of a visual meta but yeah let's see i think uh metacore is currently searching very hard for like their next hit game because they they're having like lots of games in soft launch there's the grandpa solitaire thing there's the merch plaza thing now there's this i would guess that they're probably also cooking something else i guess guys from supercell or maybe they're trying to be like supercell it's gonna push push for more iteration on new games to kind of go there because merch mansion isn't definitely in a great spot because it's getting completely attacked by micro fund the chinese guys who took over merch category why was it against it to manage to take over the merch category? It's just... It's pure manpower.
And pretty much newer and better version of the original games on the market. Like Love and Pies got literally steamrolled over by...
I don't remember if it's Gossip Harbor or Seaside or the other one. I think Seide Escape is the Travel Time copy, and Gossip Harbor is the Love and Pies one.
But yeah, basically, they took the original and make it better, and took them over in the chart. So, let's see.
Gaming is brutal. Yeah, gaming is very brutal in this, like, especially if you're competing with Chinese teams, that's how it is.
Okay.
Yeah, this will be interesting.
So, as we know,
yeah,
AI is here.
AI, this is not AI, there's
waifus there, but basically what's
happening here
that there is this game called
Throne of Roses.
And you can
guess the developer of this
Thank you. here that there is this game called throne of roses and you can guess the developer of this I can't army and waifus I have no idea it's tough for fun again the guys behind top girl obviously of course this seems just the like real 4X version of Top Girl
where we have
it's a bit more hardcore
yeah like basically hardcore
probably less streamlined more kind of 4X-y
we have our usual kind of trick
with 4X
we build a tank armory
why would she ask that
so we have these AI animated characters
you can see this already
that this is done by AI and stuff
Thank you. Tank armory.
Why would she ask that? So we have these AI animated characters. You can see this already, that this is done by AI and stuff.
Then somewhere here later, there comes the usual trick where our character narrator gets captured. Give up the city or she's dead.
That's all that was written on the photo. I regret that I didn't hold her back that day.
So it's the usual thing that the narrator character ends up on a bomb or whatever, like a dangerous situation. And then it goes into the usual thing where another character steps in and you just build the town and roll over and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
I think like fifth or seventh minute, there's a 4X map already. Yeah, here we are.
And yeah, that's our usual thing. The kicker here is that this is actually Kiss of War.
Because if I look at this, this is Kiss of War, which is basically the same intro cinematic. And then instead of our AI girl, we have 3D girls that are there.
And the YouTube video I'm showing you is four years old. No way.
Yes. That looks like Rettler 2, which is 20 years old.
Yeah, that's a different thing. But what's happening here again is the signature tip for Fun Move where you took your original game and what you changed there is just the onboarding in order to lower CPI.
So now they're putting the top girl kind of a skeleton on top of it basically. Isn't that quite a clever way of game making though? Of course because like you know the only thing that matters in 4X is CPI and they are masters of 4X gameplay and like the you know product part, so the only thing that matters to them is just lower the CPI.
That's what they do. To top it off, here is the other game that they have, because Top 4 from always have two 4Xs within very similar onboardings.
There's Warhunt Survival, where it literally starts with you killing animals that's a good
hook
when the girl kind of tells you something
then she goes
into killing a deer
which she
misses and I guess
our narrator misses there
he killed the deer then goes the
cinematic as it was there and then we go into killing Scarlett Johansson. Wait, why? Because IP infringement.
And we don't care. So, yeah.
This is quite literally very interesting. And it's exactly the same kind of onboarding, except this part.
But once this part goes off, we're back to city building.
The usual thing.
It's the same game.
Yeah, exactly.
But again, without the part where you're shooting arrows
at Black Widow.
So yeah, it goes on.
As usual, our character gets captured somewhere here i think somewhere here
yeah new character comes in and i think she's like the bad girl yeah there there she is
give up the city or she's dead as usual that looks exactly like the person who was in that
james bond movie I can't remember.
Yeah.
So again, another character steps in and help us and cycle pretty much continues.
So again, every single month or every single quarter I'm doing this.
And by the way, now we're killing Assassin's Creed character with a tomorrow.
So every single quarter when I'm looking at their account, they're this forex on-boarding nonsense it's just so funny uh yeah but to top it off they have one uh other game which is actually unique and i'm super curious how this one will go this one is called shop and goblins soft launch january 27th uh both the throne of roses and War Hunt for Survival was soft launch February 14th and 26th. But Shop and Goblins is super unique because you go into a shop.
