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

that's UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan. Basically, tier one countries follow it very closely.
The UK was a soft launch country. So they were running everything in the UK since the very beginning.
Which is also insane, by the way. It's also insane because UK, I mean, insane in terms of the CPIs and the number of installs they were pulling in from UK, it's just not really cheap.
On the other hand, it's kind of for the puzzle genre and like for measuring monetization. This is a perfect one.
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Tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry. Hello, welcome everybody.
Welcome to another episode of Two and a Half Gamers. My name is Matja Lanceric.
I'm Felix Bromberg. And I'm Jak'm your premier.
That's right, he is. Yeah, and we are your hosts.
And today, guess what? We are going to talk about Royal Kingdom. Yeah, but before we go into the episode, we want to thank our sponsors, Supersonic, because we partnered with Supersonic for their super hybrid competition and we value our sponsors so guys uh go to supersonic.com slash super hybrid uh which says you should unleash your hybrid superpowers and transform your hybrid into a super hybrid and make it profitable so guys from supersonic are actually uh going to help you with financial support for the game and you know it's non-reculpable so check it out 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 we really value your support and and we are gonna go back to the episode thank you very much yeah all right perfect good again thanks supersonic so we're gonna talk about royal kingdom now which is scaling like there is no tomorrow or is it oh you know we're gonna check it i actually posted about this game right before Black Friday.
500,000 installs is fucking insane. It's not...
Let's check. Recalibrate.
Yeah, exactly Donald, like, the name doesn't bring a bell, this is basically a continuation of a royal match. Doesn't ring a bell.
Like, if you don't know what the Royal Kingdom is, you should leave the industry immediately. We've got the rock, I know, but just to be clear.
Yeah, yeah. There's probably the biggest vendors on mobile, like, easily on mobile games yeah for Royal Match absolutely so you know if you don't know the campaign behind the Royal yeah the Royal Match in Royal Kingdom is Dream Games based in Turkey all ex-peak guys who really know what they are doing and we can see in the numbers yeah so okay so today numbers first than the game yes yeah today numbers okay yeah numbers first okay this is a unicorn already yeah here's the game but like uh we'll get to it so um that was a pretty lengthy soft launch i would say which started in april 2023 and of course, you see this big spike of downloads which pretty much entered the soft launch phase and started the global launch phase.
There was a big hype about this like CGI trailers and everything, so a proper global launch like in old days, I would say. Just days.
We don't see these anymore. We just see these

stealth Asian

lunch only, like Happy does these days

or whatever. This is a proper

old-school global lunch

with giant revenue spikes

by UA and trailers

and everything.

This is not UA.

Do you want to tell me?

It is UA, yeah, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

It is.

So just to zoom in,

yeah, November 19,

you can see that their soft launch downloads

changed to global launch downloads

to something like 330K a day

for a mystery game

that is driven completely by IAPs,

which is super expensive.

Yeah, it could be, yes. But then they also had a big featuring on the store, which obviously is not 200,000 still players.
Yeah, the UA bump remained from the old days, but the featuring impact didn't remain. Yeah, featuring is useless.
It's completely useless. Anyway, can you show me revenue? Some things don't age that well.
So here's the revenue where there's like our usual slow hockey stick slowly forming here. Where, yeah, if you look at it, basically...
Can you put Royal Match as well? I just want to compare it it so i just want to see how far away it is oh okay whoa this is a little shot and this is where you chat where we now probably need to take up some kind of a lens yeah whoa we'll get to the comparison of course there will be a lot about comparison is that daily? no that's monthly surely it's monthly but I can put in daily there how much a day is Royal Match really want to see this small flick is that 3 mil a day? more 4 and a half easy it went over Candy Crush now it's the biggest puzzle in the world now for some time so this thing like this this is what we're talking about today and if you're watching this episode from Turkey please right now go and enjoy our Turkish subtitles yeah a smooth transition yeah. There you go.
A smooth transition. Very smooth.
We also have Vietnamese, Russian, Chinese, South Korean, and... Yeah.
That's it. That's it.
And that's it. That's it for now.
That's it for now, yeah. Anyway, just to compare.
So Royal Match was soft launched the big game currently, the Zond the premiums portfolio in July 2020 and started scaling slowly in June 2021. Downloads-wise, you could see that even the pattern is a little bit different now because this was slow scaling.
This is not the case for Royal Kingdom, sorry.

