Softlaunch Sonar #7: The Evolution of CPI Testing in Gaming

Speaker 1 They're doing this because even if you

Speaker 1 do the famous marketability tests, you don't have the C the real CPIs, you just don't, because you don't have the actual CPI optimization because you don't have the game.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's why they're doing this. Yeah, so you now have the game, but you build a different mini game as a CPI test.
Exactly, yeah, exactly. This is the CPI test now, basically.

Speaker 1 Minigames are the CPI tests now. Welcome to the new world.

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Speaker 1 Ho ho ho ho, Merry Christmas!

Speaker 1 And Happy New Year in Slovakia.

Speaker 1 Happy New Year.

Speaker 1 What did you get for Christmas?

Speaker 1 Absolutely nothing. It's fine.
We don't do gifts anymore. We're not not a kid anymore, so that's how it works.
Jakub, what did you get for Christmas? A cooking course for steaks.

Speaker 1 That's actually a really good gift.

Speaker 1 That's pretty good. Pretty good.

Speaker 1 What did you get, Mr. Chairman? I got a pair of wood clogs.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There is a blind woman living 30 minutes south of my house in Sweden, and she took on an apprentice.

Speaker 1 And what she did to turn blind was she made wood clogs, and there had some pigment that she turned blind. So she taught an apprentice how to make wood clogs.
And I got one of the wood clogs.

Speaker 1 What's a wood clog? It's wooden shoes. Ah, the

Speaker 1 Dutch have them, but also we have them.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Matthias, put this in the end as a blooper and let's start again. Three, two, one, go.

Speaker 1 I think it's great. I think this is great.
Thank you very much, guys. My name is Matiel Ancherich.
I'm Wood Clog Felix Brauberg at the Cubremia Christmas Tree. Yeah, and we are your hosts.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. So, this is going to be the episode.

Speaker 1 We're actually going to talk about some games in Soft Launch. And I think

Speaker 1 the intro is great, so we can just dive right in. And yes,

Speaker 1 again.

Speaker 1 Now we have the fake background with the actual decorations on

Speaker 1 the tree, which is now

Speaker 1 lighted up behind you. Can I show you my Christmas tree? Yeah, sure, sure.
Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Missing a little bit of light, but okay. Yeah, I didn't turn it on.
That's on me.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's do it the usual funny way. So I'm gonna show you the games.
You're gonna... Oh, there's Capybara, which is

Speaker 1 Matsuka. Did you not get any Christmas gift?

Speaker 1 Did you not get a Christmas gift?

Speaker 1 Well, we usually give Christmas, not Christmas, but gifts to each other like the whole year. And now we just buy Christmas gifts for Katarina, not for each other.

Speaker 1 And we had made, like, we're going to go to Maldives in two weeks. So, I mean, that's a Christmas gift.
It's a kind of a Christmas gift. Okay, I don't feel sorry for you anymore.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 you can cry on your fucking island. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 Maldives feel. Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's fine. Make sure you don't get sand in your eyes while you're crying.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 oh, yeah, fair enough. Okay,

Speaker 1 let's start the usual way. I'm gonna show you the game, and you're gonna tell me which studio this is coming from.
Ooh,

Speaker 1 merge plaza. Jeez, merge plaza.

Speaker 1 Look, it smells Turkish.

Speaker 1 Really? Enough, but I guess that means it's Vanama.

Speaker 1 Don't start with century games again. No, it's not century games.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 same guy. Einstein?

Speaker 1 No, this is not Einstein. That's not a random AI guy, I think.
And then AI girl.

Speaker 1 Is it from China?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 Okay, good. Therefore, maybe it's not AI, I think.
But look at the mechanic. This is not your typical merch game.

Speaker 1 Like, this is more close to something like Merchtown, the original Gram game. Because you see,

Speaker 1 you hold the generator and then you produce the board.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this is not your usual travel time copy. No, okay.
Great. See?

Speaker 1 So there are some innovations and stuff. Interesting.

Speaker 1 See? You have the generators on the bottom, and then the board changes like levels. Yeah.
So it actually seems like it's a level-based merge game. Ooh,

Speaker 1 nice. That's very interesting.
How did you find this?

Speaker 1 As usual, I can find anything.

Speaker 1 We have the renovation decoration meta, as Esther say.

Speaker 1 And any more tips who this is coming from is a very very famous name in the merge genre in the merge is this

Speaker 1 merge mention

Speaker 1 yeah this is metacore no is it yeah this is metacore

Speaker 1 and this has been soft launched on December 11 so they're coming back strong huh

Speaker 1 I would say they're trying because it's not their comeback yet it's just

Speaker 1 that's why we're talking it on the soft launch sonar version 6. 7, I mean.

Speaker 1 But it's definitely interesting to see that they're trying some new things here. It's not just like hoping on the travel town trend.
And yeah, we'll see what can happen here.

Speaker 1 But it seems that there's the usual kind of build renovation meta, which is like Royal Match Carbon Copy. But the core gameplay seems very, very unique.
So let's see how this one goes.

