Royal Kingdom Game Review: The Art of Level Design in Puzzle Games Genre

Speaker 1 That's uh UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, basically Tier One countries follow it very well.

Speaker 2 But UK was it was the UK was a soft launch country, so they were they were running everything in the UK

Speaker 2 since the very beginning,

Speaker 1 which is also insane, by the way.

Speaker 2 It's also insane because UK, I mean, insane in terms of the CPIs and the the number of installs they were pulling in, like from UK, it's just not really cheap.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, it's kind of for the for the puzzle genre and like for measuring monetization. This is the perfect one.

Speaker 3 This is a no bullshit gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail, powered by our ad monetization, game design, and user acquisition triple threat expertise.

Speaker 3 Welcome to the two and a half gamers, the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles.

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Tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry.

Speaker 2 Hello, welcome everybody.

Speaker 2 Welcome to another episode of Two and a Half Gamers. My name is Matteja Ancherich.

Speaker 1 I'm Felix Brauberg. And I'm a Kubremir.
That's right, he is.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and we are your host.

Speaker 2 And today,

Speaker 2 guess what? We are going to talk about

Speaker 1 Royal Kingdom. Yeah, but

Speaker 2 before we go into the episode, we want to thank our sponsors, Supersonic, because we partnered with Supersonic for their super hybrid competition.

Speaker 2 And we value our sponsors. So, guys, go to supersonic.com slash superhybrid, which says you should unleash your hybrid superpowers and transform your hybrid into a super hybrid and make it profitable.

Speaker 2 So, guys from Supersonic are actually

Speaker 2 going to help you with financial support for

Speaker 2 the game.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 you know, it's non-recoupable. So, check it out.

Speaker 2 You can scan the QR code, which is right on the screen, or you go to supersonic.com slash superhybrid and submit your game. So, thank you very much, guys, from the Supersonic.

Speaker 2 We really value your support and we are going to go back to the episode. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 Yep. Right.

Speaker 1 Perfect. Good.

Speaker 2 Again, thanks, Supersonic. So, we're gonna talk about Royal Kingdom now, which is scaling like there is no tomorrow.
Or is it?

Speaker 2 I know, we're gonna check it. I actually posted about this game

Speaker 2 right before, what was it, Black Friday?

Speaker 2 And like 500,000 installs is fucking insane. So

Speaker 2 it's not, yeah, I know. Let's let's check.
Let's check.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I know. Recalibrate.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 For those

Speaker 1 who

Speaker 1 like the name doesn't bring a bell, this is basically a continuation of a royal match.

Speaker 2 Doesn't ring a bell. Like, if you don't know what Royal Kingdom is, you should probably

Speaker 1 get a rock, I know, but just to be clear. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 biggest spenders on mobile, like easily on mobile games, yeah.

Speaker 2 For royal match, absolutely. So, yeah, if you don't know, the campaign behind the Royal Royal Match in Royal Kingdom is Dream Games, based in Turkey.

Speaker 2 All ex-peak guys who really know what they are doing.

Speaker 1 And we can see

Speaker 1 the numbers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. So, today, numbers first than the game? Yes.
Yeah, today numbers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, numbers first.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is a unicorn already.

Speaker 1 Here's the game, but like we'll get to it. So

Speaker 1 that was a pretty lengthy soft lunch, I would say, which started in April 2023.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, you see this big spike of downloads, which pretty much ends the soft lunch phase and started the global launch phase.

Speaker 1 There was like big hype about this, like giant CGI trailers and everything. So a proper, proper global launch, like in old days, I would say.

Speaker 1 No, but like

Speaker 1 we don't see these anymore. Like we just see these like, you know, like stealth.
People don't eat Asian lunch only, like hubby does these days, or whatever.

Speaker 1 Like, this is a proper, like, old, old days, old school global lunch with giant revenue spikes bump up by UA and like trailers and everything. And like, what

Speaker 1 this is not UA, you want to tell me?

Speaker 2 It is UA, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, it is,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 So, just to zoom in, uh,

Speaker 1 yeah, November 19, you can see that like their soft lunch downloads change to global lunch downloads to something like 330K a day for a mystery game

Speaker 1 that is is driven completely by IEPs, which is super expensive.

Speaker 2 Yeah, COPS, but then they also

Speaker 2 had a big

Speaker 2 featuring on store on the store, which obviously is not 200,000 still players.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the UA pump remained from the old days, but the featuring impact didn't remain. Let me guess.
Yeah, featuring is useless.

Speaker 1 It's completely useless. Anyway, can you show me revenue? Some things don't age that well.

Speaker 1 So here's the revenue where there's like our usual slow hockey stick slowly forming here.

Speaker 1 Where

Speaker 1 yeah, if you look at it basically.

Speaker 1 Can you put Royal match as well? I just want to compare it, so I just want to see how far away it is. Oh, do you want to see?

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 We now probably need to pick up some kind of a lens.

Speaker 1 Whoa.

Speaker 1 We'll get to the comparison, of course. There will be a lot about comparisons.
Is that daily? No, that's monthly, surely. It's monthly, but I can put in daily there if you're not.

Speaker 1 How much a day is Royal Match? Really, really want to see this small flick.

Speaker 1 Is that three mil a day?

Speaker 1 More.

Speaker 1 Four and a half.

Speaker 1 Easy. Easy.

Speaker 1 It went over Candy Crush now, man. It's the biggest puzzle

Speaker 1 in the world now. So for some time.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this thing like this, this is what we're talking about today. Yeah.
And if you're watching this episode from Turkey,

Speaker 1 please right now go and enjoy our Turkish subtitles. Yeah.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a

Speaker 1 smooth transition.

Speaker 2 Very smooth.

Speaker 1 We also have Vietnamese, Russian, Chinese, South Korean, and...

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's it.
That's it.

Speaker 1 And that's it. That's it for now.

Speaker 2 That's it for now.