But just to cross-compare, like, raw numbers here.

So Royal Kingdom is currently pulling something like solid 80k a day download still,

which is, like, pretty much, like, one month after the global launch.

And then revenue-wise, it's totally increasing. But again, you see the spikiness of this because it's just like the as like all these like players get through the levels you know they monetize late they don't monetize immediately and this is like puzzle games are known for their very slow raw periods like up to like two years and stuff like that.
So this is completely normal intended behavior. So they're pulling in something like 200K a day IP, which will be probably...
For now. Yeah, for now, which will like double in next month or triple or something like that.
If you want to check a Royal Match, it's pulling actually around double the downloads, which is like 160k, just saying. It was, by the way, February start of the year was really killing it because it did like 800k downloads a day.
Let's put country filter in. So we're safe here.
Yeah, that's 200k in India. Let's be honest.
Let's be real. Let's be real.
I'll just stop you right there and say right now, right now there is an army of SDK network sales reps descending on Istanbul and watering at the mouth because the budget for the UA budget for this launch must be in the hundreds, if not billions of dollars, right?

Not billions, but it will be lost.

But it will be lost.

400, 500 mil?

We'll see. We'll see.

Yeah.

And look, let's put the country filter on the Royal Kingdom as well

and see how many installs are going from the actual US. I mean, yeah.
Just go there. It's still like fucking hell.
It's 50k. It's 40k.
Actually, it's the same scale as Royal Match. Like 50k from US.
US. Multiply it by 30 or 50.
At least. I mean, now it's maybe.
You see, it's doing like double what Royal Match does on US only. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
But this is like where the bulk of the spend goes. Even though the downloads are just higher here, the money is the, you know, the different thing.
Yeah. So that's there.
And revenue side, of course. I think they're spending like one or two million a day predominantly in the US.
It's like... On the Royal Match now.
Yeah. Yeah.
On the Royal Kingdom, I would say, honestly. On the Royal Match, it's maybe the same.
Okay. Okay.
I think the Royal Match CPI is way higher than Royal Kingdom at this point you can see like literally like a textbook slow hockey stick in its own natural habitat here where yeah where you put this slow hockey stick I'm sorry wait wait when does the hockey stick goes into the classic textbook hockey stick? When did that happen? This bump right here. Because it's not later.
You see that it goes up. Since when is the slow hockey stick textbook? That's my question.
I'm still just waiting for the donut. When are we going to get the donut growth? This is amazing.
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 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 Match, no ads.
Player X, no ads. There are like the ones, and then there's some different segmentations and the other ones that do have ads.
So we see pretty much. And I would say this is super accurate because on this scale, even since tower sadness multiplier tends to get very very marginal

yeah

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

let's just go by

countries to again see what's happening

here it's still

predominantly US

it's already in decline so this is

dead game

that's

the happening here it's still predominantly us but it's already being declined so this is dead game that's uh uk australia canada germany japan basically tier one countries follow it very cool it was the uk was a soft launch country so they were they were running everything in the uk since the very beginning yeah it's also insane by by the way. It's also insane because UK,

I mean, insane in terms of the CPIs and the number of installs they were pulling in

like from UK, it's just not really cheap.

