Raid Rush Review: If you miss Battle.net tower defense, Raid Rush is your new addiction.

So what you want to build is actually this kind of S-style snake.

Zigzag.

Yeah, zigzag.

That that pretty much everything goes around everything multiple times.

That that's what you mean.

I thought this is pretty straightforward how you play tower defense games.

Not for current generation, which doesn't remember the days of the battlenet when where tower defense was born.

All right, that's true.

Okay.

Are you suggesting

they they like they don't have seen these games before because, you know these are the days of RTS era like Stars Warcraft which are long gone as we see

it's 4 a.m.

and we're rolling the dice Mate drops knowledge made of gold and ice felix with ads making those coins rise Jack up designs worlds chasing the sky with the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too Matei Felix Shaku bringing the insight we're rocking those vibes till the early daylight

you a master eyes on the prize tracking data through the cyberspace skies felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jackets crafting realms, lift us to the highs.

Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow hockey stick, 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.

Uh-huh.

Of course, it will.

It will get better.

And it's also an episode is going to get better as soon as we introduce what are we talking about.

And it's going to be Raidrash.

Welcome, everybody.

Name is Matiel Angelic.

I'm Felix Broberg.

Capella.

And

we are your

hosts.

So much better.

It's so much better, yeah.

For last five episodes, we should do it like this.

Yeah, well, next time you fucking push it.

Okay?

And don't push it to to the limit, Yakub.

Yeah, let's let's not help me to push it for Jesus Christ.

So, are we covering a Turkish game?

It's been so many Chinese games lately and Vietnamese games, but we haven't forgot about our fellow Turks.

Yes, and Raid Rush is a game made by Pantheon, which is from

where in Turkey, exactly.

Turkey, Turkey, yeah,

is it Istanbul?

Is it Istanbul they're based in?

Or is it in Ankara?

Either way, they're definitely circumscribed.

I'm guessing Ankara.

I don't remember anymore.

Yeah.

Of course, you don't.

Do you want to?

Should we start with the game today?

Anyway,

numbers, I think, because it's interesting numbers.

Do you want to start with the game, Matte?

We started with the.

I don't care.

I don't

resign already.

I resign already.

I don't care.

I vote for a game anyway, and you just go with

the other one.

I like this game.

This game is fun.

Called Democracy.

Did you just say, like, in the previous episode, like, this is not the political party or whatever?

You lost the election, man.

That's your problem.

Okay.

Anyway.

Yeah, so release somewhere in January 2023 now scaled to something like 70k per day IP.

There's ad revenue.

What?

I think that's way more.

I think that's way more than what we see in in the same way.

Yeah,

this game is not making 300-400K a day, which means the lower the numbers, the bigger the sentence multiplier.

That's the rule of the line.

What do we say?

100 a day?

I would vote for more, but since we are not voting, it doesn't matter.

You lost your voting.

Yeah, you lost your vote.

I lost my voice.

I would say it's close to 120 or 130.

Download was

something like K

say

mostly from

US

so that's Russia a little bit interesting positive sign

active users Felix favorite metric this is the best metric yeah somewhere around like uh

quarter of a million yeah like 300k on a weekend let's say

as usual like all the spikes are basically weekends

and then uh

what was it revenue wise

yeah 50 us of course.

That's very healthy.

So, but yeah, second place is expectedly South Korea.

South Korea, which is a very, very good sign because our defense games are super popular in South Korea, if you don't know.

If you remember some of our episodes about the

111% games,

like Lucky Strike.

What was it like?

Lucky Strike.

That's

Lucky Strike.

Lucky Defense.

Lucky Defense.

By the way, I already forgot that we need to cover because they have a continuation of that, like unlucky defense or what was it?

A lucky offense.

Lucky offense, yeah.

That one.

We need to cover that one.

Nothing's for last four months, maybe.

Have you started smoking?

Lucky strike and unlucky defense?

How's the second kid treating you?

Is the sleep cycles okay?

There's no sleep cycle.

That's okay.

Next time when I see you, I will buy you a lucky strike, so I guess you start smoking.

It's okay, it's okay.

It's uh

it's like unlucky defense, just say something.

Oh my god, okay, okay.

Anyway, so if you're familiar with the menu, it kind of looks familiar.

