🧠 Sudoku Master Review: The 6,000-Ad War Between Hungry Studio & Miniclip

Speaker 1 Yeah, so 600k Dow. What do you think this is earning right now per day in ad revenue? So, Banner's interns rewarded 43.
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Speaker 2 No surprise, like this is actually a game that I like. I played Sudoku like offline.
Yeah, offline, but now I'm I'm gonna play this like every day.

Speaker 1 I just hope the listeners appreciate this episode because I have never played a game because I hate Sudoku. I learned Sudoku

Speaker 1 than Sudoku. Like I feel so dumb.
You never played Sudoku before?

Speaker 1 Oh, hello.

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Speaker 2 Really? I mean, these young, young lads.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know we have a streak of games of like Matt is granny games now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's actually, yeah, pretty sure. I need to

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Speaker 1 wait, wait, special YouTube session.

Speaker 1 Hello, we are your two reluctant host and half a real Sudoku player.

Speaker 1 And today we're reviewing probably one of the most interesting titles that we've hated to play, or at least Yakub and I, which is Sudoku Master by Hungry Studios.

Speaker 1 It's the first time they're scaling a game outside of the largest ad-monetized game in the entire industry, which is, of course, Block Blast. I'm Felix Brauberg.

Speaker 2 My name is Matte Sudoku Anchari.

Speaker 1 I'm Jakub Remier. And we are your hosts.
And legitimately not Sudoku players.

Speaker 2 But I I mean Yakuji didn't ever play the actual like Sudokus on paper before

Speaker 2 did you do crosswords at least yes crosswords I did of course with my grandma I mean Sudoku is I mean it's whatever guys like you should you should definitely pay attention to it it's you know one sudoku actually you know when

Speaker 1 I actually could go into it you know what it reminds me of

Speaker 1 mathematical this is basically Minesweeper like it's like it's minesweeper without the blowout phase I mean in Sudoku Masha is Minesweeper with like with

Speaker 1 and Minesweeper is harder. Like I used to play Minesweeper a lot, but not this thing.
Sure.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 Let's review Minesweeper next time.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 let's just start with some numbers here, right? Because what we're entering to right now in Sudoku before we even get into the game. Not that I don't love the gameplay.

Speaker 1 I don't understand it, but I don't love it. You know, whatever.
But we are entering into probably what is Mini Clips, one of their crown jewels in their gaming ad revenue empire, right?

Speaker 1 So if you look in absolute downloads in the last 30 days, you see on number one spot, mini clip, mini clip. And if you keep going down, it's mini clip.

Speaker 1 So basically, majority of the larger games is mini clip. And it's also if you go, because you both know that downloads don't really mean anything in this genre.

Speaker 1 It's all about active DAU because these are ad-monetized titles, right? Yeah, yeah. And here you see number one slot with 3.2 million DAO, mini clip.
Then number three spot mini clip.

Speaker 1 Number four spot mini clip.

Speaker 1 And then you have 12 here mini clip. But basically to shore up their lead in this genre, they actually brought easy brain, right?

Speaker 1 And I'm sure probably one of the biggest reasons is they want to stay in control of this genre, right?

Speaker 2 Two and a half steps ahead of the whole Sudoku genre. Yeah.
Most probably.

Speaker 1 And here, I guess. Where is Sudoku Master? So by daily active users after launching very recently, I think it's a couple months ago.

Speaker 1 It started scaling in May, right? But yeah, they launched.

Speaker 2 We'll see the chart because

Speaker 2 I'm curious to hear what do you call this type of chart in terms of the scale because it's just like roller coaster.

Speaker 1 But this is not all Sudoku games, it's just like, you know, there's 20, 48 stuff.

Speaker 2 This is not like a Sudoku

Speaker 1 chart. It's just like

Speaker 1 numbers

Speaker 1 category. Numbers, literally numbers.

Speaker 2 Numbers, the okay numbers.

Speaker 1 Sudoku is just the biggest portion of it. I speak by downloads downloads again, and like by downloads.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 2 Easy, easy, man. Number match.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Yeah, number match. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But the inspiring thing or the interesting thing here by downloads is just how much Sudoku. Where did I have it? Did I lose it?