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 multiplied by 10. If you expect 50% of your revenue coming from US, I guess that's the right choice to do.
But very expensive to do also. Question.
So go back to lifetime revenue for Dream Games as a total company, please. So they have our 2.8 billion in IMP sales, right? How does a company like this, Majig, 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 scale? Because assuming they have maybe a 30% or 40% profit margin, they have maybe close to a billion in cash, right? What do you think? What do you think the profit margin would be, right? Jakob, on match three, where do you keep...
30 to 40%, that's quite a lot. 20? I don't think so.
I don't think it's not that big, man. 20? Max.
20 max. 20.
Okay, it's 20, but 20 is still 400 mil. Yeah.
So I don't think you're going to go for a loan in the bank like you have the the credit lines that you don't need to really pay that money kind of at the end of the month anyway so the cash flow is slightly different in this case but they need to have some cash and uh they raised a lot of money man if you if you kind of remember the last couple years before. A couple hundred million.

So they most probably use it now.

And yeah, if they're spending two mil a day,

they still have some time

until they get some cash back from the campaign.

Okay, they raised $255 million last time.

So, okay.

When was the last time, by the way?

The date. It was like last year.
So, okay. When was the last time, by the way? The date.

It was like last year.

Wait, wait, I'm checking.

January 18th, 2022.

Okay, two years ago.

More than two years ago.

Nearly three.

My goodness.

Okay.

They don't know what to do.

Yeah, but they still need to do UA on the Royal Match as well.

So, I mean, like for the 250, it's kind of questionable how many they have left.

They made nearly $3 billion, right? So, you're probably $600 million in profit. You're the biggest puzzle game on the market, man.
Yeah, exactly. I think the collateral is pretty solid.
Yeah, pretty sure. So, that's there.
Any else regarding the numbers? Or do we want to see the jump? I want to see the game. I want to see the game? Also, Felix, as soon as you say, like, you want to have money for the launch, people will be just knocking on you.
They're like, take all my money. Please spend it.
Please spend it. You know who's the real winners of this? The high-end restaurants of Istanbul.

Salt Bay has opened up a new restaurant next to Dream Games' office.

Just, you know.

Just, yeah.

Just to host everybody.

Just finishing the numbers here.

So Royal Match Active User Base

is still scaling up

after all those kind of years.

And then it's somewhere around 16, it 16 17 which literally there's like 17 daily activities here d dau so last last episode was a mistake mau versus dau but this is this is actually yeah ma is like 50 oh my god this is insane but we always look at the AU just saying that that's the important number and yeah to compare this with currently the Royal Kingdom that's hitting something around 1 million so like 1.15, 1.16 of that scale that's pretty good actually but let's see because also keep in mind that even if 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. You just cement yourself on the second position, right? Yeah, reinforce yourself there otherwise, because we know that there's something coming from the East.
It's going to come for the casual genre very fast anyway let's talk about the game a little bit so 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 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 a Pixar movie basically so guys didn't really you know they stand on this for sure and it's like really shows quality.

Some new things that are like immediately

like you basically see it if you

like I was just playing Royal Match this week, like

a fresh flight through and

you could really see that like this is

just a better polish, better

visual, better

everything smoother, but

the difficulty is just hard.

It's really hard.

The game is really hard.

Thank you. visual better everything smoother but the difficulty is just hard it's really hard like the gloves are off now and like 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 power through the like first 50 levels easily.
I stuck on level 12 oh well level 18 was for me like two days yeah I was like what's happening it was like okay bye you actually need to think really carefully like you can do this in a day like like level 30, level 35, it's completely okay.

Royal kingdom, no way. Goodbye.

Show me.

That's why I needed to put all these videos

because I can't even just go

around the levels to show you all the mechanics

what they have. I'm playing this for two weeks

or three weeks already.

What's your level?

Let me check. Way lower than yours.
Oh, really? Yeah. It's just super high.
Yeah, so Royal Match is one of its unique traits that they're very known for is that they have the best creatives. 23.
Level 23. 23.
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.

These are no playable creatives.

