The Real Story Behind Tasty Travels’ Meteoric Rise: Merge, Monetize, Repeat!

The ARPDAO,

they actually have

double the ARPDAO of travel time.

Interesting.

Nearly.

And long scale, man.

So, I know, I know.

But still, yeah, it's

revenue.

I just want to see the actual revenue.

The revenue is not comparable.

Yeah, like exactly.

Jesus.

How is this category?

Amazing.

Growing so much.

Amazing.

Yes, it's insane.

Yes.

It's the second biggest category in Puzzle after mentioning.

It's

Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jackups crafting realms lift us to the highs.

Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow, hockey, sick, got your back.

Ads are beautiful, they like the way.

Click it fast, don't delay.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome for another extremely special episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast, and today we're doing something special.

We are taking, we're going traveling somewhere tasty, yeah, maybe China, maybe a Chinese type of traveling, but we don't know because today we are covering the new hit game from Century Games called Tasty Travels.

But first, I'm Felix Brauberg.

My name is Martel Anchelic.

My name is Jacob Remier,

and

we are

your

host.

Okay.

Nice.

Yeah, we're like a barbershop quartet.

We just need to, you know, snap the fingers.

And

yeah, like from the family guy, the guys.

We should sing actually next time.

Maybe.

But yeah, we're talking about tasty travels because it's scaling like crazy.

And we're actually going to China in a few weeks.

So we're definitely going to talk about this game and multiple other games.

from the Century Games portfolio.

Because there is some interesting things.

Can you mute the sound?

Yeah, just wanted to have some calming music because we want to call Matte after the last.

I'm fine, don't worry.

It's okay.

It's okay.

I'm all right.

I'm all right.

Anyway, yeah, so does it look familiar?

Yeah,

very,

very familiar.

Just not like a little bit less of the beach and sand.

So the beach and sand.

There's even the beach.

There is some.

There is some.

Yeah, yeah, there is some.

No worries.

But you know what?

There's this one signature thing that tells it away.

Oh, snow!

Yeah, there's actually winter, yes, even ice,

winter self, because ice converts super well, snow converts

even better, even better.

Anyway, yeah, so for those listening, let's go straight to it.

So, this is a follow-up on Travel Town,

which already has a follow-up called Seaside Escape from Microfun, which is currently the category leader with everything and we'll call it.

Seaside, not the gossip ground, uh not the gossip ground, gossip harbor.

No, gossip harbor is on love and pies.

Sure, but

like two different merge games.

So

yeah,

so regarding the game itself, when I was first playing, I was like, oh, this is again Travel Town as we know it.

And like, like, what can you do?

Yeah, you can do.

Oh, you can do a lot of stuff.

You can do a lot of stuff.

And

before I thought, like, before I started the game, by the way, it took me two days to get here to level 17, which unlocks the album, which is like the whole, I guess, the whole feature set on the feature set.

It's very, very fast.

I think much faster than I got.

It took me to get somewhere in Travel Town.

I guess so.

Yeah, I think really, guys at Century, even though this is not their forte in a way that like, you know, their Forex and upscaling Kingshot and all like White Out Survival, whatnot.

Yeah, they did an amazing job here, and I think they really have a chance here in a way like to kind of go and disrupt it a little bit.

Anyway,

so let's talk instead of going for the match free.

Now they're starting to do merge, and then they will go to match free again.

I mean,

are they though?

So let's see.

I will see their business models like looking at what earnings earns the most amount of revenue and be like, huh, nice revenue there.

We'd be put a shame if anything bad happens here.

Yeah.

Sure.

The thing is, which I'm really confused about, is that the UA here in this game is amazing.

I mean, amazing.

It kind of goes exactly hand in hand with what they're doing for Kingshot and Wide Adult Survival.

Let's quite alter the gameplay.

I will get that.

No, it's missing.

Yeah, it's kind of misleading anyway.

We'll get that.

But still, that shit works.

Kind of confused why it doesn't work for match 3 or their games in that category.

But yeah, I think merge is a little bit easier than match 3 as for like how much kind of background know-how you need to have because this is not based.

I'm talking about UA, not about the level balancing.

Okay, I'm talking about game design products.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because this is not that much based on level-based difficulty.

It's more based on this like merge.

Merge economy.

Yeah, yeah.

that's basically it so

the typical feature set of a merge game so this is merge to

two things merge into one

so we you know drop these things we have lucky and magical as literally a critical strike where instead of level one item drops this is what literally level of course you click sometimes and you got to too lucky and then magical because you're lucky bastard yeah and again

i hate merge games i'm just gonna come on and say it like

much, merge, merge games are good.

It's just the grind after 20 minutes, it's just grind.

You're opening the gotcha all the time.

