High Seas Hero Game Review: Navigating through Scaling Challenges

Speaker 1 That's why we don't see the game scaling that fast as we would expect

Speaker 1 fast.

Speaker 1 Usually, you see at least the curve. I will talk about it.
We'll talk about it. Let me finish.
So, it's out for a week. I know, I know.

Speaker 1 Is it broken?

Speaker 1 Is it broken, Joachim?

Speaker 1 It's missing features.

Speaker 1 How Whiteout Survival scaled and Truckstar is scaling, and everything. Oh, I know,

Speaker 1 it's your slow hockey stick. I know, I know, just saying, because I know this is

Speaker 1 it's 4 a.m. and we're rolling the dice.
Matei drops knowledge made of gold and ice. Felix with ads making those coins rise.
Jackup designs worlds chasing the sky.

Speaker 1 We're the two and a half gamers, the midnight crew, talking UA adverts and game design too. Mateish, Felix, Shaku, bringing the insight.
We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight.

Speaker 1 Mate, you aim as your eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.
Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise. Jackups crafter realms lift us to the highs.

Speaker 1 Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick, got your back.
Ads are beautiful, they like the way. Click it fast, don't delay.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Never mind. I lost where you here.

Speaker 1 Hello, everybody. My name is Matie Lantarich.
And I'm Jakob Ramier. Then I'm Felix Bruber.

Speaker 1 Oh, and we are your hosts, I guess.

Speaker 1 I guess.

Speaker 1 We are your guests. We are your guests.
You are the hosts.

Speaker 1 It's late at night. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4am vibe, as usual.

Speaker 1 4 a.m. discussion vibe.
As you might have noticed, we have a new intro and we have a new logo. And we also have merch.
So go to 25gamers.com and buy

Speaker 1 everything

Speaker 1 because then

Speaker 1 you're going to be cool.

Speaker 1 Oh man, I wish I had our merch in high school.

Speaker 1 So if you have kids or in high school,

Speaker 1 yeah, I'm also working on kids' collection because

Speaker 1 all of us are dead.

Speaker 1 Because yeah, because we have kids and they want the merch as well. And I know Adam wanted the merch for his kids.
So yeah, it's coming. It's coming.

Speaker 1 But anyway, yeah, we're actually talking about a game.

Speaker 1 Surprise, surprise.

Speaker 1 We are talking about the new game,

Speaker 1 and you're gonna shit your pants because

Speaker 1 we are not your typical surface-level podcast. We actually play the game, and we find

Speaker 1 hidden gems in those games. Uh, yeah, you will see.
You will see.

Speaker 1 You will see. Wait, wait, I have a question.

Speaker 1 If you're looking to scale a game, but you don't really have a UA budget, Marty, what do you do that?

Speaker 1 Oh my God, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 That's a very good question because today's episode is sponsored by PVX Partners, your go-to solution for flexible, non-dilutive user acquisition funding.

Speaker 1 So if you're scaling your game and your game business and you need capital, act now, maintain the control, retires flexible payments and fast funding.

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Thank you very much, Felix.

Speaker 1 That was a really, really good question.

Speaker 1 Man, two more episodes you turned into horse foods.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that's that's exactly what we are going to do because nobody cares about these

Speaker 1 jingles and uh creatives that are

Speaker 1 recorded. Yeah, nobody listens to that.
Everybody's just, you know, fast forward forward in 30 seconds. But this is the real shit.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Did you hear that someone thought we're sponsored by App Loving?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what I heard. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, exactly.

Speaker 1 Definitely not sponsored by Applevin. If we do like App Loving, we yeah, I know it's not ever gonna happen.
It's never gonna happen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so, but thank you very much. Yeah, well, we don't

Speaker 1 get to join.

Speaker 1 Exactly. As we said, you know,

Speaker 1 Felix,

Speaker 1 there's one thing that I wanted to ask as well. For my friend from Vietnam, he can't really, he doesn't really understand what we are talking about.
Do you have any advice?

Speaker 1 Yes, I do. If you are in Vietnam, Cambodia, Latino,

Speaker 1 Korea, Korea, Turkey, or Russia, don't you worry. We have translations for you.

Speaker 1 Just go down here, click subtitles, and select your language of choice, and you will be able to read and keep up with this two and a half steps ahead of the game industry fun.

Speaker 1 Yes. Okay, let's just move to the high Seas Heroes.

Speaker 1 We're like High Seas Hero. High Seas Hero from our dear friend Century Games.
And saying hi to Heaven and the whole Century Games team, because this,

Speaker 1 our dear listeners, is very interesting

Speaker 1 and how the fuck are you you having all those legendaries? Whoa,

Speaker 1 seriously, because I really played the game a lot.

Speaker 1 I played the game a lot, but I

Speaker 1 hated the game. What's your level?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know, man. 30.

Speaker 1 I'm half you, basically. It's just, yeah, let's see.
It's a little healthy. It's less than health.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 please. Just number us in half.
Yeah, it's obviously scale. But it's low.
Like, I really didn't like this game. So it's shameless to admit your level, basically.
No, it's not updating. It's a loading.

Speaker 1 Felix, why did you put Matte Lancharich

Speaker 1 under you? What the fuck?

Speaker 1 Oh, because I'm Jakob Ramiar.

Speaker 1 Always expect the unexpected.