Speaker 1 Anyway, just to compare, so uh royal match was soft launched the big game currently that this on the museum's portfolio in july 2020 and started scaling slowly in june uh 2021 uh downwards wise you could see that even the pattern is a little bit different now because this was like slow scaling

Speaker 1 global launch this is not the case for royal match definitely a royal kingdom sorry uh but just to cross compare like raw numbers here so royal kingdom is is currently pulling something like

Speaker 1 solid

Speaker 1 a day download still which is like pretty much like one one month after the global launch

Speaker 1 and then revenue wise it's slowly increasing but again this you see the spikiness of this because

Speaker 1 the as like all these like players get through the levels, you know, they monetize late. They don't monetize immediately.

Speaker 1 And this is like puzzle games are known for their very slow ROAS periods, like up to like two years of the scare and stuff like that. So this is completely normal intended behavior.

Speaker 1 So they're pulling in something like 200k a day IP, which will be probably double,

Speaker 1 yeah, for now, which will like double in next month or triple or something like that.

Speaker 1 If you want to check Royal Match, it's pulling actually around double the downloads, which is like 160k, just saying.

Speaker 1 This was, by the way, February start of the year year was really killing it because it's like 800k downloads a day let's put country filter in so we are we are

Speaker 1 save here

Speaker 1 yeah there's 200k in india let's let's let's see like let's be honest let's be real let's be real

Speaker 1 but let's stop you right there and say right now

Speaker 1 right now there is an army of SDK network sales reps descending on Istanbul and ah watering at the mouth because the budget for the the UA budget for this launch must be in the hundreds, if not billions, of dollars, right?

Speaker 1 Not billions, but it will be billions. But

Speaker 1 400, 500 mil?

Speaker 1 We'll see, we'll see. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And like, look, you have, like, yeah, let's put the country filter on the Royal Kingdom as well and see like how much or how many installations are going from the actual US.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, just go there.

Speaker 2 You still have

Speaker 2 fucking hell.

Speaker 1 Actually, it's the same scale as Royal Match. Like 50k from US.
US

Speaker 1 only.

Speaker 2 Multiply it by 30 or 50.

Speaker 2 At least. I mean, now it's.

Speaker 1 It's doing like double what Royal Match does on US only. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. But this is like where the bulk of the spend goes, even though the downloads are just higher here.

Speaker 1 The money is the you know the different thing,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 So that's there, and revenue side, of course. Uh, if we can.

Speaker 2 I think they're spending, they're spending like one or two million a day, uh,

Speaker 2 predominantly in US. It's like on Royal Match now, yeah, yeah, Royal Kingdom, I would say, honestly.

Speaker 2 On Royal Match, it may be the same.

Speaker 1 Okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 2 I think the Royal Match CPI is way higher than Royal Kingdom at this point.

Speaker 1 So you can see like literally like a textbook, slow hockey stick in its own natural habitat here.

Speaker 1 Where

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 where you put this slightly what

Speaker 2 when does the hockey stick go into the classic textbook hockey stick? Like, when did that happen?

Speaker 1 This bump right here.

Speaker 1 Because it's not linear. We see that it's later.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 since when it's the slow hockey stick textbook, that's that's my.

Speaker 1 I'm just waiting for the donut. When are we gonna get the donut growth?

Speaker 1 Well, this is amazing.

Speaker 1 Let's continue here. So bulk of the revenue is coming from US 55%.
You see it there, this kind of giant violet color blob here. And it goes all the way to heights like

Speaker 1 5 million a day, pretty much. And no ads, of course.
Just keep that in mind. If I understand, no ads here.
Candy Crush has ads. These guys don't have yet.
Royal Much no ads, Player X, no ads.

Speaker 1 There are like the ones, and then there's some different segmentations and the other ones that do have ads.

Speaker 1 So we see pretty much, and I would say this is super accurate because on the scale, even sensitive or sadness multipliers tends to get very, very marginal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 So, so that's there. So, yeah, that's the biggest game on the market regarding Puzzle Genre.
And now they launched the second one. And if we check their revenue,

Speaker 1 let's just go by countries to again see what's happening here.

Speaker 1 It's still predominantly US.

Speaker 2 It's already in decline. So this is dead game.

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 1 UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan. Basically Tier 1 countries follow it very well.
But

Speaker 2 the UK was a soft launch country. So they were running everything in the UK

Speaker 2 since the very beginning.

Speaker 1 Which is also insane, by the way.

Speaker 2 It's also insane because UK, I mean, insane in terms of the CPIs and the number of installs that we're pulling in, like from UK, it's just not really cheap.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, it's kind of for the puzzle genre and like for measuring monetization. This is a perfect country.
Way better than Australia and Canada combined and multiply by 10.

Speaker 1 UK, it's the

Speaker 1 yeah. If you expect 50% of your revenue coming from the US, I guess that's that's the right choice to do, but very expensive to do also.

Speaker 1 Question: So, go back to lifetime revenue for Dream Games as a total company, please.

Speaker 1 So they have around 2. Is that 8? 2.8 billion in IEP sales, right?

Speaker 1 How does a company like this, Matie, go about a new launch? Do they get credit from a bank or do they just fund it themselves? Or how does it work when it's this big scales?

Speaker 1 Because, you know, assuming they have maybe a 30 or 40% profit margin, they have maybe close to a billion in cash, right?

Speaker 1 Well, it costs a billion in cash. What do you think the profit margin would be, right? Yako Bon Match 3.

Speaker 2 30 to 40%. That's quite a lot.

Speaker 1 20%. I don't think so.
No, I don't think so is that that big man. 20

Speaker 2 for now. Max.

Speaker 1 20 max. 20.
It's 20. Okay, it's 20.
But 20 is still 400 mil.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I don't think you're going to go for a loan in the bank. Like, you have the credit lines that you don't need to really pay that money kind of at the end of the month anyway.