Speaker 1 Because it's basically merge CT on the level based setup with these kind of setups. But yeah, let's see.

Speaker 1 Because you see that that the levels get more and more complex and it's energy base actually like there's no moves there's energy so let's see how this one goes in but it's very interesting to see okay next one

Speaker 1 no redma solitaire secrets is metacore just firing on all cylinders

Speaker 1 uh seems so uh i'm i'm i'm gonna put more context behind this but uh

Speaker 1 this completely confirms my prediction that i've been saying for last three podcasts podcasts. Solitaire category is going to be really, really disrupted next year.

Speaker 1 And this is another kind of a nail in that theory where we have this. We have, by the way, fully animated 3D grandma.
Do you think that's AI?

Speaker 1 Oh, this is just like a great 3D.

Speaker 1 3D, like that's, you know, easy to do. It's not that hard.

Speaker 1 She's the deck dealer, whatever, but we have the Solitaire thing. And again, this is the new solitaire, which is the level-based kind of a solitaire, not your usual one.

Speaker 1 Because solitaire category is currently divided into solitaires that are the actual solitaire game running on organics, and then games that are having these custom solitaire core gameplays, which is occupied by who?

Speaker 1 Grand Harvest.

Speaker 1 Exactly, which is making 15 million a month and it's completely wiping the floor with everybody. So it's a game because it's hard, it's really expensive, and they have all the money in the world.

Speaker 1 Plus, they have

Speaker 1 the knowledge from Social Casino as well. Yeah, because it's plaything, and it's the same, it's the same audience.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I worked on this game for some time in the past.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 we have the Grandma Solitaire Secrets, which is coming, which was initially launched December 3rd. I can tell you it's not going to be live, it's not going to be launched.

Speaker 1 We have this already for more than a year, which is Candy Crush Solitaire.

Speaker 1 We have this

Speaker 1 Solitaire

Speaker 1 from Super Play. The guys that were just bought by Plaitika.
Whoa, that's totally Disney. Look at that.
That's totally Disney.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 1 And then we have Vuga also doing

Speaker 1 Journey metagame on Solitaire. So there's already four big significant names trying to disrupt Solitaire.
You know what's going to happen? You think all will fail. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Why do you think so?

Speaker 1 Why do you think so?

Speaker 1 Because it's

Speaker 1 really expensive and it's really, you need

Speaker 1 very different kind of campaign structure. And I remember the campaign structures we had, well, they had basically, and what I was running, and it was very different.
It's just

Speaker 1 it's not easy, and if you don't have the expertise, this is exactly what it's called. So we have Mentacor, Vuga, Platika, and King against each other.

Speaker 1 This is UA play. This is a very

Speaker 1 pretty UA play. Each one of these games has pretty much the same core with this new level-based Solitaire, and a little bit different metas, which is the renovation build for the game.

Speaker 1 Maybe Super Play. Vuga one is more

Speaker 1 SuperPlay already did this with Domino Drinks. They already did this.
Exactly. Yeah, so

Speaker 1 we'll have it later today.

Speaker 1 That's another Domino game.

Speaker 1 But this is, they were talking about card games and solitaire. Maybe SuperPlay can do it because

Speaker 1 it requires different things

Speaker 1 in terms of the UA. And they already did it with Dice Dreams and Domino Dreams as well.

Speaker 1 So maybe they have like, I guess that the best chance it's them and also, you know, the new owners kind of makes sense. Yeah, because they have the top game in the category.
Exactly, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1 They have probably the biggest chance. By the way, Vuga is also owned by Enplatica.
Don't forget about it. Oh, yeah, that's right.
That's true. So there's actually

Speaker 1 two against one, not four against each other. Exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 let's see. But it's really bad then.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, you have the Disney Solitaire from Super Play against the Vuga Claire Chronicles.

Speaker 1 Sounds like Tencent tactic.

Speaker 1 It's just,

Speaker 1 well, I mean, I think the Super Play game was in the preparations for longer than

Speaker 1 before the acquisition. So, I mean, it's just like evolution of how it's how it's how the things played out.

Speaker 1 The Solitaire from Vuga as well, I mean

Speaker 1 well, just guys, it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be very tough.
It's gonna be super tough.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Anyway, things move on.
Wait, wait. What do you think Playtica would do if they saw a contender competing in this market? They would just outspend anyone, right?

Speaker 1 They're already outspending everyone now. Yeah, they're spending more than all of those games together.

Speaker 1 Honestly, yeah.

Speaker 1 If you look at Greg Harvard, it's doing like half a million a day, which I think it was way more like 20k a day.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 so I guess the DAU is still super strong. That's the bad revenue in this game.
It's insane,

Speaker 1 very stable, I would say.

Speaker 1 Yeah, 400k users in that category.