I don't think this is this is also in travel time

emphasizes that much that you're lucky or maybe or like this kind of critical striking

two things together, which then goes higher, it goes exponential because you know the math means

so it takes like 32,000 of these to get.

I don't know.

Yeah, that's actually.

I know.

So it's why I don't really like this that much because it pre-counts.

Because you know, it takes like an infinite amount of time.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So you get these generators.

Yeah.

So I'm not going to talk about how merge games work, but let's compare it with if you want to know how merge games work, go go watch

merge game special exactly yeah which is here somewhere i i will put it as as a youtube card so you can click and then go yeah yeah go watch that we we took the whole market there so what's new here buy store

yeah

so what's new here they have pretty much everything what the reveltown had last time i saw it so we have the typical generators that are just like very straightforward then you have these generators that like generate another generator that is

temporary and then pretty much runs out, like this, whatever dish or something like you see there.

Then they have these like automatic generators that you literally need to isolate somewhere else because they like start generating stuff literally just by like, yeah, yeah, but it's like, you know.

The whole point is like, you know, pollute your board so you

just can go there and go into this infinite loop of merging stuff.

Because that's also the big beauty of this game.

There's no fail state, you're just merging stuff.

Like, you can't fail, it's just like it's this giant exercise.

Anyway, so they have everything.

There's this very interesting thing.

I never saw this thing.

So, there's this thing called Aladdin's Lamp.

And so, literally, at some point, like this thing,

it generates Aladdin's like first stage lamp.

At stage three, you get this literally genie here.

And what it does it gives you hard and soft currency

and then it goes into cooldown

and i guess okay so it's three times and then it gets into some whatever liquid gin

stuff there we go

yeah

so yeah that was it also

that's my liquid gin

it's the wrong one can i just say jakob you're getting a lot better

at narrating and playing a game at the same time.

Because

you can't fail, you just merge.

Yeah, you can merge whatever.

Two brain cells needed.

You can merge whatever, but then you're wasting your time.

You need to merge against the orders.

So, yeah.

Anyway, so there are these orders.

There's like different generators.

Like, this is pretty much like a week's progress because I played that whole week in two days like a madman here.

I literally spent like, I don't know how much gems to just restore the energy i almost i was yeah i was surprised that you actually spent money but i thought that's great you did you didn't no no no of course

i was surprised by the you didn't because i was testing the economy and i think this is faster faster startup than travel down

like i think they're either more generous or their generation or

orders are scripted in a way that they're taking the users faster through the initial experience.

I think maybe it's a good strategy, whereas they're taking maybe seasoned players that they don't want for them to kind of crawl again through the same thing, you know, faster and same grind part over again.

Yeah, exactly.

Because, like, I go to the events and like this is the good part, like the events and stuff in the second day.

It's great.

But I think, like, I don't know, four or five hours into this game already.

So, this is like on the usual 60-minute session daily time this is as i said nearly a week 60 weeks like time

anyway so they have everything here it's great some additions that they have here so yeah even these like chests like this one there's like 12 hours and like everything whatever so interesting part you see the shop icon

i haven't seen this one here so when you see like

whatever something something

the shop

the token shop in the shop is directly translated into the game orders and everything.

I don't know if it's in Travel Time or not, but I haven't seen it before when we were reviewing it.

So that means if I go here into the shop and I go into the section of like what they offer, they have it directly.

You don't need to go here.

It's directly there.

Like you just click on it.

Or you can just go here and directly.

Wait, wait, wait, go back in the shop.

What are they missing here, Mache?

Is there something missing in there?

I'm yeah, I'm pretty sure.

But if you if you if you scroll again,

isn't there

isn't there a website?

No, there's not.

There's no website, right?

That's so weird.

It's very weird actually, because

as we talk to FastSpring almost all all the time, like during the week, and and by the way, there's also a sponsor of this episode.

They have they they have delivered like D2C at scale for twenty years, empower top mobile developers and publishers around the world.

And you know, as the no drama D2C partner with the real-world experience at scale,

like FastSpring is the partner you can trust with the players and with the money.

I mean, quickly just go and launch a new web store, replace an existing D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

So you just add one button or just a link

outside of the game

and

earn additional money.

Fastspring.gg.

Easy as that.

We can get back to the end.

That's it.

I mean, yeah.

Don't you want to earn 30% or 50% more?

They're earning 200K per day.

Like, it's still more.

Anyway, 50k a day, you know, extra money on the table.

Inventory

regions, or let's say, construction regions, inventory, again, same as travel town, nothing really to it.

But there's this interesting thing where, like, need more tools.

Like, you can directly buy the crafting regions, or let's say the construction regions for soft currency.

So that's there.

Like, these guys are pretty much just generators for that, like, temporary ones.

daily quests and like all these things whatnot like that's there

The interesting part starts with the events, and these things now follow the Royal Match style events meta.

