Acecraft review: Retro Cartoons + Hardcore Gacha. Collectible Albums just hit Midcore!

Western IP is not going to do well in the West, but very good in the East.

Yeah, that's

my main answer.

Nothing makes sense.

Yeah,

I mean, it does because the game is made for Asian audience, but the art style is from the West because Asian audience love this shit, and the game needs to be suitable for all Asian audience.

If it's like too easy, nobody would play it.

System design-wise, for me, it's like literally 9.9 out of 10.

Yeah.

We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight.

Mate, you aim as your eyes on the prize.

Tracking data through the cyberspace skies.

Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jackups crafter 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.

What did I say?

Welcome.

Can I go?

Can I go?

Yeah, you can go.

Welcome to another special episode of the Two and a Half Gamers Podcast, where you can stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry.

Today, we are talking about the most impressive game I've seen since White Out Survival.

We're talking about Acecraft.

What happened to you?

White Out Survival?

That was two years ago.

I said the most impressive game since White Out Survival.

Yeah, I know.

But still, it was quite some time ago.

Yeah.

What happened?

I mean, I haven't been this impressed with the game in this long.

It's really cool, this game we're going to talk about.

But before, I'm Felix Brauberg.

My name is Konfus Lanceric.

And I'm surprised to catch me.

You guys are not impressed by this game?

No, not at all.

No, I'm not.

You've seen Kingshot?

Okay, fine, Kingshot as well.

But yeah, I'm really impressed.

And by the way, we are your hosts.

Thank you very much for coming.

I mean,

and

I'm surprised as well because Andre was also impressed.

And Andre is my co-founder of Playboy Maker.

And he told me about this game last week.

He's like, yeah, we're talking about it on the podcast.

And he's like, oh, I love it.

And I was like, oh, okay.

And And I don't like it.

I really don't like it.

It's not about what you like or not.

It's just

because it's not the granny game.

No, no, no.

But he likes all the granny games.

Because it's physical, motor skills.

No, no, it's all like...

No, no.

I don't care about the skills.

And I really hate the art style.

Ah, it drives

crazy.

You don't like Tom and Jerry?

I do.

I don't fucking get the Tom and Jerry there yet.

And I I mean, I don't get possible.

I've been trying to get Tom for like a couple of days.

It's like, no, how much money it costs to get this.

Yeah, you need to pay so much.

Yeah, you really need to pay a lot of money.

And Asian style gotcha, man.

Exactly.

And it was like, it was the first time actually I thought I'm going to re-roll.

It's like,

like, okay.

And you're like, okay, let me.

You re-roll and it takes you like two days to get one temple.

Goodbye.

Exactly.

Nope.

Nope.

Well, actually, I could re-roll with the 99 cents offer.

It would be easy.

It would be cheaper to actually.

Because you buy the 99 cents and you can actually go and buy and try to get Tom or Jerry in those guys.

Yeah, I just do it again in a different account.

With a different account and they will also give you the resources.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's just like it's 99 cents.

It's not that that expensive as is I would just go and buy fucking like everything in the shop.

So it's like but then it's like nope.

But no, this game is not made for re-rolling.

If you compare it with something like Umamusume, Umamusume re-roll takes like 20 minutes, and you can like

seven, eight temples immediately.

So, wait, wait, wait.

Are you impressed with this game, Jakob, or no?

I know, Mate is not.

I am impressed, of course.

He is very impressed, but not on a level of like whiteout survival.

Yeah, okay.

Because

there's some clever engineering here and system design, but it's not, I think, like, you know, best thing since bread, which Kingshot literally is.

Ooh,

okay

should we show the game

fancy let the fans decide or let the listeners decide for themselves of course why not so game first numbers after numbers are huge let me just say that

yes

huge before we go there the listeners this episode is brought to you by pvx lambda no ambush ads this time because uh i want to introduce our new sponsors pvx lambda so you know it's a game changer and you can plug it into mmp and get clean and clear ROS benchmarks retention insights and even forecasts or of whether you are ready for funding so no fluff just real answers go to pvxpartners.com slash lambda

and get your growth strategy on point so pvxpartners.com slash lambda 100 free go there hey you should yeah you can you can do it you can do it it's fine okay so here we go for those that looks familiar the art style here it's basically similar to a game called Cuphead, which is a very, very popular PC game, which also did this trick of using 1930 animation.

You are level 15, Mr.

Jakob?

Yes, what's your level?

Yeah,

let me check.

I'm level 9.

Mr., you are impressed.

Ooh, you are fucking impressed.

Oh, my God.

I'm level 13.

Okay, so obviously.

Impressed all those two hours.

Exactly, yeah.

I'm so impressed.

I played it the full hour.

It's a great game.

Yeah.

I can see it on your level.

Man, Jesus.

Man, you can get to level 9 just by playing the game for five minutes, by clicking patrol and taking all the XP for the whole day.

That's it.

You watch seven ads and then you are there.

I did the plus for all 30 minutes.

How dare you?

How dare you say anything?

I was like, fuck me.

Anyway, yeah, so

we have this, like, this is, of course, the play.

I I don't think so we have a popular mobile game with this art style yet or this whole pretty much

the first note.

Is it popular?

Man, it's going to die in two weeks in US

in the US in the US.

In the US up to the US.

Not in Asia.

In Asia, not really.

No, not Asia.

We know already that there's this other Tom and Jerry game that was super, super popular in Asia.

We just haven't played it or I I don't think so it was released in the West or maybe it was but it didn't went big or something.

