🧩 Can Century Games Crack the Match-3 Puzzle Genre? In Match3 genre, only the bold survive!

Speaker 1 They're not differentiating enough. So, one thing I questioned when we first, you know, before we started recording, was I have questions around what the strategy is of these three games.

Speaker 1 Like, what are they trying to achieve? I mean, I think one of you mentioned, yeah, they're like this learning. But if you go back to when Party Match came out,

Speaker 1 they've been learning for three years. And

Speaker 1 if you're going to be learning in match three, you got to be learning much faster. And they have a live game.
So the learning should be

Speaker 1 moving exponentially.

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Speaker 3 Uh, recording already.

Speaker 2 Ah, there you go.

Speaker 2 Let me just hello.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 Are you in a rave?

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, it's of course. It's uh, It's a podcast rave as usual.

Speaker 2 Hello, everybody. Welcome.

Speaker 1 Better nightlife than in Seattle. I'm coming to your place.

Speaker 3 Yeah, of course. Come on.
It's a rave in my daughter's room.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Bratislava. Like, fucking dark literature and suicidal novelists.

Speaker 3 All right, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 2 Okay, welcome.

Speaker 2 Yeah, okay. Let's start here.
Let's start from here. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 We already started, man. Let's go.

Speaker 3 And today we're talking about not one game, not two games, but three games. Then three games.

Speaker 2 Woo-hoo. I need to go for it.
My name is Matiela.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Imomo Forex. My name is Matteel Ancheric.

Speaker 2 I'm Felix Brauber.

Speaker 1 And I'm the guest. I'm Laura Taranto.
Oh, yeah. I've been on this podcast before.
I'm very excited to return.

Speaker 2 Welcome. We are your hosts.
So, perfect.

Speaker 3 Thanks. So, it's not Forex, it's Century Games, it's batch-free, it's casual puzzle there, whatever activities they're trying to do, and it's a lot.

Speaker 3 It's a lot. So let's

Speaker 3 start with what

Speaker 3 can you share, Yaku, what exactly all those games are looking like or where do we start? Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 let's start as usual with some numbers and some kind of. Thanks for bringing the energy.

Speaker 1 Should we do like a high level of as well and what Century Games is? Because I know they're typically known for Forex games.

Speaker 1 Like I think they did Kingshot, they did White Up Survival, and now they have these three Match 3 games. And it's kind of like, where do they go?

Speaker 3 Yeah, but

Speaker 3 I think when we started talking about them early, when Frozen City, Frozen City was and then White Out Survival, like they had all these farming simulation games,

Speaker 3 tons of them, and then suddenly Frozen City exploded, and then White Out Survival exploded as well. Yep,

Speaker 2 nevertheless, the portfolio, even before White Out Survival, was doing something like 16 to 15 million a month already in 2022. Just saying, those are those family farm adventure doing 7 million.

Speaker 2 Like it's dwarfed by whiteout survival on the graph. But if I take this out, you can see that it was still doing huge chunks of revenue.
So the origin,

Speaker 2 like the portfolio is very diversified, let's say, for a Forex company. Comparing something, this to River Game or Fun Plus.

Speaker 3 Because it wasn't a Forex company before.

Speaker 1 Yes, it was not. So that's what I wanted to talk about.
So it was, it was Fun Plus sold DNDN Interactive Studio to Century Group. And that's how this group, that's how Century Games started.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, sorry, that's that's what I wanted to because it's a fascinating history of how they started.

Speaker 1 Yes, they had the family farm adventure, which was one of their first games, the farming game, I believe, or it was an early game of theirs.

Speaker 3 Early games, they had Dragon's Capes, which was a spin on this family, whatever. And when we talked about it, they already had back in like 2022 or somewhere around it,

Speaker 3 the gross

Speaker 3 pupils were like pimples.

Speaker 2 One of of your favorite creative tricks.

Speaker 3 Yeah, one of my favorite creative tricks in the onboarding already back then. Now they're doing all these like slightly different

Speaker 3 hypercasual stuff, but yeah, like they were already changing it all back then.

Speaker 2 It was absolutely so far farm adventure, just to get that in context, already behind 208 million just here. So it's still pretty big.

Speaker 3 But yeah, just just to tell you, I was working on the creatives on this game.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 I was supposed to bring new creatives to the table, new creative ideas and concepts. And like, okay, so these are the creatives we actually tested.

Speaker 3 And I opened that drives, like 500 different concepts. Like, okay, so how do you, yeah, how do you find something that wasn't tested already before? Oh, my God.
I tested everything.

Speaker 3 So, and that was a low-scale family farm adventure. Like, now you can translate it into what I thought survival.
It's like on steroids, basically.

Speaker 2 So, here somewhere, you could see that, like, at the

Speaker 2 beginning of 2023, there's the frozen city kind of a blimp here, but it gets dwarfed very fast by whiteout survival, and that's usually what people know. It's everything for, yeah.

Speaker 2 So, now it's the forex company, mostly, I guess, but there's still other avenues that they're following because Kingshot is doing very well.

Speaker 2 We recovered that, it's already passing one million a day in revenue. So, yeah, that's getting very, very big.

Speaker 2 is basically it can i yep just ask here laura how much do you think on top of this they do through web shops

Speaker 1 how about

Speaker 1 okay first question is i actually don't do they have web shops set up for at least for the match three games i think most of these have

Speaker 1 i have not looked for i'd have to check

Speaker 3 Or we can ask our new sponsor, Fast Frink.

Speaker 2 You saw where I was going with it.

Speaker 3 I I know where we were going with this because, you know, Fastprink delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years. You know, they power top mobile publishers around the world.

Speaker 3 So maybe, just maybe, they also work with Century Games. Well, we never know.

Speaker 3 We should definitely ask because there's no drama D2C partner. They can scale.
So just go to FastSprink.

Speaker 3 And open your web shop as well. That was very, very nice, Black Felix.
Very nice. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 I thought you'd you'd pick up on that. I thought you'd pick up on that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I had it in my sleeve for later.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm actually curious, though, Laura, like, do a lot of web, do a lot of match 3 games monetize with web shop or not? Like, going back before the shill, but yeah.

Speaker 1 But back before the shell, well, I think the hardest thing for me to know is what percent of the ones that do have it set up, what percent actually of their revenue comes from web shops?

Speaker 1 Because that information doesn't, it's not in Censor Tower.

Speaker 3 It doesn't exist yet.

Speaker 1 Yes, unless that, yeah, unless a company like Xola that does it will share it, which I imagine they wouldn't because this is, they're not going to, you know, reveal revenue data of their, of any of their clients.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that's the hardest part to estimate.

Speaker 2 So shoot from the hip. You have a lot of how many years experience do you have? Like shoot from the hip.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So shoot from the hip.
Shoot from the hip here.