Is there a story as well, or no?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Like, if let's say

did you care about the story?

No, I just go against the time, yeah.

But people care, people care, you know, housewives.

Really?

Yeah, yeah,

a little bit at least, a little bit,

just a little bit,

anyway.

The stuff on the right is all offers

like uh yeah

so there we have here by the way this looks so ai so yeah

it's also so polished yeah it's very polished so

just just there and there was the last one these two are events so we have the concert one

where again we just reward the player the event currency as he plays the game.

So typical like event streak meta like we have here.

And then you need to upgrade this Red Panda,

where again gives you more stuff, whatever, stuff like that.

This one's more in there.

Yeah, it's a fox.

What?

It's a fox.

Where do you see Foxman?

Fox.

Is this Red Panda as it gets?

Oh no.

Okay.

Guys, sorry.

I thought it was a fox.

I would say it's Red Panda, not Fox.

I take it back.

But nice try.

Nice try.

I thought it was a fox.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, seriously, come on, man.

Like,

you don't really need to swing your dick here.

It's fine.

We said you're right.

You're right.

It's okay.

It's okay.

You're right.

Jakob has never been wrong in his entire life.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

Okay.

So,

yeah, you upgrade him and he gives him stuff that's handy, like what you need to do.

Blah, blah, blah.

As usual, so this is a typical passive event.

You don't really need to do anything.

It just rewards you with stuff.

You maybe need to merge something up.

Was the fox playing violin?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was playing violin.

Yeah.

So there we go.

And there's the active event, which is actually a second board you need to now play.

Board?

Yeah, and this is this is really nice because

a lot of times these games just create events which is like temporary boards and stuff.

And this is this is even better because it's just like it's on steroid, it just gets the good part and like you really need to c just like walk through it.

This started from like zero and I'm just walking my way actually to the door.

And then

you go back to your

chaotic board.

And it's not chaotic.

It's very ordered, man.

Yeah, I know, but that's you.

I mean, as a user.

As a user, yes.

As a user, you get like back this chaotic stuffed board.

Like, oh, Jesus Christ, not this again.

That's okay.

Yeah, but this works very well as like change of pacing.

So again, this is one of those like events.

And how you how you play it or how you do it, like just you know, just check as I'm saling.

And you see these totals at some point, like I just get them.

So

I guess I didn't get any now.

Yes, I didn't.

But they just kind of give give you to them blah blah blah.

It's there.

Same as this disk, basically.

So it's like Royal Match Trigger Meta.

So that that that's done very well.

What's on top of all of these things is actually fruit merge.

So there's this icon.

By the way, the game never even tells you about this.

It just sits there.

Nobody

points you there or like quests or they have very good tutorials.

Same thing as with the

detective merge or what was the game.

It was the exact same as we did with Radiant games or what was the Find the Cat?

Or like not Find the Cat, but the Triple Match CD.

And they had this black and white kind of types of gameplay.

Like main button in the main menu.

Yeah, but I want to say the detective merge had the same button in there, but they're like kind of UA gameplay, the black and white type of stuff.

Never said, like, oh, you need, you actually need to play it.

It wasn't even like between levels.

It was just sitting there, nothing else.

Okay, so it's here.

If you click on it, it literally says fruit merge.

it's like like the fruit merge game for those that don't know this is like very popular kind of hyper casualish game if you go into it

you play literally reverse fruit merge because normal fruit merge goes from top to bottom this goes from bottom yeah but this is this is the ua yeah this is this is pretty much ua purpose like this is the ua purpose game basically but it was also in trevotan

it's also in travelton if you if you remember some of

the creative trends that we've talked about sometimes ago, like a few months, it was there as well.

Yeah, so it's like a college frat party, some kind of drinking game.

Yeah, yeah, it's like a drinking game here.

And the interesting part is that you see that there's no kind of a limit, no nothing.

I could just do this.

You have an objective, no?

You have an objective, okay, but like there's no limit to it.

There's no reward.

Play more stages, please.

Yeah, play more stages, please.

Oh, there's this coffee.

Okay, fine.

Are you looking for some typical creative?

Yeah, I just want to see a little bit more.

But you need one more.

Yeah, just play this.

Perfect.

I love the end thing with the fireworks.

That's so nice.

So satisfying.

Something to it's just pretty much like

during curling.

Yeah, but it's

yeah, like Felix said

classic stuff.

Okay, but this basically is helping the UA

because I will show you.

Yeah, I'll show you afterwards, but still I want to know if there's like so many other types of this because you have different objects here and uh which is fine, but they have a very different also mini games and stuff in there.

I guess it's gonna be quite long and

harder and harder.

Right.