Uh, this looks what?

You don't recognize this.

Hobby, it looks like hobby.

No,

this doesn't look like hubby, Matei.

Please save, save, save your last game design honor.

Clash Royale.

Great.

Yeah, so we have the chess system on the bottom, we have the arena visual in the middle, and then we have additional engagement and monetization stuff on the right or left side, which is taken from mostly hubby, but like everybody does that these days.

But the main bulk of it is Clash Royale because the whole system and progression is kind of clash royale ish.

Also, those four chess slots.

I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, those four chest slots like Felix, you get an F today

for Felix, yeah, for Felix

for failing, failing, and I would give you P for PVX partners

because today's episode is ready to PVX partners,

the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing.

I can give you M for marketing, that's fine as well, or S for scaling because you're scaling your business, you definitely need PVX partners, no equity dilution, and you you can repay as you get paid.

Visit pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you grow your game.partners.com.

Now let's get back to the scaling of RAID Rush.

Yeah, so the progression itself, even though it looks it works exactly as the shard gacha system clash well, it's actually closer to the hubby staple merge gacha, as you see here.

So we have our usual kinda you merge more of the same to kind of upgrade their tier.

Then we have our deck which is six towers that we select.

Then we have our hero and then we have our skills.

So a lot of progression layers that the game already has.

If you're asking what this actually is, it's a tower defense game done in a style of

IRPG rogue glides on hubby's kind of a staple

template.

So if you go into the actual gameplay, how it looks, because it's I would say quite unique.

I don't think we have a kind of similar game in a way because the tower defense is actually the main genre is going the other way around, where you have stuff like Doodle Magic, which digital completely.

It's pretty much a plane and monsters are coming from the top.

We have seen many copies of those games.

The new hubby game that's on the block is actually following the tower idol defense game, which is pure towers or more of a characters in the middle everything coming from like circle towards you so no walls again this is older than

yeah this is as i said

i don't remember where's the magic you can you can check in like two years ago last christmas so twenty twenty four yeah uh no twenty twenty three you know i would say twenty twenty three So this is one year before Doodle Magic maybe.

Oh no.

But just saying that the the paradigm with this game is actually the opposite, because you have full control over the road here, and you actually build it.

That's the important part.

Because as you see here, let's start the gameplay.

So let me just get the slot type.

Right, December 2023 is the Doom Magic.

And then May 30, it's the Bang Wing Survivor.

Yeah.

So actually, one year after these guys.

Your washing machine is done.

I can hear it.

Very good.

Should we wait?

If you.

Yeah, just a tutorial.

Yeah, so what happens here?

You start the wave and then you need to destroy the things which are going after HQ.

So it is what?

No, nothing, nothing.

Should we wait until you unload your dishwasher?

It's like, no, no, no, this is just a tutorial.

Like, what the fuck you're talking about?

Man, I'm

two things at once when I'm punching and commenting.

You know that.

Mortar Tower is my favorite one.

I like the Mortar Tower the most.

Yeah, Mortar Tower is great.

So you see the range of the tower, where you place it, and you need to do it very strategically.

And the very unique part of this game is that you not only place the towers, but you also create the road yourself.

Because as you will see in a moment, when

our favorite randomizer is giving us one of each of these towers that we then need to build, suddenly, instead of a tower, we have a choice to actually build the path.

Which means that we not only shape like how we build the towers around this path but we also prolong the time

how much time it will take for monsters to get to the hq therefore make it easier for us so for instance i want to now some kind of a yeah sharp curve here this is not the one that i wanted let me yeah you see actually like it's very I would say complex in a way that you can even rotate it and do stuff with it.

So for instance, what do you want to do, you want to put towers into those corners so they can hit stuff on both sides of the road, not just kind of doing here because again, like, yeah, they just hit monsters here.

If we put it here, they can hear them all the way, pretty much utilizing much of their radius.

So what you want to build is actually this kind of S-style snake.

Zigzag.

Yeah, zigzag.

That that pretty much everything goes around everything multiple times.

That that's what you want to do.

I mean, I I I thought this is pretty straightforward how you play tower defense games.

Uh, not for current generation, which doesn't remember the days of the Battle Network Defense was born.

Alright, that's true.

Okay.

Ire suggested

or they're young.