Speaker 1 It depends. Okay.
So what I've seen it done before, it depends on, honestly, I think it partially depends on the integration if it's available in the app itself.

Speaker 1 So I know you can do one link in the game to push it to a web shop, but then you still owe, what, 27%

Speaker 1 of the

Speaker 1 platform fee comes from the post-sale that that sale.

Speaker 1 I would not say

Speaker 1 it depends

Speaker 2 almost.

Speaker 1 You think so?

Speaker 2 After the Apple ruling, I guess it's going to increase much more to something like 30.

Speaker 1 I would agree with that. I think it's going to increase.

Speaker 1 I don't think the visibility is high enough today, and I don't think it's easy enough to target your players without setting off alarm bells elsewhere.

Speaker 2 But you can do direct pop-up now in the US. You've seen those screenshots of Supercell games, literally in your face, pop-up, here's the store.

Speaker 2 True.

Speaker 1 The only thing that is missing is it's so one thing that I've, you know, recently I've been getting a little bit more accustomed to is when you have to make your own.

Speaker 1 Well, one, if you have your own payment processor, that's one thing.

Speaker 1 If you have to build that whole tech end-to-end, it can be that's the part that can be incredibly annoying, multi-step, which may or may not affect the actual funnel completion rate of that purchase.

Speaker 1 The one thing that makes it super easy is when you have Apple doing the whole thing, it's click-click done.

Speaker 1 So, these are the things that actually have to sit down. So, shooting from the hip would entirely depend on how it's how it's implemented.

Speaker 2 We're gonna need an answer: 20%, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 It's, I would say,

Speaker 1 fine. I'm gonna

Speaker 1 open up to any of the listeners.

Speaker 1 I have not

Speaker 1 myself worked with it.

Speaker 2 So let's go 20%.

Speaker 1 Tell me, I want to hear that.

Speaker 2 I want to hear what everyone else sees. I have worked with a Forex game that was quite large, and they had 50% payments coming through web shops.

Speaker 1 50%?

Speaker 2 But we're not going to be able to do that.

Speaker 2 Not mega scale, but it's.

Speaker 2 Anything mid-core can hit this easily, does mid-core.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but then you ask about casual games in Matrix. so it's like the 20% is always like Laura.
If you say 20% on anything, it's always the like that's the safe bet.

Speaker 2 It's a safe bet.

Speaker 3 20% is always a safe bet.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 I would say 20%.

Speaker 2 Back to century, why are we actually talking about centuries?

Speaker 3 We're talking about century games. Yeah, you're right, yeah, sir.

Speaker 2 So White Out Survival and Kingshot Killing It, yada yada, that's the forex part, which we're not going to talk about today.

Speaker 2 But the other thing, which is really important, and I guess it's this kind of a sleeping dragon, is that they're going very heavily into casual, and they're going meaning they're attempting they don't have yet like a giant if you don't care

Speaker 2 family farm adventure doing 200 million a success, it's not the match tree, yeah. So, basically, they're going after a lot of casual games.

Speaker 2 If you look at pretty much how these games are being released, for instance, just last month, they already released Boltsoft and Block Color Match, which you can guess which are following.

Speaker 2 Block Color Match is color block jam uh color block match and Boltsov is screwed on, basically. Yeah, I mean so Century is trying to heavily diversify into casual and

Speaker 2 what we'll be talking actually are the three match tree games that we picked off of the portfolio because they are going heavily into match three.

Speaker 2 Not not I'm not saying that not going to other directions, but let's say at least Trackstar has been a little more successful, definitely more successful than Chrome Valley Customs, so we're gonna talk about that.

Speaker 2 that that's the topic for today hopefully we can figure out some strategy because i'm a little bit puzzled still what the strategy is

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Speaker 2 Now let's get back to it.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Truckstar, Family Farm Match and Party Match.

Speaker 3 For some for a second, I thought you are actually on level 239.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Which

Speaker 3 I'm pretty sure you are not.

Speaker 2 When you say party match, can you actually sound excited? Like you're going to a party? No.

Speaker 2 Party.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so let me get out of this and lose my string here so we are on the same page.

Speaker 2 We are able.

Speaker 3 Level 50, okay, nice.

Speaker 2 That's my usual here, like level 50, I guess when the feature said unlocks. Like, did you see anything else, Laura, that I missed there? That was supposed to be unlocked after level 50?

Speaker 1 No, I mean, I played to level 100, uh, 100 in Truckstar. I got to high 80s in a party match, which used to be called Disco Match and a Family Farm Match.
They're very similar.

Speaker 1 And at one point, I realized I could stop playing. I didn't have to hit actually level 100 because the games, especially Family Farm Match and Party Match.

Speaker 1 They're so similar, I'm convinced that they used almost the same engine with a couple of improvements for those two games.

Speaker 3 I mean, we're talking about Chinese companies, so Chinese efficiency. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, you joke about that, but that's actually standard. I mean, you have

Speaker 1 the if you have the engine,

Speaker 1 you might as well take the engine you have, and add what you think is going to be the next wave of innovation that a player wants to see, and then chuck it in the next game.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe we can look here into the slide you did there because before we actually start to talk about the games like their dates because I think this is quite important whereas the disco party match, I guess, went and didn't make it.

Speaker 3 But it's dead basically now, right?

Speaker 2 That's my question. Like, do these games are considered to be just like guinea pigs to do experiments or they're just dead or why they're alive? I don't know.
But yeah, this was done here.

Speaker 3 Chrome Valley Customs comes around and then Yaku, Byako, you know, like like you said, like, Laura, can you talk about this slide you made? And then you start talking.

Speaker 1 It's fine. I'm happy for you to jump in.
So I remember when Disco Match came out, because I was playing it about a year ago.

Speaker 1 It was on my radar. Yeah.
And I didn't realize it. I mean, I realized it was Century Games, but not to this.

Speaker 1 I didn't, what I didn't realize was that it was going to be the kind of the foundation of what Family Farm Match was going to be. But in 2024, I actually went through the updates.

Speaker 1 They renamed it to Party Match. And I could not, that I have, you know, a theory, some theories as to why they're not good theories, but

Speaker 1 they did, they released this in 2022-ish.

Speaker 1 Then it was pre-Chrome Valley Customs. So Chrome Valley Customs came out.

Speaker 1 And then I do not think at that point, I don't think Disco Match, they may have used the same engine, but there's more differentiation between Party Match and Truckstar than there is between Party Match and Family Farm Match.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 Disco match was first, then Chrome Valley Customs came out, and that was supposed to target,

Speaker 1 give, I think it was increase the demographic of male players in the Match Street audience, give them something that they would particularly like in terms of theme.