And you're the shopkeeper, actually. And people come to your shop and then you need to appraise their items.
I thought like, oh, didn't we saw this somewhere?
Like Match Factory?
Is this like 3D match or something?
No.
So they took this kind of a physics-based gameplay that looks like 3D match.
But then you are literally going piece by piece equipment
in the mess, basically, in the chest. It tells you like how much and it's like i think there's there's this show on discovery like uh you know the best i can do meme is from pound shop something or whatever yeah so i guess this is it basically because then the guy says like oh let's give you a fair price like 100 000 and like you say like oh 20 000 and like he
goes 60 000 and you go then 5 000 and he's like okay i'll sell you sell you for 400 or something like that so like junk junkyard heroes or like yeah one of these like auction shows whatever it is yeah exactly it's like one of these auctions i always forgot the name but yeah there's so many of them
yeah so this is the core loop
where like some people come in and you then you then sell the thing and you see here on the on the top that like you have made your profit because you give him the price and then like on top of it you you pretty much go there And in the meantime, as you go, you some rocks and a gold nugget and then you upgrade your guy, you upgrade your armor, you upgrade blah, blah, blah, a lot of things. Yeah, they are the usual.
It's basically about earning money. Yeah, it's about earning money, but the thing that kind of distracted me, and because this is top for fun, was when I got here to this point where you can clearly see the ui there on the bottom where the ui says uh alliance i think it's a 4x as well yeah so that's also my idea that that probably this will end up being a 4x also that's that's my guess.
But I don't see the world button, but maybe
it will be somewhere there. But yeah, we'll see.
We'll see if this goes somewhere. But it's super
unique, definitely. It's super unique,
very interesting, and as I said, I've
never seen this kind of a
gameplay before.
So let's see.
As I said, this was Softland January
27th. Okay.
Now for something more conventional. Cool.
Here we go. Family farm match.
Is that with a hand grenade? Yes. Jesus.
How is that okay? It's a hand grenade in match 3. Color grenade I mean it looks really good instead of a bomb yeah okay family farm with hand grenades who could even make hand grenade family farm match with a hand? Why is a family with a hand grenade? That's the developer.
I don't know. Peak? I don't know.
No. Grand? No.
Century Games. Oh.
It's again. Honestly, as soon as you said Century, of course they would put hand put hand grenades in with something called family.
Yeah, of course. They really want to break into the match three category.
Of course, it's one of their latest attempts. And I don't know which one is this, like seventh or eighth one.
Anyway, sending Gregor's to heaven. This one is super polished, as usual.
Like, it literally plays like a royal match. I can't really speak for...
Does it have the meta? The same meta? Yeah. That's the kicker here.
The story, yeah? So actually, let me go here. And it's not the renovation of that castle thing, but you are basically building some farm stuff.
So if you finish the level, you see you get these things and then you build a house or whatever or something and like renovate. See, it's basically Royal Kingdom.
Royal Kingdom is the system also. Like it's kind of very simple.
Yeah, this is basically Royal Kingdom. It's not renovation.
It's just building without the like broken you know desolated part whatever but if we scroll forward this is basically how the game basically looks on level 48 which is royal match because you see they already have the events here on the left side they have the battle pass they They have the reward pass. They have...
This is probably an offer.
It seems that they have everything already.
So, looks very good. How do you think this will do?
Hmm?
How do you think this will do?
The kicker I was kind of
trying to look for is, do they have these
you know, save the king levels?
I wasn't able to
find them because there's not a video of a level that's like
10 to 12.
Do you think that's the difference?
The thing that makes a real difference?
The creatives, they're already using the creatives
of Royal Match.
The concept of saving the king near that situation
blah blah blah.
That's
definitely needed anyway.
My question is if they put something
into the core like Royal Match did like every 10 level is this or that or whatever something something so that's what I'm really curious if they will have this kind of advantage because otherwise I don't know and it's just like going against Royal Match now that they released Royal Kingdom it's just like you're going against two of those now so kind of a very it will be very bonanza yeah cpi bonanza uphill battle definitely but you know if there's anyone that can crack it for sure like uh i mean they have a budget chinese company with giant budget definitely they they they are within the means to do it definitely okay moving on boat game
ah
yeah budget, definitely. They are within the means to do it, definitely.
Okay, moving on. Boat game.
Ah, are we going to cover this on an episode, standalone episode? Probably until we get an alpha invite, but it seems that... Didn't our correspondent in Tahiti have one of these? I think so, maybe, don't know, but it seems that the alpha is kind of ongoing.