I don't think it's actually actually going to be hard because, like, where's the difficulty in this?

Just throwing this stuff forever.

That's true.

It just takes long.

It just takes long.

I still need two more of these.

Because if you compare it to those, like, Player X puzzles, you know, with you need to heat the stove in the freezing family, you can fail there in two moves.

Like, I can do this forever.

You can't do it forever.

You have that line over there.

And if you cross that line, then you're fucked.

Really?

Okay.

But like, I need to be

the bad.

That's the fail state.

Pretty much.

There you go.

Okay.

What?

Two more, I guess?

Two more?

It was already two before.

Yeah, the touch, or what?

So, yeah.

It's not moving.

Oh, it's broken.

It's just broken.

Yeah, it's broken.

Okay.

Okay.

No, it's fixed.

Like, nobody cares.

It's just there.

It's just there.

Nobody cares.

It's just like

UA players.

Mitigating the fake reviews.

Yeah.

That's there.

Fake.

What do you mean?

We have the album, as always.

Not as always.

Yes, as always, with the top casual game.

There's color.

Top casual game, yes.

Yes.

Which is again the same.

There's really not not much to it.

There's no cosmetic reward, which is interesting because the top one should be always the cosmetic reward, but I don't see any.

But I guess why, if like nobody cares about it, but that's there.

Interesting part that they already advertised during the tutorial of this that you should trade with your friends, which is the important part of this mechanic.

So, they have it out of the box because lots of times people have this just on solo mode, and you can really trade because, again, it takes lots of back-end stuff to kind of make it work.

There's this one feature which I really, really enjoy that they have, and no other game I've seen before.

You can see the overview finally

of which stickers from which collections you have already.

And I would really like to see this spread into other games because it's just so handy because in other games like Grow Magic you just need to go like one by one and see which one you have or you don't have whereas here it's going over

amazing yeah whoever did this like yeah I would say amazing

happy again very

Anyway, so my guess is what's going to happen here is that they're going to have these events and they're going to be more polished and more unique and going much further than Travel Town.

Similarly, as we've seen what they did with this meta in

Truckstar,

where they also push it very hard with like very custom events, like your own track stuff like that, like this.

So my guess is they're going to catch them on live ops.

That's like

yeah, yeah, I think that's one thing that they're gonna push really hard on live ops because they know how to do these things.

I mean, they have a lot of casual games and they just

don't you think Moon Active knows how to do live ops as well?

Wasn't there the coin master event, kind of the hidden like record the revenues?

You mean the disco event?

That's from Royal Match.

Still, I don't care.

No, no, it's casual puzzler, man.

It's not social casino.

It's a little bit different.

I mean, I know it's different.

I'm just like speculating the attack vectors here.

Like, yeah, yeah, okay.

What we're going to do better.

So you can do better live ops because everybody is just like doing these things.

Like, for instance, I know that what was it, three, four months ago, I remember I was writing an article when

Travel Town enabled like times two energy spent and stuff like that.

So, they're all like kind of jumping or still going on this train.

Like, live ops needs to get better, game needs to be optimized, so on and so forth.

So, I think they're gonna try to attack from this side.

Of course, UA, we're gonna talk about that.

We already seen it with the Fruitsman stuff, so that's going to be the main attack.

That's like exactly what Travel Town was doing for like six months, even more.

Yeah, so I mean, that's like it's not even the same thing, it's just, yeah, but they're just starting.

I know, yeah, I know, I know, like, nothing against it, it's just and that's been done before.

The other thing which I can't really

uh assess here because I'm probably not that far into it, is the monetization and the offer system.

I can't even do that because, like, it's you know,

it's really

differs from payer to payer depending on your LTV.

Who can really say like

you would

you would get anything because do you think they

segment it or like how does how do you think they do it

if if you bring forex economy monetization know-how into this you you have like everything you literally have everything so here's what I found interesting with this right so a lot of the merge games I've worked with right they monetize with ads in terms of rewarded video and interstitials.

Here, there's only rewarded video after you complete the levels, which is fine, right?

What I'm wondering here is man, what did you just say?

You don't complete the levels here

when you complete the or

that's when they show the rewarded ad, right?

No,

they never show rewarded ad.

Yeah, I didn't see any

the only time you can get a rewarded ad if if I run out of energy and I click on something, you run out of energy and it says you can watch a video four times a day.

Or if there's a bubble offer, bubble offer being like a low-value item, when I merge an item, there's like a bubble out of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like unlock, and low items that are within the rewarded ad budget can be unlocked for rewarded video.

That's it.

That's that's the whole placement.

So exactly.