Speaker 1 Forza Customs came out shortly after Chrome Valley, and then Truckstar came out. So there's this wave of like, how do we integrate more of potentially an audience with,

Speaker 1 how do we engage more of a male audience into the match day world? Because we know about 50% of the population of match three generally plays is male.

Speaker 1 So maybe if we give them trucks and beer, they'll play, they'll enjoy it more. Who knows?

Speaker 2 Brilliant idea.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Outstanding move. We're so simple.

Speaker 1 And then what came afterwards, which was a very recent release, was Family Farm Match. And if you play all those three games, the top row is the Century Games games for Match 3.

Speaker 1 And then I've just put two for comparison that were not Century games.

Speaker 1 The way I see it as Family Farm took from Party, and then Truckstar is a little bit on its own. So it was a little bit different.
And I think that's why I pulled in the Chrome Valley and Forsa.

Speaker 1 So there's two different distinct lines

Speaker 1 as I would slice in Disaster.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Here's the chart how it actually went off where

Speaker 2 Chrome Valley Customs said like 2023 hit this peak of something like 100k a day

Speaker 2 and then slowly if I get this off pretty much

Speaker 2 declined.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then you see why. Yeah, pretty much Truckstar ate his lunch and then

Speaker 2 Truckstar kind of peaked and stayed somewhere there around 80k a day. And here we are basically.
Can I say a really funny note here? If you put the cursor on November 1st,

Speaker 2 the CEO of Space Ape actually told me that, no, no, back another year.

Speaker 2 So, go back to when it was actually peaking for, yeah. So, right here during this peak, the CEO of SpaceSape told me that Exhibit visited the Space Ape office and was very excited.

Speaker 2 And I had no idea that Exhibit is actually called Melvin.

Speaker 2 He was very excited, and it was a very funny visit to the office. But, yeah, he was involved in this game, right? So, hilarious.
Oh, yeah, we talked about the episode. Yeah, yeah, we covered it.

Speaker 3 Hey, with Dmitry,

Speaker 3 from the Euro perspective, and then like how they

Speaker 3 got in exhibit

Speaker 2 by a cameo

Speaker 3 then and they're like, oh, you know what? Yeah, let's just work together on this. And they put it in the game.

Speaker 1 If you look at downloads for the same group, the same group,

Speaker 1 what you'll see is that at Chrome Valley Customs, around the same time, you can see the revenue kind of switch. They also stopped, it looks like they stopped spending against this game.

Speaker 3 So you know, because

Speaker 2 CPL is really high

Speaker 3 cpi is super high like dimitri said like look like it was so expensive at some point like we we just had to do a lot of different hyper casual type of videos because yeah as soon as you start showing match free it's like fifty plus

Speaker 3 and i'm pretty sure like this

Speaker 3 fifty plus it's quite high for chrome valley customs to just

Speaker 2 beat against by the way that's the only differentiator between the let's say the ua play that i've seen within these games. That Chrome Valley Customs actually has the mini games.

Speaker 2 Similarly to like Royal Match. If you go here, you can even go and play them.
It's called Vehicle Simulator. So you literally,

Speaker 2 I guess it needs to download it. I think I had that normally put in.

Speaker 3 Was it called?

Speaker 2 Yeah. What was it called?

Speaker 2 I heard that too.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. What was it called? The minigames?

Speaker 2 Do you say

Speaker 3 okay.

Speaker 3 What's the name of the mini mini game section?

Speaker 3 So you actually go and

Speaker 2 ride a truck

Speaker 1 and you need to put that was not a success.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was not a success, but it still kind of went there.

Speaker 2 You failed with reading the fucking echo simulator. The second one's better because the second one's actually forklift.
Oh, I did that one too. That's it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because that one was actually put put on level 30 into normal saga, so they force you to play it or skip it.

Speaker 2 So it's the typical kind of royal match treatment, but it's not every 10 levels as you see. The yeah, it's like level differences is giant, so they didn't really kind of put that much effort into it.

Speaker 2 But uh, if you look into it, it's there. If we're talking the UI question, like, yeah, it's this is like pretty advanced stuff that they have.

Speaker 3 And you remember when we talked about this in one of the creative uh trends,

Speaker 3 it was all like kind of like a driving simulator type of creatives, and it's still there.

Speaker 3 It just, I,

Speaker 3 when I was kind of looking into the family

Speaker 3 match, farm match, also creatives, and we were going to look at that.

Speaker 3 I don't think, and heads off to the team, and we love Heaven and the whole century games. I don't think, yeah, they their UA knowledge for match games is there.

Speaker 2 You mean like it's hindering their progress?

Speaker 2 It's probably they're kind of getting there, but UA is

Speaker 3 exactly. Yeah, yeah.
On the on the forex,

Speaker 2 yeah, no problem.

Speaker 2 How I in here, how I view it, like the slide that Laura did here, is that like this is pretty much when they were kind of more starting with like match 3 formula and just learning, learning, learning.

Speaker 2 Here they went in two separate ways, whereas like because they had different games in between also, not match 3, but click to match or whatever, different kind of sub-genres, just same schedule.

Speaker 2 And they went Chrome Valley Customs and pretty much diverted there into the Chrome Valley Customs meta and like the mechanics.

Speaker 2 But they still use their template from Disco Match because it's like the base baseline.

Speaker 2 And Family Farm pretty much gets returned back to the original, like, we're following the baseline standardized template and went like Royal Match style on it.

Speaker 2 And Trackstar's kind of a deviation, which I guess kind of they okay with it, but can scale it still.

Speaker 1 One thing you should, we should note is that the uh the vehicle simulator that you that you showed to access it it's actually not a button on the hud it's in this it's in the settings screen yeah it is here yeah so i played up to the first four they're very similar they're all basically driving there's some sort of the maneuvering vehicle yep yes exactly

Speaker 2 yeah so that's there regarding the template itself is the usual kind of royal match setup the events trigger meta, where you have the battle pass that unlocks somewhere there in like around level 30, the monetization events on the right side of the screen,

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 let's say trigger engagement events on the left side of the screen. By the way, this one I didn't saw in the Royal Match lollout.

Speaker 2 I don't know if this is because you actually have to pay soft currency to be matchmaked.

Speaker 3 And you never pay. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 Normally, you would be like mitch made automatically with these other events that I've seen within different games. Here you actually had to pay like a wager and then

Speaker 3 skull.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it basically puts a timer there.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 after it finds an opponent, you have like 15 minutes to kind of overcome.

Speaker 2 Also this one, this is also interesting where you have the

Speaker 2 track that you're pretty much restoring and you need to make it by the end of the timer in order to keep it in your collection.

