🎮 Matching Story review: The 2-Year Soft Launch That Turned Into a $100 Million Match-3 Success

This is hitting Royal Kingdom levels already.

So without counting Royal Kingdom because it's coming directly from Dream Games, would say this could be the most successful new match 3 game.

is not from Turkey.

There you go.

not from Turkey or China.

I mean, China is not there yet.

there it is.

No no don't.

Me me me me me me.

Oh hello.

I was looking, I was trying to find some stuff, you know, you know me.

That was right there now.

It's right there.

and action-packed.

I'm Felix Braberg I'm Jakub Remiar We are your hosts.

That is very right.

But before we get to this action packed episode, we actually made a public service announcement because we actually had a friend we spoke to last week who actually lost his Moscow flat due to a bad LTV model.

So Martie, what can you do about LTV modeling and UA?

LTV modeling and UA, are you referring to our deepest and dearest sponsors, PVX partners?

Very cool.

Very, very, very cool.

Because today's episode is brought to you by PVX partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing.

You know, let's face it.

Your game is crashing KPIs.

ROAS looks juicy.

Your bank account.

not so much, but PVX can fix that because they can help you with the UA financing.

So it's fast, flexible, and you can scale your game without selling your soul.

No equity dilution, just money in, adds out to the cross.

It's amazing.

So go to pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you.

Also tell them two and a half gamers sent you.

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So PVXpartners.com Thank you very much.

partners doesn't stand for player velocity extreme.

I looked it up.

That's not what it stands for.

What?

Where did we get this?

He just baked an Yeah, anyway.

Thank you very much, guys.

Let's get back to the episode.

What the start the episode?

don't even know what we're talking about.

Yeah.

So, oh yeah, we were talking about matching story.

And this game, it's a quite a story.

And I thought it was a flop for three years, but they actually was in a soft launch.

It wasn't a flop.

And I can tell you guys that the matching story is actually by Vertex Games, which was really, really interesting.

Yeah, so this is a Singapore based mobile game developer and publisher.

They have few games actually.

So matching story, bingo frenzy and bingo voyage.

And then there's also a word game.

So interesting.

Apparently based on glass door is anything between one and 50 employees.

That's what, that's what it said.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

No, it's actually the game is more than 6,000.

6000 levels.

So it's not bad.

6,000?

Supposed to be 3,000 sometimes.

was 3000, but then I was also watching some of the creatives and they said 6500.

So you usually check the levels through the top players in the game, they are creatives?

Yeah, so it's 3750.

We're lied to.

Oof.

No way.

numbers just to get us hyped up and excited because they're big.

Yeah, let's look at the numbers.

So the company account, as Mati said, there's the...

Yep, there's many games there, not just the matching story one.

So it seems they started somewhere in 2019, if I get that right, yeah, with Block Puzzle Infinite, which was doing like 2 million downloads a month.

Yeah, it's like...

Yeah, we just see it here in the graph.

And then, if I understand, they were living on the Bingo Friends, the live Bingo games, which was doing like million a month from 2021.

Yeah, for a long time, like that game has already like 100 plus million lifetime revenue.

And then comes the matching story, which was released in 2021.

And then you got the Mbush hockey stick, which means...

no no I have push hockey stick wait just go to country filter country filter please that hockey stick happened when they released globally end of sentence nothing major happened thank you very much for listening bye of the longest soft launches we've covered?

Yeah.

game was in soft-line for long time.

2023 yeah.

So they really launched the game in 2023 in November.

Because I was like, oh my god, this is terrible because I don't know.

And then I was like, wait a second.

What was happening?

So yeah, I think they were obviously iterating on the game because when we look at different game plays and the one that I showed you, oh sorry, send you is from, yeah, yeah, it is from.

the launch month.

Yeah, this is May 2021.

So this is the launch month gameplay.

Yeah, soft launch, soft launch.