They're 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 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 like, and I'll keep this in mind.
I'll show you. It's time-based now.
And yeah, it's like some kind of a visual from that creative or even the 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 again like this is just king's nightmare and he's again is usually like hurry up because I'm gonna die in a second yeah but you have visual feedback is like 10 more seconds and he's actually gonna blow up screen starts blinking red and everything yeah there we go so they they've done this masterfully to kind of lower the cpi with these faggats creatives and then keep the roas and the retention of these players unaware of what they're getting into whereas the things that they saw the creatives, they're going to actually play them, even though they're going to play shit ton of match three levels in between. So we'll see what happens there.
But yeah, that's what they're altering with Royal Match. 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 this is the old build i'm showing not the new build this is the old build where you actually have an opponent like you see even the the source icon that's like very telling that that would be an actual player and they were playing this very hard on this kind of pvp formula you can see here thank you harshal by the way for putting all these levels on on the screen as usual on youtube uh and then uh where we are just just want to show you the swords because it changes the level like like it's for instance now and i have the super hard level it kind of telegraphs this is going to be a p pvp level so once this ends and it ends yeah there you see attack level it was called yeah 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 it's basically empires and pysel 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 or whatever it's not times based 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-ups, boosters and everything.
I haven't ever lost yet in these levels. I don't think so.
They are very difficult. Because you're a two and a half gamer.
Yeah, they just kind of, again, change the flavor of the difficulty. I will get an answer, I guess, within the creatives if we see them from Mate.
But this was their old play that they would want to kind of go around this PvP mechanic. Something to kind of, I guess, a little bit close to Coin Master, where Coin Master also works on this light PvP meta when destroying other people's villages.
This has completely changed during Global Launch. And now we have this, basically

a boss mechanic where there are

these

high CGI's

where... People don't like PvP.

Yeah, people don't like PvP. By the way, PvP

is one of those motivations that

is lost the fastest.

There was literally research, I remember,

from guys from Stanford, like Quantock Foundry guys, where they literally said PvP motivations died first because nobody wants to do PvP the older they get. They just want to go and enjoy the game.
Not be kicked by some 15-year-olds around. So what's happening here, as you see here, those are those high CGI cinematics.

So now they switched it where King Richard,

our main hero of the Royal Kingdom,

is going against the Dark King.

And he's literally destroying his fortress now.

So we need to fight back.

He's not fighting anyway, by the way, just standing there.

So you beat the shit out of him.

But it's the same thing.

It's not time-based. Again, it's move-based.
And it's the same thing it's not time based again

it's move based and it's every 5th level

every 5th level

which is much more frequent

than the King Nightmares from Royal Match

which is every 10th level

this is every 5th level

and it's fully fledged levels

with mechanics and everything

I think it's even here

but this is the whole point of Royal Kingdom

so this is just like the whole innovation

on top of the Royal Match

Thank you. and everything.
I think it's even here. 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.
This is one of the main innovations, basically. Yeah, from the very beginning in the soft launch, it was just PvP more.
Now it's just PvE kind of, right? Still? Yeah, it's PvE. This is like complete PvE because there's this boss guy and you know you defeat the guy and that's it you move on yeah you move on i guess he gets pissed or something or where it is yeah yeah he gets pissed 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 better better 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 story actually progresses with different cinematics and like 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

