High Seas Hero Game Review: Navigating through Scaling Challenges

That's why we don't see the game scaling that fast as we would expect. Why not fast? Usually you see at least the curve.
I will talk about it. Let me finish.
It's out for a week. I know.
Is it broken, Jakob? Look at how Whiteout Survival scaled and Trackstar is scaling and everything is slow. I know, I know, I know, slow hockey stick.

It's your slow hockey stick.

I know, I know, justob, 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 colors like a wizard in disguise Jakob's crafting realms, lift 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 never mind i lost where you're here you are hello everybody my name is mate Lantaric. And I'm Jakub Remier.
And I'm Felix Braber. Ooh, and we are your hosts, I guess.
I guess, yeah. I guess.
We are your guests. We are your guests.
You are the hosts. It's late at night.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Forum vibe, as usual.
Forum 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 everything because then you're going to be cool.

Oh, man.

I wish I had our merch in high school.

So if you have kids,

you're in high school.

Is it?

Yeah, I'm also working on the kids collection because...

Because all of us are dads.

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

but anyway we're actually talking about

a game

surprise surprise

we are talking

about the new game

and you are gonna shit your

pants because

we are not your

typical surface level podcast

we actually play the game and we find hidden gems in those games. Yeah, you will see.
You will see. I have a question.
If you're looking to scale a game or you don't really have a UA budget, what do you do do you do that oh my god thank you very much 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 so if you're scaling your game and your game business and you need capital act now maintain the controlaintain the control. There's flexible payments and fast funding so you can actually receive a term sheet in 24 hours and the funding within 30 days.
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Thank you very much, Felix. That was a really, really good question.
Two more episodes, you turn into horse fuchs. Yeah, but that's exactly what we're going to do because nobody cares about these jingles and creatives that are recorded.
Nobody listens to that. Everybody is just fast forwarding 30 seconds, but this is the real shit.
Did you hear that someone thought we're sponsored by Applovin? Yeah, that's what I heard. They're being on the podcast and they're not allowed to come on.
Exactly. Definitely not sponsored by Applovin.
We do like Applovin uploading that's not ever going to happen

yeah so but thank you very much

yeah well we don't

get sponsored by uploading

exactly

you know Felix

there's one thing

I wanted to ask as well for my friend

from Vietnam he can't really

he don't really understand what

we're talking about do you have any advice

yes I do

Thank you. 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.
Yes. Okay.
Let's just move to the 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, our dear listeners, is very interesting.

And how the fuck are you having all those legendaries?

Whoa.

Seriously.

Because I really played the game a lot.

I played the game a lot, but I hated the game. What's your level? I don't know.
I'm half you, basically. It's just, yeah, let's see.
It's not half. It's less than half.
Yeah, please. Just numbers in half.
It's low. I really didn't like this game.
So it's shameless to admit your level, basically. No, it's updating.
It's unloading. Felix, why did you put Matej Lancharich under you? What the fuck? Oh, because I'm Jakob Remia.
Always expect the unexpected. For those listening feelings is again pranking on nameplates on Riverside yeah it's actually 25 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 we um let's do it we'll do a little bit of uh who's the best game designer challenge after me so yeah immediately what you see in this screen is what a legend of mushroom mushroom exactly so the game starts pretty much like this uh there's a girl that tells you like 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 because we covered this game already on softland sonar and i was like legend of mushroom with fallout shelter that could be interesting legend of mushroom is really like very automated long term so it needs a little bit more engagement.
Why not? And then I was like going around and like,

something doesn't add up.

Yeah.

Something doesn't add up.

I was here like in full out shelter style thing.

Like there was no forex mechanics or nothing,

but there was one thing.

Hospital.

One thing.

No,

no,

no,

not hospital yet.

There was,

um,

there were speed ups that were like in these time items as usual and i was like 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 and like the more and more i pretty much go into this and then what it it took away was even before the map, there's this guild store and there was this thing, which just tells you that guild teleport. Yeah.
Where stuff like, oh, anywhere on the world map. What world map? You mean this feature that I didn't unlock before? Which is not world.

It's hidden.

It's just a question.

Yeah, because I was here and I was like, yeah, Recon Balloons, it should have down on me.