But yeah, Asia it loves these like i know yeah yeah all disney style 1980s that's why it's made by a chinese company

it's moon by the way yeah that's that's

that's the games that did uh

was the bang bank uh mobile legends bang bank mobile legends bang bank yeah the moba which is like uh

League of Legends kind of follow-up.

And then they did Watcher of Realms, the tower defense game we have been talking about recently.

And it crashed.

I don't know why.

Which I know why.

Because it's made for people with money and iPhones.

That's why.

Anyway, let's get to the core core gameplay.

Once it's loaded up, you can do the

dance.

We'll do the dance while it's loading.

Yeah, I can do it.

It's fine.

So, this is actually under category Matte's favorite.

Shoot them up.

Shoot them up.

Shoot them up, baby.

All right.

Okay.

But for those that remember these games, those are like scroll-up shooters, or I don't know how to

fucking making this up

exactly as the dinosaur style graphs.

It's the same thing.

It's basically similar to some of the old games like

Call of the Shadows Raptor or the Tyrion game.

Oh, yeah, that one.

Yeah, so...

No idea what you say.

Okay, good.

I'll show you afterwards.

Okay.

Yeah, so we are basically controlling this plane of our characters.

This is everything.

This is everything.

Yeah, this is everything because everything was originally the starter of the genre.

No, it wasn't, but this is the closest.

We'll get to this.

I'm talking about these.

I'm talking about like the 1980s, man.

Yeah, of course, but you know, history lesson, we can get there.

Yeah, yeah.

Something more, you know.

Anyway, so it's an interesting spin of the whole hubby action

RPG roguelike formula because it's hard to talk and play, I know.

Yeah, this one is easy to focus.

Well, especially here, like this is

super hard here.

it is actually hard yeah yeah it's very hard the good thing that i think it's like really innovative is this whole mechanic of you by the way there's one button control that's like really good like and uh heads off guys for doing this way so if you hold the button and you see these projectiles that are pink you it means you can absorb them which means you get this kind of tornado spin vacuum cleaner whatever and you absorb the projectile and then you actually

in in a counterattack shoot it back again at the enemy which is amazingly satisfying if it's timed correctly and gives you a lot of

it's also way more damage yeah way more damage and you're not only like it's not only defensive because you get rid of the projectile that was flying right at you it's also offensive because again you just get more damage through it so that's amazing and i think it's a great innovation in this because i haven't seen this thing ever in any genre like i had this hate these things where sometimes there's just so many projectiles that you can do shit.

You just close the whole screen.

Oh, you die.

And I'm dead.

But he's also quite interesting.

Yeah, I know, I know.

It is quite interesting.

Which is also interesting because they also did implement, I think,

brilliantly, like, this is one of the most, I think, clever implementations of gacha incentives in this whole template of hubby, where the game...

very clearly gives you incentives to upgrade different heroes, different weapons, different things, because it's basically my second life, which is my second guy.

And if I don't have upgraded him, he's shit.

So I need to upgrade more characters now, which is really good.

There's one element.

I have one character?

Yeah, yeah.

One.

One, well, I would say some other one, like it's a bread or something.

It's absolute shit.

And he's only like

close

combat kind of attack, which I need to be very close with these enemies.

Everybody has the same attack man.

Like first two attacks are the same for everybody.

Really?

Mr.

fucking idiot.

Okay, tell me yeah, let me just show you the the bird.

Fuck yeah, my god, I just loves the one

so much.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

No, no, no, I'm I'm saying that.

Like is probably what we're talking about is the third or fourth skill, the ultimate and the other one probably.

Those are the unique ones per character, but the first and second one needs to be the same because there's the same skills for it.

So they are the same.

They are not shooting in the same way.

Could be shooting differently, of course, but it's just shooting.

It's shooting, but it's from close distance, not from the long distance.

Is this guy could be?

Did you have you played with that guy?

Okay, I have the hamster guy, and uh, whoever's the other guy, and this is this is this, whatever.

So, no one has Tom or Jerry, right?

No, Tom and Jerry is literally this

arm, this guy, Donald Duck from Wish,

yes, and uh, also another one

is the attack, yeah.

This is the close combat combat attack, like very short distance.

So

that's the main cannon.

This is the main cannon from a very close fucking distance.

So don't try to

convince me

because his skill didn't reach his character.

No, I'm saying like you are fucking wrong.

That's it.

You're not always right.

That's my main issue.

That's my main issue.

Nothing else.

Another interesting part that did here is that they have these abilities like this one, but you literally need to go over the power power-up to extremely trigger it.

Like, here, you have these mini-bombs, then you have

another interesting thing, like with these boss phases, basically the waves and everything, like how it's structured.

Like, I think again, flawlessly with the skill randomizer and stuff around that.

So, like, I'm really liking the core and like everything that these guys pull in regarding the innovation in the genre.

So, I think it's enough for to feel different, but not that kind of complex or hard to get into to like lose.

what do you think about the music

music is great

but it's like fits the theme and everything like so good of course even the effects and literally it looks like you're playing the 1930 cartoon like everything looks so smooth like there's never a point where it breaks away the immersion and like leaves this kind of 1930 cinematic feel it's always like all the menus all the animations everything when you see the purple balloons for the first time but you have to shoot the bunny balloons and they like become the they're like scared of going down and then they explode.

It's just it's so good.

Yeah, so good.

Like see even even these menus, like it just like looks so good.

Even the menu transitions.

And by the way, it's already uh ready to like it it tapped uh pre-mapped the controls for emulator already.

Like I didn't even have to do it.