Speaker 1 It was way more. I think I was on this project for a couple of months in 2019 or 20.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but this is COVID bump.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is, it is, it is. But anyway, it's just

Speaker 1 we'll see. As I said, it'd be a very interesting look at what's going to happen with Solitar category next year.

Speaker 1 Moving on, I think, yeah, okay. Mop takeover.

Speaker 1 Let me zoom in. No,

Speaker 1 super

Speaker 1 wow okay

Speaker 1 so i wasn't able to find the actual gameplay of this but it seems that guys are trying some uh

Speaker 1 new tricks with the mobile

Speaker 1 talk talk to supercent when we are in south korea in a few few weeks so yeah i mean next week yeah basically next week it's true tomorrow for me

Speaker 1 or tomorrow for you

Speaker 1 so yeah it's interesting uh i said wasn't able to find this but my guess is this is more more on a play just by these screenshots on something like uh

Speaker 1 the tower game

Speaker 1 uh the one that uh Segengon has

Speaker 1 Tower War Tower War War see the towers here, but you still have the mob control-ish kind of uh not straight lines, but these kind of soldiers.

Speaker 1 So basically it kind of reroutes itself back to Marshall Wars, it seems. But yeah.

Speaker 1 we'll see

Speaker 1 we'll keep an eye on it

Speaker 1 yeah uh this one's pretty interesting

Speaker 1 jesus christ exone okay nice

Speaker 1 so interesting any idea who's this but we can see from your writing that's homer games but um i wouldn't have guessed it otherwise yeah so this is this is soft lunch on homer's portfolio um

Speaker 1 And it's from November 2nd. I was looking into this.
It's called CoinStack Puzzle. And it literally looks like pretty much Blockjam meets Hexasort.

Speaker 1 That's what it is. But if I was looking a little bit more deeper into it, there's actually this other puzzle.

Speaker 1 Again, called same CoinStack Puzzle by Rolex.

Speaker 1 Which was sitting on Rolex portfolio for more than

Speaker 1 so what what both of these companies are doing they're using this new kind of coin core, which is basically hexasa.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 very important,

Speaker 1 the coins can only go four ways, not six ways, as our favorite hexagon.

Speaker 1 So it's a little bit different. And

Speaker 1 then I guess because of the level design and everything, it's not that simple, especially the Homer one.

Speaker 1 where you can see that you actually are smashing the coins from the bottom to the top, which is even more hard now.

Speaker 1 It's just, yeah, it is,

Speaker 1 yeah. We'll see.

Speaker 1 It's it's very interesting, but yeah, as I said, um, this again proves the point that we were talking about: that hexa core, hexa sword core basically will be innovated and iterated next year to some point, definitely, because that core is just too novel and too new to just leave standing there.

Speaker 1 Okay, Barbie merch mystery

Speaker 1 by

Speaker 1 Rolick again.

Speaker 1 That is gonna make us so much goddamn money.

Speaker 1 So, October 21st, I wasn't able to find the gameplay, but I found the screenshots, and it's basically Trebble Down, if I understand.

Speaker 1 Yeah, from the screenshots. So,

Speaker 1 yeah, don't know if we can find the gameplay, or if you can, or somebody can.

Speaker 1 You know why I said that, Matte? Honestly, because Rolik and Barbie, who's never given out their IP before, it's going to get a lot of organics. And Rollick knows exactly what to do with that.

Speaker 1 It's just, yeah, Barbie's never given out their IP before, really. Not for games, no, for in-mobile.
Oh, there's Barbie

Speaker 1 from

Speaker 1 Dreamhouse Adventures. There's just

Speaker 1 some Barbie games, it's just

Speaker 1 most of them aren't that prominent, I guess. Yeah, exactly.
That's the problem.

Speaker 1 And I think there's also the second movie coming in.

Speaker 1 I don't know when, but I know that the second movie is coming in.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's probably,

Speaker 1 but they are super small, I think.

Speaker 1 You don't feel your dollar signs tingling here for this?

Speaker 1 Not really.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 guys, it's a merge category. What do we know about merch category?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a merge category. What do we know about merge category? China.
Exactly. Yes.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you can be Barbie, but I don't think so. You can take on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can be Barbie, but if yeah, well, you're not China. Absolutely.
no, yeah, you're not gos well.

Speaker 1 You are not microphone, yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this will be the best play, but let's see.

Speaker 1 Look, if if the second movie mentions microphone, I'm fine. I'm I'm okay.
Yeah, there those dollar dollars will be tingling, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Let's see.

Speaker 1 Okay, moving on. So there's this Domino to go fan board game,

Speaker 1 which is, if I understand correctly, the same thing as Domino Dreams.

Speaker 1 The thing that I'm bringing it up, that it's actually guess on whose portfolio.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But you're looking around.

Speaker 1 I look at the board. Yeah, yeah, like, where is it? It's voodoo.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's on Beach Bum, actually.

Speaker 1 the company they bought us these cargoes makes sense oh in that case that makes way more sense yeah it makes way more sense.