It's not like the usual three-day weekend test because it's full of YouTube currently through influencers and the usual Supercell Influencer Army. I just wanted to mention it because this was basically announced last month.
So they're finally doing a normal soft launch? No, no, no, it's not normal.
It's invite only.
It's not like the usual countries
are unlocked, blah, blah, blah.
So what I just wanted to briefly cover is that
what this is and what it seems
this is and, yeah, what we
think. So, to me
it looks like Sea of Thieves a little bit.
Sea of Thieves is this very, very popular
PC pirate game
from
Microsoft that's basically like a more complex version of this, where you go on islands, you fight enemies, you pick up treasure, and then you go on boats, you fight enemies to get on islands to pick up treasure, like here. Imagine if Ubisoft would have thought like this, like that, it would be so good yeah so as you see here you control you have either land combat or sea combat you can even swim so go around the place uh what you need to do is you go on some one of these islands where search area for a dig spot where you literally need to find the X marks the spot.
It's here.
Then you dig out the treasure.
And then you bring the treasure chest into your boat.
And then once you do it, you sail off into the horizon
as done here, which is the goal objective.
Leave the map.
And then you get the treasure in your kind of a hideout cave or something like that, if I understand correctly. Like, this is basically the main menu.
It's like something... Is it PvP or is it...
PvP, PvP, both. Oh, okay.
Both, actually. So, yeah, seems very interesting.
It reminds me a lot actually actually this is close to their Moco game if you remember the RPG where again you have the central hub from which you go on missions taking loot blah blah blah the VCR store no no no VCR store is different anyway no bear yet yeah's double inventory, one for the gear for the land combat, one for the boat for the sea combat, and there's brain. And brain is basically a skill tree.
I don't know if that'll be the... Oh yeah, here it is.
So there's like massive, massive shitload of skills. Yeah, massive, massive skill tree similar to something like bed of exile i guess the not green points are the ones that are just stat holders and then the other ones are the ones with uh special abilities for instance here you can see the combat of a player so he literally he switched into like pvP mode because suddenly he became red.
There's an alert beddy nearby and then the guy gets killed, I guess, because he didn't catch this. But yeah, it seems that it's both PvP, PvE.
It's not Battle Royale, as I thought.
It's a little bit different.
But let's see. It seems super
interesting, but also it seems
super core, because there's so many
abilities and so many things, and
they're still on two joysticks, basically.
So,
yeah. How much do you think a game like this
costs before they put it in alpha?
A lot. To make? A lot.
Right. Because it looks really good already.
Yeah, it looks really good. It's fully 3D, everything's new art, you know.
I don't know. Depends on like...
Would you play this? Or are we not the target audience? I would be definitely the target audience. For sure.
It's RPG-based looter, basically, so I'm definitely the target audience. I would be definitely the target audience, for sure.
It's RPG-based looter, basically.
So I'm definitely the target audience.
But what I meant to say that
because Supercell acquired Rift Labs,
sorry, Phantom Labs,
the studio that makes the Rifters game,
which is, again, similar to Moco,
and this is like the third or fourth game
which is kind of this kind of rpg light style thing so my guess is that there's a little bit of reuse of technology so it's not that that expensive that's starting from the ground because i think they're just literally following a direction that they want to that gun called The problem solver?
Yeah.
The RPG?
Yeah, problem solver.
That's great.
See?
The negotiator.
Oh, I Solver.
That's great.
See? The Negotiator.
Oh, I love it.
Double-barreled shotgun.
Oh, I love it.
So, yeah.
It's the usual quirky humor of Supercell.
So I guess that's what's done with it.
But yeah, we'll definitely,
once we get our hands on this,
or Mr. Tahiti guy returns, we'll get a full review on this, for sure.
It looks quite good, man. I really like the artwork.
I say that with every Supercell game. You cannot not like it.
Yeah, of course. It's just like...
Like Flood Rush? I still feel like that artwork was the prettiest. So sad they killed that.
Flood Rush was so good. I also missed that, to be honest.
I wonder why they killed it.
Probably too similar to Squadbusters, I would guess.
But yeah, let's see.
Squadbusters is still not dead, no?
Squadbusters is definitely not dead, but it's not scaling up.
Or even kind of keeping up.
Okay, moving on.
Grow a monster.
Grow a monster?
So where do we see this?
Do you see the game?
Oh, it's Alien Invasion.
There you go.
It took me a while.