Speaker 2 So the cash flow is slightly different in this case. But they need to have some cash.
And

Speaker 2 they raised a lot of money, man, If you if you kind of remember the last year

Speaker 2 a couple hundred million, so they most probably use this use it now,

Speaker 2 and yeah, if they're spending two mil a day, they still have some time until they get some

Speaker 2 cash back from the from the campaign.

Speaker 1 They raised 255 million last time, so okay, when was the last time, by the way, the date

Speaker 2 was like last year,

Speaker 1 I'm checking january 18th 2022

Speaker 1 okay two years ago more than two years ago nearly three years

Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 2 they know what to do yeah yeah but they still need to do ua on the royal match as well so i mean like for

Speaker 2 250

Speaker 1 it's kind of question what money they have left they made nearly three three billion right so that's probably 600 million improved

Speaker 1 biggest puzzle game on the market man yeah exactly

Speaker 1 pretty solid yeah yeah pretty sure so that's there.

Speaker 1 Any else regarding the numbers, or do we want to see the channel?

Speaker 1 I want to see the game. I want to see the game.

Speaker 2 Also, Felix, as soon as you say, like,

Speaker 2 you want to have money for the lounge, people will be just knocking on your door, like, take all my money.

Speaker 1 Please spend it.

Speaker 1 Please spend it.

Speaker 1 Those are the real winners of this. The high-end restaurants of Istanbul.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Salt Bay has opened up a a new restaurant next to Dream Games office.
Just, you know,

Speaker 2 just, yeah,

Speaker 2 just to host everybody.

Speaker 1 Just finishing the numbers here, so Royal Merge active user base is still scaling up

Speaker 1 after all those kind of years. And then it's somewhere around

Speaker 1 what was your 16, 17, actually, there's like 17 daily activities. This is

Speaker 2 DAU. So last

Speaker 2 episode was a mistake. MA versus DAU, but this is this is actually.

Speaker 1 yeah MA is like 50

Speaker 1 oh my god

Speaker 1 this is insane but you always look at DAU just saying that that's the important number

Speaker 1 and yeah to compare this with currently the Royal Kingdom that's hitting something around 1 million so like 1 15 16 of the scale

Speaker 1 pretty good actually yeah but let's see because also keep in mind that even if

Speaker 1 we'll get to this but even if royal kingdom never reaches the scale of royal match it's still better to do the competitor yourself other than leave a company to beat you. Like

Speaker 2 from cement yourself on the second position, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Reinforce yourself there, otherwise, because we know that there's something coming from the east.

Speaker 1 Anyway, let's talk about the game a little bit. So,

Speaker 1 not this one, this one. I'll get to the other one soon.
So, the game looks completely amazing and gorgeous, literally, like one of those triple-A quality like production values mobile games.

Speaker 1 It has a fully done CGI trailer, even like cinematics in between when there's this whole like dark king, good king kind of drama going on and everything is like fully like it looks like literally like a Pixar movie basically.

Speaker 1 So guys didn't really, you know, they they overstand on this for sure and it's like really shows quality.

Speaker 1 Some new things that are like immediately

Speaker 1 like you basically see it if you like, I was just playing Royal Match this week, like a fresh, fresh playthrough, and you could really see that like this is just a better polish, better visual, better everything smoother, but the difficulty is just hard.

Speaker 1 It's really hard.

Speaker 1 The difficulty is just hard.

Speaker 1 Like the gloves are off now.

Speaker 2 I really look, so I usually play these games and I usually don't need to either use the the boosters or I just kind of I

Speaker 2 power through the like first fifty levels easily.

Speaker 1 I was back to level twelve

Speaker 1 I was level eight was for me like two days

Speaker 2 yeah, I was like what's happening? It's like it's not like oh tu tu ta ta t ta okay bye

Speaker 1 you actually need to think really carefully. Like you can do this in a day like level thirty level thirty five it's completely okay.
Royal Kingdom. No way.
Goodbye.

Speaker 2 Sure me

Speaker 1 So that's why I needed to put all of these videos because I can't even just go around the levels to show you all the mechanics what they have.

Speaker 2 I'm playing these for two weeks or three weeks already.

Speaker 1 And what's your level?

Speaker 2 Let me check. Way, way lower than yours.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Okay.

Speaker 1 That's just like super high.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Royal Match is one of its unique traits that they're very known for is that they have the best creatives.

Speaker 1 So they have the best creatives because they did this kind of very specific play that they put the creatives into the game and they're part of the experience during these special levels So let's start from the beginning where if we look at what's happening with the Royal Match the previous version of this you have these King nightmares which you can skip and this is the old way that this was done which we all remember back to like Hero Wars where again you could skip these playable creatives.

Speaker 1 These are no playable creatives are fully fledged levels done on like very properly all pretty sure there's big reward by the way just to play so you definitely want to play them it's like not like something that you want to skip and it's all part of that I'm saving the king creative fake ads kind of formula they're telegraphing so so much where you have these very nice and I would say much more benevolent levels which are kind of easy you're just spamming stuff it's time-based by the way it's it's like and I'll keep this in mind I'll show you it's time-based now, and uh, yeah, it's like some kind of a visual from that creative or even a custom one where the king is stuck, or you see, like here, for instance, there's a dynamite line going to be blow up, or like something like water, or acid, or lava, or whatever, something, something that you can like, this is just king's nightmare.

Speaker 1 And he's again, as usual, like, hurry up because I'm gonna die in a second, yeah.

Speaker 2 But you like, you have visual feedback, it's like

Speaker 1 10 more seconds, and he's actually gonna blow up. The screen starts blinking red, and everything.
Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 they done this masterfully to kind of lower the CPI with these fake ads creatives and then keep the ROAS and the retention of these players unaware of what they're getting into.

Speaker 1 Whereas the things that they saw in the creatives, they're gonna actually play them, even though they're gonna play a shit ton of match 3 levels in between.

Speaker 1 So we'll see what happens there. But yeah,

Speaker 1 that's what they're all tricked with Royal Match.