Like, yeah, of course, we were here.

So.

Ooh, Recon Balloon Radar.

Yeah, all horrors leads to 4X, especially with center games.

So what's happening? That dramatic zoom with your camera, I love it. Yeah.
Yeah. So what's happening here is that the game starts as Legend of Mushroom.
That goes later into the... This is, by the way...
Fallout Shelter. No, no, this is not Fallout Shelter.
This is just Fallout Shelter UI. No, not even UI.
This is just Fallout Shelter visual. Well, we can say it's Castle Castle then.
No, no, no. Look at this.
What is this? Oh, yeah, that's buildings. Now, what do you see here? Idle Tycoon.
No. It's Frozen City 1 to 1.
Oh, wow, okay. It's basically Frozen City 1 to 1.
You have heroes that are controlling the rooms. 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 it's basically frozen city frozen city so what this actually is is whiteout survival plus legend of mushroom plus frozen city frozen budget survival.
Yeah, that's true. Fair.
So that's actually this. Yeah, with a different theme.
Yeah, because this ship thing, I think it's pretty good. I don't really like that side-scrolling thing from both Legend of Slime and Legend of Mushroom.
This is, in my even a little bit better if it switch 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 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 um that was a weird flex by the way nobody appreciated that flex just to let you know I know especially these people that are just like so we move on and 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 uh quite uh empty and now it's completely full as usual this is their typical like you know the the lamp system where it just goes into this autoplay and like sells and builds equipment and it's pretty much legend of mushroom.

Again,

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 so this is the forge this energy on the bottom because there's just so much crap on the screen on this where is the energy that's

the thing that doesn't exist no like the index is here it's not there within the indexes that's the problem i was also confused and being like how do i know how much this cost or whatever it just cost one and then you speed it up here into like this okay but there was it was going up, they know he's going down.

Yeah, because 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 like basically somehow like the game doesn't really tell you just lands in the inventory and that can be confusing so yeah definitely i got

the same feeling there because there was my my my revelation 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 legend the mushroom has a chat the mushroom has There's nothing there.

It's pretty much the timer

currency and then later on of course they have the actually we can talk a lot about let me finish the Legend of Mushroom Frozen City part and we'll go into Forex pretty deep now because this is not your traditional Forex I think there are still problems with it that's why we don't see the game scaling that fast as we would expect. How fast? Usually you see at least the curve.
I will talk about it. Let me finish.
It's out for a week. I know.
Is it broken? Is it broken, Jakob? It's missing features. Look at how Whiteout Survival scaled and Trackstar is scaling and everything is slow.
It's your slow hockey stick. I know, I know.
Just saying. Because I know this just doesn't work.
For instance, do you see why I have 84k gems here? Because you don't need to spend it anywhere. Exactly.
That's some kind of issue, basically. So, the thing is that...
If you were a cheap fuck that you wouldn't spend it anyway the thing is that the whole thing with Forex is that it's released on servers and that is the same for Legend of Mushroom and all these kind of RPGs they are within these like blocks of servers and players are matched against each other on the server as we had Ken here and we're talking about this and once the server kind of consolidates everybody fights each other with forex in legend of mushroom is a little bit different they they move you to another server much faster but what's happening here like these features for instance here the feature is literally locked by day 12 since server launched today is my my day seven since server launched. And I just can't even have this feature.
Same goes for these. Like, these are not even available.
Those are available in Legend of Mushroom, like this edition, like, for instance, these mounts or the whatever, Emerald Edge and all of these, like, different pros and, like, whatnot, and like whatnot blah blah blah whatever uh 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 so they even wouldn't let you into the forex start in the beginning which is a little bit different than like i guess they are the games where if you can just you know money pull through it you can do that they wouldn't allow it here um the other thing is that um i think they're kind of too generous i don't know if it's by just me completing all these events and like 4 000 free draws draws and stuff like this but I'm just like

I think I'm kind of getting too

strong too fast compared to

the other experiences that I have with Last War

and Top Heroes

and all these other 4X games

You mean all these other 4X games

from Rivergame?