So it's gonna be like the same thing as microphone yeah yeah pretty much yeah because these games don't make much revenue on it's gonna be like what like 10

uh 16 but yeah

only continue felix

no what i was saying is just like there's a lot of merge games that i work with that use a lot of interstitial ads and usually what you end up doing is you look at the ecpm value on a user level what you're actually generating and then you don't show ads at all to the high value or high ecpm users.

But then, what you do is for the low-value ones, which are very low-likelihood of converting, after they spent whatever the average point of conversion is, like if it's five days, two days, whatever like the average time for the first IAP is, that's when you actually start implementing interstitials as well during natural breaks in the game.

And there's merge games I worked with where interstitial revenue is literally like

of the whole revenue is like 10 or 20% of the overall revenue of the app is just interstitial ads.

But those merge games don't really scale.

It's like, obviously, it's not like microphone or the ones that are category leaders, but still, it's still a lot of revenue, right?

But I'm just wondering, because Century Games, like I took a look at their AdApps TXT file and

like

it's so old.

They haven't updated this for like a year and a half.

I guess they have small revenues, but like, it's just, it's a three-minute thing to update this, right?

So like, why not not just do it?

Because you're still earning probably like 18 to 20k a day on this app, right?

In ad revenue.

So, why not five thousand a day?

Yeah, but still, like, knowing that

having spent time with these guys, they care about the revenue, right?

It's just sure.

Yeah,

yeah, exactly.

I wish I was.

Yeah, sad I'm not coming, actually.

Unfortunate.

Yeah, I'll bring this up to heaven next time.

And it's like, so they're not going to be able to do that.

They have that

CST, but yeah yeah

but i don't think the updating of the adaptc file is so old there's a lot of network names in there that

they don't exist they don't have those names anymore

yeah

i guess they don't care but that's there no

the the other question is

how's how's this game doing in china if it's there somewhere that we don't see it either on wechat or either on some of the stores again and stuff like that so that's uh

that's a question we'll hopefully find out.

Yeah, we'll find out in two weeks.

Yeah, anyway, uh yeah, so product part is excellent, like uh as expected, like you can't really compete in this category if you don't hit the standard of Travel Town or Microfun and it just goes from there to be even harder.

But yeah, they have it everything.

Like I was positively surprised how they did as as I said, like some of the quality of life features that are done better.

And some of the features here are pretty much like top-notch, again, again, a little bit with a different flavor, but yeah, like 80% is travel down.

But that's just maybe you can actually show the numbers now.

Yeah, maybe you can show the numbers.

I can't believe it's been 28 minutes and we haven't seen any numbers.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Switching the parts.

Okay, I'm very surprised as well.

So, this launched during

New Year's last year, so December 2023, soft launch, and then it slowly started scaling from somewhere like

July last year and then it went to overdrive somewhere like

May

this year and currently sits somewhere at like what like 200k a day IP.

I wonder when when they're like where they're getting the draws benchmarks from.

Yeah.

Maybe PVX Lambda.

I'm not sure but you know this episode is brought to a PVX Lambda because if your UA data feels like a black box, it shouldn't.

You plug it into your MMP, boom, within an hour, you get clean, clear, RAS benchmarks, retention insights, and even forecasts of whether you are ready for funding.

No fluff, just dashboards, real with real answers, 100% free.

So go check out it on the pvxpartners.com slash lambda and get your growth strategy on point.

Okay,

pvxpartners.com/slash slash lampda all the benchmarks you can think of and we had a great episode about the robust benchmarks with uh with pbx guys so you should definitely go and check it out

yeah you can get back to the episode one very interesting tidbit

if you look at uh arpdao

they actually has double the arpdao of travel time interesting nearly and log scale man so i know but still yeah it's sequel w I just want want to see the actual revenue.

The revenue is not comparable.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

How is this category?

Amazing revenue.

Amazing.

It's insane.

Yes.

It's the second biggest category in Puzzle after Match 3.

Yeah.

Yeah, but only thanks to the microphone.

Yeah.

Yeah, but you know, another giant Chinese company entering the ring, so I guess we're gonna see.

It's gonna be interesting.

Like

keep in mind that also Microfan have their own new game.

Scaling new one, Flammerch.

Flam, yeah, Flam something.

Flammy Merch Cook, or how do you read it?

Which is also kind of not

really, you know, sitting on the sidelines doing nothing.

Ah, but it's still in soft launch now.

No, it's already in scaling phase.

So, 100k a day isn't.

So, it's also

Even though it's 10k downloads a day.

That's the thing.

It's just like I guess the CPIs are atrociously high.

What are the CPIs right now in the merge category, would you say, Manche?

Well,

last few months when I was running a merge game, it was still like 30.

It can get lower than that with proper creatives, actually.