Speaker 1 Because, again, if you look at Domino Dreams, how this is currently faring is doing something like more than 200k a day already.

Speaker 1 And if you look at the like, I don't want to say the domino category, I think it's bored, but there are multiple games in it, stuff like Yahtzee and Ludo, even, and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 In the domino category, because it's bored. It's

Speaker 1 bored.

Speaker 1 Domino isn't that big yet to to like have it on category but it's still the biggest here and makes seven and a half million a month still so

Speaker 1 yeah this is this is another like one of those kind of casual card games horses that are getting innovated similar to solitaire story that people are trying to kind of get into i think so we're gonna see more of these probably but because we are running we are running out of the the categories

Speaker 1 because keep in mind that the good good point about these categories that they still are powered by these huge organic numbers that are coming from the classic board games that people know which is both Solitaire, Domino, and like even Yala, Ludo, I mean, Ludo, and

Speaker 1 a few more of these, like other games. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if we can see something like

Speaker 1 cheekers or checkers and chests and like stuff like that. Whatever.

Speaker 1 I'll bring my cheekers.

Speaker 1 Can we play some cheekers with you?

Speaker 1 As usual.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's move on.

Speaker 1 I love you. Merry Christmas.
Yeah, Merry Christmas.

Speaker 1 This is my gift for Christmas. Thank you very much.
I love it. Another interesting spin in the voodoo portfolio is the Junk Wheel game,

Speaker 1 which seems that it's making the play on the Doodle Magic. Blob Invasion.

Speaker 1 Blob Invasion. It seems it's making the play on Doodle Magic with the Backpack Hero.
But they had something similar as almost doodle magic. It was Freuid Ninja or something.
I'm not forgetting.

Speaker 1 Fruit ninja.

Speaker 1 I can find him.

Speaker 1 Freuid ninjutsu.

Speaker 1 No, they had the backpack, backpack something,

Speaker 1 backpack game thing that

Speaker 1 we talk about how it can be.

Speaker 1 Freuid ninjutsu is lion.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's lion.

Speaker 1 But this is interesting because if I understand correctly, instead of skills, you are selecting the weapons to be merged in your inventory, basically. But again, wasn't able to find the gameplay.

Speaker 1 I guess we'll see it later down the line. But again, interesting iterations.

Speaker 1 When was it launched?

Speaker 1 This was soft launched November 21st. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 As usual, everything on the sonar is soft launch after we finish the last sonar. So it's last two to three months.
That's it. Everything's kind of super new.

Speaker 1 Nothing's more

Speaker 1 older than that. Okay, there's one.

Speaker 1 Who's

Speaker 1 This is Speak. No, Century Games.
Century Games. This is Century Games.
No.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know what? My new answer for everything is it's going to be Century Games. Century Games.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 that's why I scream always Century Games and I'm 50% chance of being right.

Speaker 1 So I don't know which one or like is this, but I think it's like either seventh or eighth casual game that we've seen from them that they're like still trying to kind of get into.

Speaker 1 This seems seems to be like classical take on

Speaker 1 Tomb Blast. This absolute tomb blast or toy bazaar is like it's the same.
It's like it's the same thing.

Speaker 1 Let me try to find the main menu.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, it seems like

Speaker 1 a typical static image. Yeah, that's it, basically.

Speaker 1 I wonder,

Speaker 1 Trackstar is doing fine.

Speaker 1 Fine, but not amazing.

Speaker 1 I know, but if you have seven

Speaker 1 trackstars, then you know it's it's microfund basically on steroids. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So I'm fine. I think I think uh that like

Speaker 1 I think if if we would ask uh century games guys, they would still tell us like we're learning and this is still like part of the learning. I mean I can I can understand that.

Speaker 1 Uh it's not nowhere near White House survival, right? So yeah, but one thing I've learned in this industry is never bet against century games like that.

Speaker 1 Speaking of uh century games, what do we have here? Oh no, which one? This one?

Speaker 1 So this one was a prominent one. I wanted to cover this one.
October 29th, it was soft launch. And it's actually...

Speaker 1 Let me maybe play the trailer.

Speaker 1 Again, I wasn't able to find the gameplay. So this was not popular.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's not out yet. There was a beta, actually, or something.

Speaker 1 So let me just stop it here because if you see it here, you kind of know what this is about. So, this scream is basically some kind of iteration of Legend of Mushroom.
Legend of Mushroom, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but wait a second, there's very interesting catch here. So, we have the like inventory and like probably the autoplay with some auto skills, like there's auto-off button right there immediately.

Speaker 1 So, this is basically Legend of Mushroom stuff. But then, if we move on forward in the trailer,

Speaker 1 there are some epic boss fights and stuff. It's epic Godzilla.
Yeah, the boss looks like this here, Remo.

Speaker 1 But this is what we also got here. Oh, what the full art shelter?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there was basically a full-out shelter interface where you have different rooms with different stuff, and then you could see the water kind of

Speaker 1 it's almost like Sea of Conquest.