I was like, I've never seen this, but I'm like, oh yeah.
That's great.
So there's this game called Grow a Monster. This actually from studio hype hype which is the former frog mind guys they had their ugc engine on which is hype hype literally and it seems they finally released a game of their own which seems to be this kind of a first slash third person alien invasion if i understand
correctly it looks like it's built in their ugc engine because last time as i was looking at it the art and everything looks like it so is this mass marketable though yeah that's the question I don't know.
This was soft launch February 22nd.
And yeah, I'm kind of, let's say, because the UGC content in the Hypervenged always looks like it has this prototype-ish production budget quality. And this is definitely within that same, like, ballpark.
So I guess it will look like this always, but I don't know. I don't know.
I don't see any difficulty here, though. That's the thing, right? Like, Alien Invasion gets really hard.
Later, of course, later it gets really hard. But, like, yeah, my guess is that this seems more of, of an advertisement for the UGC tool.
Yeah. That it's possible to create games within it.
That would be my guess. Not really like we're aiming to make this into a sustainable business as a game.
Fair. But yeah, let's see.
That's my guess because I don't think so. This is going anywhere.
Okay, moving on.
Cube Masters.
So guess what?
Is this Peak?
Nope.
But I don't know who.
It's Turkish, but it's not Peak.
Yeah, it's Turkish, but yeah.
Looks like a Turkish puzzler. Do you see already?ler you know but you can see you can see the scandinavian artwork like you know if you're seeing a rovier game or supercell game likewise you can see if the turks are making it work you know just like you can see it's a vietnamese game there's so many interstitial ads yeah so this this is called called Cube Masters.
This was Soft Launch February 7th. And as you can already see, it's an iteration on single-player level-based version of Block Blast.
And the studio behind this is Spike Games. Ooh.
Yeah, so I guess Rina is at it it again sending regards uh i think this is quite interesting because if i understood correctly after their first failed game the casino one spike games they hope on like a lot of games that were currently trending during that period which went I think pretty well with dialbusters but didn't sustain then there was some some other game basically or like there was the match game that i guess also didn't make it now they're jumping on the block blast trend which by the way a lot of people are jumping and i'm already working with like one client that is already doing like this. I mean, the thing is, when you're about to overtake the most successful game in mobile history in terms of active user base, that's something people take notice of.
They are maybe, I was looking at the numbers today, they are maybe two or three weeks out of taking over Subway Surfers. Yeah, yeah.
So Block Plus is definitely making ways, and you can see it even here. This gameplay is now being thrown around a lot.
And just because of that image, and I guess we'll get to it once more, where we can already see our usual Royal Match meta or Magic Sword or however. But yeah, the icons basically in the bottom tells you way.
This one on the right is from the collective problem. So it seems that just using Royal Match meta with the blockbust level-based core gameplay.
So that's there. It's a good proposition.
Like if you can make it and be fast enough, you can still do it. But yeah, we'll see.
It will be a tough fight. I'll definitely have some more on this later in this episode.
Okay, moving on. Match details.
Harry Potter? Seems Harry Potter from Wish. So, this is, again, as you can say, is what? Man, I was just going to say, man, this is exactly what the world needs, another match three game.
You mean another copy of Royal Match? Exactly, yeah. Yeah, so it has this very unique Harryry potter like kish ip which is not harry a little bit of spyro there did you see spyro up in the corner yeah he holds a dragon egg so yeah dragon egg which is yeah so i guess there are dragons or something there are no hand grenades Who is this? Guess.
I don't operate in this space. They always advertise how they don't have ads.
So I usually don't get hired. Okay, this is my game.
Okay. This was Soft Lunch February 12th.
And again, seems your typical kind of royal match follow-up with this Harry Potter-ish vibe. I wasn't able to see what's the, like, in between meta because it seems that there's just, like, the image gets fuller or something like that.
Yeah, the image gets unhidden or, like, populated because, yeah, you see there's less stuff in it. Yeah the usual it's like the low cost version of something you just saw that Century Games use on their family grenade farm so yeah it's just a little bit of less production budget version of Royal Match stuff but yeah to be honest I don't really think this is a good strategy now like it's too late yeah i think it's too late and you don't have like a strong enough usb to even differentiate between all the clones so yeah that's there okay it's tough huh because it takes time to build it and it's yeah it's super tough it's super tough and you know keep in mind that all these things that you build is still not even the main thing.