You can get actually low as like 10, 15, but it was on the scale of like two million day revenues

on that and that that scale definitely between

twenty and forty

depends on the scale it's crazy like when we were it was fifty it was f easily fifty yeah when we go to singapore i spent some time with the ceo of a merch uh gaming company and he told me a funny story that he ha said he's probably been marked by microphone because as soon as he comes out with a new creative within three hours, no matter what time of day it is, microphone comes out with a copy.

Everyone was marked by microphone.

Yeah, everyone.

Everyone in the merchants, Chinese just one-on-one creative strategy.

Yeah.

Now I know.

I thought you were talking about our other friend, but now I know who you were talking about.

Now I know.

Sending regards

to both.

So looking at the category last 30 days, let's recap.

So Gossip Harbor is hitting an all-time high of 50 million a month.

Let's sink in.

Where do we have this beauty?

So it's doing currently 1.6 million IP a day.

Same.

And it seems it's not still stopping its scale from growing.

Yes, still on growth trajectory.

Downloads-wise,

that's, I guess.

Also,

records.

Oh, wow.

nearly 3k a day this month.

Where is that?

Go countries.

I'm just super curious.

This is this means like some giant money is being thrown into it.

Maybe, maybe they got scared by century and tearing, so they want to price them out.

You don't price century games out of the market, my friend.

Yeah, but in merge games, you know, you can

make, yeah, you can make their life a little bit more miserable.

Very hard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess heaven will need to really speak with heaven about this.

It's gonna be fun, yeah.

Anyway, it's not gonna be micro, but a lot of fun, yeah.

It's gonna be macro fun,

anyway.

So, uh, gossip harbor hitting down was all times high.

Oh my god, these dead jokes, I love it,

I love it.

I guess merch mansion

with the

lens of jail icon,

they they're just gonna get there and sit there and hopefully hopefully not get eaten alive.

Which they will.

Which they, I guess, will.

It's still doing 10 million a month.

Like, it's it's yeah, not really moving anywhere.

It's not moving anywhere, but it's good because it could be moving down to the stegosaurus curve and they're at least surviving.

Yeah, yeah, but look

on those spikes and the events, it's not really going up that much.

This is an offense.

I mean, it's stable.

It's very stable, so we can

find that.

I don't know.

Maybe.

Maybe they work with FastSpring.

I don't know.

So,

Gossip Harbor, Seaside Escape also isn't moving anywhere, it seems.

Even though it's still doing something like half a million, more than half a million a day,

which is not bad at all, which is not bad.

But revenue-wise, I guess everything's been switched to Gossip Harbor because this literally means like streams that they kind of went all in there.

as for microphone

regarding Travel Town, it's doing okay-ish with similar to CSAT Escape, so 600k a day.

They're getting squeezed, they're getting squeezed, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, downloads, yeah, it doesn't decline, so they're getting squeezed definitely.

And uh,

what was the last one?

Yeah, merge cooking.

We haven't really talked about this game, we need to talk about it a little bit more.

It's still on our like to-do list.

So, this game is actually growing, which is very interesting.

It's hitting pretty much the same size as

where they from

happy bits.

Where do I think?

Probably China.

I would say.

So, I mean,

I would say either China or Cyprus.

One or the other.

Anyway.

So this game seems to be hanging pretty well

there.

It's on the.

where is it?

It's on the fifth spot.

Six million months.

And then we have Dasey Trellos.

Okay.

Yeah, so

but this is all like very irrelevant because all those like linear curves up.

So it's going to be completely different situation in month.

My guess is that these both of these are going to jump over Metacore and Metacore

push to like position seven.

So

yeah, gonna be very hard for guys there.

And then, yeah, that's the whole category pretty much as it is.

So my prediction is that Gossip's harbor is going to even grow more.

Seaside Escape is going to be as it is.

Pretty much hovering there with Travel Town.

And Dasty Travels, I would bet that,

yeah, Century can really scale this up because the game's top-notch, definitely.

As for how it plays, how good it's positioned with their UA expertise and everything.

And they know what happens in China.

Yeah, know the way around.

Let's get some energy back in this.

Yeah, let's do this.

Yeah, you should, you should definitely.

It's gonna be amazing.

I don't even know

what to do.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

not even close.

Not even close.

Because,

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I have something very important to say.

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Now, let's get back to the episode.

When you were talking about like showing showing all of this, I mean, it's not free.

I mean, and this is just the first thing, just yeah, just to just pump you up a little bit, but uh,

yeah, this is not the core of the creative strategy.

This is the core, um, not not exactly this, but

AI mess.

AI mess objects, but here,

this is the core of the the AI the the creative strategy.

It's moving this bullshit stuff from left to right.

Some fake random game.

This is this is the core creative?

Yes, this is basically everything they they do.

I will see.

I mean, yeah, I will see, you will see, you will see.

Uh they have also some some of the other stuff, which is kind of the conveyor belts and kind of merging and stuff.