Speaker 2 Where are you trying to find master?

Speaker 1 Sudoku Master.

Speaker 2 It's right there on the fifth spot, I think.

Speaker 1 There we go. There you go.

Speaker 2 Sniper. Sniper.

Speaker 1 There we go. Sniper.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, Block Blast, Maker, Hungry Studio, they launched this, I guess,

Speaker 1 January.

Speaker 2 And then scaling, just like, I mean, if you click on that name, Felix, if when you have the screen, then we might actually find out.

Speaker 1 Here we go. Sorry.
There you go. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But you need to change the graph.

Speaker 1 So Yakuba will go crazy. Okay.
Of course.

Speaker 1 So September 2023.

Speaker 2 And then... No, but this, man, like, this is DAUs.
I mean, the game is live since January.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay, fair. That's what it might be.
Yeah, just like a like a soft lodge or something.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I guess it's been scaling it slowly since May, I'd say. And I guess it's been showing up really hardcore in the charts now.

Speaker 2 Just now, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 In September. And now is when they're crossing basically 600k DAO, which is starting to be quite big.
But the scale at which they're doing this, it's what's quite impressive, right?

Speaker 1 And for those of you who don't know, Hungry Strudio is behind the largest ad monetized game in the industry called Block Blast. It's got 41 million daily active users now.
It's just a behemoth.

Speaker 1 Talk about it on the podcast. Yeah, but also what they're kind of rumored to, what their specialty is, is A-B testing, right?

Speaker 1 So the CEO has many times said in public talks that basically they run 200 A-B tests on BlockBlast every week.

Speaker 2 And that is the key to their success. 2,000, not 200.
Like it's actually

Speaker 1 200. 200.

Speaker 1 It's 200, yeah. Yeah, a week.
A month. But they have...

Speaker 1 Man, a month, like, let's be real.

Speaker 1 Is that a week when we saw him talk at Unite?

Speaker 2 I think so.

Speaker 1 It was way big numbers. Yeah, it was way big, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then that they had about rumor that they have

Speaker 1 to balance the game and stuff like that. Felix, can you give me the screen for a second? I want to show something.
You can indeed. If you're talking numbers here.

Speaker 1 So I pull off the whole numbers category, and it seems that it's pretty stale as for the growth itself, because this is like last eight years for numbers and it, you know, this is like start of corona somewhere here.

Speaker 1 What, like 10 million downloads a month, and then we're basically there. But it's part of the highly lucrative and interesting evergreen games, right?

Speaker 1 So the retention these games tends to be quite like saying that people

Speaker 1 are just like there, like a rock basically, and sitting there. And yeah, like those are the games.
Here's the Sudoku Master one. But it it's there.
It's not like Merge 2 or Forex or whatever. yeah.

Speaker 1 Matthia,

Speaker 2 every week we run more than 50 A-B tests across different fields, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, it's 200 per month.

Speaker 2 I said, Yeah, but you were talking, yeah, 200 per month, but we were talking about 200 per week.

Speaker 1 Matthew was right, and Jakob.

Speaker 2 I should just have just not said anything because now he's like,

Speaker 2 the fucking smile on your face.

Speaker 2 I hate it, and you're right, but you never admit

Speaker 2 that's that's that's the biggest problem. But why did you stop sharing?

Speaker 2 This is done, okay. thank you very much for listening, guys.

Speaker 1 Enjoy the moment.

Speaker 2 Yaku was right. So now we can all go home and enjoy.

Speaker 1 The worst part now is

Speaker 1 next time I'm saying something, he's going to be like, remember that time we did Suku Master? Exactly, Yakui.

Speaker 2 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. Okay, fair.

Speaker 1 Anyway.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm going to enjoy this. Where's my popcorn? You playing this and talking? You don't really know how to play this game.

Speaker 1 Okay, so there's not even main menu here. There's nothing, it's just the boards, basically.
What is a main menu? Of course, there's a main menu. There is where? Click out.

Speaker 1 How do you click out?