Like first initial build basically on the stores.

yeah.

Which looks way worse than what we see now.

Even this.

was way worse, but the main point that we thought before is that this was a match 3 game or this was a merge game.

No, this was already from the beginning combination of merge and match 3 game.

So no sudden whatever something happened, they just iterated what they got because you see how it looks here.

It looks now pretty much like this.

listeners, my assumption was this was a merge game from the get-go and then they change it to match.

And then it was like, Oh, wait a second.

Then they combine it with like merge and match and like, Oh my God, now it works.

But no, this was exactly the same case from the very beginning.

They added few things.

Yeah.

visual stuff.

Like I guess we definitely, my guess is that they definitely didn't have the Royal Match event meta.

It wasn't invented yet.

wasn't live.

Yeah exactly.

It was exactly my thought when I was watching the episode and then I was playing and I was like, wait a second.

I have all the fucking events everywhere.

On the right hand side, on the bottom, everywhere.

It's just like something is happening.

It's like, oh my God.

And also, what level are you?

Did you get the game pass?

Oh, I'm 65.

Yeah, but you didn't get the library or whatever this is it's it actually starts to be really hard 60 it's like oh, I mean I What I don't Okay, we'll figure out.

Anyway, so this is the state of how the game looks now.

So you basically have like a fully fledged Evermerch or pretty much a Merch, I would say Merch 5, but this is not Merch 5, it's Merch 3 only.

They have it a little bit different here, but so...

Isometric merch basically not our usual travel towns merch too on the board.

That's not there It's ever merge and then you have on top of it a match tree game Like a typical match tree game with all of its like royal match stuff and now like kiss Yeah kiss kiss.

I have so...

it's working and they're living happily ever after.

Yeah, and they're heavily ever after.

Exactly.

Like laughing all the way to the bank, basically.

Yeah, you pass the match level and you get the chest, which then kind of you open the chest and then you play the merge game.

I have 30 chests not open because I was getting really, really mad and angry and it's it's really overwhelming.

There's no auto merge.

And guys, like how and why in hell there's no auto merge.

It's insane.

Yeah, it would be very handy to have some kind of auto merge feature like from Top Troops where you would just click on the button and everything merges on it because the point is here, we can start right there, it's no optimization here.

So usually with merge five game like ever merge, you want to optimize because it's 3 to 1 and 5 to 2.

So you're saving one token if you're merging five.

But if I merge five here, nothing happens.

It's just merge and like the tool would just remain there.

this brings the thing that, or let's say this, the optimizations throw out of the window.

So you just have giant mess here all the time.

do you see how clean this board is?

Everything has some place.

It's very, you know, very clean.

You should see mine.

It's mess everywhere.

Yeah see?

So here we have, let's say, five.

So if you do this on Evermerge or typical isometric merge game, it should turn into two more tokens.

Now it just turned into the next one and like the two remain.

Yeah see?

So we need two merge three and that's it basically.

mean it would be too complicated, right?

I guess.

too complicated as usual, that's how it is with much much 5 games do you think match players do really care?

because we have the merge element on it so it's like less optimization so they went for it to kind of cut down the time for you would be tidying this shit up.

So I think what happens here is instead of you when you run out of lives and you go to another, yeah, yeah, that's perfect.

If you run out of lives, you go to another match free game.

Here you run out of lives and you just merge.

So you don't need to leave.

stuff to merge, you play more levels.

But it's still a little bit, as you say, optional.

It's the same thing where let's say, garden scapes, homescapes, you have people that have like thousands of stars and shitty garden that's not renovated because they just don't care.

They don't even care to pick one of the three benches to place and restore the abandoned villa or whatever.

They just play the match three levels.

Here the merge is just the optional progression, but it's additional gameplay, so it's much more functional.

Yeah.

And it creates an engagement and monetization vector.

that's the brilliant key here because the thing is that in gardenscapes, it creates just visual progression.