I just don't think they like they don't have seen these games before because you know these are the days of RTS era like Starcraft Warcrafts which are long gone as we've seen.

Yeah, so you also are able to

add more additional land.

So for instance here we add more land which means we not only need to add road or towers, we actually need to add the land on top of which we will be building the road on the towers.

So there's very, very big strategic depth within the randomizer, which is solving one of the biggest issues actually of this whole roguelike template where eventually what happens with you, you select all the skills all the time, all the same for the best build, like most of Happy Games, like Happy Barrago, Archer, or whatever.

There's very few differences.

I think Archer have it much better because they have added a rarity on top of these skills.

So you actually choose on, let's say, the skill that you don't want in your build, but it's high rarity.

So you can go there.

Or with Capybarrago, you have some trade-offs that you can or like the randomizer was always the problem with like Survivor IO or Archero origin one.

It's just very, very stale after you play it like multiple times.

This thing's boring.

Yeah.

This thing is much deeper because sometimes again, because of your you know playthrough or luck or whatever,

you need more roads, you need more towers, you need more land, whatever.

So every

playthrough is different and

you feel much more invested.

That's the other big, big thing, which means if you lose, you watch ads, you pay, you refresh.

If I refresh again, I spend hard currency.

I can even move stuff now.

This was added.

Yeah, definitely later.

So there's a lot of strategic depth in this kind of randomizer and this vector has been pretty much pushed to the limit.

Like, I don't know any...

one more mortar.

Yeah, well, no, okay.

One more mortar and we do one more cannon tower.

I really need towers now.

The interesting part is also that you can

speed up the waves.

So if you just click here, these things just go faster.

On top of it, you have also skills that you can do.

Stuff like, I don't know, rushing rockets, whatever, like stuff like that.

You aim them and then the moment the the thing goes yeah times always stop during you having uh selection

and it was an upgrade

yeah so yeah see that that that was the skill there's also my hero which is kind of as some kind of additional last resort unit wherever you put him usually it's just like he does ability slows unit downs do stuff around it so there's a lot and lot of lot of strategic depth so essentially what we're looking at is that this is a golf clash style scenario where we have proven metagame concepts proven metagame templates taken from functional games added into or let's say the unicor added on into them unicorn

so

yeah

so these guys what they did instead of copying the you know pretty much the most copied game of all time now like like

Vampire Survivor Cleasur, yeah.

Like, I've seen like five games of that, like every single month.

Yeah, they went the other way around, really think about it, and they actually put the Rogue Light RPG template into the tower defense gameplay, so which is really good.

And the important because we've seen this, like, this is again, we've seen that with

what was I saying, the new hubby game and the new

defender, and uh, doodle magic game, doodle Magic.

They did this also, but these guys did one not higher because they have the depth through the road, through the land, through these other pretty much vectors, which increases the depth and increases the replayability much more.

So that's yeah, but then you look at revenues and the story is slightly different.

It's bigger niche with more complexity.

you get bigger niche.

That's the trade-off.

Sure, but then wouldn't you say like bigger niche mean also higher whales, so like more kind of like higher paying users rather than just less play players?

We can check how we can do RPU uh comparison, like like we have a Tillito Match City, if you remember, which had like

but uh yeah, the more kind of you know, the more you cater it to your niche, the more stable it will be for you, but the lower the total addressable market you can achieve, probably.

I mean, it can be stable for seven users, though.

Of course, can be stable for seven users.

Can be stable for, I don't know, 100k a day,

which is completely okay for you, you know, and you can go from there.

But yeah,

it's a strategy.

It's a strategy, and they went for it and they executed, I think, it's very good.

Yeah, pretty well.

The other thing is,

as you have seen here, there was the tutorial menu or whatever was there.

They was telling me a new enemy.

They are enemies that are flying, there are enemies that are walking, their enemies are pretty much different.

Elemental types and

things.

Not elemental types, but pretty much they have their own version of elemental types that they have here, which forces you to change your deck because different, like see, for instance, you have these drones that they fly over our hero and so on and so forth, which need different towers to attack, mortar towers only attack land targets, and so on.

Yada, yada, yada, yada.

Yeah,

this is very, very deep, and that's the beauty part of it.

That this core, I don't think so.