Speaker 1 For those listening, Felix is again breaking Matteo on nameplates on Riverside. Yeah, it's actually 25.

Speaker 1 Yeah, let's cut the crap and actually talk about this. What do you mean, cut the crap? No, no, no.
No, of course. Let's go.
Yeah, let's do it. So

Speaker 1 we'll do a little bit of

Speaker 1 who's the best game designer challenge after me.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. Immediately what you see in this screen is what?

Speaker 1 A legend of mushrooms. Mushroom mushrooms.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 So the game starts pretty much like this.

Speaker 1 There's the girl that tells you a little bit of narrative. Like, we need to do this, we need to do that.
Not that much of a story. I was thinking that, okay,

Speaker 1 because we covered this game already on Softline Sonar, and I was like,

Speaker 1 Legend of Mushroom with Fallout Shelter, that could be interesting. Legend of Mushroom is really

Speaker 1 very automated long term, so it needs a little bit more engagement. Why not?

Speaker 1 And then I was like

Speaker 1 going around and like was in this way. Something doesn't add up.
Yeah, something doesn't add up. I was here like in fallout shelter style thing.

Speaker 1 Like there was no forex mechanics or nothing, but there was one thing. Hospital.

Speaker 1 One thing. No, no, no.
Not hospital yet. There was

Speaker 1 there were speed ups that were like in these time items as usual. And I was like.

Speaker 1 Did they really just couldn't, you know, resist and just put this as because they're just so good with forex? Or is this really a forex?

Speaker 1 And like, the more and more I pretty much go into this, and then what it took away was even before the map, there's this guild store, and there was this thing which just tells you

Speaker 1 that the guild teleport

Speaker 1 where stuff like oh, anywhere on the world map. What world map? You mean this feature that I didn't unlock before? Voila, which is not the world, it's hidden, it's just a television.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I was here and I was like,

Speaker 1 yeah, recon balloons, it should have down on me. Like, yeah, of course.
We were here.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 recon balloon radar.

Speaker 1 Yeah, all roads with forex, especially center games. So, what's that dramatic zoom with your camera? I love it.

Speaker 1 So, what's happening here is that the game starts as Legend of Mushroom that goes later into the

Speaker 1 this is

Speaker 1 no, no, this this is not full out shelter this is just full out shelter UI no not even UI this is just fallout shelter visual well we can say it's castle castle then no doesn't matter no look at this what is this oh yeah that's buildings

Speaker 1 now

Speaker 1 what do you see here idle tycoon no

Speaker 1 it's frozen city one to one oh wow okay it's basically frozen city one to one you have heroes that are controlling the rooms oh i see you have like workers that you need to set to the rooms you need these upgrades with three different resources, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 It's basically Frozen City. Frozen City.
So, what this actually is, is whiteout survival plus Legend of Mushroom. Plus Frozen City.
Frozen City is already part of Shiva.

Speaker 1 That's true. Yeah, that's true.
Fair. So that's actually this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, with a different theme. Yeah, because this

Speaker 1 ship thing, like, I think it's pretty good. Like, I

Speaker 1 don't really like that side-scrolling thing from both Legend of Slime and Legend of Mushroom. Like, this is, in my opinion, even a little bit better.

Speaker 1 If it switched into this, like, boss mode, if you're like approaching the boss during the changes, so oh shit, I got like airplane boss, but usually the boss is here on the right, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, you're gonna go fight it now. It's this like airplane thing, it's gonna probably kill me.
Oh, I don't know if I'm strong enough, just like 2.7 million power.

Speaker 1 Um, but that was a weird flex, Mr. Yaku, by the way.
So,

Speaker 1 nobody appreciated that flex, just to let you know. I know,

Speaker 1 especially these people that are just like 30k or whatever.

Speaker 1 So we move on, and

Speaker 1 we have pretty much a lot of mechanics. I think like every single mechanic from Legend of Mushroom and even more.
This screen on the top was usually quite empty and now it's completely full, as usual.

Speaker 1 This is their typical, like, you know, the lamp system where it just goes into this autoplay and like sells and builds equipment. And it's pretty much Legend of Mushroom.

Speaker 1 Again, yep.

Speaker 1 The forge and the numbers and the energy doesn't make any sense. Yeah, so in the beginning, yeah, there's you don't see like this, like, how do you control the forge?

Speaker 1 So this is the forge, this energy on the bottom, because there's just so much crap on the screen. There's so much.

Speaker 1 Where is the energy? That's the thing that they

Speaker 1 doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 No, like the index is here. It's It's not there within the indexes.
That's the problem. I was also confused in being like, how do I know how much this cost or whatever? It just costs one.

Speaker 1 And then you speed it up here into like this. Okay, but it was going up, then it was going down.
Yeah, because

Speaker 1 you get a lot of these whatever orbs if you move to another level here. Like Abyssal, if I move to Abyssal 3 now, if I complete the 9, I get like a lot of stuff in

Speaker 1 basically somehow. Like the game game doesn't really tell you just blends in the inventory and that can be confusing so yeah definitely i got the same feeling there because they there was my my my

Speaker 1 translation point like oh this is forex because this doesn't make sense for me it was for me it was the that nothing made sense and then that like they had a chat feature at the bottom i'm like hmm a chat feature

Speaker 1 legend of mushroom has a chat legend of mushroom has

Speaker 1 also nothing nothing there it's pretty much the timer uh currency and then later on, of course, they have the

Speaker 1 actually, we can talk a lot about like, let me finish the Legend of Mushroom Frozen CD part, and we'll go into Forex pretty deep now because this is not your traditional Forex.