and like we build a golem

and there's actually a golem mechanic that you need

to defeat where because there's a golem

mechanic like golems are running at you and

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

the age they're targeting is like

Thank you. 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. The age they're targeting is like 45 plus, right? It's basically American Housewives.
That's like one of the main demos here, I guess. Yeah, I exaggerated there but just saying.
Kind of, yeah. I want to say 35 plus, which basically we now we can check by the way check your password we can check so actually it's not 70-30 I'm surprised 64 to 36 I was looking into it already and everything is 41 and is 41.
Yeah. And you keep forgetting, like, male audience still plays a lot of puzzle games.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not disregarding that, of course. Like, it's quite a lot.
We know there are puzzle games predominantly for males, and, like, we'll get to Trackstar soon once it's even higher. Also, like, this is 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. Yeah, so I guess that's the innovation from the core standpoint.
The other point is the difficulty balance because it's really hard. It's freaking hard.
Can you show us a level? Yeah, for sure. I'll show you how I end up moving miserably.
You have only 28 moves. That's the point.
You have only 28 moves. Usually you have way more in different games and I was playing like, fine, and they're like, oh, one more move.
What? I was like, wait a second. Yeah, wait a second.
I only cleared like half of the board. So basically, if you don't create like specific booster types that are solving your situation problem, especially within these levels where there are limited space like for creating stuff, you're just like, that's it.
Like try one more once again. Yeah, you can start from the beginning.
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 otherwise it's just like yeah we just basically wasted the move whereas dynamite can like blow it up but again 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 was lucky enough to spend the dynamite

and I'm just like few moves after

and how many levels it will take me

to actually get to this situation again.

So they have the know-how.

They have the know-how.

This is exactly what happened to me

I think level 17 or 18.

I was like, wait a second.

I only had like one more move

that I need to do to finish the level and I said, okay okay i will do it again and it's like fuck shit what so you see here 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.

Not correct me if I'm wrong.

The other important thing is if we exit this, and

we'll break our hearts,

are these

pre-level boosters, I think

I haven't unlocked it here, but the streak

mechanic basically, beat levels on the first

try to get boosters there.

This is what games in puzzle 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. Therefore, again, you're motivated to put more boosters and, like, go for it.
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.
Royal Match is very known for their very hidden meta, where their whole meta is basically just these super speedy and super easy to trigger events where they're just reinforcing you playing the core. 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.
Or you want to do battle pass, again, compete something, do anything. Or you want to do, like, King's Cup tournament.
Yeah, 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.
Like what Hexasword puzzle games do, basically. Yeah, because they copied it from these guys.
so if you want to see the full force of it uh this is actually how it how it looks like when the guy actually finishes the level 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 not having a dungeon escape. Yeah, there we are.
Just wanted to show you how it actually looks fully unlocked because I'm just not having... Yeah, there we go.
For a brief second it was there. Yeah, I know what you mean.
There's so many different events. So see, this is basically how the game looks endgame.
This is Royal Kingdom again. So you see that you have like

Battle Pass mechanic,

the tournament mechanic, whatever dungeon escape

mechanic, I don't even know what was there.

Then you have some kind of a mechanic, and then you have

all these events running up.

See how the timer is so low on this one,

like just 25 minutes? This is what they excel like.

So my guess is

there's also probably innovation in this

with the setup, different functionality, different events there was this like uh notorious disco ball event which literally skyrocketed 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 know it.
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.
It's very, very specifically tailored towards puzzle genre. And it's working super well.
Everybody's copying it, by the way. Even different genres works different genres works very very well yeah and I think that's pretty much it from the what's the retention guys can we see the retention figures yeah yeah sure sure we can I mean it's insanely high by the way yeah the day 30 must be nuts it is you can see if you go if you change US to UK maybe you will be able to see something there this one yes UK so actually on the UK standpoint they have start.
Also, if you just changed the date to maybe Q2 this year, they would also just change quarter and then 2024. And then, yeah, Q2 or Q3.
Yeah, whatever. Q3.
This is a little bit more representative than the whole thing because then it takes the whole... Yeah, still the same.
So what it basically shows is that Royal Match still fares better, but the big question is that this is still soft launch data when Royal King was not in its final form. So it's basically worse, I guess, what's having now.

Yeah, because then there was this big update

for the global launch where there's no PvP, but PvE,

which changed that for better.

Yeah, exactly.

There was a reason for it, for sure.

But it's still, by the way,

still, in the long term,

Day 90 retention is kind of the same.

Wow!