I ever seen this kind of a very heavily roguelite tower defense score plus the road iteration like this is really good and by the way one of the most interesting things they have here is that

yeah let me just finish this one

that you can speed up

paying money which is great because yeah you definitely want to buy it because yeah like no brain no brainer no brainer yeah

and

If I understand the spells should also work like boosters, like you can still them.

Or

I don't remember how it was last time when I was playing it before, or like the newest update, because this game actually went through a lot, lot of iteration.

Before, there were no heroes, no, like just three skills for everybody, and they added a lot and lot of progression layers because as you've seen there, it's been around for

what

two and something years now

yeah, so they didn't really just iterate it, they actually added a lot of progression layers into it so it's pretty pretty

and they have a lot of ads as well which is yeah they had a lot of ads yeah just saying this would go like for 40 waves so you can imagine how long it would take actually to me finish this level it takes like 15 to 20 minutes if i would be actually focusing on it not just commenting all over the place so let's there be a great banner ad for those 20 minutes

i mean not for this dau though Yeah, but let me just show you

how big it is and like what these are the things because one of the really interesting things that these guys are running is a cooperation that they have now with the

Terminator item.

Terminator.

Yes.

Yeah.

T8.

Well, it's a Terminator 2 now.

No, it's T1000, no?

Or was that the liquid one?

I haven't seen T Terminator 2 for so long.

Yeah.

And we got the chicken.

Perfect.

I don't know if you can see

somewhere.

Even the hero.

You know, it's interesting.

I haven't seen any Terminator creators.

I was playing it today, and it was just Terminator.

I was playing as John Connor was my hero.

And I was killing T1000 or T100.

The ones that are rolling in Terminator 2.

I don't remember which one is which.

Challenges.

Go to Challenges, I think, is that one.

T800 is Frasenegger.

Where's Challenge?

Challenges.

Right next to Battle.

Kind of jackpot.

Yeah, this is battle.

And click battle.

And click battle.

This is when you're playing as John Connor.

There you go.

Yeah, so until we got here, you've seen how many modes.

Like, those were all the additional modes that you can do here.

And now we have one with John Connor, basically.

By the way, these artifacts are basically me having an emulator.

So

not actually how the game looks like.

Yeah.

yeah, it looks a lot better on my iPhone.

Yeah, yeah,

see, is Terminator's coming out?

Everything is looking better on iPhone,

except AI, except me, which I am not there,

yeah.

Because, well, of course, then you would look way better,

even if

you put it in.

We'll talk in a few years when Apple gets their ass kicks on AI

and we'll see who will get the last laugh.

You remember the bitlive episode when you had 50% looks if you put iPhone on top of that?

80% immediately.

Simple joke.

Anyway.

Yeah, it never gets old.

Yeah, just so you know, so the game is packed with content.

You see how many different much.

Yeah, I don't even know what half of it is.

I don't know what's going on.

How many different modes they have there?

They even added the PvP mode.

So on a traditionally only PvE game, then I have like this kind of beta of experimental PvP, literally says that in the

banner.

Then they have these challenges.

This is kind of, again, it's very close to Hubby template.

Like if you compare it with some kind of Capybara template, Capybara goes

basically their template.

Then you have all of these kind of monetization and engagement mechanics here into these

login seconds.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that that's that's the typical thing.

Pretty much like nothing really to it.

Yeah, here is our offline earnings, which we can do again, exactly the same thing.

Then we have, yep, this one we covered already.

First offers.

We run out of screen space, so we put the icon on the top of an icon.

Because the Judgment Day.

Judgment Day Pack T800 Guardian offers.

Amazing.

It's amazing.

It's nicely themed and everything, like to the last detail.

Then we have Hero Pass.

then we have

the MIDI, Mini, Maxi offer, which means you can buy only one of those, but you can buy all of them if you want.

Yeah.

Interesting.

But a lot of games have been using this offer format lately.

You should.

Then we go.

We go to the store.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Then we go to the shop.

Again, very typical.

So we have these campaign offers as you pass chapters.

This is literally taken from Survivor.io or Archero 121.

And we have Epic Challenge, the same thing basically for the other one.

And we have the

then we have Carusal.

This is the other important part because you can buy specific shards or or like

tokens of an item that you're missing to merge.

Like again, this is very typical.