Speaker 1 What happened here with Royal Kingdom is that the game actually, during its soft launch, changed because they started doing this PvP mechanic where you would be going.

Speaker 1 This is the old build I'm showing, not the new build.

Speaker 1 This is the old build where you'd actually have an opponent. Like you see, even the swords icon that's like very telling that that would be like actual player.

Speaker 1 And they were playing this very hard on this kind of a PvP formula. You can see here.
Thank you, Harshal, by the way, for putting all these levels on the screen as usual on YouTube.

Speaker 1 And then,

Speaker 1 where we are, just want to show you the swords because it changes the level. Like, it's for instance now, and I have the super hard level, it kind of telegraphs that this is going to be a PvP level.

Speaker 1 So, once this ends, and it ends, yeah, there you see, attack level, it was called.

Speaker 1 So, once we go there, it goes and it literally selects a player that you need to beat, and then it goes into this very specific

Speaker 1 styles gameplay where you matching the pieces on the board are actually being sent to the opponents like health hp whatever damage of the castles and again they are like extra mechanics whatever it's not time space anymore think about it this is not time based anymore it's still that kind of joyful a little bit bigger board on the side so you can do like a lot of power-ups boosters and everything i haven't ever um

Speaker 1 lost yet in these levels. I don't think so.
They're very difficult. If you're a two and a half gamer.
Yeah, they, yeah.

Speaker 1 They just

Speaker 1 kind of, again,

Speaker 1 change the flavor of the difficulty. I will get an answer, I guess, within the creatives if we see them from Mate.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 no. Yeah.
But this was their old play that they would want to kind of go around this PvP mechanic. Something...

Speaker 1 to kind of like get i guess a little bit close to like coin master where cloin master also works on this like light pvp meta and and destroying other people's villages.

Speaker 1 This has completely changed during Globe Launch. And now we have this basically a boss mechanic where there are these

Speaker 1 high CGIs.

Speaker 1 People don't like PvP.

Speaker 1 Yeah, people don't like PvP. By the way, PvP is one of those motivations that is lost the fastest.

Speaker 1 There was literally research I remember from guys from Stanford, like Quantok Foundry guys, where they literally said PvP motivations die the first because nobody wants to do PvP the older they get, they just, you know, want to kind of go and enjoy the game, not be kicked by some 15-year-olds around.

Speaker 1 So, so, what's happening here, as you see here, those were those high CGI cinematics.

Speaker 1 So, now they switched it where King Richard, our main hero of Royal Kingdom, is going against the Dark King, and he's literally destroying his fortress now. So, we need to fight back.

Speaker 1 Uh, he's not fighting anyway, by the way, just standing here.

Speaker 1 So you beat the shit out of him. But it's the same thing.

Speaker 1 It's not time-based, again, it's move-based, and it's every fifth level.

Speaker 1 Every fifth level, which is much more frequent than the King Nightmares from Royal Match, which is every 10th level. This is every fifth level.

Speaker 1 And it's fully fledged levels with mechanics and everything. I think it's even here.

Speaker 2 But this is the whole point of Royal Kingdom, right? So this is just like the whole innovation on top of the Royal Match gameplay.

Speaker 1 Like this is that why

Speaker 2 from the very beginning in the soft launch, it was just PvP more.

Speaker 2 Now it's just PVE kind of, right? Still?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a PV. This is like complete PV because there's this boss guy and you defeat the guy.

Speaker 1 And that's it. You move on.
Yeah, you move on.

Speaker 1 I guess he gets pissed or something. Or

Speaker 1 where it is. Yeah.
Yeah, he gets pissed.

Speaker 1 And then some more rewards and stuff and yeah then you move on and it actually gives you gives you like they don't have a star mechanic now they have this like elixir mechanic whatever i guess it's batch of granularity for you to kind of build stuff around and yeah and then you move on and that's it and uh stuff kind of continues and the story actually progresses that's interesting that the story actually progresses with different cinematics and like

Speaker 1 There's no real impact on gameplay or even like what you're building in the kingdom. It's just like story goes and like, yeah, let's like lure him into this trap trap and like we build a golem.

Speaker 1 And there's actually a golem mechanic that you need to build

Speaker 1 where because there's a golem mechanic, like golems are running at you and

Speaker 1 creating grass on your board and stuff like that. So it goes very nice, I guess, and very smooth.
And I guess that's what people want. They don't really want PvP in this genre.

Speaker 1 This age genre, the age they're targeting is like 45 plus, right? It's basically American Healthwise. So that's that's that's that's the that's like one of the main demos here, I guess.
But uh

Speaker 1 yeah, I exaggerated there, there, but just saying kind of, yeah, kind of.

Speaker 2 I wanted to say 35 plus, which basically we are.

Speaker 1 We are now.

Speaker 1 We can check, by the way.

Speaker 1 Check your password, Rima.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 We can check. So actually, it's not 70-30.
I'm surprised. 64 to 32.

Speaker 2 I was looking into it already.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and everything's 641. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you keep forgetting like

Speaker 2 male audience still plays a lot of games.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm not

Speaker 1 disregarding that, of course.

Speaker 1 We know there are puzzle games

Speaker 1 predominantly for males. And we'll get to Trackstar soon once it scales even higher.

Speaker 2 Also, this average age is 41, so you are not that far, but it's kind of like the main group is 35 plus for sure. So 35 to 44.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I guess that's the innovation from the core standpoint.

Speaker 1 The other point is the difficulty balance, because it's really hard. It's freaking hard.

Speaker 1 Can you show us a level? Yeah, for sure. I'll show you how I'm going to do that.

Speaker 2 You have only 28 moves. That's the point.
You have only 28 moves.

Speaker 2 And usually you have way more in different games. And I was playing like, oh, no, no, no, no, fine.
And it's like, oh, one more move. What?

Speaker 1 I was like, wait a second. Yeah, wait a second.

Speaker 2 I only clear like half of the board.