Speaker 1 It looks very different. Yeah, no, it looks very different than from iOS.
iOS, yeah, really.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. I have a main menu on iOS.
I have main menu as well. Come on, man.
I see literally nothing.

Speaker 2 I see that people.

Speaker 1 Sudoku.

Speaker 2 Sudoku Masher, let me see. Yeah, I have a.
So I actually have a road, like two events, which is called

Speaker 2 one is called Road Road to Master, which

Speaker 1 okay, maybe that's the problem. I just played three Sudoku because it took me an hour.
I played four

Speaker 1 and I played three

Speaker 1 menu. I played three and I got the menu, so I guess it's different from iOS and Android.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, so yeah, there's a home daily explore statistics, even and you can play daily challenge, Halloween event, and road to master.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 2 interesting, yes, very interesting.

Speaker 1 So, for those who don't know how to play Sudoku,

Speaker 1 you need to have

Speaker 1 basically Minesweeper. So you need to make sure that some of the rules apply and you cannot breach the rule with the numbers.

Speaker 1 In a square, which is three times three, there can be only one of each number from one till nine. Same goes for rows and same goes for columns.
And this is basically the game. That's it.

Speaker 1 Which means that you just need to like

Speaker 1 it's like a logic puzzle. That's it.
You need to count like with you need to count to nine and make sure that you count all the numbers right.

Speaker 1 So like let's say one number is missing here, which means we just count all these numbers and we just choose three. Yeah, it's basically three.

Speaker 1 There we go. There you go.
There's a combo.

Speaker 2 Oh, how hard that can be.

Speaker 1 Yes. And then, for instance, there are two missing here.
So again.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it's a different,

Speaker 2 there's already one square, so you count that square, and then there you go.

Speaker 1 So if you go that first,

Speaker 1 six is missing here. Yes.

Speaker 1 And then here is one.

Speaker 2 three three three again there we go yeah and then we go on and on that's complicated yeah and then you fill the whole board basically and that's it and also since you don't really have that uh menu there i have actually the streak there is the streak mechanic for some reason this reminds me duolingo for i'm not sure why puzzle game on the market has a streak mechanic No, I'm not saying that because of the street mechanic.

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ. I'm just because there is a daily

Speaker 2 kind of which goes from now back in time, I guess, in October.

Speaker 2 And then there's Explorer, which you can do like four by four, Sudoku, casual Sudoku, six by six, Sudoku, and even Schulte blocks, whatever that means. I have no idea.

Speaker 2 And then you have statistics, which is different kind of levels of play. You can, you know, you have beginner, novice, intermediate, advanced, expert, and master, which I guess you have.

Speaker 2 You are the Sudoku master, both of you.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's pretty hard, actually it's it's really hard jakob when i like played this right which was hard so i hope the listeners acknowledge that but do you have the cryptogram style text when you start levels that says only x percent of people that started this level beat it because on ios they have

Speaker 1 to start yeah 45 people

Speaker 1 And do you also have the auto-complete feature when you're almost done that you can press and it then explodes in like an explosion of joyous like why do you have that?

Speaker 1 No, really, you didn't have to do that.

Speaker 1 The problem that took me so long to finish is like you finish, and then it's like when you have maybe four or five numbers left, it says like auto-complete, and then you just click it, and then you're done.

Speaker 1 Really? You're like, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't have it.

Speaker 2 You know what's interesting? Because he's missing the go back button next to the streak level three. Because you can

Speaker 2 at least have it here, right? Yeah. See?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you don't have it there. What happens if you lose?

Speaker 1 If you lose four four lives? Do you get a rewarded advice

Speaker 1 to revive one life? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, there's hints.
Hints, if you have a hint.

Speaker 2 Also, I can play Sudoku versus Rebecca from whatever is this. I have no idea.

Speaker 2 So, that's also interesting. I mean, obviously, but it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 Do you also see interstitial ads when you finish a level and then also before you start a new one?

Speaker 2 Not all the time, man.

Speaker 1 I don't think so. I wouldn't say so.
When do you see your interstitials then? Because that's the main monetization driver of the game, right?

Speaker 2 I saw a few, but not after every level. Not that much.