Speaker 2 Which is again, I guess, a little bit of like that's what I was saying: that they kind of deviated from the Royal Match template and just went completely kind of accustomed to their Truckstar needs, I guess.

Speaker 1 I would agree with that.

Speaker 1 There's definitely elements of differentiation between the meta in this and even less so I'd say the core, but mostly how they approached a lot of these kind of the live events versus the other two games.

Speaker 1 The other thing I was messaging Jakob about was if you go to in Truckstar, if you go to the guilds, the social area, this is the first time I've seen this.

Speaker 1 They actually have team challenge integrated into the team itself, so

Speaker 1 it's almost like its own UI HUD for how the team's performing things to do

Speaker 1 that is not in the other two games. That is, again, another reason why

Speaker 2 not even in Royal Match.

Speaker 1 I haven't seen it in Royal Match, unless I'm not in the A-B test for it, but I have not seen it in Royal Match.

Speaker 2 So, they have their own iterations, which is great, but other features are pretty much kind of bread and butter oil match. Like you have the standard albums there.
This is kind of again very similar.

Speaker 2 The leaderboard setup, again,

Speaker 2 very similar.

Speaker 2 The show

Speaker 2 not show.

Speaker 2 This is the progression setup, let's call it. But again, progression here is the farm.
Here is the cars. And here is the like these club areas.

Speaker 2 Oh, they were pretty much unlocking there.

Speaker 2 Yeah, here you see, for instance, the different thing with the cars is that you have these additional cars from events, I guess, that you can get or collect or whatever something.

Speaker 2 I guess that's going for their mechanic.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about the core because I want to hear your

Speaker 2 kind of,

Speaker 2 let's say,

Speaker 2 what do you think about the core currently and what they do, what they don't do, or how would you compare this to Royal Match or why this can scale to Royal Match?

Speaker 1 You know, in terms of, okay, the core mechanics, so in terms of how the engine's been developed and the kind of the logic of things like how boosters are placed or the smartness of the propellers, especially when propellers are combined with other boosters and what they target, I think it's actually done very, very well.

Speaker 1 What for each of these games,

Speaker 1 and again, I'm going to

Speaker 1 kind of combine Party Match with Family Farm because they're so similar to even to the point where of the how they

Speaker 1 introduce obstacles, the obstacles they pick.

Speaker 1 That is all,

Speaker 1 it's not a copy, but it's almost as you can tell.

Speaker 1 It's very similar.

Speaker 3 Almost like one team.

Speaker 1 It does feel like one team. It does feel like

Speaker 1 one team that is working on the two games that are on the right. Well, looking at this on the right-hand side, and then it's a separate team working on Trumpstar.

Speaker 1 What I want to call out a little bit is

Speaker 1 what was confusing to me was the level difficulty and overall level balancing was

Speaker 1 it's too easy. So for Truckstar, I think it's a little bit more difficult.
I think I put in my notes that the

Speaker 1 if I was gonna, if I was gonna like finger in the air, you know, estimate, I would say the APS, the attempts per success, so that's general difficulty for, you know, how you determine the levels difficulty.

Speaker 1 It's probably one to 1.25 on average between levels 100, 1 and 100. A few levels were maybe two APS, but it didn't go up.
It didn't go higher than that.

Speaker 1 And I would say, like, a hard level is like you're looking at anywhere between two and six,

Speaker 1 two and six attempts per success to beat the level for that. And then, and actually, Truckstar is more difficult.
So then you have these other two games where it's, I found it significantly easier.

Speaker 1 I can't tell you how many times I used an EGP and then game purchase.

Speaker 1 more moves for coins. I don't think I did going through the first.
Let me see what actual specific level I got to. Okay, so I got to 85 in Family Farm Match.
I don't think I used an,

Speaker 1 I don't, I think I maybe failed one level and I probably wasn't paying attention when I was playing. And I certainly didn't mean to use any of my coins.

Speaker 3 Well, when you compare this to Royal Kingdom, it's just day and night.

Speaker 1 Royal Kingdom was significantly more difficult. And I think that's that's a determination.
So if we looked at that revenue of these three games, I was thinking, why, what is the strategy behind this?

Speaker 1 Why haven't they experimented with one to make one more difficult, at least, you know, starting level 50 and up?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 could they be making more revenue from this if they did?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's my this is my other kind of not question, maybe just points here that

Speaker 2 Trackstar deviated not only with the template and some like additions, but also the difficulty curve because these two have kind of very similar difficulty with and to me, it feels like Royal Match because Royal Match kind of very easy in the beginning, at least, compared to Royal Kingdom, which is kind of more close to Trackstar.

Speaker 2 I guess even the harder than Trackstar.

Speaker 1 So if you go to

Speaker 1 yeah, if you go to slide five that I made, I pulled just to like dig this point home.

Speaker 1 If you look at this, this is

Speaker 1 the obstacles are almost identical.

Speaker 1 In party match, I unlocked the, what was it, the super lightning ball. I can't remember what it's called in party match, but it's when you don't fill a level.

Speaker 1 I think I had a 41-level shriek in one of these games. And

Speaker 1 you can see here that the beer in the the cat beer is literally the same in both games.

Speaker 1 And then, what I thought was super interesting was it's pictured in Family Farm Match, but unfortunately, not in Party Match. But I have a video of it in the Family Farm Match

Speaker 1 in the graphic, you see those two cards in the middle of the board. That was a really interesting mechanic.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's not completely novel, but I haven't seen anything super identical to it in another game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I took video. So, it's

Speaker 1 so this is the

Speaker 1 just it's so similar, They play so similarly. Just the

Speaker 1 but I think the one the video after that, I show the

Speaker 2 poker

Speaker 2 here at the end. Yeah, that's yes.

Speaker 1 It's this mechanic. Again, simple, but it's exactly the same.
The art is even the same in both games.

Speaker 2 I haven't seen it anywhere else.

Speaker 2 I haven't seen it. I haven't.

Speaker 1 There's like in a farm here of Saga, they have like generators. So you match next to it, you generate.
This looks like a combination of a generator obstacle with

Speaker 1 it's almost like the super the splash color in Candy Crush Soda

Speaker 2 for Felix and Mate, who didn't kind of catch it. What do you do?

Speaker 2 Like you break those cards, you need to match close to them, and then what they do, they kind of shuffle here in this animation and turn a lot of tokens on the board into the same color, which actually creates cascades.

Speaker 2 That's basically what's there.

Speaker 1 And usually, there's a

Speaker 1 resource requirement in the level to, you know, collect sixty, a hundred, whatever of whatever it is, that color

Speaker 1 board piece that you need that's generated by this poker deck.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but looking at this screen, the the beer cat beer screen or whatever it is, like, yeah, it's definitely same as at everything pretty much. So I guess they're just following the template.