Speaker 1 I think there are still problems with it. That's why we don't see the game scaling that fast as we would expect it.

Speaker 1 Fast,

Speaker 1 usually, you see at least the curve. I will talk about it.
We'll talk about it. Let me finish.

Speaker 1 It's out for a week. I know.
I know.

Speaker 1 Is it broken?

Speaker 1 Is it broken, Joko?

Speaker 1 It's missing features.

Speaker 1 How Whiteout Survival scaled and Trackstar is scaling and everything. No, I know.
I don't slow hockey stick. That's your slow hockey stick.
I know, I know. Just saying.

Speaker 1 Because I know this just doesn't work. For instance, do you see why I have 84k gems here?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because you don't need to spend it anywhere. Exactly.
That's some kind of issue, basically. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, um, the thing is that cheap fuck, you wouldn't spend it anyway.

Speaker 1 The thing is that

Speaker 1 the whole thing with Forex is that it's released on servers. And that's the same for Legend of Mushroom and all these kind of idle RPGs.

Speaker 1 They are within these like blocks of servers and players are matched against each other on the server, as we had can here, and we were talking about this.

Speaker 1 And once the server kind of consolidates, everybody fights each other with Forex. In Legend of Mushroom, it's a little bit different.
They they move you to another server much faster.

Speaker 1 But what's happening here, like these features, for instance here,

Speaker 1 the feature is literally locked by day 12 since server launched. Today is my day seven since server launched and I just can't even have this feature.

Speaker 1 Same goes for these, like these are not even available.

Speaker 1 Those are available in Legend of Machine, like this addition, like for instance these mounts or the whatever, Emerald Edge and all of these like different uh pros and like whatnot, blah blah blah, whatever.

Speaker 1 So they're they're literally locking the functionality. Even the whole Forex functionality was locked, like the balloon and everything, like this thing, this was locked like day three.

Speaker 1 So they even wouldn't let you into the Forex start in the beginning, which is a little bit different than like, I guess, the other games where if you can just, you know, money pull through it, you can do that.

Speaker 1 They wouldn't allow it here.

Speaker 1 The other thing is that

Speaker 1 I think they're kind of too generous.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's by just me me completing all these events and like 4,000 free draws and like stuff like this, but I'm just like

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 think I'm kinda getting too strong too fast compared to the other experiences that I have with Last War and Top Heroes and all these other Forex games or you mean all these other Forex games from River Game?

Speaker 1 Yeah, not only River Game, even what was the last one we covered also?

Speaker 1 Well what was it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we covered some other Forex game that wasn't.

Speaker 1 I covered Total Battle.

Speaker 1 Total Battle. Even Top Girl.
Top Girl. Top Girl.
Top Girl. Top Girl, I meant.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's kind of

Speaker 1 slightly different Forex, as you mentioned. You see, people that are just much more stronger than me.
I don't know why it is. Because even if I go...

Speaker 1 By the way,

Speaker 1 also, also... No, I don't suck.
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 Because they also have this captive mechanic. You remember from Legend of Marshalls, where you can capture other players.
I have no master,

Speaker 1 nobody was able to capture me yet, basically, because I'm so high-level. And I have like five slaves.
I can instead of so high-level, you could join the other podcast.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you can, you won't throw tomatoes.

Speaker 1 Well, I think you just came to Lisbon.

Speaker 1 It just came to Lisbon and arrived at Lisbon.

Speaker 1 So you can throw paintball, oil barrels, and time the bombs on these players so you can poke them or what.

Speaker 1 But it's it's is is the usual thing, like you pick some kind of player, for instance this one, yeah, one point seven million, let's go.

Speaker 1 And you defeat him in battle and then you capture him for a week until he either gets stronger or calls a friend, kind of defeats you and stuff. So it's like one-to-one Legend of Mushroom, basically.

Speaker 1 And then it's like another idle mechanic ruled on top of it. You have also the base idle mechanic here, which is again Legend of Mushroom, nothing to it.
So, that's all there.

Speaker 1 There's, by the way, there's a lot of ads, as in Legend of Mushroom. There's like, I would say,

Speaker 1 Shitonovitz placement. We just didn't see them, Felix, because it didn't get that far.
He did. He did.
I saw this for them as well. I saw them.

Speaker 1 Did you saw this?

Speaker 1 The expedition, I was just one step.

Speaker 1 It doesn't matter. It's a Forex game.

Speaker 1 I just don't really matter like yeah yeah but like it's just there as a like camouflage yeah exactly yeah it's a decoy it's a decoy you don't do and then you already invested three days in it before you realize it's a weather balloon and then you're like yeah so let's go to the cabin so at some point i unlock this cabin and it looks like for lock chatter it's not it's pretty much direct copy of frozen city like all of these kind of sleeping quarters and the beds and like even this machine which is the engine room which controls the temperature that you can turn off, turn on, super size.

Speaker 1 It's basically Frozen City one-to-one.

Speaker 1 They have the template already, so

Speaker 1 this is whiteout survival plus legend of mushroom, yeah, until I tell you why it's not because it's missing for its features.