Like so it's they knew you're gonna go to the next one.

Why is that a big deal?

Why is that a big deal?

It's low of friction.

And you know, they're counting with the big population on emulator already.

Oh, really?

Yeah, of course.

It's like or it's also Android for PC no?

I haven't played that one because Android for PC uh breaks down the virtualization machine which means I then cannot run any other emulator.

I'm yeah I s I didn't you know mention that because you you should try it.

I was just saying they might be thinking about

Android for PC let me anyway.

Um so that was the core gameplay.

It's similar to one of those like like we talk about like the Abby portfolio we we need to look at uh at some point.

We also have the shoot em up uh plain side-scrolling games.

No, they must count with uh the actual emulator players because it's not on Android PC.

At least I can't I can't install it.

Okay.

So back to the thing.

So metagame.

Metagame wise this is basically Abby's template one to one.

One to one with some additions.

That that's the good part.

Because we have stuff like friendship bolt which is super good which means they are tracking the progress of your friends if you give them your link code and yada yada yada yada.

So this means

all those all those crates there if you want.

Oh, you can't.

Oh, what?

1800 gems?

You need

you need the friendship scrolls to

be flying.

I have one or two.

Anyway, continuing.

Friends here.

Again, send and claim energy, all these things like done perfectly.

Look, I can uh, I can already redeem two, yeah, because and then I can redeem the gift once for for the sky reward recruit ticket.

Yeah, of course, give it to me ten, okay, ten tickets.

Thank you very much.

So, back back to it.

Um,

regarding the inventory, even though this looks differently, the layout and everything is basically the same.

So, we have six slots, merge gadget with like fusing elements, such as these ones, like exactly hubby pipeline nothing really to it.

This is

actually the same even this thing like you remember this from survivor.io

This is like one-to-one the big difference here is that you unlock new skills through this not just get upgrades.

So that's there

in this menu there's a little bit of a more skill tree.

So your dog you like skill trees we put skill three in your skill tree.

Three right.

Yeah yeah exactly.

Yeah so there's three skill trees here which are given through these medals that you get through various occasions.

So that's there.

That's pretty good.

Like, you know, click a button, you get an upgrade, nice feeling.

So that's there.

That's like, what, two or three layers already.

Then we have the...

Why it's getting so slow lately.

It's about to crash, maybe?

Yeah, I hope so.

It crashes when I'm AFK or something.

So those are like two main layers.

Then we have the pilot layer.

which means different characters and that's also really fleshed out because we have the character itself.

We have its instances, meaning that for each copy I can unlock more and more outrageously destructible skills on top of it, which I won't click on because the animations, once it's all up, breaks something later.

Then I upgrade his main stats if I have enough of this Pepsi thing.

So there's a special currency for that.

The other interesting part is that he also has Wingmen, which wingmen are basically two accessory additional weapons, basically.

Yeah, which are also, also, if you get the weapon itself, it has its attribute bonuses and it can be promoted

similarly to gacha.

So its copies from gacha will give you more stats.

So that's there.

But the good place, as you see here, like there's elemental bonuses.

So if I match the elemental

affinity of an item with the rider, it gives 25% bonus, which I have with this said hamster guy.

Which

this is you.

This is one-to-one you, man.

Like it's a little bit more hair, but it's it's definitely you man.

little bit more hair.

This is just like this guy, by the way, very good.

He's very good.

But this, this one, in my opinion.

Yeah, it's like that's the main character in this game.

Basically, what you're saying, the spend depth in this game is huge.

Giant.

It's giant.

And then you have stuff like this guy.

Hello, Mr.

Tom.

Also, forgot some of these guys, the original ones, they have also support skills.

Support skills.

Meaning that if you have two characters matching in your selected loadout, they get Thunderfield synchronous ability, where we have seen this last time.

Isn't this

no

Whittle Defender?

Come on,

I don't remember that.

It's Habby Gacha Tefe.

It's Higginsia.

It is twice here.

So, they have that there.

Typical stuff, daily quest system achievements, really nothing to it.

Idle system with patrols, which you can quick patrol and like work and stuff like that.

Same shit, not really something new.

Then, oh, battle pass.

This is really interesting.

So, their battle pass.

So, I can click on the battle pass because it's playing a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Yeah, because if you click on

the crash, I think.

Anyway,

you can swipe left and right, and then basically, if it's playing the cartoon, you can't click on it.

If it's the actual navigator pass there, you can see it,

then you you can add it.

Their battle pass has very one very interesting upgrade over usual battle passes.

It's a typical battle pass, nothing related to it.

You get free, free stuff, you get uh where is it?

I can click on it.

Yeah, it's navigator pass, it's called.

So you have the paid column and you have the free column.

The interesting part here, and notice this.

This is this is the super interesting part.

So I click on the reward, it gives me the reward and that also gives me the rewards that I would get if I purchase it.

And it looks in the same animations, like I'm getting all of the shit, which I'm not.

Yeah, and I was like, Oh, I got all of this because I unlocked something for 90 90 gems, and it's like, Okay, where the fuck is this?

Like, oh, go to purchase.

Oh, no, no, no, this looks so good.

It literally gives you all the shit that you would get if you get the battle pass, but you don't.

So, it's basically upsell with every single click.

Yeah, this is the best upsell battle pass I've seen ever.

So, hands down, very, very good.

Um, but yeah, you see, the layout is basically the same as with like all the hubby games and even Royal Match.

Monetization on the left, engagement on the right, battle bus in the middle.

Like, it's tried and tested.