Like there's no addition to the economy.

It's just like you're spending those stars.

Yeah, Austin is like renovating shit and everything and like that's great.

yeah, there we go.

But here, because of Merch, have very good monetization because there's exponential curve with the tokens and like you see here, I immediately got the famous bubble offer, which means if you're new stuff or like high level stuff, it duplicates into these bubble offers, means the game creates one more token and then sells you the token.

We need to click it and then we don't have it.

you motherfucker against emulators.

Yeah.

Anyway, it would be like horribly high.

Like these are usually horribly high pricey things in either hard currency or direct money already.

like, let me, don't I have any others like high level tokens or maybe let's upgrade the thing.

E-tap my stars.

and go and just share my phone if you want, honestly.

Ah, that's okay, that should be...

So, yeah, you get new tokens through this, like, island reward thing, which is like one of those connectors.

yeah, I think...

Here we go, the sleepy giraffe...

Oh, maybe we get the giraffe in a second.

Yeah yeah.

No?

No, shit, I need one more.

I need one more laying or, like, kneeling giraffe.

Yeah, only one more.

And this one, yeah.

Just buy the fucking giraffe.

Go to the zoo.

Open the shop, open the shop, open the shop.

There you go.

But see, this is exactly the product.

They have a lot of stuff that you can do in Merge.

And in Merge you can spend a lot of soft currency on the tokens.

In Match Tree you could only spend it on fail state.

Only on plus five mool.

Yeah, or boosters.

That's it.

Here you have much more things.

So the spendable of this game is much higher than probably Garden Escape.

not counting the level spend, because if we count in the level spend, I mean 15 000 levels, okay, of course they went over this thing, but this thing as you said has currently, yeah, 3 751 levels, which I guess is a usual content treadmill, but immediately had during those 3000 levels much more spend compared to Garda Skips.

So that's there.

On the right side and left side, as you're rightly assuming, we have the Royal Match Event Trigger Meta.

So we have the usual...

Mm.

stuff that I already failed here.

Yeah, no worries, there's gonna be the right next one, just reset the button, that's it, there we go.

There's the next one.

Then we have the Team Battle leaderboard, call it however you like it.

Then we have Pizza Dash, which is again, like, the usual thing, like the templates that you see within these things.

Then we have the offers that are kind of sitting right there on the main...

nice chain over there yeah of course and which one this one yeah some kind of home run by the way, this home run is like, the first one is 45 euros.

It's it's expensive, really, really expensive.

Yeah, so it works great.

Here is the book which gives you hard currency for first time merging something.

This is basically the encyclopedia of the game.

Then you have the usual begging theme thing where everybody is begging lives each other, begging themes.

Then the leaderboards and then...

Yeah, what's that?

In the shop.

Yeah, so shop is much more robust because in match 3, this is the shop.

Yeah.

is the shop, there's nothing there, but here we can buy the tokens.

And also the Joker tokens, by the way, the magic crystals.

These are very, very important because I could use magic crystal on pretty much everything.

it's used on giraffe.

Yeah, so we use it on giraffe.

Are you sure to use magic crystal?

Sure.

Yeah, for us, just for you.

And where we are?

There we go.

And then there will bubble uncheck.

Wow, it's basketball giraffe.

one!

Come on.

Okay.

Yeah, it's supposed to do the bubble one because it's a new token, but I guess because I have already one bubble sitting here, maybe...

Yeah, I don't know.

Come on, guys, you had a good opportunity to do it here.

is this game making a day right now?

Something like 270, 200.

Yeah.

So maybe weekly that's a little bit more smooth.

like 160 mil a week.

yeah.

I'm sorry, 1.6 mil a week.

So roughly like hitting like 300k.

which is without the Sadness Multiplayer.

Yeah, important part...

Yeah, go ahead.

you think is taking notice of this more?

Dream Games, the match three giant from Turkey, Microphone, the merge giant from China?