Speaker 1 So, uh, and this is where stuff starts to be a little bit different. Because already, if you remember that panel of Legend of Mushroom, they have different metagame features.

Speaker 1 They have capturing a place, but they have this like parking spot and whatever. They don't have that.
They, for instance, have this Intel Center.

Speaker 1 This is the same thing, like the one where you re-roll these stats and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 The weather balloon, of course, that's our usual, like guiding the players to the Forex map to kind of do mechanics and stuff like that. Yeah, helping players or, I don't know, resources, bosses.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I can go and like, again, to a normal classic weather balloon, like streamlined forex quests.

Speaker 1 But if we go here, so the important stuff is soldiers hospitals. So at some point, they give you this porting.

Speaker 1 So porting is basically the capacity of your soldier. Soldiers in these games are called gunboats.
Yeah. And those are your soldiers.
This is pretty problematic.

Speaker 1 Because in normal Forex game, you don't have capacity. They actually

Speaker 1 force you, not force you, but they...

Speaker 1 Really try to tempt you to create as much soldiers as possible and then in hospital can keep up.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, you have too much soldiers, not much hospital capacity. Somebody kills you.
You lose a lot of soldiers. You need to pay, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 Here, you have this gumboard capacity that gets increased very, very slowly, like which is even less than 10%

Speaker 1 by the level.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then they have a lot of quests where you just pick up random

Speaker 1 level one gunboats. And then you pretty much break your production.
Because I just like,

Speaker 1 I can't.

Speaker 1 I can't collect the ships that I just created because this thing can be upgraded only if I have engine room level level 10 and engine room level 10 will take probably ages to upgrade and you need you need to upgrade the med bay yeah and it's like very capped in my opinion this is not that good and it's actually prohibiting stuff um the other thing is yeah there's repair dog which is i think

Speaker 1 repairing something

Speaker 1 this is actually no this is actually hospital the med bay is the frozen city version of the hospital so there are actually two hospitals so

Speaker 1 the let's say the soldiers are kind of kept, which is unintuitive for a forex. This is not how usually forex works.
I don't never saw this yet in this setup.

Speaker 1 And now we go to the map, and this is the crux of the problem. Yet, I don't know why is this maybe because

Speaker 1 80% of these people don't know yet that they're playing Forex, absolutely. And the puffin 49 does not know he's playing Forex.
I guess hell already.

Speaker 1 So, literally, this is the part where like Neo wokes up from the Kokeon and see

Speaker 1 everybody else like playing it.

Speaker 1 So I'm here basically at this point. Red-pilled.

Speaker 1 Red-pilled, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you would see like, you know, Forex maps. So you would see what? You would see these lines, like people going around and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Clans and territories and stuff. There's nothing here.

Speaker 1 But the N6 thing. The little thing with claws.
Where?

Speaker 1 This is a random monster, nothing.

Speaker 1 Bullshit. but you don't see any like gathering things.
Like, you can go and search and like go gather these nodes, like okay.

Speaker 1 But I don't see even like the center of the map. I can't zoom out.
I just can't. It's not possible.
There's not the like try, try with fingers. Oh, wait, you don't play on the mobile phone.

Speaker 1 And I can zoom in. It's not a problem on emulator.
I know how these things work. It's just that they don't have these features.

Speaker 1 They don't have like clan-based events on on the map, or like usual feature set of a forex at this point already tries to drive you towards like

Speaker 1 battles with guilds and like resources battles on the map or whatnot. It's kind of too late here.
I don't know if it's not even like

Speaker 1 maybe they're saving it, or I don't know what's the plan, but it's not finished. Look at how White Out Survival launched, like in terms of the revenues and the stuff.

Speaker 1 Oh, you mean the shape of the curve? Yeah, the shape of the curve. Because it was quite.

Speaker 1 We checked it very early. Early.

Speaker 1 We were two and a half steps ahead of everyone. Exactly, because with the frozen city, we did the same thing.

Speaker 1 And it was really, well, not really slow, but look.

Speaker 1 You see, I mean, you see it.

Speaker 1 Slow hockey stick. Maybe it went down, huh?

Speaker 1 Well, that would be in Jakub's book.

Speaker 1 It's almost that. Do unified apps instead of countries?

Speaker 1 Look, look how look. It's basically 20k per day.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But did she like, see, the

Speaker 1 okay,

Speaker 1 I mean, yes, it's going up afterwards, but

Speaker 1 but I'm just very concerned why they are not these big things. They know these things, right? They will add it, right? Like, it's not like they don't know.
It's not even the big thing.

Speaker 1 They just didn't unlock them. Yeah, exactly.
I think they're like they're similar as this, like feature not available or like feature and look i think they're just trying to hide the the forex

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 as long as

Speaker 1 as long as you can yeah yeah

Speaker 1 so that basically i matrix their way into this

Speaker 1 i mean i don't know honestly honestly you just

Speaker 1 you know and the the biggest problem for me is that i have shit ton of resources i mean like look at these upgrades this is the main building yeah

Speaker 1 i have 70 million of food, 36 million of metal, and these upgrades are like nothing to me. And on top of it, I have like yet you still didn't

Speaker 1 upgrade the medbay to level 12.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 I have still like all of these crates, like 1333 crates, and each of those, like, more than like

Speaker 1 340k of food, each single one.

Speaker 1 Very good.

Speaker 1 If you're so rich, why don't you fix the glitch?