Speaker 2 And and yeah, again, back the question would be, would you consider this

Speaker 2 omitting Truckstar now out of the equation and just focusing on party match and family farm that they're progressing with their core kind of let's say

Speaker 2 not juiciness but let's say the quality of their core you would would you compare this that they're already reaching the like the quality of royal match

Speaker 1 they're pretty close I think they're pretty close I think the biggest obstacle for them is going to be the levels the level balancing rather the levels are way too easy

Speaker 1 and one thing that we we tend to forget maybe as developers or I don't know seeing these two games side by side, I feel like we tend to forget.

Speaker 1 One of the biggest complaints from the casual puzzle audience is that the games feel very, very much the same. And my guess with this is that the party, the party match theme didn't connect.

Speaker 1 Either the UA was too expensive or it just didn't capture the audience. People didn't like it enough.
So they went with Farm because Farm tends to perform.

Speaker 1 So if you look at these two, these are two separate games. It's like the level is almost identical.

Speaker 3 I mean, look, like the level balancing and everything

Speaker 3 you are you need to be in istanbul to know to know how it works

Speaker 3 i mean like it's pretty pretty

Speaker 2 yeah like so so so one thing as you said like is the ua problem that that probably is like hindering them down the other one is the

Speaker 2 the hidden part

Speaker 3 yeah exactly like the actual like background of all of this at the back end like

Speaker 3 all the sec secret sauce.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's definitely a secret sauce. Like, this is not something that you can take from the game just by looking at it and reverse engineering it.

Speaker 3 What do you, or what Century Games should do, they should look at Vertex games and their matching story. I mean, they're a Chinese company, they're making ten million a month.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's not Royal Match, but it's still doing way better than all the others.

Speaker 2 Right, but like, my guess is like what Century is going here after is something like

Speaker 2 Royal Match scale, or like, yeah, yes, but if you if you go step by step, then you can get it.

Speaker 3 Like, this is way, this is nowhere near royal match scale.

Speaker 2 Yeah, nowhere near.

Speaker 3 No, the trackstar is like, well, like, two mil a month.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but my guess is that trackstar pretty much they kind of for me,

Speaker 2 how I see it is basically, I think, for them is a learning experience.

Speaker 2 It's not something like like Chrome Valley Custom scenario that we make it or we kill the company or something like that, you know, like do or die kind of situation.

Speaker 2 Whereas it's like they they learn upon it, probably,

Speaker 2 you know, enrich their template setup and move on. And then Family Farm is the next one in the you know attempts, let's say.

Speaker 2 Could I make an argument for two minutes and you guys sharpen your knives? Sharpen your knives, because after two minutes, I want to get really hammered on this.

Speaker 2 Jakub, if you could go to Sensor Tower, please, for Truckstar.

Speaker 2 Because honestly, this just takes Truckstar up and look at the active user base.

Speaker 2 So just

Speaker 2 only Truckstar, please.

Speaker 2 Let's remove the other ones. And show the countries.

Speaker 2 And remove the other ones so it's only Truckstar. So it's remove Forster customs and Chrome Valley customs.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 2 So around 1 million.

Speaker 2 800, let's say.

Speaker 3 800K,

Speaker 3 which is 150k is US.

Speaker 2 Yeah, do the last 30 days.

Speaker 3 it's gonna

Speaker 3 make bullshit

Speaker 3 and then yeah zoom in zoom in please just pick us only

Speaker 2 we're getting there ios no how much unified how much felix they can make yeah like 30k

Speaker 2 so basically wait no some of the no no listen here no no listen here right so some of their top performing geos right

Speaker 2 with the largest user base is

Speaker 2 like geos that generally would never make an iap purchase right You have India, Mexico, Brazil, UK, right? Or UK, but Indonesia, Indonesia, right?

Speaker 2 But like there's a huge like part of the user base here that just is being unmonetized, right?

Speaker 2 And I'm just saying, like even if they had

Speaker 2 three rewarded ads in these geos, non-US,

Speaker 2 they could be earning another like 22% right now on ads, right? From these geos that are not generating anything, right?

Speaker 2 And we know that the second largest match 3 game uses ads century games spends a boatload wait a second wait a second second largest match 3 game uses ads when you needed to watch 50 videos from indonesia how to get to those ads after level 4 000 that's the baseline you're talking here

Speaker 2 but still all i'm saying is right if in non-us geos they showed five rewarded ads on half of the user base that would add an extra 30 percent on this title right

Speaker 2 Laura you want to take this one look look look look like let me let me finish let me finish let me finish right so what you can do is if you have close relationships with DSPs they can send you data on the users that they have in their database that have never made an IAP or that have made an IAP.

Speaker 2 If you use that data for segmentation, you never even in those geos show the ads to people who have ever made an IAP ever before from these databases, you're kind of isolating yourself from any of the risks on degrading IAPs.

Speaker 2 And I'm just saying, 30% on this, that's, yeah, it's quite a nice uplift in non-USGOs.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sharper than knives. I think I'm right.

Speaker 2 Well, look.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Let me

Speaker 2 just use my usual bullshit filter. If it was so great, why wouldn't we see it anywhere else? Century Games doesn't have any experience with ads.

Speaker 2 Get Century Games out of this way.

Speaker 2 King does it. King does it.

Speaker 3 Take a step back. Century Games and Frozen City is full of ads, man.
Like, what are you talking about? So.

Speaker 2 No argument against it? Okay, okay, great. What do you mean, though?

Speaker 1 I need a reminder. White Out Survival has ads.

Speaker 2 Yes. Yeah, but why wouldn't they have ads in Truckstar? That's my point.

Speaker 1 So I'm agree. I actually kind of agree with you.
That's what I don't get either. So they're not optimizing revenue here.
And

Speaker 1 they're basically, they're not differentiating enough.

Speaker 1 So one thing my question when we first, you know, before we started recording was, I have questions around what the strategy is of these three games. Like, what are they trying to achieve?

Speaker 1 I mean, I think one of you mentioned, yeah, they're like this learning. But if you go back to when Party Match came out,

Speaker 1 they've been learning for three years. And

Speaker 1 if you're going to be learning in match three, you've got to be learning much faster. And they have a live game.
So the learning should be

Speaker 1 moving exponentially. That's why I was like,

Speaker 1 I wouldn't know what the purpose was of why they necessarily keep releasing unless it's because it's too expensive. They were trying to scale it.

Speaker 1 Maybe Farnley fan match was the one that they're like, yes, this is the game. It has the right theme.
We know Party Match works in terms of smooth. It's a smooth core.

Speaker 1 We've nailed down the meta. Let's go.
That's the only thing I can think of.