They have so many different concepts.

Everything's fake.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, Fruit Merch.

Even this is Fruit Merch.

That's from Fruit Merch.

Yeah, that's Fruit Merch.

Yeah, at least.

Well, you.

So it's, you know, all the hooks.

Like, this is, yeah, this is the core.

Why is it again?

Man, honestly.

I think it goes back to family farm adventure where this...

Food and travel.

Should I just search food and travel?

You can really?

Yeah, go for it.

Go food and travel.

Is that someone else's creative for another game?

My guess is yes.

What is

sorting game?

Look, all of this, right?

I don't know.

Food and travel is basically their, I guess, their old name.

Exactly.

Also, they also are

Tasty Trail.

So it's their old game, but look, it's all of this.

Again, as I was saying, it goes back to the family farm adventure where they had similar stuff,

but it was more with slightly different objects.

And it was almost like, again, like a hyper-casual game.

Traveltown has this?

Look at this.

No, Traveltown.

Well, they stole that from a Magic Sword.

Yeah.

This is Magic Sword.

100%.

This is Magic Sword.

Exactly.

Exactly magic sword.

It's totally creative actually, one to one.

Yes.

And see, look.

And now it ends.

See, this is the part I I told you that I think they have a chance here because they're century games and they're just doing this UA pollution and they don't fucking care about anything.

Yeah, exactly.

That's that's what I want to say.

And here, look, so the previous creative, you know what it it didn't have?

The end card.

Because it was cut off.

Because it was stolen.

Yes.

Because and was like, this must be a mistake.

No, it's not.

I've seen that created like five times.

Okay.

But see, this is the thing.

Like, those are the rules.

Like, you can do this shit.

There's no app police.

And all the networks will take your money no matter what.

Yes, exactly.

Like, that's the name of the game.

Even though nobody's doing these things, doesn't mean that you can do this.

Called up please.

Again, like this is, as I said, like this is the core

creative strategy.

All of these different objects.

That's why I was kind of waiting for you to unlock other stages if we have this in there, but I don't think it's going to be there.

No, I don't think it's going to be there.

But for some reason, this works really well.

Again, like so many of these.

I don't think so.

No, no, no.

I don't think it's there, but

it's amazing.

Here's your Freud merch.

There you go.

That's what I want.

yeah of course i mean this is exactly why it is in the game

do you think they have different onboardings based on creatives

could be

but

it really

what would you like what exactly different would you have like the different Freud merge

onboarding if you're coming from that creative basically could be yeah it could I mean that's not that hard for them to do as

having mentioned the last time, in China, technology is not a problem.

Yeah, of course.

But look, I also saw

this.

We're talking a lot about Heaven in this episode.

If anyone listening, he's the CMO of Century Games.

Yes.

So share this time instead.

So I went a little bit back to January.

It's all up loving, by the way, back then.

And we can see all of the different interesting

playables.

So this is the first one, right?

This is a simple dome.

Now we've seen this.

Simple.

Here, have we seen this one?

They stole that one?

Or what?

No, no, no.

This is another

playable, which is Ghost Harbor.

Yes.

This is one-on-one Ghostip Harbor, basically.

Exactly.

So

that's the

second.

Here we have a third one.

Hmm.

What is this?

Fruit merge.

Looks very familiar with all this beach

theme.

Fruit merge.

It's fruit merge.

Yeah, but it's it's travel found basically.

Yeah, travel found had this also.

Grandpa.

Where's the granny coming from?

Oh, is there any other merge game where there's a

yes?

Is there Pedro Pascal?

One, please tell me this, Petr Pascal.

This is all

the different concepts from the different games.

And it's like

Kakashi UA, you know, like copy ninja.

It's like if you when did they start scaling the actual like it's May

May last year May last year

this year this year May

like really started like this way.

Yeah, yeah, because this is January.

So I would like my assumption is like in January like okay, so what are we gonna do?

Let's just use all the competitors.

Let's put it in into the

the playable ads and see.

See

what's going to happen.

Yeah, and make sure to cut the end cards.

Yeah, look.

You see, like, good sort shopping list?

Hello.

Crazy.

Amazing.

It's crazy.

And this is only playables.

One

of the things that's created,

seven, eight, nine, ten.

Ten different creatives.

Do you know how much this is?

For like ordinary gaming company?

It's insane.

But they're not 100 people, right?

Yeah.

I mean, of course.

I mean, the 4,000 people in the company.

4,000 people, 4,000 people in the whole company.

So the one team, it's definitely quite big.

There's hundreds of people doing UA in Century Games.

That's thinking.

Hundreds.

Yeah.

Again, we're not stopping because I'm, I know

I'm a curious

person and I I want to know what exactly they're running on Facebook because that's my go-to.