Then we have S tier gacha, where you can get only the one that's like on the block here with the

whatever.

The last pretty much set that you have there, then the typical keys.

This is like hubby template.

Yeah, yeah.

And Las roulette as well.

Endless roulette, I think.

I don't think so.

They had it.

These guys, I think they have it.

Yeah, it's their invention.

Or, like, have I haven't seen it within hubby?

That's not hubby.

I've seen it in one game, which was a long, long, long time ago.

After each level, there was an endless roulette, so you could basically spin

different objects within the roulette.

I think Hussle Castle has that.

It could be.

I was, I

seen it in one of the Charged Monkeys first

game type of that

summoner's tale which was

a long time ago.

That's a very long time ago.

Yeah, if you go back to store

what's missing there

store

I think they they're not using any web shops.

I didn't see any web shops there.

That's definitely definitely missing there.

Yes, you always walk into it.

But you know what who also walked into it?

Our sponsors, FastSpring.

Because, you know, it has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years and powered top mobile

publishers around the world.

So fastspring.gg can help you actually quickly launch a web store, which here, I would say, can improve the

monetization quite heavily because, you know,

especially now in the US.

Exactly.

where you're actually allowed to do it, yeah.

There makes no sense not to have a web store in the U.S.

anymore, right?

That's the thing, and with uh, with the fastspring.gg, as uh no drama D2C partner with real-world experience at scale, I think

they can quickly help you launch a new web store, replay as an existing D2C vendor, or just add a redundant D2C vendor as well.

You know, it's a fastspring you can trust

with your players.

So, yeah, fastspring.gg web stores.

There you go, additional money,

all you can get.

I mean, we can, what we were kind of discussing, 50%

on top of what you are actually earning now with

in the US with opening the

30 versus 30 versus 50 now, yeah, with Apple just and their ruling.

So, I mean, yeah,

definitely worth it.

Thank you, Fastspring.

Yeah,

Jakub, should we we talk a bit quickly about ads?

Because there's quite a lot of ad placements and quite a lot of rewarded ad placements that also look a bit like the habby kind of typical rewards.

So correct me if I'm not mentioning one here.

So the rewarded ad placement I think that has the highest engagement is the revive.

After you finish, or if you lose during one of these runs, which is up to 20 minutes long, right?

It can get very frustrating if you're losing on the last boss.

Sankin cost a kicks and yeah, exactly, right?

So if you lose on the last boss, you can watch, you can revive your base by watching one rewarded ad.

Which, by the way, won't kill the boss that's bettering on your base.

Exactly, right?

You still have to defeat it after.

It just brings back your base.

So we can kill it one more time.

Exactly.

Then there's in the store, there's gems every day times two that you can watch a rewarded ad for.

You can refresh the offers

in the daily deals, yeah, in the carousel, for watching one rewarded ad.

There's a standard chest for

you can open through, yeah, by watching a rewarded ad.

Obsidian chest that you can also watch once per day.

There's the endless roulette that you can do once per day for a rewarded ad.

And there's gold one time that you can watch for extra gold.

Are there any other ones that I missed there, Jakob?

Oh, yeah.

And there's an interstitials when you finish a level and if you don't watch a rewarded ad.

It's also interstitials.

One in 20 minutes, only after I finish the level.

The interstitial I've only seen when you finish a level, but there are interstitials.

And you've also advertised to remove season super low because the levels are so high.

I mean, I wouldn't really put that many interstitials here.

I think it's more to sweeten the deal for IAP, right?

Because all the reward or kind of

deals that you can get, it's all the offers

of removing truce of ads.

Do they have an ad offer?

They do.

Here, you can see ad-free reward.

Okay, they do.

Okay.

So

right now

there's 255,000 users, 30k on iOS in the States and 14K on Android in the States.

So I think right now these guys are generating about 24 to 28k per day or about 27 to 33 percent of revenues, ad revenue in Raid Rush.

30%

around that, yeah.

Yeah, I would say that would be

I would say quite close to what the hubby template is running.

Like all the hubby template games.

Was it really the case for Survivor I.O.

as well?

I don't think so.

It's how it was generating so much revenue, though, at some point, like IP revenue.

So it was more than 30%.

Or around.

I think it was 38%, if my memory serves me correct.