Speaker 1 Sea of Conquest has this.

Speaker 1 I think Sea of Conquest has this only created,

Speaker 1 actually.

Speaker 1 We need to play that. Or do they? We need to play that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we need to play that. So many AI creatives that they're throwing at me i know i know these days so yeah

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 nobody cares about the ai creatives that much yeah so what these guys are doing they're having a pre-registration for the game uh

Speaker 1 seems to be like a very nicely polished go on the website if you want to kind of get more info about that uh as said it's it's pretty much this kind of a post-apocalyptic battleship that's running it seems like snow piercer to me a little bit if you know the series.

Speaker 1 Oh, come on. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Why not? That was the same exact principle.

Speaker 1 Okay. Different rooms on the terrain that's running in apocalyptic world.
That's it. I'm with you.
It's exactly like Snowpiercer. See?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we have this.

Speaker 1 And then on top of it, we have also these epic bosses and the battle part which you saw in the trailer, which is the inventory

Speaker 1 right here. Yes.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 yeah i'm super interesting like how this kind of uh

Speaker 1 let's say

Speaker 1 what i'm thinking they're trying to do here is that they're trying to add more management into a game that's kind of fully automated because legend of mushroom is really like there's so much automation that you can just leave it kind of running where you even sort the gacha for you like you just filter it and like only stop if there's like epic whatever something you don't even need to play yeah you don't even need to play but if you saw the thing here in the trailer with the shelter part, you could already see that there was this kind of uh this is pretty much a mechanic from Fallout Shelter where there's like some kind of energy system or there you run out of electricity, a water room stop working, there's these like invasion of bugs or whatever.

Speaker 1 I guess the same mechanic will be done here. So it takes a lot of maintenance and you need to kind of go and like play with it, blah, blah, blah.
Like Tamagotchi.

Speaker 1 Exactly like Elder Scrolls Online or mobile or whatever was that

Speaker 1 castles, castles, yeah, yeah, castles. It's exactly the same.
Yeah, that was just this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that was a lot of grind, basically. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was a lot of grind. The plus one there was the

Speaker 1 Reigns game, the card game, or you like the Twitter

Speaker 1 Tinder stuff, kind of moral decisions. These have Legend of Mushroom plus Fallout Shelter.
So we'll see. We'll keep an eye on that.
We'll definitely cover it when it goes out.

Speaker 1 Because my guess is it's going to be very. Maybe it's going to be super high CPIs, but then also super high L T Vs.

Speaker 1 With Century Games UA, I wouldn't be against it.

Speaker 1 I really want to see the creatives. Oh my god, that would be amazing.
It's gonna be

Speaker 1 look at how much money a Legend of Mushroom is making.

Speaker 1 I think this is gonna be kind of

Speaker 1 Legend of Mushroom. I think they went a little bit into decline after the peak, as usual, the podcast curse when we cover someone

Speaker 1 into decline.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but look.

Speaker 1 Geez, Louise.

Speaker 1 So at their peak in March, I think that's when we covered. They were doing 55 million a month.
Now they're doing something like 10.

Speaker 1 Yes,

Speaker 1 that's still like okay, I could say.

Speaker 1 Yeah, download-wise there, what like

Speaker 1 check the countries. Check the countries, please, because if Japan is still like the top, then whatever what are we talking about? South Korea, there you go.

Speaker 1 Fucking Japan is top revenue.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah, US is 7% of both downloads and revenue.
It's still like very, very Asian.

Speaker 1 It is very Asian. I mean, we were sitting next to them

Speaker 1 at one table in China.

Speaker 1 It's super Asian.

Speaker 1 I think the High Seas Hero

Speaker 1 could be more appealing to the West, definitely, based on these kind of fallout shelter visuals and pieces of character stuff and everything.

Speaker 1 Keep in mind that it was like not even in the trailer. trailer in the beginning of the trail.
This literally looks like World of Warships.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but look, man, like it's still Chinese characters, the first thing.

Speaker 1 What do you mean, like the chibi small ones? No, but you see, like the first ones in the trailer, like, you know.

Speaker 1 Oh, these ones, yeah,

Speaker 1 because of the Chinese trailer. I mean, man, yeah, but like, no, but it's like a Chinese trailer, but then also with letters.
Like, come on.

Speaker 1 You're arguing that it's a problem that they put Chinese characters into a Chinese trailer?

Speaker 1 Come on, come on. It's not going to be big in the West.
You know it.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 this is. No ad revenue.
It's great. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's perfect.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much, Santa Claus.

Speaker 1 There won't be any ad revenue in it.

Speaker 1 Okay, speaking of Pledge and the Mushroom, one more update from these guys. Not really an update, I would say another kind of bold move.
So looking at their portfolio.

Speaker 1 how can you read that portfolio, man? I can, as usual. So, the last thing we covered was zombie IO.

Speaker 1 But the interesting part is this game is finally coming from WeChat into mobile stores. And this is our favorite.