The main thing is the level design and the difficulty adjustment and being able to tinker with the levels and all these funnels and so many KPIs. Basically, the kind of theme so far is Match 3 and 4X.
We'll get there. We'll get there.
Just wait a second. Okay, moving on.
XP Hero. Is it Say Games? It looks like Say Games.
Why? Because of the mechanic, like My Perfect Hotel. Insert all the other games.
The other game. Yeah, I can't remember the first one with the name is right now.
Dreamdale. Dreamdale, yeah.
Yeah. So this is actually seems to be a combination of something like Dreamdale, which is the arcade idol, and then Alien Invasion.
Why Alien Invasion? Because the guy has a cargo capacity, as you see there. And as he goes around and collects stuff and then upgrades his inventory and stuff like that, this is basically taken from Alien Invasion.
So it's a little bit of both, where you are killing monsters and getting your cargo full, which you need to then see, bring back to your base. This is the alien invasion mechanic.
But it's all done within the Dreamdale kind of wheel building our base and doing stuff around it, kind of building stuff in economy, I think, somewhere here later. Yeah, you see he like rocks now uh now we have the wood thing and like all these other kind of resources and stuff like that so it's like a mix of alien invasion and dream though which is great so who does this game who's doing this game uh it's actually done by supercent our friends from korea didn't see.
Yeah. And you see the difference between the Alien Invasion iteration that we just saw with Grow Monster from Hype Hype.
So the production quality here is just giant. This looks really good.
Yeah, this looks really good. And it's new.
I think this is going to do really well like thor's hammer hanging there like yeah yeah like um the best games are yet to come on this episode let me just say that but this is like one of the best one so far i think this is this is very good like i think the idea and the combination is very good because alien invasion still wasn't utilized the core wasn't utilized that much there's just an invasion and like few follow-ups but not like like significant the big game dream that itself uh was a great game but it wasn't able to sustain it and i think adding alien invasion progression on top of it could help it a lot because dreamdale i think suffers mostly on the thing that economy just get too complex and like to kind of you know know, need to do this, need to do that. Here you have like the merge gacha thing and yeah, this is just...
I don't see any ads though, which is very unlike SuperSense. Yeah, I would guess that this is something that they're trying to drive more towards like 50-50.
But there would definitely be ads here. The game's designed to take on ads.
It's just a matter a matter of time probably but yeah I'm super interesting on this one I'm really liking it already just by so much progression there's something about it and the art style is great let's see moving on hero roguelike RPG This looks so boring
This is not so boring man
This is amazing actually
I am sure but like nothing to like
It's just so not up
My target audience
I'm not the target audience
So we were actually shown this game in Seoul. This is from 1100%.
And this is a game that is a Monopoly Go-like RPG. Ah, yeah, I remember that.
So it has the similar... It's actually very close to something like Capybara Go because the difference between this and Capybara Go that in Capybara Go, the character just goes forward and there's like random rolls in between.
Here, it doesn't go forward. It goes on the Monopoly board and there are random rolls where he ends ends up here and on top of it there's the you know rogue glide character getting stronger selecting skill stuff like that i think the problem for this game is the art style because it's this very heavy niche like you said like not my cup of tea immediately even though progression wise and
probably systems wise it's quite close to the xp hero that i just showed you but the art style
there was just much more attractive to you so yeah i guess this could be a problem but if this
is more aimed towards kind of korea asia maybe it's not because these guys really like european
dark fantasy team which
is basically this so we'll see but seems very interesting and i guess it's one of the predictions
that's coming to light with which i said that more and more games will be using this monopoly
like random kind of system visualization to kind of move forward because it's just
people like randomness and it's it's streamlining the game very easily because you don't need to
Thank you. visualization to kind of move forward because it's just people like randomness and it's streamlining the game very
easily because you don't need to choose like it's being
chosen for you by the difficulty
sorry by the chance chance based
system so that's there
this was soft launch
February 20th and again
it's called a hero roguelike
RPG
for those who don't know, by the way,
Supercent is a subsidiary of 1100%.
Supercent is?
Yes.
Those two companies are tied together.
Like Supercent is the heavy ad-based one,
and 1100%, you know, all the lucky defenses
and tower-based, tower defense games,
heavy IP ones.
Yep.
You know what?
I was going to say I didn't know that,
but now I just remembered.
I did know that, but I just didn't remember it.
I think you even read that. Yeah.
Anyway, this is actually the top game that I'm looking for. This is a soft launch now.