Speaker 1 No, man, like, it's just

Speaker 1 I don't, I don't know, like, the monetization, in my opinion, it just works differently. Maybe they're trying something else.
I don't see. I don't know.

Speaker 1 But just saying that usually when I play Forex at this point, like, I'm just engaged much more in Forex because in Forex, I don't even do much Forex stuff in this life.

Speaker 1 Just read those two messages. I don't know what to do with my boat.
Me too.

Speaker 1 People are confused. Salty bread.

Speaker 1 Hey, Bob, why do you idolize me? I idolize you. I don't know what to do with my boat on my port.
Me too. See,

Speaker 1 and there's like this is more of a like legend of mushroom chat where people are begging other, like, I've been captured, please help me, and like, get rid of my master and stuff.

Speaker 1 This is not Forex stuff. Yeah, so

Speaker 1 I don't really know. And all maybe they're sick of forexes, just like me.
Man, nobody's sick of Forex. Forex is a money printer.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, like, there's guild bosses and shit, which is again like same thing.
And there's our Godzilla. Yeah, there's our mega Godzilla.

Speaker 1 Oh wait, quick, call the app, please. Oh, wait.
There isn't one.

Speaker 1 Honestly, until day five,

Speaker 1 like the game was super, super good to progress. I really, like, you see it.
Like, I play it like hell. pretty much all the time.

Speaker 1 I'm even higher than my guild master, basically, in my progress.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, it's great because you progress in one vertical achievement my friend yeah another vertical third vertical whatever you just go there oh yeah here we are so yeah out of these i don't know how many people 63

Speaker 1 yeah so it's super super good but then like it kind of stales because it's really good and i think this is the good innovation that for instance if i go to the map and I

Speaker 1 say let's attack something

Speaker 1 yeah here we go. Even it's shit.
Doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 So what you're sending, you're sending actually your ship. Like, of course, you're sending your gunboats, but you're pretty much sending the whole Legend of Mushroom game to fight with monsters.

Speaker 1 That's great. Yeah, yeah.
Because like you worked so hard for it. Now you can finally use it and test it because that's like the main source of your power now.

Speaker 1 Not like, I guess, soldiers doesn't really count that way. But yeah.
That's it. And you do that.
That's amazing. But,

Speaker 1 you know, that's, by the way, that's the thing I was arguing when we were talking about Legend of Mushroom back then.

Speaker 1 Like, I wanted for them to uh do a forex metagame, and the last thing I was waiting for stupid parking wall, I thought it would be a forex, it was not. It was some

Speaker 1 and these guys probably heard that and they did that. So, yeah, don't flatter yourself, Mr.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, but everybody

Speaker 1 legend of mushroom these days, it can't be better than Habi are copying Legend of Mushrooms.

Speaker 1 You remember in Shanghai, joint games, those two gentlemen are good friends of heaven. Of course they are.
They know, they share,

Speaker 1 they work together on things, I guess, and they really share the knowledge. So it was just a matter of time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like for sure, like everybody is now going after Ajando Mashu because they see how good their monetization tactics are. And it's like how, like, even their events.

Speaker 1 Except the US and Europe. Like, for instance, this thing, like, those events.
Like, these events are just so money hungry. Like pretty much the tasks for the events, I did all of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is this is

Speaker 1 one prize, or sorry, two prizes out of the thing. And this is it.
Like this is the free to play budget. If you don't spend money, you get shit in these events.
That's why they're so money hungry.

Speaker 1 So yeah, everybody's copying this because it's just like completely payer-oriented. But the thing is that,

Speaker 1 yeah, I don't know. I'm just maybe I will definitely keep an eye on this.
Like

Speaker 1 they definitely know what they're doing. Like, they're the best ones to kind of try this iteration and do this kind of bold things.
But yeah, let's see. The

Speaker 1 bad news for everybody else, pretty much, is that now you don't need to only build one extra game for your forex, but you actually need to build two,

Speaker 1 which these guys already have. So maybe we are looking at the start of the century games template where there's like, you know, it started with Frozen City and White Out Survival.

Speaker 1 Now we have the base, which is Frozen City plus White Out Survival, and we add another game on top, which is Legend of Mushroom. Legend of Mushroom,

Speaker 1 which is starting to happen now, because I guess the

Speaker 1 you know, Frozen City works very well with the Forex thing because it's an idler that you easily swap the Forex kind of a town building for, and it makes much more sense.

Speaker 1 Like, if you take, for instance, Last War or Top Heroes, that city is kind of crap. It's like the usual Forex.
It's not upgrades.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Here you have the, you know, the building, the story, the characters, and you need to, you know, feed them, blah, blah, blah.
They have like, you know,

Speaker 1 where they are. Kitchen.
Yeah, here we are. Like the same pretty much icons here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, these things. So hunger and stuff like that.
Sleep. I don't know what.
Daily cycles of like working. And it's pretty much Frozen CD.

Speaker 1 So yeah, this works very well. They have like so much experience with this.
But yeah, I'm just waiting when they pull out the big guns with forex because they're definitely didn't yet.

Speaker 1 Maybe they're just waiting. I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't think they're spending so much money though. Yeah, yeah, I guess they're testing because, again, but this is it global lunch.
Is it global? Is it not just Asian lunch? It's global.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're looking at the white house.