Speaker 1 Our favorite, which I can't even spell, but I just use free Google translation. What is the Western name?

Speaker 1 Fingertip Warriors. That's Google Translation.
Oh, but that's something something like what Lemon said, I think, very close. No, but we've got to play this on our dinner.
Yeah, we've got to play this.

Speaker 1 It's a top, top, top five WeChat game. Yeah.
Constantly top five WeChat game. And you know what? Idle Arcade plus Forex.
Fire Forex, yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's basic act of heroes. Kind of.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I would say

Speaker 1 even more, even more

Speaker 1 complex and kind of a setup. But you see that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the Idol Arcade is pretty much.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like it's a game you would love, Jakob.

Speaker 1 Of course,

Speaker 1 the moment this goes out in English translation, you're playing it. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, me too. Me too, actually.

Speaker 1 Until the forex,

Speaker 1 like, I don't think so. There ever was like Arcade Idol plus Forex thing.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is the first time. Yeah, yeah, so we'll see.
So, as said, this was soft launch in

Speaker 1 December 19, actually.

Speaker 1 So, just last week,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 and yeah, I'm just waiting when this goes into like English translation because a lot of their games, even though you see their own portfolio with no English translation, they actually went into English like Zombie IO, for instance.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, zombie. We'll get that because if it's already out of WeChat, I guess it's just closed.
Yeah, so we'll see.

Speaker 1 Okay, moving on.

Speaker 1 We have,

Speaker 1 yeah, there we go.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 Oh my god,

Speaker 1 is this a Forex game?

Speaker 1 So now, dear listeners, we entered the new segment of Softland Sonar, which is called What's the New Onboarding in Forex?

Speaker 1 Man, guys, guys, we stop here. Like, seriously, Forex has turned into like the bubble shooter of like six years ago.

Speaker 1 Remember that time when there was just so many bubble shooters on the market? This is the Forex now. But this is amazing.
This is Fan Plus, for sure. Yes, this is FunPlus.
But

Speaker 1 you can see it in the art where you see the iteration. Like, this is raw iteration, because nobody cares about the forex metagame.
Everybody cares about the onboarding. That's it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you can see the visual style.

Speaker 1 It's basically the art style and anything they have about the characters. It's just, it's absolutely fun plus.

Speaker 1 And I'm really curious to see all the different top four fun onboardings as well.

Speaker 1 We have fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm pretty sure we will have more. Because this, look, I think Jako Pito said this in the previous episodes where we'll be discussing match 3 UA.
This is exactly the same.

Speaker 1 This is actually going to come to Match 3 very, very soon. Different onboardings.

Speaker 1 Because then it's going to be the UA play again. And

Speaker 1 this is only

Speaker 1 to get the best possible CPIs. And everybody else will copy it.

Speaker 1 And I just, look, but I was just, I just posted this on LinkedIn yesterday.

Speaker 1 Like, where is the inspiration from Creative's coming from? It was, and I was actually looking into the pool, the pin, like where it

Speaker 1 began, and it was obviously Hero Wars, but then it kind of is very close to each other: the Fish Dome, Gardenscapes, homescapes, and Evoni. And now, what's going to happen? What's happening?

Speaker 1 It's Evoni,

Speaker 1 Royal Match, and then Fish Dome, Gardenscapes, Homescapes, in terms of the UA and inspiration. It's just everything is coming from Forex.
Why? Because everybody needs to decrease the CPIs.

Speaker 1 And Forex is already working on this for years, basically, since 2019, when Evoni

Speaker 1 actually puts Hero Wars the.

Speaker 1 But I could see literally how they went from 50k downloads

Speaker 1 in a month

Speaker 1 to 2 million. There you go.

Speaker 1 Female character. Female character.

Speaker 1 So it's insane. It's insane.
And we definitely need to cover Evoni at some point. Please, let's do it.
Actually, because

Speaker 1 that history is so interesting. And how they went from,

Speaker 1 let's call it normal Forex,

Speaker 1 then pulled the pin in the game, which

Speaker 1 increased the downloads insanely. And now they have the Gates mechanic, which is again like changed the whole game.
So, yeah, yeah, where did we see this road with the rescue the female character?

Speaker 1 Well, it's Last War, yeah, exactly. So,

Speaker 1 and you see, this is this is the part of it that, like, all of these forexes they like take out of each other and like always iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate, and then in the end, you get like nuclear bomb on onboarding,

Speaker 1 which looks hyper-casual almost, yeah, yeah, so you know, as usual, this is good life, and Last War is making making three three and a half million a day. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's the big difference.

Speaker 1 So yeah, there's

Speaker 1 I think there's like the typical thing there. Like there's yeah, she's getting no no bomb this time.
I guess she's getting drowned now by

Speaker 1 something like water. There needs to be some pirate characters as well, which

Speaker 1 what do you think about the buildings?