And then the hubby template has these two buttons on the left and right, which is the alternative modes, more alternative modes, and like this one, I don't know what this is.

And 4.6 teams, Tom and Jerry, I guess, some again event or live op stuff that I didn't get to it.

The Realm trial is as usual,

the daily mode thing thing where it rotates out especially with days here so opens on Monday Thursday Sunday Tuesday Friday Sunday and then bullet storm opens on this which is Wednesday as we're recording typical thing really nothing to it yeah but

what oh yeah I was playing today the ballon party the ballon party yeah

I was playing today but only yeah the blue other mode they have there which is super interesting is the co-op mode actually when you can play with other player and I'm feeling that it's actually inviting us.

Let me invite you now.

Yeah, let's see if you can.

I can, yeah, I just send you an invite.

Seems to me that it's synchronous, not asynchronous, because last time I was.

You have 10 seconds.

Come on, man.

Yeah.

Let's do it.

Let's fucking do it.

Yeah, start.

Let's go.

Okay, where is the run?

Oh, echo.

Okay, good.

So it's synchronous, yeah?

No bots.

Yeah, but it should be, yeah.

I mean, simple.

Because I was playing this and like the guy was snatching all the healing things from me.

Yeah.

Yeah, literally, like all of them.

I was like, this is not the bot, definitely.

So, see, that's the healing part.

You kill it, and then someone picks it up.

It's me.

So, this is amazing, like, honestly.

This is done very, very well again.

This is the social functionality I was bitching about with all the hubby games.

What a connection

that is not really there.

You see, I can even

heal me.

Yeah, I can't because we are both.

Are there placements in the co-op as well?

No.

I don't think so.

But if I would be able to rest Matte, I would just sit on him a little bit and I would rest him up.

Like the guy that I was playing with last time and he rested me like nine times.

Probably pitching all the way.

So I was doing like five percent of the damage.

Yeah, but you can invite other people as you see here into this co-op pilot mode.

Looks pretty good.

There's achievements for it.

You get stuff like these things.

So that's that.

And you also get booster packs.

And this is also the big upgrade that this whole thing is doing, which is, in my opinion, amazing.

Where what we have here, we have our favorite collectible album that's been taking over casual genre, and now it finally arrived in a mid-core game, which is a complete turnaround, I think, because I think I've never seen it in a mid-core game yet.

So if we go here,

yeah, there it is.

Cheese action.

And you can also trade.

It's only one month instead of two months than the usual monopoly royal match, whatever style album.

Yeah, because here

it's no, it's not really the same retention curve as the Royal Match.

And exactly.

That's why it needs to be on 30 days.

And why we know

because we actually worked on a bit core game and we know how the fucking retention curve looks like.

Yes, exactly.

Monetize is much faster, and as Matthew said, the whole thing works differently.

But what does it offer?

It offers the trade functionality.

That's it.

You can go and trade with other people, which is fucking important because this is all about.

Oh, wait,

I have the duplicate cards, which are just...

I just pulled the one with Tom.

And guess what?

I

found Echo.

Yeah, I found Echo, the main one.

Okay, so I was there.

Where's the collectible?

Send me a card.

Yeah, I want.

Okay, so collectibles.

Trade.

Received.

No, not for me.

I can.

Well, wait, well, I don't know how to actually do it.

Let's see.

Oh, I can duplicate cards, I think.

Yeah, but I don't know how to do it.

Like, how much do you think you can actually

see

friend Lanchiro?

Swap.

Lanchiro has 24 hours to respond to your swap request.

Okay, let's see.

Where do I get email, maybe?

No.

Probably somewhere.

Yeah, we'll see.

Okay, trade.

Yeah, I see it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Wants to swap cards?

Fine.

No cards available to swap, but how?

You don't have duplicates then.

I just

mean I just have this.

Man, go here, go here to chest.

And if you can exchange duplicates for rewards, at least one.

If this button is

not, then you don't have insets.

Okay, interesting.

Because I just pulled the

same main

main character.

And it's like, oh, that's it.

Okay, so I don't understand something, I guess.

Anyway,

this whole functionality is super strong.

Now that we have it in mid-core, it just proves the point that this whole fucking thing is super, super strong regarding engagement, regarding retention, regarding metagame mechanics.

It's just like the best thing ever.

So, yeah, they added it to the hubby template, which I think is amazing.

And I don't think so, that there's anyone else in the mid-core that dare to go and add a casual metagame mechanic into their game.

We will know, probably, right?

What do you mean, we will know?

More games will do this now.

I guess, yeah, that's my guess.

That's my guess, of course.

Because it's spread like Wi-Fi and Casual, and I guess it goes to the other side.

Yeah, you know, but why it spreads like Wi-Fi and Casual, because some like Western studio did it.

This is completely different.

I don't think anyone's gonna do it unless someone from West is actually gonna put it into the game.

We'll see.

Anyway, then we have Tempus Trek, which is another alternative mode that has just some bonuses and stuff for the

different flavor and shit.

So here you're not affected actually by

player attributes.

So again, it's just more towards the skill stuff.

So currently Spyro Revenge pilots with this element.

Again, what this does is is essentially incentivize you again more to upgrade specific elemental characters to kind of get advantage of this mode, which gives pretty good rewards here.

So,

now I realized why I don't really like this art style.

It's because everything looks the same.

Yeah, everything looks the same, and all the buttons, icons, everything is just like part of the art style.

Yeah, I know.

Anyway,

Memesis return, which is again an alteration of that other mode where again, some characters are buffed.

This is the PvP arena basically.