Yeah, not only Rivergame, even

what was the last one we covered also? Well, what was it? Yeah, we covered some other Forex game that wasn't... I covered Total Battle.
Even Top Girl. Top Girl.
Top Girl. Yeah, but it's kind of slightly different Forex for it as you mentioned see people that are just much more stronger than me i don't know why it is because even if i go by the way also also no i don't suck that's the thing because they also have this like captive mechanic you remember from legend of marshals have no master.
Nobody was able to capture me yet, basically,

because I'm so high level.

And I have like five slaves.

I can, instead of throwing...

You are so high level, you could join the other podcast.

So, you can, you won't throw tomatoes.

Well, I think you just came to Lisbon.

Just arrived in Lisbon so you can throw paintball oil barrels and time the bombs on these players so you can poke them or whatever but it's the the usual thing. Like you pick some kind of player,

for instance, this one.

Yeah, 1.7 million, let's go.

And you defeat him in battle and then you capture him for a week

until he either gets stronger

or calls a friend,

can defeat you and stuff like that.

So it's like one-to-one

Legend of Mushroom, basically.

And then it's like another

idle mechanic root 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.
By the way, there's a lot of adds, as in Legend of Mushroom. There's like, I would say, Sheetton of Ad's placement.
You just didn't see them, Felix, because it didn't get that far. I saw them as well.
Really? Did you saw this? The Expedition, I was just one step above. It doesn't matter.
It's a Forex game. It doesn't really matter.
Yeah. It's just there as a camouflage.
Yeah, exactly. It's a decoy.
It's a decoy. And then you're 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, they unlocked this cabin. And it looks like for Lockshedder, it's not.
it's a weather balloon and then you're like yeah so let's go to the cabin so at some point they unlock this cabin and it looks like follow 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 side it's basically frozen City one-to-one. They have the template already.
So why don't you do this? This is Whiteout Survival plus Legend of Mushroom. Yeah.
Until I tell you why it's not, because it's missing for its features. So, 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.
They have capturing the players but they have this parking spot and whatever. They don't have that.
They for instance have this Intel Center. This is the same thing.
Like the one where you re-roll these stats and stuff like that. The Weather Balloon, of course, that's our usual.
Guiding the players to the 4X map to kind of do mechanics and stuff like that.

Yeah.

Helping players or, I don't know, resources, bosses.

Yeah.

I can go and like, again, it's a normal classic, a weather balloon, like streamlined 4X quest.

But if we go here, so the important stuff is soldiers and hospitals.

So at some point they give you this port thing.

So port thing is basically the capacity of your soldiers. in these games are called gunboats yeah and those are your soldiers this is pretty problematic because in normal forex game you don't have capacity they actually force you not force you but they really try to tempt you to create as much soldiers as possible and then in hospital can keep up because you know you have too much soldiers not much hospital capacity somebody kills you you lose all those soldiers you need to play blah blah blah here you have this gamble capacity gets increased very very slowly like literally even less than 10 percent yeah by the level five yeah and then they have a lot of quests where you just pick up random level 1 gunboats, and then you pretty much break your production because I just, like, I can't.
I can't collect the ships that I just created because this thing can be upgraded only if I have Engine Room level 10, and Engine Room level 10 will take probably ages to upgrade. You need to upgrade the medbay and it's like very capped in my opinion this is not that good and it's actually prohibiting stuff the other thing is yeah there's repair dog which is I think repairing something this is actually no this is actually hospital the medbay is frozen version of the hospital.
So there are actually two hospitals. So let's say the soldiers are kind of capped, which is unintuitive for a 4X.
This is not how usually 4X works. I never saw this yet in this setup.
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 80% of these people don't know yet that they're playing 4X.
Absolutely. Hungrypuffin49 does not know he's playing 4X.
I can't tell already. So literally, this is the part where Neo walks up from the co-con and see everybody else playing it.
So I'm here basically at this point.

Red-pilled.

Red-pilled, baby.

And you would see

4x maps, so you would see what?

You would see these lines, people going around

and stuff like that.

Clans and territories and stuff.

There's nothing here.

That 6 thing, the little thing with claws.

Where?