Even on these data, it's kind of the same. It's like...
same. If you stick around for 30 days, you're sticking around forever.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that's how puzzle games and match free games work, right? But this is the point.
This is the whole point of this, like, why there's no, like, any more of these things. 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 design or work basically whereas game design is creating systems rules and like in our case spend apps economies and everything 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 keep in mind you're playing now like 15 000 level of candy crush still and you need to come up with new ideas and by the way the mechanic 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 3-4 levels

and there's new stuff, new functionality

new things and like yeah

it's top notch

so yeah this is the hidden know-how

that you just can't copy from these games

and if you don't have somebody that has like

7-8 years of experience

in a successful puzzle match

title, you're just kind of gone

He's like, oh so let me just

copy Royal Match and it's gonna be

almost the same, like yeah well no

For sure

How come they're so good? Like yeah well

Now even that

is not enough because UA

UA, UA and we can

continue to UA

So what do you think we are gonna

Thank you. Now even that is not enough because UA.
And we can continue to UA. So what do you think we are going to see? High production quality rivaling supercell odds.
I think we're going to see the tried and tested stuff from Royal Match. Yeah, 100%.
Kind of all the channels, right?

So it's like... Everything.

Remember what I said about the restaurants of Istanbul?

Yeah.

Get in now before it's too late.

Yeah, can I buy some impressions?

How many?

All of them, please, for the global launch.

All of them.

Thank you very much.

It's me, the girl, I love you, I need to do it. But basically everything.
Seriously, everything you can think about, all of them. Thank you very much.
It's Mintegrel, Uplav, Unity, YouTube,

but basically everything.

Seriously, everything you can think about, it's there.

So let's check playables, all the different things.

Again, you are...

What are you going to do?

Oh, there we go.

Save the king.

Save the king in asset.

Look, you're kind of... Do you see the mechanic there? Which one? This one, look.
What are you destroying? What are you destroying? Look. Concrete? Yeah.
But it's kind of what you see in the PvE levels. Yeah, you're shooting, right? Yeah, fair.
that's the thing oh okay so here we have the

the classic uh thing which where you see where where did we see this exactly it's a real match it's the same thing it's just this all this what is it in red instead of blue red exactly exactly rocks physics rocks physics exactly pushing towards uh the king richard and my God, he's so slow, whatever. And then let's see what we have here.
Still, it's one minute long. So, you know, like, it's the suspense.
Oh, my God. Is he going to make it? Oh.
No. He's going to make it? Oh, no.
Oh, I failed. Hexagons.
There you go. Bestagons.
Bestagons. But this is basically, look, so it shows what you should do and then you're pushing it like, but you see same animation, same everything, but so here's the thing.
It's like, this is, 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, this is actually the same games, I need to save 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 still works because you still show the gameplay.
Yeah, it's what Century Games figured out as well, right? It's just the truth in mobile.

This is not how it works mainly in Metroid.

I really like how he was

like trying to fed the fire

with his hand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is just like

the continuation of that

kind of the same

kind of

creating, right?

So I'm playing the same.

Do you think the Dream Games

founder watched

a lot of the Saw movies?