No one.

don't think they care too much.

already taking the note because if you hit 300k a day you're on the charts, you're on the list.

the chart, yes.

Yeah, but this is more match free rather than just a microphone.

It's very closer to dream than it's close to seaside escape or Ghosts of Harbor.

Yeah.

And I have to say, I actually like the game.

mean yeah.

This is...

what do you like on it?

Like what you haven't seen already?

visual polish and how I play the game and also what Laura mentioned when few things happening at the same time is actually kind of all pretty good.

I feel really good about playing this game.

I didn't feel that great when we were talking about match villains, for example, because it wasn't there in terms of visual polish and how smooth the gameplay is.

Obviously it's also a great game, but this is, yeah, this, I'm not sure like why, but maybe it reminds me a little bit of Garden's Caves because how the icon looks like.

Or you just got older in between and you're now more into match 3?

No, I was always into metry.

Didn't you notice really when we talk about a casual game, I always play it the most, like I'm always even better than you?

mean, it's fucking obvious.

yeah, this is like level based games you go usually higher than me.

always always.

Is this the game that Laura, when we had our three hour epic match three episode, which everyone should check out because we worked really hard on that covering basically everything that's happened in match three, Laura said in that episode that basically there hasn't been that much iteration on match three outside of the, like the core, not on the core loops at all.

Is this kind of an iteration or, yeah, success.

Yeah.

Okay.

Fair.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is on its way to be the success, pretty much.

Because if I remember last time, was Cromwelly Customs, which was the success, which was the male match tree.

The hype around that, which got crashed by Truckstar now.

But still isn't nowhere near close to the Giants, like the new kids, which is like the Royal Kingdom or whatever.

This is hitting Royal Kingdom levels already.

So without counting Royal Kingdom because it's coming directly from Dream Games, would say this could be the most successful new match 3 game.

is not from Turkey.

There you go.

not from Turkey or China.

I mean, China is not there yet.

Yeah, we don't know, maybe we don't know and it's like, If you've worked at Vertex Games, we are actually coming to Singapore in June and we'd love to meet you and buy you lunch and like just ask some questions.

Cause this is quite interesting.

And as usual, you have an HQ in Singapore, it also can mean quite well that you are Chinese, which most probably is going to happen.

So we are coming to China, as well.

So guys, definitely.

I wanted to ping Heaven, but it was already too late when I was like, most probably he knows them.

Yeah.

more currencies, so we're now getting both hard currency and soft currency, but still hard currency is given in giant amounts because again, the economy is much more deeper here.

And the usual mumbo jumbo, strict mechanic, everything, so it's pretty much there.

And the balancing is very interesting because it...

Yeah.

Yeah.

is like, this was like one of the harder levels now.

55.

harder around the level 60.

And I'm ending every level, either with zero moves or one move left.

And zero move is like, OK, this is the final move, and I pass the level.

So it's getting really hard.

But it's so well now balanced.

It's one move or zero, and then that's it, basically.

By the way, for the people that don't see it on the board, let me zoom a little bit so you see.

So these isometric merge games, have the usual very, very good converting offers, which are these permanently like new, like an expansion of the board, basically, these kind of, yeah, everybody like this is bread and butter stuff.

So you have this, like, I think now I have like three or four of these and yeah, they're still waiting for me.

like since day one.

they just wait here forever for you and they're like super good because they...

until you buy them because they enlarge the whole thing and that's it.

And they, by the way, they also have the restoration, right, Girl Kingdom?

Because if we are using these stars, like you've seen in the video here, where was it?

So it starts this kind of crumbly and like the whole thing is kind of run down like you see here.

bad as here, but...

but still the thing is that if I'm getting these stars, these stars are actually renovating the plane.

So we have the palace here and the more stars I have, this whole thing, I don't know if I have a little bit more stars here, I think I don't know.