Speaker 1 There's been those famous buildings so far. There's been the sale

Speaker 1 and then those Patronas towers and you're bombing them.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's this one. Oh, yeah, the London Bridge.
London Bridge.

Speaker 1 Or Tower Bridge. Tower Bridge.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know if there's one more.

Speaker 1 Look at the visual of the low poly kind of almost low polythe.

Speaker 1 It needs to be low poly because the physics would like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so, but yeah, let's say. So we have this one,

Speaker 1 and then we have this one,

Speaker 1 which is uh guess what

Speaker 1 that looks really fun

Speaker 1 i'd play this please don't make don't tell me it's a forex

Speaker 1 of course it's a forex because everything is a forex from this point on we're in the forex yeah yeah forex section yeah we're in the forex segment already i feel so stupid

Speaker 1 so this is crown of bones and it's uh it's a forex

Speaker 1 but why is it

Speaker 1 by who?

Speaker 1 By FanPlus.

Speaker 1 Really? Okay.

Speaker 1 So this was Soft Launch November 1st, and the Boomblast one was November 3rd. Yet, and the last one that I pulled from their portfolio is this one.

Speaker 1 Hello. Let me

Speaker 1 introduce you to our favorite

Speaker 1 Last War creatives with barrels.

Speaker 1 Basically. Is it just weird that they're running forward and the road is is not moving?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 no, I think no, I think at this point, everybody's okay with that. At this point, nobody cares, to be honest.
It's just a soft launch, whatever, and state of survival front war. Okay,

Speaker 1 yeah, there we have the girl, and I think some point later down.

Speaker 1 Jesus, even the latest creatives from last war, okay, with two roles, everything, everything, just take everything, the dog is there, okay,

Speaker 1 and this is really

Speaker 1 fascinating.

Speaker 1 Because literally, what will you release tomorrow? No, what will you release today will be copied tomorrow.

Speaker 1 That's the formula.

Speaker 1 You know what you should do? You should put a watermark on the onboarding.

Speaker 1 I think at some point these guys will start to release games that didn't work, but they will actually pump UA into it. So everybody else will kind of copy the shitty ones.

Speaker 1 Oh, you mean the river psychology?

Speaker 1 I'm sure it's already been done, man. Like I'm sure it's been done already.

Speaker 1 I think we're like very near this point. Very close, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, honestly, I was actually thinking about this because other podcasts copy what we do, and then I was like, okay, let's just do shit. And then I was like, no.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there was that guy who copied your post the other day as well. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Like, watching the one.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And then he said, it's, it's completely different because you're, it's, you have different, different videos on the screen.
So, like, no, she's sharelock.

Speaker 1 So funny. Okay.
Okay. That's okay.

Speaker 1 So that's there.

Speaker 1 Devil have.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But this is

Speaker 1 for fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. This is this is as usual, our favorite.

Speaker 1 Um, so as usual, it's a new onboarding on the stuff that we already seen. We've seen the cinematic before.
Yeah, we've seen that, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but guess what they bring out now?

Speaker 1 This this, it's like Brawl Stars type of thing, or

Speaker 1 oh man, come on, not brawl stars again, but we're in forex section.

Speaker 1 It's a physical Hero Wars mini game with consuming numbers.

Speaker 1 Yes, but

Speaker 1 we've seen these monkeys before. I can't remember when

Speaker 1 it's like the last sonar, basically.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 but yeah, the visual is different. Yeah, okay, fair enough.
It's heroes. This is Hero Wars, nothing.
Yeah, it is. It is.
It is Hero Wars.

Speaker 1 So in the meantime, when you play Hero Wars, there's the thing that we already saw. So it's again, like apes, something, whatever, two other different games.

Speaker 1 I can even change monkey control and monkey clash.

Speaker 1 Those games actually had these exact images, these exact same characters. Everything's basically the same.
So what they're trying, they're just using the different mini-game in the beginning.

Speaker 1 Again, typical Forex, just like, again, new onboarding, does it work? No, it doesn't. Switch, switch to onboarding.
Yeah, goodbye. Yeah, and you know what, why they're doing this?

Speaker 1 Because even if you do the famous marketability tests, you don't have the C, the real CPIs. You just don't, because you don't have the actual CPI optimization because you don't have the game.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that's why they're doing this. Yeah, so you now have the game.
Let's build a different mini game as a CPI test. Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Minigames are the CPI test now. Welcome to the new world.
Yeah, I'm saying, yeah, I was saying, like, welcome to the software.

Speaker 1 That's our bumper for a little short, like that right there. That's the voice of mobile gaming for this last year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and for next year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and let me finish that with the last game, which is called Brutal War. Oh, Oh, yeah.
And guess what? Who this?

Speaker 1 I need to watch more of it before I can figure out. It's Chinese, obviously.

Speaker 1 Top war.

Speaker 1 Creative lookalike.

Speaker 1 Point system.

Speaker 1 River game.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Okay, nice.

Speaker 1 But is it exactly the same as what you just showed us, honestly?