You have all of aces and stuff like that, so people compete with their wallets, like here, where we have four

out of four players having either Tom and Jerry.

And yeah, let me go to Gacha and we can start to talk about that one because that's like one big one.

You're only 30 minutes in, no data yet.

Only game, which usually happens when we talk about anything, any game

coming from China frozen again.

Yeah, it's a game coming from China.

It's super complicated.

Facebook status is it's complicated.

Yeah, it's complicated.

Yeah, so gotcha before it loads.

So these guys actually also iterated in the gacha.

This is no hubby gacha, the usual one.

I don't think so

that you even have the usual keys, keys mechanic and everything.

It's not there, like not one shit chest, better chest, and top chest.

It's actually much more closer to something like

Honkai Styrel or Genshin.

Again.

Yeah, because what we have here, and by the the way, I really love these notifications, free 10 gems

just

because we put notification there.

Yeah, how much

cost?

Like 60 draws.

Uh, pilot Tom comes in 60 draws, yeah.

So you need to count 60 draws, which is guaranteed.

Like, this is the PT timer.

No, no, 60.

He's he's 60, it's 60.

No, it's 70 because I already did 10.

Okay, so

70.

It's 70.

Yeah, I have 50 now, so yeah, it could be, and I did two, but

21,000 gems.

Yeah, 21,000 gems, which is

which is right here.

We don't even need to go anywhere.

Need to go scroll down the diamonds.

Yeah, here.

So 21,000 gems, 100 euro for 14,000.

Then there's another 64 euros.

We are still missing something.

So let's say 200 euros.

Yes, 170 euros.

Or 200.

You get 1,000 somewhere from the reward.

So let's

50.

100.

Yeah, exactly.

The kicker is that

this is the standard shit gacha.

That's normal.

You know, there's a PT timer for, I don't know, pretty close one.

I'm hitting it nearly because I did like six or seven temples.

It's tickets.

So you spend these here.

You don't spend them anywhere else.

Then you have special gacha for Tom and special gacha for Jerry.

No, no, like it's the draws are the same.

So you either get Tom or Jerry.

Check, check, check, check, check.

So in this one, Tom is 1.36 and Jerry is 0.34.

It's skewed towards Tom.

There's the other one, which is skewed towards

Jerry.

So it means to get both.

Now we're at the 300 for

if you want both, yes.

Now you're saying because why would you want both?

Because they have a synchronous ability, probably, as usual.

And now we're getting to why this is closer to something like genshin and and honkai and like the mihoyo style gacha where if you have the characters they're usually doubling the gacha depth through their weapons which act very familiar which means you now need to roll also for their weapons which each of them has their own signature one which is either this toolbox for tom or this coca-cola bottle for instance for jerry which goes again another 50 drolls

each

so to fully upgrade these two guys just these two guys and I'm taking just like, you know, baseline, like we have one instance of Tom, not like he's fully unlocked of six duplicates of Tom.

Sure, but I mean, like, you get Tom and or Jerry or and Jerry, and that's the end of the game.

But you know that these characters, like, once they unlock all of their abilities, I don't even know Tesla, right?

Once they unlock all of their abilities, which I cannot even get there, I would guess that, again, like these guys have here, it takes like six copies of him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in Genshin or Honkai, or wherever, like, it's a giant difference between a character that has six duplicates and the one that's one.

It's like one to ten difference.

So, yeah, there's a lot of spend-up.

Like, this game can take it much more.

Sure, I think even deeper than the usual happy temple.

Yeah, but again, like, it's it's the same thing all over again, just harder.

All the levels deeper, yeah, deeper, deeper.

So, there's their gacha.

It's basically like they ditched the happy easy gacha and then went went with like hardcore Asian style, Mihoyo style, state-of-the-art upgrade that because even Mihoyo doesn't do this, that they run two banners at once, which are kind of simple against each other with Tom and Jerry.

So yeah, that's like a pretty big step up.

Yeah, that's it.

The collaboration with Tom and Jerry works pretty well.

That's there.

But just saying, as I said before, there's this very, very popular game in Asia about Tom and Jerry that's been grossing so much.

We haven't covered that one.

So, it's like a it was basically a guarantee that they will they will do very well with this.

Events, this is also pretty good.

They launched with like fully fledged events style calendar, something, something like this thing is just packed.

We have the typical seven-day Chinese quest uh calendar, so that's there.

We have the logging calendar, we have the what was it here, yeah, cheese festival, which is basically themed around Tom and Jerry, the sign-in, which you can catch up for ads and then for diamonds.

That was pretty nice because I wasn't playing.

I'm not sure in this game is so not important

at all.

As soon as you don't see a pre-starting level boost, you know it's not going to be that the main one that they get the most impressions on is the coming back to life ones.

Yeah, of course.

You watch that every time.

Of course.

Can you go and show that, actually?

Yeah, let me just finish this one and then you go.

So there's this festivity shop, which is a typical shop with event currency that goes away, that you can buy stuff like other pilots or whatever.

I didn't even go there.

Why?

It's a pretty good thing.

I know.

Yeah.

There's cloud fishing, which means you can fish with Tom and Jerry.

You just click on this button and get some old whatever something which weights some kilos and then you get a leaderboard, which I'm in the top currently.

So that's there.

You literally just click on a button and it's a gotcha.

And it's probably.

So you're the only one who's found it.

Yeah, exactly.