Speaker 1 Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 1 Sorry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so we see 40k a day in Caesar Tower, but as that, it's like doesn't mean anything pretty much at this point.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's too early. Yeah, but it's global lunch also.

Speaker 1 It is, yeah, it's not not the hobby style of Asia lunch first, US afterwards. No, look at the Taiwan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it's there. It's there.
I know, but at the first spot. Yeah, but right now,

Speaker 1 so yeah, this is global. As usual, I mean, it is global for sure.

Speaker 1 So, how much money they make on that?

Speaker 1 Seven Euros?

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Last time I did this, like, uh, what was it? It was like $400 a day on Forex, but it doesn't matter. Ads here is like

Speaker 1 a whole

Speaker 1 lot of ad placements, man. A lot of advice.

Speaker 1 That makes sense because, look,

Speaker 1 it's still the first week where people don't really know this is a Forex. Like, that's exactly the point where they should make money.
What's it DAU?

Speaker 1 It doesn't matter because it's too early, but

Speaker 1 I won't even show. How many downloads?

Speaker 1 65k a day.

Speaker 1 So same as,

Speaker 1 yeah, I will just need to make it like let it let it uh live a little bit longer.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, but the ads are like shit ton of them. So, like, there's two here,

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 one, two, three, two here,

Speaker 1 eight here,

Speaker 1 four for speed ups,

Speaker 1 um,

Speaker 1 another for

Speaker 1 here.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 Where we are. I think energy.
No, this is not for ad.

Speaker 1 I think like two more somewhere.

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably here. Here.
Gotcha. The usual.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Three here.
By the way, Felix, did you notice this?

Speaker 1 The drop-in one?

Speaker 1 No, I didn't. The weapons, gotcha.
No.

Speaker 1 You see this problem here. I can play this ad.
It's not ready. You see here? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I can play the ad for weapons. Why?

Speaker 1 what do you mean why

Speaker 1 you didn't check it no i didn't know you would know because they pre-rolled their own ad

Speaker 1 you play

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 yeah definitely something is not up to something as it should be because this is the case all the time

Speaker 1 yes only you know maybe what they're doing then is like what they could actually be doing is they're camouflaging it by showing ad placements, but they don't want to risk losing the valuable users, so they only show their own ads.

Speaker 1 But only here, only here, only in weapons. In heroes and all the other tabs, they work normally.
There's like

Speaker 1 but yeah, it's very, very suspicious there.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 so yeah, well, I didn't click on those ads at all.

Speaker 1 You watched those ads? Of course, man, I watched so fucking many ads.

Speaker 1 Of course, you did because you're cheap. Fuck.
No, because I wanted to play the game. That's why.
And know how it works. Nice.
I mean, so yeah, and

Speaker 1 the thing is that they have a lot of monetization in it. Like this is pretty much cutting edge as usual.
Like I don't see any problems with that. And this is again typical Legend of Mushroom stuff.

Speaker 1 Lots of equipment funds and whatnot like this. And by the way, have you seen surveys? Yes, right away from the very beginning.
This is the fourth survey they do.

Speaker 1 And like they ask so precise questions.

Speaker 1 It's like,

Speaker 1 yeah, for instance, very specific gameplay metrics.

Speaker 1 But I think they also do...

Speaker 1 Yeah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 I think they were asking for

Speaker 1 specific competitor games.

Speaker 1 Like if you play those or if you don't play.

Speaker 1 I can remember. yeah, not here in this survey, so in some other survey, there are literally like a list of games.
And if you do play, and how often do you play?

Speaker 1 And this is the third survey, and it's pretty big in incentive. It's yeah, it's quite long.

Speaker 1 Frozen City, they were doing the same as Frozen City. Yeah,

Speaker 1 as long as

Speaker 1 the form to get into the new

Speaker 1 Supercell game.

Speaker 1 Okay, nice. So, yeah, let's see what you have.
It's all about the game. So, we're looking at how Jakub randomly thinked the survey.
Oh, here you go.

Speaker 1 Getting another

Speaker 1 speed times. This is also two more.
See, if I press this.

Speaker 1 Oh, shit, not ready.

Speaker 1 In your face.

Speaker 1 In your face.

Speaker 1 Let me try, maybe restart the game because I'm later sometimes. Yeah, it's anything interesting, I'll like accept what you just said.
Because this is super interesting. And first look

Speaker 1 wouldn't say it's a forex. Second look, wouldn't say it's a forex.
Third look, maybe.

Speaker 1 Fourth look, oh fuck, yeah, this is a forex.

Speaker 1 That got me there, definitely. Yeah, the guy

Speaker 1 shit. Why not ready? Yeah, the ads is not ready.
You're in Slovakia. I was definitely watching ads before.

Speaker 1 Everything is grayed out. There we go.
Okay, fine.

Speaker 1 Nonogram. What's your nonogram? Nonogram.
Zero. I don't know.
Zero. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Zero.

Speaker 1 All some some other IQ bullshit. Yeah.
Isn't IQ? Yeah, but you see, they do normal ads. They do.

Speaker 1 I would have a lot of ads for like

Speaker 1 RPG, gotcha games, for sure. A lot of Homer games, like voodoo stuff, and stuff like that.
Like, yeah, I would see normal, like, you know, mid-core RPG stuff here. I've seen like 20 interstitials.

Speaker 1 Where? No.

Speaker 1 No, not in this game. Not in this game at all.