But anyway, if you're matching here and getting these island rewards, the whole place gets renovated also.

So they have that auto build, because if I go here and check the loading screen, You see, that was the palace right there behind it, the Royal Match one.

So they also have this renovation thing on top of it.

It just streamlined, very, very heavily streamlined.

So let me go here and lose my Striga, lose everywhere and get like 20 pop-ups.

Yeah, it's like...

No Striga insurance.

And we also, of course, lost, as you see in it.

yeah crying smiling yeah.

We can start again.

There we go.

Better luck next time, there's the pizza event.

we got that one, of course.

great emoji.

But see the...

It's different because in Merge Economy, there we go, we have some different stuff here.

So, yeah, I think it's a great expansion of the spend depth of the game that fits this whole formula and seems it's working.

It's pretty much...

Man, please play three more levels, Because then is a good segue to UA.

Yes.

Please.

Yeah.

And so what has actually changed?

You'll see.

yeah.

So Jakub, just summarize three top points, why you think this is working so well and why you think it needed to be in soft launch for three years to get there.

Yeah, so the main point is that they have much more span than the typical match game, match three game or merge game just because of the additional merge layer.

That's the first thing.

So that's out of the question because you see that like the currency of this game and everything is just working on a different balancing and different scaling that's there.

It's not your usual and I'm like you have by the way like bonus levels in between where they like shower you.

on level 60.

That's why I'm pushing you to do it like three more because it's 204060, the bonus level with all the currency.

No, no, that's afterwards.

That's one of one that afterwards.

That's what I want.

Yeah.

But the Yakut doesn't really know how to play match free games.

I guess I see.

and he's got a child, you know.

It's hard.

I'm defending him today.

I'm defending him.

know.

I know, I know.

it's going to be fine.

Maybe it's going to be very tough.

you perfect.

Nah.

Yeah, just pull it up.

It's fine.

have a shit ton of...

Yeah, it's fine.

Yeah, it's okay.

Good.

Now, yeah, this is also something.

And then I think you don't have the battle pass yet.

I have that, hold on I can't go to the main menu now I think I think can go now, let's check No no no, here it is No it's...

No it's...

Man, there's an end.

Yeah.

Yeah, I got it after...

I think it's around like level 60.

think that's the main milestone.

And yeah, it was really like unfolding nicely after some time.

And I think the fact that it's actually not that hard from the level...

Yeah, for the first levels, I guess, like the Royal Kingdom.

And then they get you afterwards, like level 50, it starts to be really interesting.

And yeah, it's still interesting.

Yeah, I'm trying.

Yeah, yeah, could be spaying.

Nice.

yes.

is preparing a combo Yes, that's good.

Just do that.

Yeah can.

Yeah please.

Thank you very much for listening.

the game only has 200,000 DAO, right?

So even if they had ad placements, they wouldn't be earning more than you had three or four rewarded impressions per DAO.

would be like three to 5K a day, right?

No, no, way less.

It's 200,000 users is not all too much, especially like in these types of games.

Like that's kind of an interesting point as well, right?

Because in match three, pretty much 60 % of impressions are always made up of either after level boosts or pre level boosts.

And then the remaining is just more lives, right?

So that's the bread and butter ad placements for match three games, right?

But merge, we know that top troops had like around 18 % ad revenue, which is quite interesting, right?

So I'm just wondering like, and we also know that our friends at Microfun, which we've never met.

You They have about anywhere between 12 to 18 % as well on ad revenue.

And I'm just thinking here, right?

Like, don't you think the opportunity here, if you combine those two, could actually be quite significant?

Or do you think it's so premium that you don't even want to take the chance on it?

I think it wouldn't really make any difference here.

You don't want even to take the chance.

much money when it scales that it's just no points, right?

You've seen the downloads of the game.

Where was it?

a hundred million revenue.

Look, you're almost a hundred million revenue and then you 7 million downloads.

Yeah, like it's.

in the active user base.