Speaker 1 So basically, if you don't create specific booster types that are solving your situation problem, especially within these levels where there are limited space for creating stuff.

Speaker 1 You're just like, you know, that's it. Like, try

Speaker 1 again.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you can start.

Speaker 1 For instance, now here I need to create like dynamites with these kind of the fans, basically, and that will take the dynamite and blow it up here within like the bases on the other side.

Speaker 1 Otherwise, it's just like, yeah, we just basically wasted the move, whereas dynamite can like blow it up. But again,

Speaker 1 again, they have very, very precisely narrowed down this, like, this is the level where I need to put the booster because only now I will luck enough to spend the dynamite.

Speaker 1 And I'm just like, few moves after, and how many levels it will take me to actually get to this situation again. So

Speaker 1 they have the know-how. Like, they have the know-how.

Speaker 2 This is exactly what happened to me, I think, level 17 or 18. I was like, wait a second.

Speaker 2 I only had like one more move that I need to do, like, to finish the level. And I said, okay, I will do it again.

Speaker 1 And it's like,

Speaker 1 fuck.

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 2 so you see

Speaker 1 that opportunity this is this is basically the same like the only like super clear difference is that there's like five boosters in royal kingdom and four boosters in royal match if i understand correctly if yeah not correct me if i'm wrong uh the other important thing is if we exit this and yeah we'll break our hearts are these uh

Speaker 1 like pre-level boosters i think i did haven't unlocked it here but like the streak mechanic basically beat levels on the first try to

Speaker 1 get boosters there. This is what games in Tulsa genre monetize very well these days.
That like you try to keep the chain of winning the levels to kind of keep this extra boost.

Speaker 1 Therefore, again, you're motivated to put more boosters and like go for it.

Speaker 1 Some of these mechanics that you see here are literally like from their pipeline. Like this is exactly the same template like they're using.

Speaker 1 Royal Match is very known for their like very kind of a hidden meta, where their their whole meta is basically just these super uh speedy and like super easy to trigger events where just reinforcing you playing the core.

Speaker 1 So it's like, oh, you want to compete in this adventure, whatever, play levels and earn this alongside and you don't need to do anything.

Speaker 1 Or you want to do battle pass again, compete something, do anything. Or you want to do like King's Cup tournament.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 As you see here, win a level to earn unlimited lives and join King's Cup. That's it.
And again, it's just like you don't need to do anything with these events.

Speaker 1 That's what Hexasaur and puzzle games do, basically. Yeah, because they copied it from these guys.

Speaker 1 So, if you want to see the full force of it,

Speaker 1 this is actually how it looks like

Speaker 1 when the guy actually finishes the level.

Speaker 1 And I think you should see it in the main menu here somewhere. Oh, where we are.
Just wanted to show you how it actually looks like fully unlocked because I'm just like

Speaker 1 not having dungeon escape. Yeah, there we go

Speaker 1 for a brief second it was there yeah I know what you mean there's so many different level events

Speaker 1 so see

Speaker 1 like this is this is basically how the game looks endgame yeah this is Royal Kingdom again so you see that you have like

Speaker 1 battle pass mechanic the tournament mechanic whatever dungeon escape mechanic I don't even know what was there then you have another some kind of a mechanic and then you have all these events running up see like how the timer is so low on this one like just 25 minutes like this is what they excel it so my guess is there's also probably innovation in this with the setup different functionality different events remember there was this like uh notorious disco ball event which literally skyrocketed uh royal match revenue which again i guess they implemented also in royal kingdom so we just won't be able to see this because this will take you literally uh months to kind of get there but We'll get a little bit closer look on it soon and maybe we'll we'll know it.

Speaker 1 I guess we'll call for help here. But what I just wanted to say here, they're probably also innovated here in their meta because their meta is very signature.

Speaker 1 It's very, very kind of specifically tailored towards puzzle genre, and it's like working super well. Everybody's copying it, by the way, even different genres.
It works very, very well.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I think that's pretty much it. From the

Speaker 1 retention, guys, can we see the retention figures? Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 we can.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 that's royal nuts,

Speaker 2 Insanely high, by the way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the day 30 must be nuts.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 2 That's too early.

Speaker 2 If you go if you change US to UK, maybe you will be able to see something there.

Speaker 1 Ah, this one.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 UK.

Speaker 1 So actually, on the UK standpoint, they have like equal start.

Speaker 2 Also, if you if you just changed the date to maybe Q2 this year, that would also I just changed quarter and then 2024 and then yeah, Q2 or Q3.

Speaker 1 Yeah, whatever.

Speaker 1 Q3.

Speaker 2 This is a little bit more representative than the the whole thing because then it takes the whole thing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, still the same.

Speaker 1 So basically what this basically shows is that Royal Manage still is like fares better, but the big question is that this is still no, no, this is still soft launch data when a royal king

Speaker 1 was not in its final form so it's basically worse i guess what's happening now yeah because then there was this big update for the global launch where there's no pvp but pve which changed stuff for better and yeah exactly there was a reason for it for sure but it's still by the way still on the long term day 90 retention is kind of the same just

Speaker 1 even in on this data it's kind of the same it's like yeah is it stick around for 30 days or sticking around forever yeah pretty much

Speaker 1 i mean that's how puzzle games and match free games work right but but this is the point this is the whole point of this like like why there's no like any more of these things and everything there's so much hidden stuff here with like how good you do the level design because keep in mind guys level design and game design those are two different like subcategories of like game designer work basically whereas game design is creating systems rules and like in our case span depths, economies, and everything.

Speaker 1 Level design is about communicating ideas through environment, which is super hard in puzzle games because you need to be able to kind of create levels with ideas. They are fun.

Speaker 1 Keep in mind, you're playing now like 15,000 level of Candy Crush still, and you need to come up with new ideas.

Speaker 1 And by the way, the machine curve of Royal Kingdom is super, super fast. I mean, like the pace of how fast and frequent new mechanics are introduced in is like every three, four levels.