Speaker 3 Also, the tracks are with ads with 30% uplift. I mean, you go from 60 to 100k per day, maybe, which is okay, but it's still not real match.

Speaker 2 Opportunity cost, probably.

Speaker 2 So, what do we think of

Speaker 2 the actual strategies here? Learning or slow learning?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm trying to figure out that as well. I mean, I well, it's there, they want to conquer also Metry at some point.

Speaker 2 It's just my guess is that they just want to get too casual as much as possible.

Speaker 3 But this doesn't look like it's as much as possible. That's the thing.

Speaker 2 It's as slow as possible. That's not the problem.

Speaker 3 Yeah, this is not even close.

Speaker 2 How would you do it differently?

Speaker 2 You have

Speaker 3 three games. One is basically dead, no UA.
Then you have Trackstar, which is going nowhere in terms of the scale. So, like, why are you even just put any resources if just stable 60k?

Speaker 3 Like, that's a fail.

Speaker 3 Honestly, it's a fail. I mean, that's a fail.
So, now you have family fire match in, I guess, soft lounge. So, now this needs to scale.

Speaker 3 If it doesn't scale, kill, just do another one, another one, another one, or just do three consecutive games at the same time and then just try different things.

Speaker 3 Theme, I don't know, yeah, different

Speaker 2 whatever. I think looking at this, you already see that

Speaker 2 the theme option is already there. The difference between these two is mainly the theme.

Speaker 3 But theme option for a company with 4,000 people, two games, when you want to conquer the fucking match-free genre?

Speaker 2 You know, how priority

Speaker 2 switch within the company that makes like 150 mil from one game.

Speaker 3 But even

Speaker 3 with this pace, you will never make 100 million from match. Like, never.
It's not going to happen in make, maybe in third life.

Speaker 2 So, what? do five five match three games in a month?

Speaker 2 Not in a month, but five in a year, maybe, yeah, that's definitely possible for them.

Speaker 3 It is, yeah,

Speaker 3 it's just insane because they have like different match free uh merge games and all of the different things. So, if you want to really conquer the distance, just put

Speaker 2 a lot of efforts,

Speaker 3 they can do that, it's not a problem for them, of course, of course, but it's like, yeah, yeah, like I'm still, yeah, I'm also like on Laura's side, like, what, what's the actual strength?

Speaker 2 I am puzzled as well. I'm not, you know, I'm playing devil's advocate here, nothing else.

Speaker 1 So let's say you keep around Party Match.

Speaker 1 It's because the cores are so similar and the metas are so similar, you could use party match as kind of an experimentation place for anything you want to put in what you think is going to be your bigger game, which I assume they're betting this on.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. So

Speaker 3 they're not doing because like party match like zero UA.

Speaker 1 So the only thing I couldn't see in Center Tower was

Speaker 1 the audience of party matches too small for estimated active users. That's

Speaker 2 keep in mind they could be running these things in China that we don't see also true true

Speaker 3 We can we can ask in a few months.

Speaker 2 Yep, yeah

Speaker 3 Absolutely

Speaker 3 Because yeah, like and I'm pretty well when when we thought when I talked with Heaven and the the team in Vegas,

Speaker 3 they asked a lot of questions about Solitaire as well.

Speaker 2 Solitaire is a whole genre now.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 I think the battle has been won over here already.

Speaker 3 Yeah, just call Vuga.

Speaker 2 So you asked Heaven basically, it's like, oh, what games are you guys looking to make? And he's like, yes.

Speaker 3 Kind of. Yeah, I was like, hey, guys, well, there's so many solitaire questions.
Are you making solitaire?

Speaker 2 Not yet. Do you want to, Mate? Do you want to go briefly over your way? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I'm going to show you. We took yourself to pieces here.

Speaker 3 No, I want to show you how what they are doing with this gorgeous game is called

Speaker 3 Family Farm Match.

Speaker 3 So it's in soft lunch because you have Facebook and upload it. Nothing else.

Speaker 2 But that's not

Speaker 2 the only thing.

Speaker 3 Just watch.

Speaker 2 Right? Ooh.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but wait with the ooh until the very end.

Speaker 3 Obviously, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, save, whatever. But have you seen one important thing

Speaker 3 in the left

Speaker 2 corner?

Speaker 3 Yeah, just behind.

Speaker 2 That's just root.

Speaker 3 So here we go. That's the first creative.

Speaker 3 There's a second creative, which is actually

Speaker 3 very creative, but it's like it's

Speaker 2 a food. Cooking game.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's just a cooking game. right it's cooking game

Speaker 3 but actually with the right logo Then

Speaker 3 there's a lot of these, which all the picks, I'm not even sure if this is their own creative, but

Speaker 3 maybe it is.

Speaker 2 The tokens on the top are there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 This actually might be. Okay, so it's family mark.
But then we have this, which is another creative.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 obviously nothing to do with the family match. Because it's not a family match, creative.

Speaker 2 It's a pearl gem

Speaker 3 something else same thing here same thing here blah blah blah here i think this might be actually i think this might be actually it but again it's a cooking cooking creative cooking creative this must be steak this can't be is it isn't that the part when they are figuring out the game that you they that they put in between the levels because of the creative

Speaker 3 can you see this

Speaker 2 really yeah

Speaker 2 you can see this yeah yeah exactly so i mean, this is how

Speaker 3 Chinese companies have launched the game.

Speaker 3 You just take whatever and just run it and see what sticks. But yeah, here, look, it's the same thing.

Speaker 2 River game.

Speaker 2 Shoot bubbles.

Speaker 3 And then it's all between things like this, actually, quite funny. When God create a family merge, right? So.
You have all these fun merge gameplay, whatever that means.

Speaker 3 Now it's all gameplay. So I guess now they're trying to actually get the core KPIs.

Speaker 3 And then you have all of these different fun

Speaker 3 other gaming creatives that are trying to figure out like what's what's actually gonna stick and maybe just what kind of mini-games they're gonna build.

Speaker 3 I feel like they have no idea what they're doing on the UA side on match in here.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 3 It's really random. It's really random.

Speaker 2 It's like if you can see right like if it's not a mistake

Speaker 3 you know what is what is this game it's match factory

Speaker 3 it's again it's match factory i see this i i've saw i've seen this million times

Speaker 2 yeah

Speaker 2 match factory they took a match factory yeah it's like seven wonderful last time

Speaker 3 seven game seven different games it's a seven different game and then you have this which is

Speaker 3 it's so random i don't think like there's i mean they're trying to find like what works, and it's, I, it kind of like it's really resembling like the whole strategy for for the match because it's just

Speaker 3 pray and pray basically everything

Speaker 3 like we try this we try that like

Speaker 3 if you look at match villains

Speaker 3 you could clearly see

Speaker 3 they really know what they are doing from day one UA

Speaker 3 and the gameplay. I mean, and it's a new game, and we were like, oh my god, they are going after Royal Match.
But it's doing already 2 million a month.