Speaker 1 Quicksaw. Oh, this one.
Yeah, Quicksaw, that's one, yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, nice.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't have IQ. What the fuck? Yeah, IQ is no IQ.
Man, I'm going to be 118 soon.

Speaker 2 I wish you all the best.

Speaker 2 My dear Yaku, please. See, a puzzle a day keeps your stress away.
Yeah. A Sudoku a day keeps your stroke away.

Speaker 1 So if you like Sudoku, please lay those five stars, level five, actually. There you go.

Speaker 2 You go through the levels right away. That's it.

Speaker 1 That is

Speaker 2 interesting. There you go.

Speaker 1 But I guess that's like at the heart of. Oh, I get to keep getting this ad always as well.
What is this? Go mining.

Speaker 1 Some crypto stuff.

Speaker 1 But that's kind of what's behind Hungry Studios success, right? When they show 93% sold. There you go.
Crypto grams.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, but still no main menu.
Like, I I don't know even how to get there, to be honest. I can just restart, but this, like, I don't know if it even breaks the streak or whatever.

Speaker 2 It doesn't matter. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it's fine. Maybe somewhere later.

Speaker 2 I told you, like, the menu is

Speaker 2 basically.

Speaker 1 Is there visual progression or no?

Speaker 2 There are levels.

Speaker 2 This is basically it. Is it levels and streak? There you go.
And then, oh, well, but then you have this, which is the daily challenge.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. That's all you need.
And then you go to

Speaker 2 yeah to explore button and then you go sudoku 4x4

Speaker 2 then there's gearpo there is the interstitial

Speaker 2 wait a second i got an interesting fuck i'm getting the all the us

Speaker 2 interstitials ads us ads but i can't install because it's not in the slog store

Speaker 2 nice geez yeah but this is i really want to see this game and this is called gear paw it's almost like a gear fight.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 A lot of magistrates. A lot of gear fights, yeah.
So it takes like 20 minutes if you really go. Oh, no.

Speaker 2 Come on.

Speaker 1 Okay. I'm not Shazam Gratiat.
Okay, Matie, okay. Shazam Granny Matte, which like.
No, no, no, it's not Shazam.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, like, it's no, no, no. I see like 5-10.
But it takes time. It takes time, that's true.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's up to difficulty, medium, or whatever. Like, these things can get very hard, actually.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 So let's assume

Speaker 1 50 minutes. So what's happening? Like, it's just booster-based, or like the banners are shit on bottom regarding monetization.
The key to Hunger.

Speaker 2 Yes, sorry.

Speaker 2 You lose a life and then you just do rewarded video and then you get life. That's it.
You have fingers or hints.

Speaker 1 So there's no interstitials in between. No strengthening.
There are interstitials between.

Speaker 1 There are.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But for me, I haven't seen them.

Speaker 1 What I think Hunger Studio does here is they balance out the rewarded views and interstitial views, right?

Speaker 1 And then the interesting thing is like your banner refresh rate is super slow compared to what I'm seeing. Oh, yeah.
Mine is on like 10 seconds, 15 seconds.

Speaker 2 You still have the Royal Kingdom since the very beginning of your search playing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is crazy.

Speaker 1 I think they monitor all these things and they test and basically they do everything to keep you in the game exactly like they do on Block Blast because here you're after the long-tail day 30 plus retention, right?

Speaker 1 So if you can keep these users in, and one of the things that Hungry Studio does on Block Blast is that they, according to some people that I've spoken to in different ad networks, have the biggest block list in the entire world.

Speaker 1 So they're very.

Speaker 2 The number three you did there was a very big luck.

Speaker 1 Risk. I know.
Yes.

Speaker 1 You need to do these things like in Minesweeper.

Speaker 1 So how. Oh, by the way, if sorry,

Speaker 2 Flix, before you go there,

Speaker 2 there's a mechanic where you just do, if you did the opposite way and you didn't get the free right,

Speaker 2 then there is like a big red number. And if you go back and click on

Speaker 2 the second option, then there is a big achievement, like genius. It says you are a genius because you get it right.

Speaker 1 It's a genius even without that, if you guess it right.

Speaker 1 I never forgot it. I never got it.
I got it a few times. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like genius.