I know.

300k, 250k and it's mostly if I get a tier 1, tier 1, tier 1.

not that much.

Because then I was looking at it from that 100 million.

It's 50 % is US actually.

So it's insane.

Actually, when you play, can't try.

No, leave him alone.

I'll try to.

I will try to find a check the retention in the meantime, because that's always something that people ask.

And let's see quarter.

Let's go to 2024.

The last quarter.

So for us, day one is 41%.

Day seven is 24%.

Day 30 is 15.

And day 60 is 10%.

And apparently, yeah, and day 90 is eight.

Hmm nice.

And Google is worse, but still Day 90 is 7.9%.

Okay still.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much the same retention curve as on iOS in the US.

Shoot it, shoot it, shoot it.

The booster, the booster.

No, it doesn't matter he has a pretty pretty big amount of I was waiting for it to brute force it.

Yeah, so it was a super hard level and now comes the secret of it all.

After the bonus level.

we won.

There we go.

Again.

It's another one.

It's scaled, by the way.

It's scaled.

It was out of the tree, now it's out of...

It's scaled.

So that's very important.

The new way how to do is very fast.

Yeah, that's the very best.

Yeah, you need to purchase 10, 10, 10, 10 dollars on 10 euros.

Yeah.

There's the Archer Master new event and there's the bonus level.

We're gonna just roll it very fast.

Yeah, still need so bonus level, have a limited amount of moves and you want to earn as much hard currency as possible.

a hard currency, they just have like two currencies.

Because as I said, their economy works differently than usual match three games.

Usually match three games they don't even have hard currency, they just have...

The soft currency is the hard currency, we just have coins like garden scapes and like...

Or oil match and stuff like that.

Because again, simpler for the audience.

These guys has it a little bit more heavy because of the additional spend that they are creating through the merge part.

So...

They need to do it differently.

match-free game, part is only gems, basically.

And I was wondering, oh, why do I need so many gems?

And then I was like, oh, wait a second, 900 for five more moves.

And then if you're out of moves as well, then the next one is 1,900.

So it's chaos.

but that's the same balancing as garden scheme, it's like 900 plus 5 moves.

But then the soft currency, the gold is actually for the merge part, or the match tree part.

Yeah, that's there.

So we're gonna do three more moves and then we're gonna talk about the secret, I hope you think.

Yes.

Maybe I didn't fool you.

Maybe I did.

I don't know.

Let's see.

Maybe we'll see.

seriously.

Yeah, so that's there and now...

quite fast in like, I think it was every three or five levels at the very beginning.

Now it's every 20, I think.

more light than Cards and Scales.

Cards and Scales are other players that can have it every second level.

And there we go.

There we go.

So how does it work?

A new event pretty much pop up.

is why we are so exciting.

Help help help help help.

Fix and design, fix and design.

play.

No, no, don't skip it.

to do.

Yeah, no, just saying.

But if we play this...

Yeah, this screen.

This screen is the innovation.

This screen is the innovation.

You can even do anything with it.

And there we go.

my God, please help me fix this.

And this is so easy.

trick to the current mobile game market.

You're looking at it.

Yes.

And this is why this whole thing is happening, basically.

Without this, there won't be this episode.

Yeah exactly.

think also they have so many different creators.

I think there is one particular that was match villains basically.

And I'm going to show you that.

was just, wait, wait a second.

I just saw it.

see how, by the way, smooth it is?

It's even more smooth than what Playrix is doing.

Playrix is currently doing that pin puzzle stuff where you need to push hard currency to fire up the stove or whatever and again, make heat for a freezing family.

They have it nicely ordered within the progression.

So you've seen that there were different flats that we're going to renovate.

We couldn't even touch it, it was on a rail fall.

And if we do the last one again, you see that slowly the picture gets renovated and everything.

And then again, we get a lot of soft currency by the way for this by skipping this.