Speaker 3 We talked about it two months ago. They're still growing.

Speaker 2 So, this is not a glitch in Sensitiva for sure, yeah. No, no, no, I don't think there is a glitch.

Speaker 3 If it's a glitch, it's one creative, not seven,

Speaker 2 not eight,

Speaker 2 not eight, right?

Speaker 3 Which, I mean, it's completely normal.

Speaker 2 If people do this, we'll just set up on top so I can

Speaker 2 double-check that.

Speaker 3 May

Speaker 3 family farm match

Speaker 3 on Facebook only.

Speaker 1 If we go actually to what's interesting, is the creative side does not seem like they know what they're doing, but when I look at the actual how the engine was made,

Speaker 1 it is a polished match 3 engine. Level balancing aside, it is a polished match 3 engine.

Speaker 3 so it's just all over the place. Like, that's that's okay.

Speaker 2 I see it.

Speaker 3 I don't want to say problem, it's just uh, it's weird.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's good.

Speaker 2 Okay, I see it. I see it all.
There's no glitch.

Speaker 3 No, it's like the glitch is when it's like one, one, one.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we've seen that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we've seen the glitch, but like, honestly,

Speaker 3 this is fine. It's it's uploading the playables.
I mean, it can work. We have uh videos here, so it's fine.

Speaker 3 All this, I think it's

Speaker 3 never going to be scalable because you have one playable on Apple, which is fine because you are.

Speaker 3 I think, again, like this is a soft launch, very, I wouldn't say very early, but somewhere like a mid-soft launch where they're trying to get some KPIs and maybe work on the balancing.

Speaker 3 But they still need some numbers.

Speaker 3 But this needs to be either going the near-death experience or save whoever from the farm or just you go into the township area with all the idols.

Speaker 3 They have all the knowledge from the

Speaker 3 White House rival. They're already copying or

Speaker 3 getting heavily inspired by township anyway. So, like, this is the place where you do it.
This is exactly the place where you do it.

Speaker 2 Like, where else? Give me the screen. Yeah.
I'll show you something. Sure.
I have a theory now.

Speaker 2 So, you remember you showed showed that King Creative with Yeti being

Speaker 2 stuck with Bitcoins?

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 2 So, isn't this just the testing part to kind of filter out the working creatives and then see which ones work and then make their own

Speaker 2 like this?

Speaker 3 Yes, of course, yes, of course. So, like, it's that like it's the way more efficient way.
Just

Speaker 3 get it whatever else from whoever else, just put it, see what works, and then just then replace the assets.

Speaker 2 Yay!

Speaker 3 Yeah, literally, replace the assets, yes. Because here, like,

Speaker 2 same assets, literally, like, just the Eti is replaced, nothing else.

Speaker 2 Like, these are candy crash candies, like you can still see them.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I can see it, I can see it.

Speaker 2 But again,

Speaker 3 even this creative is just not good enough in terms of save me or save the king concept because,

Speaker 3 yeah, also, yeah, it misses basically the whole emotions.

Speaker 2 It's also part of King's creative, which I still didn't get to.

Speaker 3 That's why you don't really copy King, but you kind of go and copy Royal Miles magically. Just going Royal Magic and Royal Kingdom because they know what they're doing.

Speaker 3 Because, like, yeah, this is like this.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, so that's that's that was my point. I thought, like, honestly, if I if I then go to Trackstar, even, yeah, and this is Match Factor again.

Speaker 1 It's Match Factory again.

Speaker 3 I can see it from from Miles.

Speaker 2 Like, even like, this is

Speaker 3 this is one thing, but then you go to Trackstar, which we kind of saw a million times before.

Speaker 3 But then, like, why don't you just use

Speaker 3 exactly what you're doing in Trackstar?

Speaker 3 It's all like, you see, all the driving simulator, or as you might say, vehicle, Yakub, Mr. Vehicle.

Speaker 3 And this is what they're doing all the time.

Speaker 3 And even such, like, this is pretty good that they have also gates with all these like trucks and racing. And

Speaker 3 it's just, why don't you just do this?

Speaker 2 You mean like the fake MP strategy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I know why, because if you're in a soft lounge, you can't do this because then you're just your KPIs are just fucked.
It's just it's it's it will disappear.

Speaker 2 It's not gonna work.

Speaker 3 In here, it can because it's already live, and you can you can use all of these tricks now.

Speaker 3 So, I'm really curious to see

Speaker 3 when

Speaker 3 this Family March

Speaker 2 game will come

Speaker 3 live in worldwide. Because that's where the scaling should happen.

Speaker 2 Now you say I really like that creative. I want to play that game really badly.

Speaker 3 This one?

Speaker 2 Yeah. You could see it's a finished creative because their structs are

Speaker 2 screensaver

Speaker 2 all over the place.

Speaker 3 Yeah, screensaver, yeah

Speaker 3 well you can you can play this one as well if you want

Speaker 3 but no like but this is what you do on like

Speaker 3 match three

Speaker 3 it's just check king uh not king well just uh kings but in royal royal magic and royal kingdom

Speaker 3 so this is this is it and this is what they need to figure out for the their all match three games because if they don't figure out like the u a part it's not gonna

Speaker 3 it's just yeah it's it's like it's impossible like that's that's the part of that uh equation

Speaker 2 so this kind of works was also was the verdict works on family match current state of ua

Speaker 3 i mean it's absolutely random

Speaker 3 dbd it's not even the ai

Speaker 3 it's absolute random i mean like it looks like it's very early testing phase in terms of like the creative concepts like where sh which direction they should go that's my my verdict kind of, because they have the gameplay, which they need for the KPIs.

Speaker 3 But then, yeah, why don't you just do this

Speaker 3 as well?

Speaker 2 This is way more closer.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but it's way, way closer to like the family match. It's literally whiteout survival creative.

Speaker 3 And that's all you need. This is basically all you need.
Come on.

Speaker 2 There you go. That's whiteout survival right

Speaker 2 Even the temperature is there.

Speaker 3 That's the engine. Yeah, that's your engine.
Like, it's exactly. And it's like, what else do you need? Nothing.
You have already built everything in there. It's just risking.

Speaker 3 Basically, so

Speaker 3 still.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's like a lot of fun.

Speaker 3 We need to talk about all of these new creatives in the next

Speaker 2 creative trends.

Speaker 3 Anyway, okay, so yeah, I think that's magic. We can

Speaker 3 we can wrap it up here, okay.

Speaker 2 So, um,

Speaker 2 you always been down there. Laura, you want to do a final verdict on the puzzle strategy?