This is a random monster, I think. Push it.
But you don't see any gathering things. You can go and search and go gather these nodes.
Okay. But I don't see even the center of the map.
I can't zoom out. I just can't.
It's not possible. Try with fingers.
Oh, wait, you don't play on the mobile phone. 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. They don't have, like, clan-based events on the map.
Or, like, usual feature set of a 4X at this point already tries to drive you towards like battles with guilds and like resources battles on the map or whatnot it's kind of too late here i don't know it's not even like maybe they're saving it or i don't know what's the plan but it's not finished look at Look at how Whiteout Survival launched. In terms of the revenues.

The shape of the curve.

Yeah, the shape of the curve.

We checked it very early.

We were two and a half steps

ahead of everyone.

Exactly, because with the Frozen City

we did the same thing.

It was really slow, but look.

You see it

slow hockey stick

maybe it went down

that would be in Jakob's book

it's almost that

do unified apps instead of countries

look

it's basically

20k per day

yeah

but did she

see the

Thank you. it's basically 20k per day yes it's going up afterwards but I'm just very concerned why they are not these big four they will add it it's not like they don't know.
I think they're there, they just didn't unlock them.

Yeah, exactly.

I think they're similar as this, like feature not available or like feature...

And look, I think they're just trying

to hide the Forex

as long as you can.

Yeah.

So basically, I matrixed

their way into this. I i don't know honestly honestly you just ask you know and 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 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 upgrade the medbay to level 12 okay i have still like all these crates like 133 crates and each of those like more than like 340k of food each single one very good so if you're so rich why don't you fix the glitch I don't know it's just I don't know the monetization in my opinion just works differently maybe they're trying something else I don't see I don't know usually when I play Forex at this point i'm just engaged much more in forex because in forex i don't even do much forex stuff in just just read just read those two messages i don't know what to do with my boat me too people are confused soggy bread 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? And there's like, this is more of a like legend of mushroom chat where people are begging others, like, I've been captured.
Please help me. And like, get rid of my master and stuff.
This is not Forex stuff. So I don't really know.
Maybe they're sick of Forexes just like me. Man, nobody's sick of Forex nobody's sick of Forex.
Forex is a money printer. Yeah.
Yeah, so there's guild bosses and shit, which is, again, the same thing. Oh, there's our Godzilla.
Yeah, there's our Mechagodzilla. Oh, wait, quick, call the app, please.
Oh, wait, there isn't one. Honestly, until day five, the game was super super good to progress i really like you see it like i play like hell pretty much all the time yes i'm i'm even higher than my guild master basically in in my progress so yeah it's great because you progress in my friend.
Another vertical, third vertical,

whatever, just go there.

Here we are.

All of these, I don't know how many people.

63.

Yeah, so it's super,

super good, but then

it kind of stales because it's really good.

I think this is a good innovation

that, for instance, if I go to the map

and I

say, let's attack something.

Thank you. I think this is a good innovation that, for instance, if I go to the map and I say, let's attack something.
Yeah, here we go. Even shit doesn't matter.
So what you're sending, you're sending actually your ship. Of course, you're sending your gumballs, but you're pretty much sending the whole Legend of Mushroom game to fight with those monsters.
That's great. Yeah, yeah.
Because you worked so hard for it, now you can finally use it and tested it because that's like the main source of your power now not like i guess soldiers doesn't really count that way but yeah that's it and you do that that's amazing but uh you know that that's by the way that's the thing i was arguing when we were talking about legend of mushroom back then like i wanted for them to uh do a 4x meta game and the last thing i was waiting for stupid parking while i thought it would be a 4x it was not it was some yeah and these guys probably heard that and they did that so yeah don't flatter yourself mister yeah but everybody's the legend of mushroom these days can't be better You remember in Shanghai,

join it games and Yeah, but everybody is copying Legend of Mushrooms these days. Copy Baragos.
Javier copying Legend of Mushrooms. You remember in Shanghai, Joynet Games and those two gentlemen are good friends of heaven.
Of course they are. They know.
They share. They work together on things, I guess, and they really share the knowledge.
So it was just a matter of time. Yeah, like like everybody is now going after Vajan Lomashu because they see how good their monetization tactics are and it's like how like 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 and I is this as well one price 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 so yeah everybody's copying this because it's just like completely payer oriented but the thing is that uh yeah i don't know i'm just maybe i will definitely keep an eye on this like they're definitely know what they're doing like they're the best ones to can try this iteration and do this kind of bold things but yeah let's see the the bad news for everybody else pretty much is that now you don't need to only build one extra game for your 4x but you actually need to build two