Speaker 1 So, are these guys also the king of UA or this is too early?

Speaker 1 Too early that we can think

Speaker 1 that many things. I mean, they are kings on other games.
But if you if you let me uh share

Speaker 1 let me just do one more ad if it like goes into yeah i can i can tell you in the in the meantime it's actually you google uploading facebook

Speaker 1 that's it

Speaker 1 which doesn't really seem right

Speaker 1 because we know

Speaker 1 that they are running everything

Speaker 1 almost everywhere. And then I was looking into the Google Ads Transparency and I found the one

Speaker 1 ads transparency. The found the one ad that I saw in the sensor tower as well.
But oh my god, how many games they are running! You will be surprised.

Speaker 1 I'm just gonna say,

Speaker 1 maybe i will be able to share the screen but you then

Speaker 1 sentry games here we go oh look at that uh

Speaker 1 that's idle for sure or golden gobblies oh no no no that's the zombie the zombie different game yeah yeah yeah i know yes that's the zombie game the

Speaker 1 idle zombie minor minor

Speaker 1 Yes, Idol Zombie Minor Gold Tycoon with the very

Speaker 1 I know it's all the keywords.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 idle zombie minor gold tycoon. Okay.

Speaker 1 I've seen this. Yeah, here you go.

Speaker 1 Before. Oh, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for listening. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait a second. Okay.

Speaker 1 Here. I can actually go here so you have

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 idea what exactly they are running in the US look.

Speaker 1 Oops. Do I see AI?

Speaker 1 Yes, but this is why

Speaker 1 this is basic century games because if you go to Google, that transparency is the whole account. So I really had to scroll down.
I didn't even know they have coloring game, color

Speaker 1 Oasis. They have everything by now, right? They're dipping their toast everywhere.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Idol Mafia.
What do you do these days, Century Games? Yes. Yes.
Yes. By the way, the Idol Mafia, we should definitely talk about because that's one of their

Speaker 1 flagship titles from the good old days, let's say.

Speaker 1 Where's the uh, okay, you know,

Speaker 1 I just I don't have

Speaker 1 high

Speaker 1 seas,

Speaker 1 yes, it's there is the one

Speaker 1 and what is this legend of mushroom?

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is pretty much the classic gameplay.

Speaker 1 Jesus. I mean, this

Speaker 1 this is so good.

Speaker 1 I mean, why is it good? Why is it good? No, I mean, this is some old build.

Speaker 1 It's also

Speaker 1 good

Speaker 1 because it's, I need to zoom in like 10 times. The only interesting part on this is they actually share its App Store.
So it's iOS.

Speaker 1 That was really interesting because usually you don't run your iOS campaigns on Google. I mean, if you're Century Games, you run everything everywhere.
But still, it was interesting.

Speaker 1 so it's

Speaker 1 this is the eye this is the boss you played

Speaker 1 and we have few more which is it's still it's still everything is very plain gameplay

Speaker 1 which doesn't really add up right

Speaker 1 maybe we got guys i have a wild theory

Speaker 1 yeah maybe we finally go to the point where forex

Speaker 1 you know they know that they're gonna get copied

Speaker 1 So they're going to.

Speaker 1 No, no,

Speaker 1 no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Please, everybody else copies it.

Speaker 1 So it's basically my decoy plan

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 we were in South Korea and you were asking what I'm going to have for dinner. And I said, Vanila Smoothie, and you almost ordered it because that was a fucking decoy.

Speaker 1 So that's the decoy we're talking about. Oh my God.
No, no, no, no, man.

Speaker 1 That would be very, very, very expensive decoy. You know why?

Speaker 1 Because if you look at the River Games portfolio, Last War is literally printing money. Dark War is really, really growing.
Top Heroes growing.

Speaker 1 And then they have this top heroes adventure you showed us in the, I don't know where, in Soft Launch, maybe. It seems it's top heroes also.
It's just different summary issues. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So the top heroes kind of template. It's like, come on.
Like they are really, really, really pushing this. So I don't think Sentry games can afford using decoys.
Decoys. Yeah, decoy.

Speaker 1 Decoy games. Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's not really possible, I think.

Speaker 1 This is no sound, Jesus. Yeah.
But it's... Look,

Speaker 1 we discussed this with Evan a little bit.

Speaker 1 I said this has definitely high CPIs.

Speaker 1 And then we agreed it's too early to tell. That's what I would say because

Speaker 1 it's an interesting

Speaker 1 theme.

Speaker 1 Let's call it that way. It's definitely not even

Speaker 1 like showing Legend of Mushroom. Like, this is basically

Speaker 1 it's just, yeah, gunship battles.

Speaker 1 Nothing else. Like, why would you? Why, why, on, why on earth do you would show Legend of Mushroom? You remember remember these tanks shooting each other, turn-based? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's basically it. We just better graphics.
Well, the words were Mageddon, but with both.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Godzilla, obviously, some

Speaker 1 Chinese creatives, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's like, we don't really have that much left.

Speaker 1 That's why I'm kind of puzzled, like, why this is global launched when they're obviously still testing some stuff.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean

Speaker 1 it's not it's not that you global launch and you you push everything

Speaker 1 they have a website for this like that was like announcing everything. Yeah, they weren't announcing everything even pre-registration you could look for this

Speaker 1 yeah but you know it's like that's bullshit

Speaker 1 Do we have something else to say?