I don't think so.

Any hubby game is more than 50% ads.

No, no, no, of course no.

No, no, no.

I'm not saying that, but it's like anything between 34%, I would say, here as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would guess maybe there are some ads hidden between the events or stuff like that, because for instance, here, if you go, you see that they even have event calendar.

Like

this is a feature that you would see within like a Forex game or like a Player X style, heavy

event style game.

this just tells you like how much of these things that they have here that they need to put the calendar in uh but yeah so i would guess that like once you go into these whatever

not this one but the one where we were where we are in challenges so

usually what happens here is that if you run out of tries

maybe there would be one for an ad or something i know capy barago has that so that that could be possible which are kind of dynamic doesn't change the the mix if it pushes it up to 32 but it's around there right yeah the main bulk of it is coming from the shop always that that that's the hubby template and the revive or whatever like the one with the highest conversion in the core

because you've seen that that

let me go here

you've seen that

if i go into the refresh it was actually taking on

one is free and one is for hard currency so this could be an ad but again probably

is a very good direct monetization for hard currency because this really matters in the end if you get a shitty roll, especially if you get like

um pad flooded that instead of towers, you get stuff like additional land and additional road, which kind of fucks you over.

So, yeah, again, this is the added bonus of their system that because it's more harder to get what you want, therefore, it pushes you much stronger to actually pay for these things.

Press it,

of course, it goes higher, press it, press it,

yeah, but still 60, I would say it's it should go just exponentially higher.

You want to keep them keep in mind that it's for so long, then.

You rather want them to spend the trick.

If you do it prohibitively high, they won't like you know, payers won't finish.

We'll see that it's not respond

not a good trade-off for the value.

Okay.

In other cases, you have it like that, that you get it exponentially high.

Do you think the spike that we're seeing here on the sensor tower behind, is that from the Judgment Day event?

Most likely, right?

We We can actually check.

Yeah.

When they roll.

Yes, it is.

I'm imagining there's going to be a bunch of Arnold Schwarzenegger style ads in this.

Haven't seen any.

Probably just terminate delayed, or if any, but I mean, like the actual, you know,

this is the thing.

I work once on an IP game.

And I remember, and this was like the most like atrocious part about the whole co-op, that we were doing an IP game of an IP that without the actor isn't really an IP, and we didn't have the rights for the actor.

And now, you know, you do that.

Like, how can we do it without the actor?

Because everybody knows this is the actor, and like, you can't.

We don't have his rights.

So, you know,

Terminator and Arnold are sold separately.

So, that's that's the big thing with these IPs: that you have the IP, you don't have the actor, therefore, off you go.

Yeah,

let's look at some creatives.

Pretty much, yeah, we can definitely do that.

And they

have quite an interesting set of creatives, to be honest.

We can start,

no, we can start with the old ones, which is this one.

This one, because even though they all have quite an interesting set of different creatives, it's

from what I kind of

know,

was quite big on Apple Labin and Facebook and Google, which I see on here.

Facebook, Google, and some TikTok.

But yeah, let's see.

They have also 94 pages of creative, so it's not bad.

It's definitely not bad at all.

I see

a random person, and it's not fake

because this is happy that he can get the job of not being replaced by AI.

Yeah, this is a one-year-old creative, so yeah, this is still

not that good by that time.

Exactly, that's what I wanted to say.

This is only luck.

It's only, yeah, it's uh

such a noob.

I love it

because if if you look at it, I'm not sure what Mach is saying anymore, but I'm sure he's saying that either these guys are killing it or they're not.

No, I wouldn't say like this lady is a lady that we saw in multiple games and I muted myself afterwards for some reason.

And also the straight road, no zigzag roads.

So but this is the straight roads perform better than the zigzag roads for you?

No, but it's it's a noob.

You know, you need to you need to know how to play the tower defense we talked about.

Yeah, you need you need the

corners.

Yeah, the corners.

And this

person is the one from the

previous video, so they have these

and also some other interesting stuff.

Oh, that's cool,

yeah,

that's just a video.

Yeah, no, that's a real life,

yeah.

So they

from the times back in the days, I remember, they used a lot of AI, not AI, but AI static images, which were performing quite well, but also a lot of different interesting real-life hooks as well, because there's also quite a good performance.