Speaker 2 And then there's a smile at the emoji there, like a genius. It was so funny.
Anyway, just yeah, sorry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so 600k DAO. What do you think this is earning right now per day in ad revenue? So banners interest recorded 43.
I think smart. Well done.

Speaker 1 50k?

Speaker 1 43, because I basically took down the ECPMs because they're probably running really tight block lists, right? So I took it down to around 43.

Speaker 1 But they're playing the long game, right? And it's all about retaining the users, right? So it's, you know, we'll see if this is a success in a year.

Speaker 2 So you're saying they're keeping the monetization low just to keep the players playing and not being too pushy?

Speaker 1 Exactly. That's what Block Plus does, also.
That's their strategy. Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 2 I would counter that with my experience so far because I didn't see interstitials after every level, basically. So, as I know, as we said, they're running a shit on

Speaker 2 expert tests, I guess. Like, all three of us, we have very different experience.

Speaker 1 For sure.

Speaker 2 Like, how can you even, how can you even, I mean, they're a big company and they've done this for Block Plast on a way bigger scale.

Speaker 2 Like, the question is, like, how you can even evaluate this is not really, it's not really right.

Speaker 1 We'll see in a year. Like, it's a long way to go.
Why?

Speaker 2 I think we will see like in January.

Speaker 1 Because the DAU should stock.

Speaker 2 Because DAU should, like,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
Don't look at downloads. Look at the DAU, right? Because it's rising.
The downloads are not, but the active user base is. Why is it so spiky, by the way? Ask Matthew.

Speaker 1 But it's like seasonal? No, they they tried

Speaker 2 more sudoku or no they tried a little bit of uh ua push didn't work that well you know you need also a

Speaker 2 significant amount of players for all to run all these a-b tests as well and they start scaling in september then dropped a little bit now they're scaling again so it's like it's not easy if it's if it's the same pattern here for hope

Speaker 1 july looks like a good sudoku i think maybe they increase ua spend when they increase ua spend but there's also the same bump here in july How much of that is defensive do you think, or do you think it's actually people play a lot of Sudoku in July?

Speaker 2 Oh, by the way, that's a very good point. I was trying to find Sudoku Master.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Benny, like, what was like, don't, don't, don't blast.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I was trying to, I was just trying to find like Sudoku in App Store, and I was like, Sudoku Master, and then there was an Apple search ads for something else.

Speaker 2 Sudoku Master. And there is an ad for Sudoku.com EasyBrain.
There you go.

Speaker 1 On the first spot.

Speaker 2 So, Blog Blah, dear, yeah, Hungry Studio.

Speaker 1 This looks exactly the same.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Check the Apple search ads if you wanna if you're gonna get that

Speaker 2 user base there.

Speaker 1 Go into Hungry Studio's portfolio because it's kind of obvious where they're going and they're going after all these evergreen games, which is kind of also where MiniClip is, right?

Speaker 1 So it's uh two Chinese. Also, shipwise started there.
Come on. Yeah.
See? That's true. Same.
Again, July Spike. Yeah, but it's defensive, right? Yeah.
Most likely.

Speaker 1 There's like a hidden Sudoku war happening. You don't see.

Speaker 2 So I would say hidden Sudoku war is just like

Speaker 1 hungry guys. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, that's true. That's true.

Speaker 2 Because, I mean, usually the summer is quite.

Speaker 1 Yeah, go into their portfolio. But look at all these games, right? You see what they're trying.
Solitaire Master, of course, they want to try the organic

Speaker 1 Solitaire. Yeah.
Mayong

Speaker 1 Block. I mean,

Speaker 1 that I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's gonna be relevant.

Speaker 1 Mitchell seems new. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 Guys, don't do this, please.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's why it's so small.

Speaker 1 I'm just gonna burn yourself. Don't do this.
Okay. Yeah, but this makes total sense.
Like, just make like a giant ad-driven solitaire game because there's like a lot of space there.

Speaker 1 I've been literally monitoring this place for some time. What? You know how much downloads this category gets?

Speaker 2 I know, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

Speaker 1 Like it's not the IP game.