Speaker 1 It's definitely Chinese, right?

Speaker 1 So it's the top for fun again. Of course.
Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 How many top four fun?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 all of them. All of them.
Yeah, I mean, Stan told us, like, hey, so we have some new games coming.

Speaker 1 He didn't mention we have some new games like every month.

Speaker 1 This

Speaker 1 week on Top Or review array?

Speaker 1 It's this week on Forex, basically. Yeah, this week on Forex.

Speaker 1 This month on Forex, because it's just

Speaker 1 because exactly like what you said you just said

Speaker 1 they have the game they have the forex which is

Speaker 1 working for super well obviously yeah once you get into it

Speaker 1 yeah yeah yeah so now but you need to get into it and they and they need as many players to get into it as possible so that's why this is this is the fun

Speaker 1 this is happening yeah and this is then your usual kind of loop which seems like prehistoric something theme

Speaker 1 it reminds me of actually the

Speaker 1 game by Melsoft, Family Island, a little bit? Family Island, yeah.

Speaker 1 What the visual of it seems like. Oh, yeah, Family Island or Cologne.
No, no, not Cologne, like Family Island for sure. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, but yeah, other than that, seems like your typical kind of forex loop here later down the line. And then,

Speaker 1 yeah. Maybe some little bit of iterations with like I think the

Speaker 1 your map and your like unlocking of the the map and unlocking of the town, it seems that's there.

Speaker 1 But it's interesting because you see that they already are testing the two same mini-games within both their monkey game and this game. Yeah, but it's different visual style, kind of.
I've seen

Speaker 1 we'll see. But again, for these forex games, it's always just like

Speaker 1 you just change the onboarding.

Speaker 1 Fred Flintstone Forex.

Speaker 1 Fred Flintstone Forex, exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, it's going to be, again, very interesting next year. I'm still annoyed at the Forex genre after they bastardized my childhood with Age of Empires.
Well, Age of Empires was just

Speaker 1 one more head to roll. Nothing.
Nothing. Yeah, it's just like an item in the Excel sheet, nothing else.

Speaker 1 Don't cry too much.

Speaker 1 I'm sure we'll get Bunjo Kazooie. That was my first gaming love, so I'm sure that'll be a Forex soon enough, anyway.

Speaker 1 So, my two most favorite games from this kind of set was the merch metacore innovations.

Speaker 1 This is also gonna fail so much.

Speaker 1 We'll see.

Speaker 1 No, seriously. I haven't seen a level-based merge game.
But yeah, of course, it's good. Like, merch is as tough as it gets.
I get that. It's like if this was released

Speaker 1 very close, yeah, five years ago, very close to like after merch mention was on the top. Maybe.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 Travel Town, microphone. Thank you very much.
Bye.

Speaker 1 Seriously. It's like this is not going to be anywhere close to Merge Mansion.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You can put seven Pedro Pascals behind it.

Speaker 1 The one from Game of Thrones.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. It's not going to save you.

Speaker 1 All of them.

Speaker 1 All of them. Or you can do Pedro Pascal from Wish, and that's going to be cheaper and more effective.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for listening, guys.

Speaker 1 Guys, I'll do it for free.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Jesus. Yeah,

Speaker 1 the last one, which I think we're going to cover and it's going to be a big bust, will be the high seas hero by century. Yeah, it seems like very, very good.

Speaker 1 I'm still guessing that it will be mostly driven by Asian revenue. Yeah, it's not going to work in the West.

Speaker 1 I can watch the Godzilla throwing that flame ball, whatever was that 10 million times. Oh, this is so

Speaker 1 amazing.

Speaker 1 How much royalty have they paid for that? Well, absolutely.

Speaker 1 What they're talking about. Yeah, okay, it's giant robot.
Yeah, it's like exactly. Godila wasn't a robot.
Come on. You're right.
Let me take it home. Let me take it home.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay, okay, go.

Speaker 1 We value our viewers a lot. And at this time of Christmas, we have

Speaker 1 toiled. And we know that not all of you are in countries where you speak English.
So, if you are in Turkey, South Korea, Russia, what are you laughing at so much?

Speaker 1 Don't worry, it's in Japanese. I watched the whole episode without knowing that you could turn on supplies.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
So, you are very,

Speaker 1 very loyal

Speaker 1 fan. Thank you very much.
Yeah, very loyal fan.

Speaker 1 So, now go check it again. Are you listening to this? Manje will send you a free t-shirt.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Yeah, please reach out and join the Slack channel.
Reach out on Slack's channel. I will send the t-shirt.
So you're a loyal fan.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We should do merch like loyal fan without subtitles.

Speaker 1 I watched the episode without subtitles. The only thing I got was just the subtitles.

Speaker 1 So this is an Easter egg.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is an Easter egg. Thank you very much.
Oh, Jesus.

Speaker 1 Good night. We'll see you in Korea in two weeks.
Happy New Year.

Speaker 1 Happy New Year.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. Bye.