Speaker 1 And there's new stuff, new functionality, new things. And like, yeah, it's top-notch.

Speaker 1 So, yeah,

Speaker 1 this is the hidden know-how that you just can't copy from these games.

Speaker 1 And if you don't have somebody that has like seven to eight years of experience on a successful puzzle match tree title, you're just kind of gone.

Speaker 2 He's like, oh, so let me just copy a royal match and it's going to be almost the same. It's like, yeah, well, no.

Speaker 1 For sure.

Speaker 2 How come they're so good? Like, yeah, well, if you want to.

Speaker 1 Now, even that is not enough because

Speaker 1 UA. UA.
UA. And we can continue to UA.

Speaker 2 So, what do you think we are going to see?

Speaker 1 High production quality rivaling Super Salads.

Speaker 1 I think we're going to see the tried and tested stuff from a Royal Match. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2 Kind of all the channels, right? So it's like everything.

Speaker 1 Remember what I said about the the restaurants of Istanbul? Yeah, like

Speaker 1 now before it's too late.

Speaker 2 Yeah, can I can I

Speaker 2 can I buy some impressions? How many? All of them, please, for the global launch. All of them? Thank you very much.
Yeah, it's me integral upload in Unity YouTube, but basically everything.

Speaker 2 Like seriously, everything you can think about. It's there.

Speaker 2 So let's check like playables, all the different things. Again, you are maybe.

Speaker 1 No. What are you going to do? Oh, there we go.
Save the king. Save the king in acid.

Speaker 2 Look, you are kind of.

Speaker 2 Do you see the mechanic there?

Speaker 1 Which one?

Speaker 2 This one. Look.
What are you destroying?

Speaker 2 What are you destroying? Look.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you.

Speaker 2 But it's kind of what you see in the PVE level.

Speaker 1 So you're shooting, right? Yeah, fair. You're shooting.
That's the thing. Ah, okay.

Speaker 2 So here we have the classic thing, which

Speaker 2 where did we see this?

Speaker 1 Exactly. It's a royal match.

Speaker 2 It's the same thing, it's just this all this what is it?

Speaker 1 Red instead of blue. Red.
Exactly. Exactly.
Rocks. Physics.

Speaker 2 Rocks. Physics exactly.
Pushing towards the King Richard. And then it's like, oh my god, he's so slow.
Whatever. And then let's see what we have here.

Speaker 2 Still, it's one minute long, so you know, like, it's the suspense.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Is he gonna make it?

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 oh, no.

Speaker 2 Oh, I failed. Hexagons.
There There you go.

Speaker 1 Bestagons.

Speaker 1 Bestagons.

Speaker 2 But this is basically: look,

Speaker 2 so it shows what you should do, and then you are pushing it like, but you see

Speaker 2 the same animation, same everything. But so here's the thing.
It's like this is.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure if this is because of like players get used to see this type of ads where you're just saving the king Richard and they say, oh, you know what? Like this is actually

Speaker 2 this actually the same games.

Speaker 2 I need to save this this king but this is not in the game at all but the thing is it doesn't really need to be because in this case it kind of still works because you still show the gameplay that's what century games figured out as well right it's just the truth in mobile

Speaker 2 this is not how it works main in

Speaker 1 he was like trying to fend the fire with his hand yeah yeah

Speaker 2 this is just like the continuation of that that kind of the same kind of creative right so i'm playing the same

Speaker 1 do you think dream games founder watched uh a lot of the saw movies

Speaker 1 oh

Speaker 2 most probably just ua people yeah watch a lot of the

Speaker 1 look

Speaker 2 oh

Speaker 1 i made it do i get that

Speaker 1 do i get the diet that pretty much like

Speaker 1 40

Speaker 1 or 30 of the company success is basically based on this whole creative stream thing that it's running yeah yeah that raw match could be still like earning 100 millions but without this, it's not earning billions.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I will say this: there's one

Speaker 2 kind of trend which is which I have dig into, which is the snake creative.

Speaker 2 And I thought the snake creative kind of came from a royal kingdom guard or Russia Royale, but it actually was introduced in a royal match in 2022 as like first kind of step here and there, just trying to get the sense of if it works.

Speaker 2 Then

Speaker 2 they were really banking on the

Speaker 2 Save the King sign of without the slaves, all these fires, acid, lava, all the shit.

Speaker 2 But now they came back to this and they are using a lot of different like cameo stars and all of the fun that we we saw already. So this is uh and and this is different

Speaker 2 yeah, this is this, you know,

Speaker 2 this is different. So obviously, yes, if you don't figure out this on the UA side, then you're basically

Speaker 1 done.

Speaker 2 Because the CPIs are so high, you won't be able to sustain it.

Speaker 1 What are the CPIs? Yeah, US CPI benchmark, Puzzle Genre, benchmark.

Speaker 2 Puzzle genre, I have just now really

Speaker 2 ran match free in the US on Facebook. VO versus purchase campaigns.
And it was very low scale. Obviously, not royal match.
So low scale meaning like 5K per day in the US.

Speaker 2 For purchase campaign, it was 30 to 50. For VO, which is value optimization, which is the Vales, 80 to 120 for one player, 120 on small

Speaker 1 social casino CPIs.

Speaker 1 No, that means the social casino is already way higher.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 and that's look, and that's basically like the play,

Speaker 2 like how it works. If you don't, if you're not really innovating enough on the creative side on, you know, on the game,

Speaker 1 there's no way to exactly. And I mean, look,

Speaker 2 you need to kind of think about the whole two years payback. So

Speaker 2 that kind of scale and the long time where you get the money back, it's two years.

Speaker 2 If you're aiming for

Speaker 2 shorter payback, it's not going to work.

Speaker 2 Because you won't be able to grow that LTV so high in there in a year or six months. It's just, it's not possible.
It's just, there's no way.

Speaker 2 That's why it's two years, maybe sometimes three years.