Speaker 2 It's already so it's just the I know it's yeah, solitaire games, like a classic solitaire games with ad monetization. I know, like, it's it's pretty maybe you want to go minesweeper.

Speaker 1 I mean, seriously, I can put it there.

Speaker 1 Uh, yeah, so of course, like drive more at stuff, basically, drive more ad stuff, boy,

Speaker 1 yeah, okay, so Felix, anything else you had out there, or we go your way? No, we go UA.

Speaker 2 Go UA.

Speaker 2 I want to say and thank our dear sponsors this time, no ambush ads because you know I want to change it as well this episode is brought to you by fastspring the no drama d to c partner that's been scaling with mobile publishers for over 20 years it will be interesting to see if these games ever have a web shop I don't think so but whatever so if you want to launch a new web store or replace your current d2c setup or add a backup plan Fastspring is just here for you so they know the space they move fast and they won't definitely won't waste your time check out them at fastpring.gg.

Speaker 2 So go to fastspring.gg and

Speaker 2 set up your web store and go there.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 2 Minesweeper, how are you doing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, same category, man. Numbers, sure.

Speaker 2 What kind of numbers is like what are they?

Speaker 1 What are they doing?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's super small. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Because nobody cares.

Speaker 2 Nobody cares about Minesweeper.

Speaker 1 Minesweeper is great. Of course.
Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 I'll start with this

Speaker 2 actually, so you know

Speaker 2 because I almost lost my mind.

Speaker 1 I was like, why

Speaker 2 are they even thinking about Snapchat? Like, is Snapchat still a thing?

Speaker 2 So they were running Snapchat for some time.

Speaker 2 But obviously, in the other July or wherever it was, like, they started scaling it, they started scanning with Facebook because that's where you have all the old people, obviously.

Speaker 2 But now it's kind of Facebook, TikTok, Mint, Applause, obviously, and all of the different channels so they're running a lot of different things which is nice why would you start on snapchat yeah it's like snapchat and facebook as like what why

Speaker 2 i mean for whatever reasons i guess it's they had their incentives but i mean they

Speaker 2 then when things started to go serious like they're like ah let's stop this raid let's let's start with with actual ui channels and that's why they're running mainly facebook and the the big guys I mean, there's still Snapchat, but it's like 1% from Hero to Zero, basically, in six months.

Speaker 1 Anyway, creatives.

Speaker 2 This is this. I mean, I started seeing these ads

Speaker 2 almost on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 Like five times. Much younger.
My IQ is low. Much younger audience, isn't it? Like the main one is 25, 34, I see.

Speaker 2 I still think it's like 35 plus.

Speaker 2 The young audience, I don't think they get the Sudoku that much. I mean, whatever.
It's just like, for me, it was always way

Speaker 2 older audience, but who am I to judge?

Speaker 2 See, this is what I like, actually. I mean, I'm not sure why I

Speaker 1 drawing on your hand. Yeah.
This reminds me of Plantin's creatives. Like, it was also a bit like this.

Speaker 2 And also, you see, this, the

Speaker 2 ordinary smart genius, you know, where we saw this?

Speaker 1 Impulse. Exactly.

Speaker 2 It's impulse. Because this is basically exactly the same concept, just with numbers.

Speaker 1 But this is how the whole like brain training that you're arguing is bullshit.

Speaker 1 Exactly. I mean, what else do you do? They had this, I think, in the beginning.
When you start the Sudoku Master thing, it asks you, why do you play this?

Speaker 1 And they were like, I want to improve my brain, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 So I had one question actually because there's like, oh, we need to know like

Speaker 1 who you are.

Speaker 2 But then it was like, have you played Sudoku? I never played Sudoku.

Speaker 1 I'm like a pretty you judge your own difficulty, basically.

Speaker 2 exactly but then I was like okay I played Sudoku before I don't play it often but still I played

Speaker 1 I put there I never played Sudoku maybe that's why you didn't go through like the different uh levels and stuff that's why I don't have a menu the main menu yeah that's why you don't have the menu you don't have ads that come up on you I put myself as an expert even though I never played it really okay maybe that's why you delay ads like if you get frustrated like and you're learning you don't want to see ads right exactly

Speaker 2 when you're basically just calling all

Speaker 1 you're basically drawing on watermelon your hand but also the watermelon. Very small watermelon.