Here we go.

Launch in July.

We've already seen this.

Yeah, the magic sword comple like copy.

Exactly.

That's the magic sword.

Fine.

Okay.

So this is real world ice cream on the right.

There is a lot of different stuff, man.

Ah, this is the thing that they had in Kingshot.

Exactly.

I know that AI template.

Really?

That was interesting.

Very interesting stuff.

Very, very interesting stuff.

Yeah, the masters of the real real-life hooks.

Ah, there's AI.

Go back to that nice AI.

Yeah.

Yeah, there we go.

That's AI.

Three seconds, two.

Okay.

That's good.

It's nice.

And again,

this is not the end.

The burger, there's AI.

Oh, there's also AI.

That was Sora.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's

Sora.

That's Sora.

Right there.

So it's a lot because...

It's a shitty yellow tint.

You can see it there.

Because I was like,

why do they not have a lot of AI when the Kingshot is doing so well on AI?

I'm pretty sure we need something, a different point of view, which here in Facebook, you can see basically everything with like without no lag.

So, most probably, we'll see all of this AI stuff next month in the center tower.

Again,

all AI, all AI, the whole thing, everything test

quite nice, quite nice.

But then

there's one

very specific

creative,

and only thanks to this.

I see already the cutting gold there.

Yes, okay,

margarita

margarita creative, matie resist and out of ten, spotted immediately.

You do you really miss the rim?

So put the salt or the or tahin in there

exactly.

I was like, spot this immediately, but no, like if you think about it, this the all of these like cocktails, you were merging in your gameplay.

Yeah, of course.

It's it's all there.

And cutting the lemon, but yes, I mean,

where is the where was the AI one?

Yeah, don't worry, don't worry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is the one that I want to show you.

The cutting glass fruit thing had like millions of views on TikTok.

Millions.

Yeah.

Is it real?

Shit, I thought it would be gold.

No, no, it's real.

It should have been golden.

Yeah.

It should be gold or glass.

Yeah, oh, of course.

So, yeah, I mean, all of these look

Wow, that was a nice.

Where was the start?

So we were once we uh that's definitely they stole that video for something.

There's also AI, by the way, the transition into the table.

Look, another

merge sort of magic

work.

What's the one on the right?

Okay.

AI.

Oh, wow.

Show it, show it, show it.

Ooh, that's that's the that's the transition I was talking about.

Yeah, that's that's that's the

okay

image to video.

Yep, that's nice.

That's very nice.

So, yeah, Alex

and my favorite.

So, so many, and this is why I was talking about

hello.

I was talking about like all the different UA stuff that they are doing here,

and they're not doing on the Match 3 category.

It's just...

I don't get it.

Like, how could

we talk about the Century Games Match 3 category?

Ah.

Their UA was just like...

On the Family.

What was it?

Family Farm?

What was that game?

No, no, no.

Whatever.

Disco stuff, Disco Match.

The old ones.

Yeah, the old ones.

And then the, I mean, even the new one.

And still.

like, I mean, this is something that you've seen with Match Factory,

and I can see it working well.

But I dare not experimenting like this with the Match 3 category yet, which they absolutely should.

So that's why I'm so confused.

But anyway, like here, maybe different UI team

could be, but the tasty travels and the UA stuff is insanely good, insanely good.

I love it, really.

You have basically everything, everything that resonates with this target audience, and AI on top of it, and all of the altered, fake, misleading gameplay, which usually works for this audience.

And all the buzzwords.

Exactly.

You have

everything here.

You don't really need.

You have everything already.

Yeah, exactly.

So I was just like, oh, wow.

But

I'm very surprised that freezing families aren't that prevalent compared to the future.

This is because they've been abused for so long.

It's just.

You know what I haven't mentioned?

Like, they don't like going to go like copy one-to-one last war when they did the TV spot somewhere.

It was like, okay, well, I don't do this.

Why?

Because why would you go neck to neck?

Like, you create a different strategy here.

I don't see any other gaming, merge game, using exactly this type of creatives.

It's that's why they're gonna scale.

Like, this is exactly that.

That's it.

Super interesting.

Great episode.

Amazing creatives.

I would not want to compete against century games.

Yeah, it's like even if you're microfun.

Like Dimitri said, like, this is exactly the competition you don't want to have.

Yeah.

It's like

he's very happy now that Microfun has an even competition.

Yeah.

Their battle will be epic.

This has been another amazing episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast.

Don't forget to like and subscribe.

Comments do help us quite a lot.

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say say that as well please usually the main things are about mati

yeah

yeah i have a biggest fan yeah there's the biggest fan who wants to replace me with the robot and then something else so it's fine it's okay

good stuff all right see you later see you next time yeah enjoy the slide

thank you