Speaker 1 Who knows?

Speaker 2 So, with this, they kind of like I was checking the whole evolution of the different creatives, and I might actually talk about it in the like in the future because it's really interesting how they moved from like the saving the king in the different uh environments, like lava, acid, and then like the whatever else.

Speaker 2 And they also, I think, think, Felix also, it came back to one creative that you showed us in the in one of the episodes where you were trying to actually

Speaker 2 get water to the king versus someone else in the desert. So there is all these like different things.
They also tried pull the pin mechanics in like

Speaker 2 sometimes sometimes in the line, which is now completely gone. It's all

Speaker 2 snake and stuff.

Speaker 1 But here it's

Speaker 1 already on that spend level of like we tried everything.

Speaker 2 and yeah, and that's that's kind of like what like you see like it's that's what I want to say. It's all these different cameo like B A actors.
I have no idea who is this lady, but whatever.

Speaker 2 But they're using it in Royal Match as well and they were using it really like a lot like before the snake. And I think like it's still kind of there on Facebook especially.
So it's again UGC

Speaker 2 and then all these different

Speaker 2 saving the kings.

Speaker 1 It's not only concrete or rocks. I remember what was it? Um,

Speaker 1 they have the snake as well.

Speaker 1 I'm just thinking: like, if I understand correctly, or if I remember correctly,

Speaker 1 it was Ryan Reynolds that uh tomblast used at some point for creatures, yes, but there was there wasn't this like super high celebrity campaign yet from Dream Games, was it?

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I guess it doesn't work at all.

Speaker 2 I'm glad you asked. I had it in the

Speaker 2 in the uh in my celebrity kind of uh celebrity article article, which is they I didn't know well, I was kind of digging into this, and they used Simon Coble, Powell, whatever, who is that from the

Speaker 2 American Goes Talent.

Speaker 1 American Good Talent,

Speaker 1 yes,

Speaker 1 but that's

Speaker 2 I think that's basically it. So it wasn't really that working that well, maybe because they didn't really go for a different type of celebrity.

Speaker 1 Well, I think they didn't ask for that much money as like J-Lo would for CoinMaster exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 But it's like with the J-Lo, it was different because CoinMaster got a little like a lot of extra views on the J-Lo's Instagram and all these celebrities.

Speaker 2 It was like millions of views, honestly.

Speaker 1 I have it in there.

Speaker 2 So, it might, but also, I think back in the days when Ryan Ryan Reynolds was in Tune Blast, it was rumored that it was like 600,000 for just that kind of

Speaker 2 campaign, which is insanely low, which

Speaker 1 quite cheap, right? It wouldn't be

Speaker 1 like that game for Ryan Reynolds with like 10 clips. That's before he was super, super famous, right? Before that, exactly.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Super, super famous, super, super cheap.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but look, it's what like it was. I think I don't know.

Speaker 2 Just go for go and search for the date was like 2018, 2018, I guess, 18. Like, it was a really long time ago.

Speaker 1 What was the first that full date?

Speaker 2 It was afterwards, after that, even, like, man, like, seriously, like,

Speaker 1 I was no, yeah, so like 16, 16, 16, okay,

Speaker 2 but still, it was really long time ago, it was really cheap, and I was like, it's not totally like this would be like five mil. This is like,

Speaker 2 if I understand correctly, yeah,

Speaker 2 no, not that I saw, but they were using it in the creatives, so why not?

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 also, this is just well, finally, here's a creative of the PV

Speaker 1 mechanic,

Speaker 1 yeah, the battle mechanic. Yeah, but those are the golems that

Speaker 2 need to kind of march but this is yeah but this is

Speaker 1 playable it is playable yeah

Speaker 1 do you think they they're just doing it because of the playables because playables are working with this

Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 2 oh i failed because he attacked me yeah nice but this also like do you see the quality

Speaker 2 do you really see the quality like usually

Speaker 2 yeah yeah yeah yeah the playables look really shitty and uh

Speaker 2 okay let's let's look. I mean, what can we do? How it works.
Let's just go to my favorite place where to look for weird shit, which is Facebook,

Speaker 2 and then again, like what we are looking at.

Speaker 2 Here you go, hello, snake.

Speaker 1 Oh, dude, I'm getting anxiety. I'm getting anxiety

Speaker 1 CGI version of that snake eating creative.

Speaker 2 Also, if you if you pay attention, I was actually showing this in the in the the last trends.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, so last trends.

Speaker 2 But that's what we see here. But yeah, look, we have this.

Speaker 2 It's Tia. Like, who is Tia?

Speaker 1 I mean, whatever, but

Speaker 2 I don't know. But they use this a lot.
Zero ads, Royal Kingdom, thank you. And then just combine it with the different save the king levels again.

Speaker 2 So, and we have all of these also.

Speaker 2 I see, like, you see, like, there's all of these animations quality of this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is really, really high-polished.

Speaker 1 I like how he started making it now as well. It's just.
All right, a second one, he won't make it.

Speaker 2 It's, you know, like the thing is, as we discussed, this is becoming way more complex all the time because it needs to be, you need to do multiple things at once.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you need to go from, it's

Speaker 2 almost like a story, exactly. Like it starts somewhere, you need to go from A to B.

Speaker 1 and it's

Speaker 2 Felix.

Speaker 1 One

Speaker 1 minute,

Speaker 1 yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. This is great, creative

Speaker 1 experience is always text, but like all the things that people are afraid of, drowning.

Speaker 1 Yeah, oh, yeah, snakes and drowning.

Speaker 2 That's great, snakes and drowning. Um,

Speaker 1 who's this? Is this Graham?

Speaker 2 I have no idea, puzzle game, but it's all like all of this.

Speaker 2 It's really interesting. It's actually a

Speaker 2 actually a level

Speaker 1 throwing

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's not

Speaker 2 no impressions.