Speaker 2 Hungry Studio. It doesn't matter, man.
It's just made of perspective. Yeah, Hungry Studio.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Here's their like, hello, hello, hello, hello.

Speaker 2 So we have more, we have also the back of a lady. I mean, and we have to come.

Speaker 2 It's almost like this voiceover is almost like hearing your sui Yakuba, like, oh, I was right, I'm always right, and you're always wrong. It's exactly that, like, I'm hearing this in this.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I mean, guess what? How many creatives? 10 million times with different voices.

Speaker 1 They changed that to watch, new brand of watch there on that one.

Speaker 2 And, like, didn't even notice that. So, you can, you can tell I'm not a watch person.

Speaker 2 But you see, it's all like the same, like the impulse style of game. Yeah, this is actually how you can play this as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is actually a tutorial.

Speaker 1 This is how you play it. You should play Sudoku or Tic Tac-To.

Speaker 2 No, like, this, you can't, you know, like, see, because you can't play seven here, seven here, because you, that's those,

Speaker 2 those are already taken by the other sevens. So, how many creatives?

Speaker 1 Yeah, 14,000.

Speaker 2 14,000 in last year.

Speaker 2 It's here today,

Speaker 2 16,000 last like last 30 days.

Speaker 1 Ah, 6,000. There you go.

Speaker 2 That you find that's the same thing.

Speaker 1 This is the game they talked about at Amplify when they were saying that you need at least a thousand creatives a month. This particular example had more.
This could have been it. That could be in it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it could be. Let me check.
I mean

Speaker 2 we have 600 creatives in the last 30 days for uploading only. And this is playables and videos as well.

Speaker 1 How much is that compared to BlockBlast? Oh, now we're asking interesting questions. Blockbuster I'm expecting we will have.

Speaker 2 Let's see.

Speaker 2 Uploading only 1700. That's three times more.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's different.

Speaker 2 That's a different scale though, but very different scale, but it's not that big of a difference that you you will think.

Speaker 2 But still, 600, that's very impressive. And this is also

Speaker 1 a playable.

Speaker 2 So let's see.

Speaker 1 Can you compare Sudoku from MiniClip also as well? That's really interesting. Number matches, the main one.
Yeah, that's easy, brain. Number matches by downloads.
Wow. Really? No bueno.

Speaker 2 I think now we're going to talk.

Speaker 1 What are they leaving?

Speaker 1 What's the meaning?

Speaker 2 What? I mean, that's like, this is the sign of a Chinese company.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 And exactly, like, they know that if, even if you have, because this is, I mean, this is what's what's interesting about like Chinese companies and the Hungry Studios

Speaker 2 because you have all these different games that we talked about on the podcast, and you have like a very boring gameplay. So, like, what do you do?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And they usually be

Speaker 1 creatives.

Speaker 2 And these guys still do 600 creatives because they know you need to spin it from 10 million different kind of variations.

Speaker 2 And even if the variation is like here, it's a different hand, it's a different voiceover. It's here, you have this is a playable on the right hand side, this is a video, and this is only uploading.

Speaker 2 And these previous games were also only on Aplavin, but like it's X more creatives only on Aplav. That I mean, that's like go to the

Speaker 1 UA month. I want to see if it's the same number.
Oh, July, yeah, let's go back to July.

Speaker 2 Okay, let's do this. Now it's now it's actually interesting.
So this is

Speaker 1 now we're asking the real questions.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is what's

Speaker 2 happening when you play a bomb.

Speaker 1 You have

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know because I'm right

Speaker 2 Fuck, I mean seriously

Speaker 2 stop don't argue.

Speaker 1 This is this is good. Come on.
Yeah, so okay put their

Speaker 2 numbers match from 600 okay now talk then we have oh you can you can actually do this. That's amazing.
Oh thank you very much, Sensor Tabber, for making my life easier.

Speaker 1 So even during the offensive UA month, they were still outnumbered

Speaker 1 basically like four to one.