Ooh. Most probably just UA people.
Yeah. A lot of the...
Oh, you made it. Do I get the right that pretty much like 40% or 30% of the company's success is basically based on this whole creative stream that it's running.
Yeah. The Royal Match could be still earning 100 millions, but without this, it's not earning billions.
So I will say this. There's one kind of trend which I've digged in, which is the snake creative.
and I thought the Snake Creative kind of came from Kingdom Guard or Rush Royale but it actually was introduced in a royal match in 2022 as like first kind of steps here and there just trying to get the sense of if it works. Then they were really banking on the Save the King sign of without the snakes, all these fires, acid, lava, all the shit.
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 saw already. So this is different.
The Pixar movie. Yeah, this is different.
So obviously, yes, if you don't figure out this on the UA side, then you're basically done. Because the CPIs are so high, you won't be able to sustain.
What are the CPIs? Yeah, US CPI benchmark puzzle genre puzzle genre i have just now really like run match free in the us on facebook video versus purchase campaigns and it was very low scale obviously not royal match so low scale meaning like 5k per day in the us for purchase campaign it was it was 30 to 50. For VO, which is value optimization, which is the Vails, 80 to 120 for one player.
120 on a small scale. That's social casino CPIs.
No, that means the social casino is already way higher. Not inflation.
And that's basically the play how it works if you're not really innovating enough on the creative side on the game there's no way exactly you need to think about the whole twoback. So that kind of scale and the long time where you get the money back, it's two years.
If you're aiming for shorter payback, it's not going to work because you won't be able to grow that LTV so high in a year or six months. It's not possible.
It just, there's no way. That's why it's two years, maybe sometimes three years.
Who knows? So with this, they kind of like, I was checking the whole evolution of the different creators and I might actually talk about it in the future because it's really interesting how they moved from like the saving the king in the different environments, like lava acid and then like the whatever else and they also i 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 uh get water to the king versus someone else in the desert so there's all these like different things they also tried

pull the pin mechanics in like like sometimes sometimes in the line which is now completely gone it's all snake and stuff but here they're already on that spend level of like we tried everything and yeah and that's that's kind of like what like you see like it's It'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. 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 it's still kind of there on Facebook especially.
So it's again, UGC and then all these different saving the kings. It's not only concrete or rocks.
What was it? They have the snake as well. I'm just thinking if I understand correctly or if I remember correctly, it was Ryan Reynolds that Toon Blast used at some point.
Yes, exactly. But there wasn't this super high celebrity campaign yet from Dream Games, was it? No.
Well... Because I guess it doesn't work that often.
Glad you asked. I had it in my celebrity article, which I didn't know, but I was kind of digging into this, and they used Simon Cowell, Powell, whatever, who is that from the...
American Got Talent? American Got Talent, mm-hmm. Yes.
But that's, 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.

Because they didn't ask for that much money as JLo would for Coinmaster. Exactly.
But with JLo, it was different because Coinmaster got a lot of extra views on JLo's Instagram and all these celebrities. It was like millions of views, honestly.
I have it So it might, but also I think back in the days when Ryan Reynolds was in Toon Blast, it was rumored that it was like 600,000 for just that kind of campaign, which is insanely low. Yeah, it's quite cheap, right? It wouldn't be like that.
600k for Ryan Reynolds with like 10 clips. That's before he was super super famous right before that exactly super super super cheap yeah but look it's more like i don't know then like just go for go and search for the the date was like 2018 20 18 i guess 18 like it was a long time ago what was the first first actual date? It was afterwards, after that.
Man, seriously. 2018.
No, 16. 16.
Okay. Still, it was a really long time ago.
It was really cheap. And I was like, this would be like 5 mil.
They didn't do anything. If I understand correctly.
No, not that I saw. But they were using it in the creatives, so why not? Okay.
Also, this is just... Well, finally, here's the creative of the...
Battle mechanic? Yeah, the battle mechanic. Those are the golems that need to kind of match.
But this is playable. It is playable, yeah.
Do you think they're just doing it because of the playables? Because playables are working with this. Okay.
Oh, failed. Because he attacked me.
But this is also like, do you see the quality? Do you really see the quality? Like the level they're having the gameplay yeah yeah