Like air defense systems on US warships.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Combining it with actual gameplay afterwards.

So this is a 55-second video, but it's kind of a combination of

does it have, by the way, that machine gun sound?

Yes, yes.

Without the sound, it's like half the experience.

Exactly.

There's an AI, AI image.

Yeah, this is an AI.

Yeah, I mean,

they were using static AI images as soon as they could back in the days, and it was performing really well.

So I would be very surprised not to see AI videos

from those images.

Yeah.

I think we need to start running an AI segment finally.

What do you mean, like, you're running the AI AI segment in the

whole episode?

It's like it's too much.

I'll show you what's too much.

No, don't show me that your

your uh videos on your f your computer, please don't.

No, I I don't want to see that, and I don't think anyone else wants to see that.

They're like, look, yeah, it's it's also a combination of the text, right, and uh the text overlay, and then just random do it.

Yeah,

that was that was uh AI at the end.

Was it AI at the end?

What is this?

This is not AI.

What is not

after, after, after, end card?

This, yeah, of course.

This is AI.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, but I showed you that already, and they have also this.

These are, I think, one of those interesting

static images.

Second, we saw this, we saw this as well.

Yeah,

this guy.

This guy definitely performs.

He's like, you don't build long roads, bro.

The good thing is that this looks like hyper-casual gameplay.

Yeah, it has.

Because you're building the road, you're building the tower.

And even the assets and like production

visuals, yeah.

It looks like hyper-casual.

And yeah, the enemies overload and like stone when things happening in the same time.

It's just this is like it's not mass battles yet, but still.

But then, hello, and yeah, this is super, super hyper-casual, right?

Kind of very,

you know, solid background, nothing else, and then suddenly oops.

If you compare it with something like Watcher of Realms, which is like for a Shadow Legend style tower defense game, like day and night difference, yeah, I mean, of course,

the Vulcan towers are shooting up, they can't do that in the game.

Yeah, well, no,

yeah, alter, altered gameplay.

Let's call it altered.

Yeah,

who's the leader here, by the way?

I always forget.

A leader of what?

Leader of uh category, tower defense category.

Yeah, oh, let's have a look at that.

I'm actually curious for that.

Or

my yeah, your star guys didn't get that.

So, Bang Bang Survivor, as always,

12 mil.

And then we have what do you what do you have here, Jakub?

can you tell me

um we are warriors yes

exactly

is that chickens or what is it

i don't know

i just i just lost

so ark knights is secondly eight million a month and then we have lucky defense five million a month still still keeping the end

and then there's like kingdom guard on the fifth spot come on guys you can do better you can do better this is not the tower defense

Okay.

Do you think there needs to be more creative, uh, creative um

asking?

Different type of creatives.

It seems like it's all one theme, right?

It take there.

There could be a little bit more.

It is just June new creatives, which kind of looks all the same, but then we have the static image.

Raid is on the seventh spot after Raid Rush, after Rush Royale, actually.

Okay.

Rush Royale

doing 2.3 million revenue seems to downscale, didn't they?

Yeah, a little bit.

We have also, you know, zombies who would

get

7 mil a month in peak.

Well,

good old days.

Yeah, good old days.

Good old days.

Now you have more games in the tower defense genre and

they're not scaling that much.

You have some game.

Unlucky defense.

Unlucky defense.

Yeah, unlucky defense.

Unlucky.

Lucky.

Yeah.

Lucky strike.

Unlucky defense.

Yeah, what should have run is number nine, which is even less.

So evolve these.

And this is just new creatives.

I can actually go look.

Ruthless defense.

Oh, really?

No shit.

That was defense, yes.

Then it's just, you know, like they're using a lot of hooks from AI, but still goes, oh, hello.

Okay.

That's right.

Yeah, that's the end card.

You see how it's not Arnold Schwarzenegger next to him?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course, I see.

But even not the other guy's face, also.

Yeah, no, his face, just a random face.

Kind of face.

And this guy.

Games to play on the toilet, of course.

Let's actually try because anime there that was the

Terminator one.

But it seems like like the AI hooks really, really pro pro proliferated in the last half a year i would say i think in the last half a year

no ai hooks at all

yeah of course there was just uh real life uh

real life hooks like

running and all the yeah exactly it was driven by century games but not anywhere anywhere else but now he's still okay we saw this but still it's just six months too late

we were talking about this since like november last year okay this is nice ai hook yeah uh is it an ai hook?