Speaker 2 Four to one. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Wow. Because this is how you do UA.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is exactly how you do it. You just, I mean, especially in like this year, 2025.
That's what I've been talking about since the very beginning of the year.

Speaker 2 You need that fucking volume. I mean, it's like it's not that away.
Because, I mean, remember

Speaker 2 Alexis said.

Speaker 1 Wait a second. Like the volume, they had the volume.
Like they actually have higher volume. It's just the variation in the UA was just much lower.
Downloads-wise, it's kind of the same.

Speaker 1 Just the number of creatives, like the quality of UA is different.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. I want to say with what Alexis mentioned when we were talking about Autolavin, like as soon as you put new creatives into the mix, they will get initially impression boost.

Speaker 2 Which, if you add volumes, then you will get more and more chances to get the creative winner again. But yeah,

Speaker 2 that's the difference. Also, I think like this Sudoku

Speaker 2 Kom and Number Match are also older games than Hungry Sudoku Master.

Speaker 2 So, usually, when you start these steps of UA kind of activities, then you just launch with a lot of ads because you kind of don't know what exactly works that well.

Speaker 2 Although, I don't think like this is exactly like what we are looking at.

Speaker 2 But interesting.

Speaker 1 Also, can we add this to when we do creative reviews? Because this is interesting. The fact that we can get the number of creatives here.
That's so absolutely. yeah,

Speaker 2 absolutely, which is gonna happen next month because it's already the end of October and we didn't do October episode or no, September, anyway.

Speaker 2 So, let's go back to the Sudoku Master for the let's say last 30 days and even last 30 days.

Speaker 1 Well, let's end this, uh, like this, the whole topic, basically. What's the prediction here? Basically, having much more robust UA

Speaker 1 uh concept variation means like you win eventually, like the whole UA war.

Speaker 2 100%, 100%, because it's

Speaker 2 you can't even compete with all the different

Speaker 2 variations. Meaning,

Speaker 2 imagine this from the player's perspective. You see one ad 10 times a day,

Speaker 2 or you see 10 different ads from the same game

Speaker 2 from the same game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is

Speaker 1 exactly. Is there some kind of lag time, I guess, with staying power? Because some of these games have been around for a very long time, right?

Speaker 1 So I'm guessing they need to have a really high creative velocity for longer to have an impact, right? But there will be an impact.

Speaker 2 There will be an impact still.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 last three days, 15,000 credits versus 6,000.

Speaker 2 Come on.

Speaker 2 If we

Speaker 2 just for the fun, there you go.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 Turkey. Even this.
And even this is super high. This is super high.
If we do.

Speaker 1 What would be higher then? I mean. A kink shot.
Now we're talking.

Speaker 2 Yeah, 8,700. There you go.
So this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but they don't have the volume there. I mean, no one has bigger volumes than Hungry, like Hungry Studio for Block Blast.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 But you see, this is just like, this is why King Shot is where it is at the moment.

Speaker 1 This is why.

Speaker 2 This is exactly why.

Speaker 2 I mean, obviously, the game is absolutely amazing, but still, I mean, and since we are talking about Sudok Masher, like the trajectory from now until next year, and like where you want to to talk about, like, oh, well, it was a bingo episode where you were like talking in a year, like, how it's going, but still, like, this is gonna, yeah, my assumption is like this is gonna go quite well

Speaker 1 in the next couple of months. Even ChatGPT has less creative.

Speaker 1 That's interesting. You know, they have three million downloads a day or something like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it's way

Speaker 1 different.

Speaker 2 I mean, like, yeah,

Speaker 2 it's way different because

Speaker 2 it's a game and there's a lot of organics as well at the same time.

Speaker 1 All the organics, basically.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 They have 100 million downloads a month.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's pretty much it.

Speaker 1 Great insights, as usual. Don't forget to always check out Two and a Half Gamers to stay two and a half steps ahead of the creative game.

Speaker 2 And thank you very much for listening. Check the Slack channel for the upcoming games we are going to discuss and put your comments in, whatever you think about that you want to share with us.

Speaker 2 See you next time.

Speaker 1 Go play my cheaper.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Bye-bye.