yeah the playables look really shitty and uh but i like it let's let's look i mean what can we do now let's just go to my favorite place where to look for weird shit which is facebook and then again look what we are looking at here Here you go. Hello, snake.
Oh, I'm getting anxiety. I'm getting anxiety.
CGI version of that snake eating creative. Also, if you pay attention, I was actually showing this in the last trends.
Yeah, it's from last trends. But that's what we see here but yeah look we have this it's tia like who is tia i mean whatever but i don't know i don't know but they use this a lot zero ads royal kingdom thank you and then just combine it with uh with the different save the king levels again so and we have all of these also i see like you see like there's all of these like the animation quality of this yeah yeah of course oh my god yeah this is really really high polished and i like i'm sort of making it now as well it's just all right a second one he won't make it it's 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 and you know you need to go from it's almost like a story exactly like it starts somewhere you need to go from a to b and it's yeah yeah yeah exactly this is great creative there's always textbooks things that people are afraid of drowning snakes and drowning that's great snakes and drowning is this Graham? I have no idea puzzle game but it's all like all of this.
It's really interesting. It's actually a level.
Level for only game. Yeah, but it's not.
No impressions. Okay, this is the...
Oh, it's a real gameplay. Yeah, it's a real gameplay.
Exactly. It's all this different guy.
But as 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 Mintegrel and Uplavit which again, becoming really, really interesting to see like the different casual games just banking on Uplavit Mintegrel quite a lot it's just insane and I would say it's insanely good because if you have let's say 2 mil a month or 2 mil a day budget you need to spend it wisely and look it's just growing it's still growing of course we have we have the classic real short classic airplane thing oh my god I need to put this together like this like so many different airplane I think there's Hero Wars as well it was more like Lilith Games with what was Kingdoms, yeah.
So this is where people are comparing their power level in the game for whoever gets the best seats in the airplane. Yeah, exactly.
And that is, look, it's like classic real short type of stuff, right? For sure. It's also like the Royal Dragons thing that they have there.
Oh, Royal Dragons. Shit, what Dragons.
Royal Dragons. Nice.
Yeah, that's Lilith. Call of the Dragons.
Call of the Dragons, yeah. Royal Dragons coming up next.
You heard it first. Okay, yeah.
Thank you very much, listeners. We are at the new games coming from two and a half gamers it's called Royal Dragons you'll see it on the app store 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 oh my god this is great okay so yeah like this is basically it's so it's like you would say classic textbook of dream games.
I'd say one word and you turn it always into a meme. Because you're a celebrity, Jakob.
You're a celebrity now. You're so nice.
Everybody loves it. Go back to those statics.
Yeah, there's King Richard. Oh, wow.
That's really nice.

A lot of Japanese.

No, no. I mean, it looks literally like a Pixar movie.

Look at this and then look at

the new posters for, I don't know, Despicable Me 4

or something. It looks exactly

the same quality.

Of course. Even Anatoly

from Burning Games told us

people actually care about quality.

They actually care about quality a lot.

But that's what differentiates you

within the sea of clones and everything.

Exactly.

And you won't be able, if you're cloning,

you won't be able to do this.

You won't be able

to do this at all.

You can't imagine how much

to render that cost.

Come on, you have render farms, please.

But who can order render farms?

I can render.

I can.

Come on.

Man, have you seen some of those interviews

on how much one minute of Blizzard cinematic costs?

No, and I don't care.

I don't care either.

Let's end.

I think we can end this right here because it it's that's why i don't make movies out of those because it's brilliant well i can tell you one thing uh we are living in the era of ai you can do so much it's just a matter of time before sora comes out and then everything is just done it already it already days ago, man. You can't really create any account.
For now. It's already there.
Oh my god, yeah. We'll get there.
I mean, you can't give anything else than 10 out of 10 for for any ua like because if you are 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 you just use it on royal kingdom and you just multiply it by 10 which i'm pretty sure it's gonna happen 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 soon but I will see for now I'm still leaning more into this usual like diminishing return story candy absolutely. But yeah, let's see.

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

Okay.

Soon.

Ad monetization is a zero. How dare they have this many users and don't share them by showing ads.

But, you know, that's cool if you're earning that much, I guess.

Can you wait a 10?

Yeah, I would say 10. I can't say they invented things man this is just like heads off I can't do anything else I would be fucking idiot if I say anything less than 10 seriously okay sounds great thank you very much guys for listening please join our Slack channel on YouTube.
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