100%, man.

Why would you not be?

Yeah, it's three seconds.

Could be.

Could be, but still.

The image could be done by artists, but

I think we are now kind of.

Yeah, this is the static image of Terminator, and then that's pretty much it.

Oh, let's see.

Molten glass

go back

three seconds, man.

It's hard to tell.

I really don't know.

This is AI for sure.

Come on.

It's in painting, actually.

Go back.

So there's a still visual of the environment and everything.

That's AI, and the 10 minutes guys are added on top, impainted.

Yeah.

You know why?

Why?

No shadows.

Could just be a cloudy day, Jakob.

And I think I've seen this.

I think I've seen this once when I flew over Spain.

For sure.

It's definitely a cloudy day.

Definitely.

What do you know about Spain, Jakob?

Yeah, exactly.

A lot.

Or Turkey.

Or Turkey, anyway.

So, yeah, I think to your point, Felix, yes, I would say you could use more

kind of creative concepts.

Not fake, but more creative concepts but still still pretty good for this type of uh this type of game and uh and genre they're doing quite interesting things uh that not the others

are doing so yeah i think

they can still support the game go higher

i expect uh even you have the terminator i don't think terminator helps with the cpi too much uh honestly it does add some content which is fine trending up though it is trending up trending up like it's like peak It's like no, no, no, like

a very good job, uh, anyway.

On the it's on the critic side, it's not as easy because of like how the genre, like, kind of is like the tower defense is still quite expensive, not forex expensive, very saturated.

Last, yeah, you see, you see 10k installs per day,

1000 something from US.

Like, it's that's not very cheap.

You can see it quite clearly there, but it's like for that, like how much money they actually actually earn.

Uh, we should we went, we wanted wanted to actually look at the dar

pool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so we should we should definitely do that, which is gonna be quite high, honestly.

Yeah, so what do we want to put in?

Yeah, raid rush

rush royale, you could do that,

and what else

could defense

not a fair comparison,

Yeah, exactly.

Lucky defense.

It's lucky defense.

It's lucky defense.

What is the problem?

You spelled.

There you go.

And I think it's fine.

Man Max Roy will be atrociously high.

Oh, yeah, because of China.

But because of China,

it's RPU, it's not revenue.

We can do RP.

Oh, you want a revenue per download?

Just revenue per download, it's fine.

Yeah.

I don't see anything because you're out of the chart.

They're better than the Russia.

Yeah, but

come on, like the scale is nowhere near.

It's like 10x lower scale.

It's like, how can

you

70 million downloads on Russia versus 7 million downloads?

Yeah, but Rush Royale is after Zenit, like it's dying, basically.

Yeah, so it's not fair

Yeah, so that's why I would do ARPDAO instead of revenue per downloads.

So that's what I'm saying.

So revenue per downloads, these guys are actually winning.

That's the important part.

That's what I was saying.

Trouble downloads

and high revenue.

Average revenue per DAU.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's what I'll add revenue performance.

Because the revenue per downloads, it accumulates over time because payers stay.

This is that's why

they have so much but like this is the important chart.

And keep in mind that this is even higher if you add in the ad revenue on top of it.

it.

So even the Koreans are hardcore on tower defense as you've seen there.

Yeah, because

lucky defense is not big in the US and it's big in South Korea and Raid Rush is the other way around.

Yeah, but this is global.

This is global.

I mean, sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Nice.

It's a fun game.

I like the game.

Very, very unique and smart.

Again, iteration, you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Use what works.

Just add your own unique part into it.

That's it.

offer and you know what you should you should also do if you want to scale a little bit more you can start a ctv campaigns because you go and call vibe.co because vibe is also sponsoring this episode so if you want to just join the 5 000 brands out there that using actually vibe just call them vibe.co oh well co so vibe.co

it's your turn go and start some ctv campaigns well yakub is doing it next week

i'm gonna do the week after vibe.co

exactly easiest way to launch the ctv campaign pretty much yeah totally self-serve

and uh i think that's that's pretty much it for this episode thank you very much for listening bye-bye bye-bye thank you