And then

there if you gave me directions like exactly where that was yeah exactly you say like go there like i have no idea where it is

it's just very left or right

it's very deep it's like hubby template plus the genshin template so it's it's very yeah but like the the art style doesn't really help with the with the navigation

navigation are we getting old

no no like this is exactly the art style for us men like this is exactly this is this is our completely our demographic yeah targeted yeah This is our like cartoons and all of like the big crow.

I'm willing to check out what what does this this 426 level does because like probably some portal or whatever.

Then there's uh this uh archives which is basically everything's collectible.

So there's monsters that are collectible.

There's the wingmen that are I mean these like weapons basically.

There's the pilots that you click on and again you get more bonuses from the like it's like typical shit like nothing great to it.

Adventure style chests and stuff like that.

I don't think we need, really need to go into this technique.

Basically, what this means is that this game released in fully-fledged feature set with fully fledged on live ops, fully fledged on IP collaboration, everything.

Like, this is how you should do it.

Not like how fast.

Yeah, but it was in soft lunch for a long time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It wasn't like there's even people talking.

I, when I was getting the codes, because there's also you can get the codes in.

So, if you go somewhere here, yeah, I was like, okay, I have to go.

Yeah, where are we going to go?

Where are you going to go?

Where are you going to go?

It doesn't really say anything.

Yeah, here.

Here.

Not here.

Exactly.

You sent me the code a couple of days ago.

I was like,

I remember.

Yeah.

Here, reading code.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's so obvious.

So it's so obvious.

So there are people talking about some codes still working from close beta.

So there was a closed beta that we didn't run.

That's the point of this.

And then.

So there is a world where you have closed beta, open beta, soft launch, and then you actually earn money.

Oh, okay.

Can you tell us someone to SuperSo?

Anyway,

yeah, stores pretty massive, as is usual, nothing really to do.

More placement in the store.

More placement, not really that much.

And yeah, she ton of stuff you can buy, a shit ton of progression lens and everything.

So that's there.

But it's amazing.

Like what they achieved this is amazing, and I'm really liking the gameplay.

Nice.

Number money.

Okay.

Yeah.

So this launched last Tuesday, August 26th.

And it's dying.

It's doing 600k.

It's not doing 600k.

300k downloads.

600k only because of the pre-registration.

Yeah, there was a big pre-registration there.

Let's go to the revenue and let's actually pull on the bullshit filters because we really need that.

There's important data behind that.

So last days.

What do you call that?

Yeah,

that's a sad snail.

That's a very sad snail.

So it went should all the way to like 330k a day.

Wait, wait.

There's also a web store in this.

Yes.

Oh, yeah, there's a real web store.

This is not a real story.

That is actually a real web store.

I have it up here if you want to see it, but

how they link to it.

I don't see any mention to.

It's pretty basic, let's just say.

Yeah, it's really basic, right?

So on their developer webpage that's listed, you have this called 5% bonus.

Yeah.

And then if you go to the store, it's here.

It's pretty basic.

And it's only in a couple of countries.

But this is the first time I see it being done so blatant or so out in the open, I guess.

Yeah, but there's only saying.

You don't have to redirect in the game, man.

Exactly.

Nothing in the game.

It's not really blatant.

Guys, if you need help,

you can get the Spring Offensive from our friends Fast Spring.

Because this episode is also brought to you by Fast Spring, the Node Drama D2C partner that's been scaling with mobile publishers over 20 years.

Chip was in China, so I hope you met

because they're fast-growing, profitable, really reliable, which is more than you can save for most of the vendors in the space.

And whether you're launching a new web store or replacing current D2C setup, which should or adding a backup plan, or just mediate those web shops, FastSpring is here for you.

Check them out, fastspring.gg.

They know the space, they move fast, and they don't waste your time.

FastSpring, there you go.

Nice.

Web shops, we don't really know how much revenue they're earning, but can I just say one interesting thing about ads?

Because the ad revenue is tiny here.

Like it's really hard,

next to impossible for me to estimate because these guys are not using admob.

They're not using level play, they're not using Macs, and they're not using digital turbine.

So they're using the I did some snooping on this, and it needed a lot of slooping.

But basically, they are using top-on mediation from China.

Top-on mediation.

And the way I figured this out is I only got Mintigirl ads.

And basically, Mintigirl is owned by Mob Vista.

And Mob Vista runs this mediation platform called Top On.

And as you can see, it's missing so many key bidders like Appleven, not a pipe,

angle, not a pink bidder.

Like it's just, yeah.

So i have no idea what to estimate ecpms on for this because i don't know what they are well app loving is there yeah but bidding

it's on playing yeah yeah oh

so i have no idea right which means they're not doing that much ua with app loven because i don't know they can't do that right with they can't do the blended rows or ad ros campaign yeah but but why would you do blended rows with this kind of cameraman like it's it's it's it's not it's it's useless i probably think the ad revenue is maybe 10 or 15 percent because it's the same as me right but Let me finish the numbers.

Yep.

Let me finish the numbers.

Nice investigative journal.

That's very good.

Yeah, it's a very good investigation.

Yeah.

So

we'll get to this later.

No, no, no.

Let's not get to that later.

Let me get there just for a few seconds.

Revenue is coming from China.

Thank you very much for listening.

See you next time.

50%.

Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait, dance.

Let's do the dance.

And revenue is coming from China.

Then comes Japan.

and then there's a dying US, then there's dying US,

and then another

Asian gang countries, and then France and Taiwan.

So, 28,000, 28,000 from France.

I mean, come on, that's a

joke.

Yeah,

same holiday.

Yeah, that's my favorite

scientist.

Why does it not show China in the DAU?

Because it's

a beard.