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 Whiteout Survival

now we have the base which is Frozen City

plus Whiteout Survival and we add another

game on top which is Legend of

Mushroom

which is starting to happen now because i guess the 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 yeah building for it makes much more sense 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 as much upgrade that 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 where they are kitchen yeah here we are like the same pretty much icons here uh attribute 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 city so yeah this works very well they have like so much experience with this but uh yeah i'm just waiting when they pull out the big guns with forex because they're definitely didn't yet maybe they're just waiting i don't. I don't think they're spending so much money though.
Yeah, yeah. I guess they're testing because again.
But is it Global Launch? Is it Global Launch? Is it not just Asian? Yeah, it's Global Launch. It's Global Launch.
Oh, we're looking at the White House survival. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Sorry. So we see 40k a day in Cesar Tower, but as a said it doesn't mean anything pretty much at this point yeah it's too early but it's global launch also it is it's not the hobby style of Asia launch first US afterwards look at the Taiwan I know but it's the first spot US revenue is 30% so this is global As usual.
I mean, it's a good start i know but that's the first spot yeah but right yeah

yeah so yeah this is global as usual i mean it is global for sure so how much money they make on that seven euros doesn't matter doesn't matter last time i did this like uh what was it it was It was like $400 a day on Forex, but it doesn't matter.

Ad series, like...

Yeah, but it kind of does.

It's a kind of does. A lot of upplacements, man.
It kind of does make sense because, look, it's still the first week where people don't really know this is Forex. Like, that's exactly the point where they should make money.
What's the DAU dau it doesn't matter because it's too early but

yeah i don't even show how many downloads 65k a day so same as yeah yeah i will just need to make it like let it let it uh live a little bit longer Yeah.

But the ads, they're like shit ton of them.

So like there's two here.

Then one, two, three. live a little bit longer.
Yeah. But the ads, they're like shit ton of them.
So like there's two here.

Then

one, two, three, four,

eight here.

Four for speedups.

Another

four here.

Where

we are? I think energy.

No, this is not for ad.

I think like two more somewhere.

Yeah, probably.

Ah, here.

Gotcha.

The usual three here.

By the way, Felix, did you notice this?

The drop-in one?

No, I didn't.

The weapons, gotcha.

No.

You see this problem here.

I can't play this ad. It's not red.
You see here? Yeah. I can't play the ad for weapons.
Why? What do you mean? Why? You didn't check it. No, I didn't know.
You would know because they pre-roll their own ad. You play Pisces hero ad.
So, yeah, definitely something is not up to something as it should be, because this is the case all the time. They only play their own ads? Yes.
So, 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. But only here.
Only here. Only in weapons.
In heroes and all the other tabs, they work normally. There's like...
But yeah, it's very, very suspicious there. Okay.
So, yeah, well, I didn't click on those ads at all. You watched those ads? Man, I watched so fucking many ads.
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 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. Also, deep 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.
And they ask so precise questions. It's like, yeah, for instance, very specific gameplay metrics.

Yeah, what makes you play?

Okay.

But I think they also do, yeah, blah, blah, blah.

I think they were asking for, no, here, but they were asking for specific competitor games.

Like, if you play those or if you don't play, I don't remember. Not here in this survey.
So in some other survey, there are literally like a list of games. And if you do play at how often do you play? And this is the third survey and it's pretty big incentive.
Yeah, it's quite long. It's almost...
Frozen City, they were doing the same as Frozen City as long as

the form to get into the

new Supercell game

beta

ok nice

so let's see

it's all about the game

so we're looking at how Jakub's randomly

thinking the survey

oh here you go

getting another

see if I press this

Thank you. and how Jakub's randomly thinking the survey.
Oh, here you go. Getting another.
This is also two more. See, if I press this.
Oh, shit, not ready. In your face.
In your face. Let me try maybe restart the game because I'm later sometimes.
Yeah, anything interesting except what you just said. Because this is super interesting.
First look wouldn't say it's Forex. Second look wouldn't say it's Forex.
Third look, maybe. Fourth look, oh fuck yeah, this is a Forex.
That got me there definitely. Like I...
Shit, why not? Yeah, the ads is not ready. I was definitely watching ads before.