Speaker 1 So, I'm trying to think of if I was in, if I was the one leading the portfolio strategy for these games, what I would be, what my thinking would be.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 1 if this were me, what I'd probably be doing is

Speaker 1 getting slowly winding down party match, disco match, in favor of what I think is going to have lower CPIs and a more broadly appealing theme by releasing a fan match, farmly, uh, family farm match, and then taking everything that worked and just wrapping it up a little bit nicer.

Speaker 1 My hope then would be that what I want to see, what I want them to do next is start to figure out how to adjust their balancing so that they can actually make money off of this game.

Speaker 1 And frankly, I'd be putting ads in it as well. That I would be.

Speaker 2 I would see, Marty and Jakob always hate on me, but I'm always right.

Speaker 3 Wait a second, I didn't say any negative comments about not putting ads.

Speaker 2 Okay, like, I can get that. I can get that.
I just said it wouldn't move, we wouldn't move the needle that

Speaker 2 30% is nice.

Speaker 1 I would still take it.

Speaker 1 I would be,

Speaker 1 if the goal is for them to learn and say,

Speaker 1 We know they're that they have, you know, I think they've done a great job. Love what I loved white out survival.
I thought it was a great great game. And I'm not even a Forex player.

Speaker 1 So I wanted to move into casual.

Speaker 1 Maybe this is a slow ramp, but what I can't stress enough is that when it comes to these types of games, making a match your game is not easy, especially if they're building that, they built this engine at some point from scratch or they took it, right?

Speaker 1 So, and I just pulled up a tactile Simon's Cat Match as a quick comp.

Speaker 1 It's doing pretty well. But if I play the engine side by side, the the engine in Family Farm Match is, in my opinion, significantly stronger.
It is a more polished engine.

Speaker 1 So you have this team that could actually build a very good match 3 engine, but there's, in terms of how they're

Speaker 1 handling some of the things around that, is

Speaker 1 maybe they need to learn, or maybe they just want to get players through. They just want to measure.
That could be it as well. Right now, there's nothing.

Speaker 2 Go ahead.

Speaker 3 Yeah, but you know why, like, this Simon Scat is doing well because of the Lily's Garden.

Speaker 1 I mean, they already done this it's lilies garden's a tapper sorry a clicker not a match three game

Speaker 2 yes are we talking about the same game like it's doing well

Speaker 1 well i just thought doing

Speaker 1 terribly i just quickly looked at the hold on doing okay

Speaker 2 it's doing okay

Speaker 2 it's doing okay give me the screen it's doing it's doing okay

Speaker 2 i mean it's it's doing okay it's doing okay

Speaker 1 i mean let's yeah we can't

Speaker 2 we can't compare this downloads this downloads They've lost an engine.

Speaker 1 We can't compare everything to Royal Match, right? I mean, not everything's going to be a billion-dollar plus game.

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 2 I think it's not doing it. It's a cute game.

Speaker 2 It's doing better than the other game. That's what I was looking at.
It's doing okay.

Speaker 1 Let's see. I mean, is it going to be a hit? Probably not.
Definitely not. But I would say that it has to do with the quality of the engine more than anything else.
And the theme is a little bit niche.

Speaker 1 I mean, I know Simon's Cat. I think it's a cute comic, but is it going to be the IP that everyone knows and loves and downloads because of it? No.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 3 I mean, this is just

Speaker 3 a risking, just a risking of the party match game, basically. That's also dead.
Come on. Like, it's also dead.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I think I played about 70-something levels of Simon's Cat match. Actually, it wasn't bad.

Speaker 2 It wasn't bad.

Speaker 1 I was proud of Tactile for making it, but if I'm going to compare apples to apples for core engines, I would say Family Farm is a stronger core engine.

Speaker 2 They have the product, manpower, that that's definitely taken there.

Speaker 2 Don't get me wrong.

Speaker 2 What you said there, I guess, is the biggest problem where this like

Speaker 2 pretty much secret source match three know-how that only few people or not few, but like very specific,

Speaker 2 let's say, people that have lots of yeah, a lot of years behind driving match three games have.

Speaker 2 And if you don't have someone that skilled on the team that can especially know like how to balance difficulties difficulties and drive conversions through that, then I guess it's really hard to figure out yourself.

Speaker 3 So, again, that's the thing. You can copy one-to-one the level design and everything.
But when we come back to your points in the match-free overview,

Speaker 3 how all the boosters are behaving,

Speaker 3 how everything is happening on the board.

Speaker 2 Especially the stuff that you don't see that's happening on the back end.

Speaker 3 The real difference if two of the boosters are uh activated at the same time like it's a completely different player experience as well

Speaker 1 yes if i'm gonna get like really technical it has to do with the timing how long animations take the order in which they play how many particle effects if you're gonna be like though there's a milk bottle in one of them how much spray that gives off all of that has an effect in terms of how it makes the player feel But a lot of it has to do with the speed and I would say the order of operations of how things go.

Speaker 1 How player friendly is it? So, one thing that I think it does a great job of that I haven't seen done well in other games and match 3 games is how they handle pre when they when the level first loads.

Speaker 1 You have boosters. You have your wind streak boosters, you have your

Speaker 1 persistent timed boosters. So, the pre-level selection boosters, sometimes you have a timer, you can use a little, you can use the line clear for 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 There's a certain order in which you have to lay those on the board without disrupting either a preset match in the seated level or, or, um,

Speaker 1 or there's not enough space like you have to think about how the player is going to respond because then it feels like something they earned is something they can't use so in in that regard that's what i say a polished engine these are the types of things that i mean the smartness of the propellers this does family farm match does it really well i was i'm i'm actually quite i think they did a great job i would commend them but that's only one one aspect of it they need they need to get the other bits and bobs they need to get their aps curve making more sense because then i think they'll see a world of difference in revenue But again, it comes back.

Speaker 1 They also got to figure out what ads they're going to use and maybe not the Wonder Blast ads.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Figuring all the ways.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's great.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think we can end Brittie here. Like, it's not going to take on the Mage 3 market immediately, but definitely, yeah, we'll keep it on the radar.
Arte, you want to take us out?

Speaker 2 Me. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Me again.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 Thank you very much for coming.

Speaker 2 Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
No, thanks.

Speaker 3 No, like it's also thank you very much, Laura, for coming.

Speaker 2 It's always great to have you here, especially these episodes. Because

Speaker 2 there's some things that I can't even assess here. So thanks for the expertise.

Speaker 2 Happy New Dinner. Always great to have the puzzle queen with us on batch three episodes.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 3 And listeners, thank you very much for coming as well. Join the Slack channel.
Also, please comment on the video. It's very important to hear your feedback.
And see you next time.

Speaker 2 Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Ciao.