I don't know, but that's interesting.

Let me just say that.

Anyway, maybe if you click on App Store instead of Unified

there?

No.

It doesn't help me.

It doesn't really change the numbers, though.

Yeah.

Oh, there you go.

So there's no one.

Yeah, there's no one.

Whatever.

Okay.

Yeah, this is not...

This is not really.

Yeah, this is not a Western, Western, big super Western release.

But still, I don't think we are looking at the the correct data with the day using

we'll look back at it on a review radar, right?

Like yeah, we'll see.

We we still do that shit?

Seriously.

The games I was mentioning before

Raptor One.

So there are these games that did this.

Like I don't know what's the release date of this, but I would guess 1990 something.

Let me get to the actual gameplay.

This is the OG OG of these things.

Early 90s, yeah.

So this is 1994.

1994.

April 1st, 1994.

Okay.

And then there's Tyrion, which my guess is even older, which is again the same thing where you have this menu where you like buy weapons and shit, and then you go into levels and do the same thing as you saw there, which is again this shit.

Which are my very, very favorite games from the old 1995.

Oh, so it's afterwards.

Interesting.

Anyway, uh, that was it.

Uh, Matte, you can go UA.

Only 44 minutes.

Only 44 minutes.

Solid 44-minute episode, and we can talk about UA next time.

No, don't worry, it's not going to be too

long.

Surprise, surprise.

So, what do you think they are actually showing?

Tom and Jerry.

Tom and Jerry all over the place.

Tommy's Tom and Jerry.

Just try to section.

By the way, you guys, who's your favorite, Tom or Jerry?

Jerry, always.

I like Tom.

Tom's great.

Tom is so much more funny.

Tom has the best memes.

Jerry doesn't have many memes.

Actually, like the invisible Tom meme.

I mean, I do like Tom with

when he was forcing himself not to sleep like that.

Oh, yeah, that's

another meme.

He has all the memes.

Jerry don't have memes.

He doesn't have memes.

That's my

favorite part of the whole thing series.

No, I mean, look, I'm going actually to January because there were some ads in January because it was kind of in this pre-registration, but this was actually not the pre-registration, but actually UA.

Because I mean, mostly the the the soft lunch stuff was what was it Facebook only I think it was face oh TikTok as well and then you like these guys are running Facebook YouTube and TikTok mostly and yeah like that was in soft lunch and nowadays like I think there is a little bit of uploading but we'll see.

But at least

they're following trends.

And actually, this is again, like, this concept was brought to you by Raid Rush.

Oh, because they

started this street interviews, but with actual weapons or just towers from the game.

Like, nobody else was doing it.

So, thank you very much.

But, but, yeah, I, you know, like, don't expect to go like too crazy.

Uh, because that's that's pretty much that's the craziest thing that you can you can see

there.

Yeah, and the dancing, and uh, that's actually there's a really nice music to it, so retro style creatives

like there's this like Tom and Jerry music, like the or not the Tom and Jerry, but the actual

uh good old

music from the from the what

yeah, from the series it's really trippy animations like

animation, yeah.

So, okay, so these are like the some of the the have you seen the ones where he actually plays the cartoon?

Yeah, one sec.

Oh, actually, i was playing this this level recently this one it was quite tough yeah how do you think they came up with this it's just like do you think just did a lot of mushrooms and a section no i think i think

acid for sure yes weed or acid 100 excuse me what was uh what was the what was the weed budget on ace craft yeah

man but like you don't really need the weed budget you just look at the old cartoons they all look like this exactly yeah maybe

that's it it, that's it, that's it, absolutely.

Yeah, so like if you have these kind of animals, it's all of kind of combination of gameplay and different elements, but you know, the characters, the animations, like what else would you do, right?

I was thinking if this wasn't done at least partially through AI, because like you know, you have the data set, you have the IP rights, you can just split out these.

You have the IP rights, and IP and AI doesn't really work that well.

Why not?

You have you have the IP rights, meaning you can do your own data model on it and just fit out stuff.

You can do your own data model.

Because you have the data set, which means you have all the cartoons and everything, or like they will rent it to you or something.

And there you go.

This is what you meant?

Yeah, I don't even know.

Yeah, because that's their own.

See?

That's their own kind of like Acecraft style characters in this art style and everything.

So

could be.

The hottest bullet.

Hell.

There you go.

Hello.

I mean, I'm still kind of, I'm not sure like what should I think about this.

This is going to be all of the IP and the cartoons and this type of ads, but does it really work in West?

Not really.

I don't think so.

Is it supposed to work in the West?

The question is if they even care about the West.

Yeah, I don't think they care, but like, this is pretty Western IP, no?

It's the Western cartoons of 19.

I think Tom and Jerry was big in Chinese.

Sure, but like the, like, where is it, where is the IP coming from?

This is Warner Brothers, you know?

Walt Disney.

Warner Brothers.

No, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Jerry is not Walt Disney, absolutely not.

Walt Disney's Warner Brothers.

Yeah, what?

Like this?

I think that's also Walt Disney, man.

No, no, you can, you can do the

you can do the background check and I can show it to the rescue to the rescue, yeah.

Yeah, I told you, I told you it's about the Warner Brothers, Warner Brothers on Storm and Jerry, and almost probably all the rest as well.

But I mean, Warner Brothers Discovery now, but still, yeah, still, I mean,

it doesn't matter.

So, okay, well, let's see, we we are going to look into September, but they are definitely scaling like hell on even on uplogging.

I mean, just kind of running basically every channel out there.