Speaker 2 Okay, this is the.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's real gameplay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's real gameplay, exactly. It's all these different

Speaker 2 guy. But you see, like, it's seven pages on Facebook and Instagram, so it's not really the biggest channel right there.
The biggest channel was the Mintegral and Aplavin,

Speaker 2 which again, becoming really, really interesting to see like the different casual games just

Speaker 2 banking on

Speaker 1 Mintangra quite a lot.

Speaker 2 It's just insane. And I would say it's insanely good because if you have, let's say, two mil a month or two mil a day budget, you need to spend it wisely.
And look, it's just growing.

Speaker 2 It's still growing.

Speaker 1 Of course, we have

Speaker 2 the classic

Speaker 2 real short. Yeah, the classic airplane thing.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, I need to put this together like this. Like so many different airplane.

Speaker 2 There's Hero Wars as well.

Speaker 1 Hero Wars started this thing, though.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. It was more like Lilith games with what was it? Lilith Gardner? Rise of Kingdoms, right?

Speaker 1 Oh, sorry, Rise of Kingdoms.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Rise of Kingdoms, yeah.

Speaker 1 So this creative where people are comparing their power level in a game for whoever gets the best seats in the airplane.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 And now it's look, it's like classic real short type of stuff, right?

Speaker 1 For sure.

Speaker 1 It's also like that Royal Dragons thing that they have there.

Speaker 1 Royal Dragons.

Speaker 1 Royal Dragons.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's Lilid. Call of the Dragons Lilid.
Forex. Call of the Dragons, yeah.

Speaker 2 Call of the Dragons.

Speaker 1 Royal Dragons coming up next. You heard it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. Thank you very much, listeners.
We are

Speaker 2 the new games coming from two and a half gamers. It's called Royal Dragons.

Speaker 1 You'll see it on the App App Store.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's a puzzle game, PvP puzzle game. You're gonna see it in two and a half years.
Thank you very much. That's the payback period, also.

Speaker 2 Oh my god, this is great. Okay, so yeah, like this is basically it.
So

Speaker 2 it's like you would say, classic textbook

Speaker 2 dream games.

Speaker 1 Say one word and you turn it always into a meme. Yeah,

Speaker 1 because you're a celebrity, Jakob.

Speaker 2 You're a celebrity.

Speaker 2 You're so noble.

Speaker 2 Everybody loves it.

Speaker 1 Go back to those statics.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's King Richard. Oh, wow.
That's really nice.

Speaker 2 Japanese.

Speaker 1 No, no, I mean, like, it looks literally like a Pixar movie. Like, look at this, and then look at the new posters for, like, I don't know, Despicable Me 4 or something.

Speaker 1 It looks exactly the same quality.

Speaker 2 Of course, like, that's the, like, even Danatoly from Burning Games told us, like, people actually care about quality.

Speaker 1 Yeah, actually, care about quality a lot. So that's what you differentiate you with in the sea of clones and everything.
Like, you need to have

Speaker 2 and you won't be able if you're cloning, you won't be able to do this. Like, seriously, yeah, like seriously, you won't be able to do this at all.

Speaker 1 We need to

Speaker 1 just render that cost.

Speaker 2 Come on, like, you have render farms, please.

Speaker 1 But who can order render farms?

Speaker 2 I can, I can, I can.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's not, come on, like, man, have you seen like some of those uh interviews on like how much one minute of Blizzard cinematic costs?

Speaker 2 No, and I don't care.

Speaker 1 I don't care either. Let's end.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think we can.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we can end this right here because it's that's why I don't make money out of those because it would take billions.

Speaker 2 Well, I can tell you one thing.

Speaker 2 We are living in the era of AI.

Speaker 1 You can do so much. It's just a matter of time before Sora comes out and then everything is just done.
It already

Speaker 2 released two days ago, man.

Speaker 2 It already, yeah, you can't really create any

Speaker 2 aspects.

Speaker 1 But then you lose the quality for now. For now,

Speaker 2 but anyway, yeah,

Speaker 2 it's already there.

Speaker 1 And oh my god, yeah.

Speaker 1 There you go.

Speaker 2 You'll get there. I mean, you can't give anything else than 10 out of 10 for any UA.
Because

Speaker 2 if you have a game which makes five mil a day, then you launch a new game which uses the actually like whatever you learned along the way until you get to the five mil a day revenue on the UA side.

Speaker 2 You just use it on Royal Kingdom and you just multiply it by 10, which I'm pretty sure it's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 On the other hand, I'm not sure how much money they can earn and if they're gonna go if they're gonna be anywhere near the Royal Match revenues

Speaker 2 soon, but I will see.

Speaker 1 For now, I'm still leaning more into this usual like diminishing written story, Candy Crush, Soda thing. Awesome.

Speaker 1 But yeah, let's see. Let's see.

Speaker 1 I'll hold my rating until we get to the next next episode. Okay.

Speaker 1 Soon. Ad modification is a zero.

Speaker 1 How dare they have this many users and I won't share them by showing ads. But, you know, that's cool.
If you're earning that much, I guess.

Speaker 2 10.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I will say 10. I mean,

Speaker 2 I can't say like they invented things, man, on for a row.

Speaker 2 This is just like heads off. I can't do anything else.
I would be fucking idiot if I say anything less than 10.

Speaker 1 Seriously. Okay.
Sounds great.

Speaker 2 Thank you very much, guys, for listening. Please join our Slack channel, subscribe on YouTube.
Definitely make a comment if you agree or disagree with whatever we said.

Speaker 2 If you have any other insights, please let us know.

Speaker 1 Or suggestions.

Speaker 2 Or suggestions. Yes.
Also, please go and check the Spotify. We have the video there.
We have the audio version as well. So you can check it there.

Speaker 1 Read our subtitles. We have more coming on that tune.

Speaker 2 I have more coming on tune.

Speaker 1 Also, not only subtitles, wink, wink.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, stay tuned. Stay tuned.
Thank you very much. See you next time.

Speaker 1 Bye-bye.