Are you sure about that? Yes. This is actually global launched asia launched it's already making something like 70 to 80k a day uh it's that usual kind of we first global launch in asia uh and then we'll like go out to the rest of the world so we played this at china joy last year you remember that we were shown this yeah because this is like one of those most popular wechat games we actually had this in last uh quarter sonar but it was still not translated into english now it's translated into english i don't know what's happening because sensitive tower or the day i don't remember which one keeps saying that this was released October 26th.
But my guess is this was just done in February because I would
just... or the day I don't remember which one keep saying that this was released October 26th but my guess is this was just done in February because I would just know about it I was I was literally a joint account and it wasn't there in this English translation but yeah here we are we finally will be able to play this game and I'm really looking forward to it for those who don't know this is a one of the top games in china regarding wechat platform uh even regarding normal kind of mobile platforms it's a arcade idle 4x rpg basically and it's making waves racing pretty much i don't think so it will be probably that uh successful in the west but I guess it will capture the audience anyway, but it's super successful in China, definitely.
And the name is Go Go Sam Gorg. I don't know how they ended up.
They'll probably end up changing the name, I think, for the Western audience. Maybe.
This is the Western audience name already. This is how it's named.
I don't know.
Like the Google Translate put there,
last time I was translating the Chinese name,
Fingertip Warriors,
which I got told that it's kind of pretty accurate,
but I don't know.
Like I'm really looking forward to kind of play this because this is literally like the game you saw,
Dreamdale 1 with like the arcade.
Like there we go.
Like so nice. And then
somewhere here later, I don't know
if you have the image here,
there's the usual
4X map and it goes into
heavy, heavy 4X.
So that is there.
But yeah, this looks absolutely amazing.
I can't wait once we're able to play
that and do a review of it.
Okay.
Last game on the list. An Angry Birds Block Blast? Angry Birds Block Quest, which is an Angry Birds Block game.
So, yeah, as you expect, Angry Birds Will the IP be helpful here?
I think they use their IP
everywhere, like ketchup.
Yeah.
It's all over the place.
This game
is actually dead, or it was
taken down from the store.
So, I just put it here
as some kind of
wild card because
I wanted to show that
there are many companies going after
the Block Blast
Hungry Games core gameplay
because everybody see how profitable
it is and how big it is.
This game actually, by the way, once you
see this, this is a little bit of
controversy, but this game actually I don't know if it's specifically this one probably also this one this game got criticized because it uses ai art but why criticized because gamers hate ai art but criticized, criticize, like, what?
Like, a review?
No, on the internet.
I think also review-wise,
then, like, review-bombed, basically.
It is not real.
Like, if you get critique there,
it's like, psst, cry me a river.
It's not real.
Cry me a river.
Yeah, I know.
I'm just saying it's like a nice tidbit.
But still, the thing is that
it's basically a single-player-based version of Blockblast, which, I guess, saying it's like a nice tidbit. But still, the thing is that it's basically a single player based version of Block Blast, which I guess didn't make it.
Or they took it down and maybe they'll do another kind of version of it. I don't know.
I like that mechanic with firing on the Angry Bird on top of the board. That's actually quite fun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess there's some iteration in it that didn't really went too deep into it.
What I wanted to mention here is that pretty much just by surface level look, you can see multiple companies going after this core gameplay in a single player fashion. So, and we of course already saw that there's Wudoku Blast from Triple Dot, which is kind of the legacy game trying to get its ground ground back but yeah there seems to be some kind of different mechanic here with shooting the birds it's not that uh the usual kind of block blasty thing but yeah let's see i wonder if they kind of bring it back or or not but yeah that was was it.
It's hard competing against like 200 data scientists just doing levels, making it easier and harder based on your user input. Like it's just.
Yeah, that was it. A lot of interesting games.
I'm definitely picking up later the GoGo Samcock, jointed games arcade idol 4x and the xp hero we definitely kind of keep that one up and yeah lots of i guess interesting games that could be kind of either prominent games or prominent failures we'll see man well done man that was really good there's a couple on there i'm really gonna look forward to play bokeem looks quite good our friends is supercent also probably will make a boatload of money on that game it looked really good thank you for putting that together um yeah for those of you joining us and who are right now in tahiti uh matier is in San Francisco. So if you're in Tahiti, you're shit out of luck because he's at GDC.
And if you're at GDC, we are hosting some events. Don't know what, but it is something you can take part in.
There's one on Monday or Tuesday, but I guess listening to this is already over. It's already over.
So don't worry about it. We had a great
event and thank you so much for
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