For sure.

Everything is grayed out.

There we go.

Nonogram.

What's your nonogram?

Zero.

I don't know.

Zero. Zero.

Some other IQ bullshit.

It's an IQ.

You see, they do normal ads.

I would have a lot of ads for like RPG, gacha games, for sure. A lot of HOMA games, like Voodoo stuff and stuff like that.
Yeah, I would see normal mid-core RPG stuff here. I've seen like 20 interstitials.
Where?

Now.

Not in this game. Not in this game at all.

So, are

these guys also the king of UA?

Is it too early?

Too early they're not running that

many things. I mean, they

are kings on other games.

If you let me

share.

Let me just do

one more ad

if it like

goes into.

Yeah,

I can tell you

in the meantime,

it's actually

Google

uploading

Facebook.

That's it.

Which doesn't

really seem

right

because we know that they are running everything almost everywhere. And then I was looking into the Google ads transparency and I found the one ads transparency, the one ad that I saw in the sensor tower as well.
But, oh my God, how many running you will be surprised I'm just gonna say maybe I will be able to share the screen but fuck you then century games here we go look at that that's Idle Iberflayer or Golden Goblins that Oh, no, no, no. That's the zombie different game.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.
Yes. That's the zombie game.
Idle Zombie Miner. Idle Zombie Miner.
Yes. Idle Zombie Miner Gold Tycoon.
With very... I know.
It's all the keywords. Idle Gold...
Fuck. Idle Zombie Miner Gold Tycoon.
Okay. Yeah, yeah.
I've seen this. Yeah, here we go.
Before. I do zombie minor gold.
Okay.

Yeah.

I've seen this.

Yeah.

Here we go.

Before.

Oh, thank you very much.

Thank you very much for listening.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wait a second.

Okay.

Here.

I can actually go here. So you have the idea what exactly they are running in the US.
Look. Oops.
Do I see AI? Yes, but this is why this is basic century games because if you go to Google, that's transparency. It's the whole account.
So I really had to scroll down. I didn't even know they have a coloring game, Color Oasis.
They have everything by now, right? They're dipping their toast dipping their toast everywhere yeah exactly what do you do these days century games yes yes yes by the way with the idol mafia we should definitely talk about because that's one of their like flagship titles from the front of like good old days let's say where's the okay the... Okay, you know, I just...

I don't have...

I see...

Yes.

There is the one.

What's it, Legend of Mushroom?

Yeah, this is pretty much the

classic gameplay.

Jesus. This is so good.
Why is it good? This is some old build. It's also good because I need to zoom in like 10 times.
The only interesting part on this is they actually share it's app store so it's iOS 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 so it's this is the boss you played. And we have a few more,

which is...

Everything is very plain

gameplay,

which doesn't really add

up, right?

Maybe we got...

Guys, I have a wild theory.

Bamboozled?

Yeah, maybe we finally

got to the point where 4X, you know know that they're gonna get copied no no no no no no no please so it's basically my decoy plan when we were in South Korea and you were asking what I'm going to have for dinner, and I said vanilla smoothie, and you almost ordered it because that was a fucking decoy. So that's the decoy we're talking about.
Oh, my God. No, no, no, no, man.
That would be a very, very, very expensive decoy. You know why? Because if you look at the river games portfolio last war is literally printing money dark war is is really really growing top heroes growing and then we have this top heroes adventure you showed us in the I don't know where in soft launch maybe it seems it's it's Top Heroes also.
It's just the same variation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 Century Games can afford using decoys.

Yeah, decoy.

Decoy games, yeah.

It's not really possible, I think.