Check Mintigrill, yeah, because I have a feeling Mintigl is maybe one of their biggest partners.

I wouldn't say so, honestly.

How many pages?

No, one, one, no, definitely,

definitely not.

Yeah, nice theory, but no, nice theory, nope.

Let me check if they're playables.

No, they're not playables, but yeah, it's two pages now.

And yeah, so it's like

this is pretty much it, man.

I mean, show the one with the.

I'll show the one.

What I give me the screen.

Which one?

I mean,

there are plenty of these, obviously, but this, I think, is the best one.

Literally, playing.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Without anything.

The music and everything is basically Tom and Jerry.

Such a funny episode.

Yeah, yeah.

I was watching this.

Yeah, yeah, I was watching this.

So good.

And then it goes into like the actual gameplay and the actual gameplay.

it goes back actually.

No, you have Spike versus Tom.

No, no, because I saw another one also here.

Yeah, there's plenty of this one.

This one where it says, like, yeah, this one.

I think it's the same thing.

Yeah, this one, this one, this one.

See?

Oh, yeah, I see.

Yeah, I saw this.

I need to watch Tom and Jerry tonight before I go to batch.

Very, very nice transitions, let me just say that.

Yeah, you can get Spike.

Oh, wow.

I didn't know that.

I guess there's another gotcha coming in right after 20.

Yeah, all right.

If you, if you actually go to their like uh UA networks, it's just 17

networks, not 17, but everything all are committing a leaf of iron source, digital turbine, in mobile, uploading, Facebook, even Unity now,

Bangle, TikTok, or a line as well.

Let's see, the line, yeah, yeah, I mean, for all the Japanese stuff, yeah, it's like they're definitely going

big budgets, I would assume, but I don't know, like, for how long because this, yeah, I mean, all of like the Japan, sure, this is definitely gonna work.

Uh, China, yes, but US, not really.

It's quite interesting, like, in sense of portfolio context, because mobile legends bang bang makes like revenue that we see here in sensor tower, it's like half a mill a day, basically, jumping between four and 500k.

And this thing is already in the second spot,

like you know, taking over all the other games basically

so yeah because it's just it just launched yeah it just launched but the question is like if it holds up

i don't think so the problem here is no no no the thing is that it won't hold up because the revenue profile of these games if they have games in star gacha is spikes meaning that yeah okay everybody buys tom and jerry it goes down spike or whoever comes into the gacha next spikes up again and goes down yeah but he is those spikes needs to go is to increase and go up yeah increase or at least not decreased yeah i mean welcome to the arg of hope

okay but you know if if they can license tom and jerry i think they already line up their own like you know license schedule for like next yeah i mean there's plenty of childhood cartoons you know like you have everything from flintstones to like whatever yeah like there's so many

uh art style Flintstones is different.

Okay, but there's a lot of IP you can draw on that's the same as Tom and Jerry, like kind of from that era.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, tell me which one you need something like Tom and Jerry.

What's that one called the Future family?

I keep forgetting what it's called.

Yeah, I know.

Jetsons.

But

Jetson's, yeah.

Okay.

It's not the same size.

It's not the same.

It's not the same.

It's not the same, but it's like...

Yeah.

But everyone knows the Flint stuff.

They can do Roadrunner, for instance.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

They can do those.

They can do that.

And Tweety.

Looney Tunes, basically.

Yeah, the whole Looney Tunes portfolio.

They can do

Popeye.

Oh, Popeye, definitely yeah they can do lots of that fits well yeah that fits well also also woody woodpecker and like all these other other other like yeah pretty old shows that fits the art style let's see if we have

like regarding the the lineup yeah oh also goofy and all these other things yeah okay fair I'm not yeah I'm not worried about them I'm definitely not worried uh yeah okay so it's not gonna do that well in in the West I guess but it's gonna do quite well in China and Asia because of the IP and everything.

Okay, I mean

quite interesting interesting that Western IP is not going to do well in the West, but very good in the East.

Yeah, that's

my main situation.

Nothing makes sense.

Yeah.

I mean, it does because the game is made for Asian audience, but the art style is from the West because Asian audience love this shit, and the game needs to be suitable for all Asian audience.

If it's like too easy, nobody would play it.

System design-wise, for me, it's like literally 9.9 out of 10.

Yeah, you literally upgrade the bigach, a lot more depth, a lot more stranded, it's shown.

Like, combine a lot of these systems for like Mihoyo and the Hazio Collective albums.

Yeah, social systems, really good.

Finally,

finally, the social system is great.

This is how social systems should look like.

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised.

Well, not surprised, I didn't look it up that much.

The trade

is

if it's exactly the trade that is in like Monopoly Go, maybe that would,

yeah, that would be way more helpful for the organics because it's created external groups exactly, exactly, yeah.

Although

exactly Monopoly official trading group or the main group on Facebook has 9.2 million people just to one, just to one, yeah, exactly.

That's exactly so each casual game has this kind of giant Facebook trading group.

Yeah, I know, I know Ridicor had like a massive groups, yeah, but again, it's different audience, it's just you know, that's my grannies, my grannies there, anyway.

I think that's that's pretty much it.

So, thank you very much for coming

and staying with us until the very end of the episode because it was a long one,

but a very interesting one, and I still, yeah, very deep, deep catch pool.

Thank you very much, guys.

Enjoy the Slack channel, comment under the video, and share your thoughts.

And uh, yeah, go boom, Tom and Jerry.

Yeah, yeah, say goodbye to your wallet.

See ya, yeah,

next time.

Bye-bye.