Speaker 1 We have this

Speaker 1 yeah it's the same thing we have this uh static image. Oh no, it's actually

Speaker 1 it was actually sent into

Speaker 1 into the store. Okay, good.
Yeah, so it's it's yeah, now it's all gameplay oriented. Uh but let's check actually the the uploading at least

Speaker 1 because I had this interesting discussion recently with the with the

Speaker 1 one

Speaker 1 guy about the uploading. You know

Speaker 1 basically

Speaker 1 you're dependent on how upload works. And this is this is the kind of like

Speaker 1 my not prediction, but my way of thinking: like, where is this going? Because we were talking about how UA is your game design.

Speaker 1 So now, what basically you are doing, and we discussed it in the episode about color, uh, block, color, blockchain.

Speaker 1 Not exactly the same thing what I'm gonna say, but kind of I was trying to get there, but I was constantly

Speaker 1 that you know, you need to design the game around the UA, and now you're kind of designing the game to send as many events as possible to the UA channel so you can actually scale.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, that's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 Explain that again. So,

Speaker 1 neat game with early monetization.

Speaker 1 That's exactly. So, that's like the not as early as possible, but at least in the first seven days.
And you need to hit the threshold of 10 to 15 unique purchases, ideally more.

Speaker 1 So you have more data to send back to Aplavin and any other channel, but mainly Aplavin, since it's the top channel right there.

Speaker 1 So you need to take this into consideration when you actually design the game. No, when you design the decoy game, the fake onboarding game.
Yeah, but then like the fake onboarding game as a design.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the fake onboarding is just it's very fast. You still, after you onboard the user, they need to play the rest.

Speaker 1 But yes, yeah, you need to design that.

Speaker 1 The sophistication here is that we are not even doing like random gameplay that works in hypercasual creative anymore.

Speaker 1 We need to do something that works on those creatives, plus, it already needs to monetize superfluous

Speaker 1 events.

Speaker 1 So what happens to lure you into Forex afterwards and still work together so what happens with app-loving campaigns if you don't have a purchase in the first seven days it's it's dead it's it's dead

Speaker 1 dead they got ad roads they got blended roas you tell you yes but how

Speaker 1 do we blend them out on the forex game that's first question the second question yeah like how can you use adroas in this in this case no you can't you have say yeah you have more that's why they added so many ad placements no they would need need to mediate with max, but it doesn't really

Speaker 1 core, man. That's it.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 And the Legend of Mushroom had like, well, like 10% ads or 15. It was very small.

Speaker 1 It's

Speaker 1 really negligible. And

Speaker 1 this is the future, right? So you need to have the

Speaker 1 fake onboarding. And then design it in a way that you actually get as many events as possible to the UA channels, which is in this case, event is purchase.

Speaker 1 And you need to design the economy so you don't really destroy it in the first seven days when you just randomly send purchases into the UA channels.

Speaker 1 So, so that's this is the moment we cross from 60 to 70 percent regarding the responsibility of UA for the success of your product.

Speaker 1 Exactly,

Speaker 1 it's just insane. Insane, Felix,

Speaker 1 very, very confused. Yeah, if a confused Felix appeared.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. You know what you're saying?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. I'm just kind of mind-blown because it makes so much sense.
It's just nuts.

Speaker 1 Okay, and this is applicable. So yeah, they have multiple things.
Obviously, the baseline is there. I mean, I can't talk about their,

Speaker 1 but like they're not... they don't know what they're doing.
Of course, they know

Speaker 1 exactly what they're doing. Yeah, they won't see.
Yeah, they're spending a shit ton of money on right that survival.

Speaker 1 Obviously, they won't be like, oh, well, this is the game, I'm we don't know what we're doing. Created with Cocos.
Okay, great.

Speaker 1 Anyway, so yeah.

Speaker 1 There is the boss and we play and then we fail because I'm just literally think they're probably hiding Forex part.

Speaker 1 They're literally hiding it forcefully, probably.

Speaker 1 I think so as well.

Speaker 1 I I really wonder I I'll keep the game on my tab and uh definitely return it on the review radar and uh I'll see what happens of after day 12. If after day 12, they fully unlocked Forex feature set.

Speaker 1 Super curious.

Speaker 1 Unlock a puzzler.

Speaker 1 You don't know. For sure, man.
Hexasort.

Speaker 1 Of course, because hexagons.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Okay, I think we should end. Yeah, I think we should end.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 If we are the best tags, we should always have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 All right, but it's super interesting. Like, game with three cores, we didn't have that before.
That's a giant leap for mankind production-wise. No, no, no, no, for mankind.

Speaker 1 For like everybody else that doesn't have this template, man. Like, think about it.

Speaker 1 You don't have whiteout survival template, you can do shit because these guys already are one step ahead, beat like the third core. And what can you do? You start building these three cores.

Speaker 1 By the time you build these three cores, they'll build the fourth one.

Speaker 1 Yeah, then we're gonna be the fourth. Then we're gonna be four and a half gamers.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, what comes after four cores?

Speaker 1 Yeah, thank you very much for listening, guys. Please share this episode with everybody because they really want to know this is a forex game.
So they play and they pay

Speaker 1 because uh, whatever. Okay, thank you very much, guys.
Uh, join the Slack channel, buy the merch so you're cool.

Speaker 1 And uh, see you next time. Bye-bye.