This is no sound, Jesus. Yeah.
But it's, look, we discussed this with Evan a little bit. I said this has definitely high CPIs.
And then we agreed it's too early to tell. That's I would say because it's an interesting theme let's call it that way it's definitely not even like showing Legend of Mushroom like this is basically it's just yeah gunship battles nothing else like why would you why on earth you would show Legend of Mushroom you remember these like tanks shooting each other turn based yeah yeah that's basically it with just better graphics well the world is Armageddon but with boats Godzilla obviously some yeah Chinese creatives, I guess.
Yeah. We don't really have that much left.
That's why I'm kind of puzzled. Why is this global launch when they're obviously still testing some stuff? Well, I mean, it's not that you global launch and you push everything they have a website for this announcing everything yeah they were announcing everything even pre-registration you could do for this yeah but you know that's bullshit do we have anything else to say? we have this it's the same thing we have this static image oh no it's actually it was actually sent into into the store okay good yeah so it's yeah now it's all gameplay oriented but let's let's check, actually, the upload-in at least.
Because I had this interesting discussion recently with one guy about upload-in. You know, basically, you're dependent on how upload-in works.
And this is kind of like my, not prediction, but my way of thinking like where is this going? Because we were talking about how UA is your game design. So now what basically you are doing, and we discussed it in the episode about color blockchain.
Not exactly the same thing that I'm going to say, but I was was trying to get there but i was constantly what was that nothing and and uh 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. So, I mean, that's kind of interesting.
Explain that again. So you need game with early monetization as possible, which is Legend of Mushroom.
That's exactly. So that's like the, not as early as possible, but at least in first seven days.
And you need to hit the threshold of 10 to 15 unique purchases, ideally more. So you have more data to send back to Uplavin and any other channel, but mainly Uplavin since it's the top channel right there.
So you need to take this into consideration when you actually design the game. No, when you design the decoy game, the fake onboarding gameing game yeah but then it's like the fake onboarding game is a design yeah the fake onboarding is just it's very fast you'd still after you onboard the user they need to play the rest but yes yeah you need to design that kind of onboarding the sophistication here is that we are not even doing like random gameplay that works in hypercasual creative anymore.
We need to do something that works on those creators. Plus it already needs to monetize super fast.
Yeah, exactly. Those events.
So what happens when you 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 dead. It's dead.
Dead. They got blended ROAS.
Yes, but how? How can you do blended ROAS in the 4X game? That's the first question. The second question, yeah, like how can you use ad ROAS in this case? You can't.
You have multiple... Do you think that's why they added so many ad placements? No.
They would need to mediate with Max, but it doesn't really make any sense. Legend of Mushroom core, man.
That's it. Yeah, exactly.
That's how it works. And the Legend of Mushroom had like 10% ads or 15%.
It was very small. So it's really negligible.
And this is the future, right? So you need to have the 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. 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.

So this is the moment we cross from 60% to 70% regarding the responsibility

of UA for success of your product.

Exactly.

It's just insane. It's insane just insane.
Very, very confused. Yeah, the confused Felix appeared.
Yeah. Okay.
Oh, yeah. You know what you're saying, yeah? Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying.
I'm just kind of mind-blowing because it makes so much sense. It's just nuts.
Okay, and this is a playable. So yeah, they have multiple things.
Obviously, the baseline is there. I mean, I can't talk about they don't know what they're doing, of course.
They know exactly what they're doing. Yeah, they're spending a shit ton of money on Vita Survival.
Obviously, they won't be like, oh, well, this is the game. We don't know what we're doing.
Created with Cocos. Okay, great.
Anyway, so yeah. There's the boss and we play and then we fail because...
I'm just literally thinking they're probably hiding 4X part. They're literally hiding it forcefully, probably.
I think so as well. I really wonder...
I'll keep the game on my tab and definitely return it on the review radar. And I'll see what happens after day 12.
If after day 12, they fully unlocked like 4X feature set. Super curious.
Maybe they unlock a puzzler. You don't know.
Or Sherman. Hexasaur 2.
Of course, because hexagons. They're the best exactly okay I think we should end I think we should end if we are the bestagons we should always end yeah but it's super interesting like game with three cores we didn't have that before that's a giant leap for mankind no no.
For, like, everybody else that doesn't have this template, man.

Like, think about it. You don't have

whiteout survival template, you can do shit.

Because these guys already are one step

ahead, like, the third core.

And what can you do? You start building

these three cores. By the time you build

these three cores, they build the fourth one.

And then, yeah, then we're to be four and a half gamers. And then you know what comes after four cores? Hi, Charles.
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.

Because

whatever. Okay, thank you very much

guys. Join the Slack channel.

Buy the merch so you're cool.

And see you next time.