Let's see like...

50 gems and 100 coins, it's not that...

mean...

Hey!

what we're seeing screams of a team that really knows what it's doing and has took his time to basically perfect it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got 1500, it's not that much.

What do mean on the UA side and not on the game design side?

Like.

on the game design side, as I said, they were there before, three years ago.

But no, they were there before on the product side.

Yeah, so they had this, they had this figure out.

Yes.

the product didn't really change.

The only thing that changed they changed because of role match meta.

Yeah, but that's not the key.

yeah exactly.

So that's why I was telling the listeners about the context, because we thought the context was different.

Because the merge, match, whatever, but the merge and match was kissing already in 2021.

And now they added.

And it was very late, soft launch, because I see these creatives already in September, October in different variations.

And we're going to check it.

So they mastered the art of product-driven UA.

Exactly.

Now, take us behind the screen of product led UA.

Show us.

I'm not sure where should I start, man.

It's so interesting.

Should we go into the history first, or we want to go directly?

Let's go to the history.

Yeah, let's go to the history, actually.

Yeah, mean, this is November, so you know what?

Let's go to actual history of 2022.

which is, mean, I can go even to 2021 later, but this is what they've been running in the soft launch.

See?

Yeah.

So core gameplay not gonna work Yeah, this is what, yeah, but look, what do you do in soft launch?

What do you do in soft launch?

You use actually, and this is why I thought this was only merge.

Yeah, you're kind of showcasing the gameplay because you want to see the actual KPIs.

If you just start running this, oh my God, my matching story, the, They they improved quite a lot, the whole visuals, man, I can tell.

But you want to see the, yeah.

Look, you were saying?

You were saying something?

Pin puzzle, there we go, 2022.

So, and this is why I think this was really killed quickly because this has nothing to do with the gameplay.

And if we do this in soft launch, you can see the low CPIs, but also really bad retention.

Seriously, I mean, it can be very misleading for any decision-making ever, especially in soft launch.

So this is, because you're lying.

Yeah, because yeah, yeah, you're, you're, yeah.

You're Okay.

This tasks all, you know, merging nice.

This is like an ever merge creative.

Thank you very much.

God that hand has never seen sunlight in the entire...

So why- almost like you.

man, you're Snow White.

Yeah, mean, you're Viking.

Is that Aladdin by the way?

It's Aladdin from Wish.

Okay.

Yeah okay fine.

Aladdin from Temu.

there is no app police, so you'll get away with it.

yeah, you're right.

So they have all these different kind of township, farm will type of stuff here.

Now with merging, so this is 2022.

We can try something else, but it's the thing all over again.

No match.

And then, I know, right?

I guess it was trending back into it in 2022, I guess.

I want the movie It was yeah, try it.

Yeah, try to know try yeah, was movie Yeah, try try to find out.

Yeah Yep, Okay, more water.

Okay.

This is kind of going into that safe.

Whatever theme but not quite there.

So it's like only for Okay.

Yeah, that's I guess that's not working in their favor.

So look As you see, zero match free.

What's the CPI you think on those creatives in the States?

Okay, let's just give context, right?

Let's just say like, it's going to be high.

Yeah.

it but it you have Merch Mansion and Microphone battling each other.

2022?

OK.

It's in UK, in Germany and Canada, think, the soft launch.

So it's also quite high CPIs.

But it's honestly like how they pick the countries for soft launch.

Yes, pretty good.

That's a very good because UK, merge games and all the casual games.

10 years in UA does.

Experience.

No one can beat it.

Yeah, no one can beat it.

Here we are kind of moving forward to the global launch date, which is November, 2023.

And then you see...

There's some difference.

Look, I think she is kind of lying in this, is it?

That's like a TV infomercial, like until I discovered blah blah tool and it's black and white and you're like, I was chopping cabbage really wrong until I discovered this tool.

Exactly.

No ads.

my God.

Zero, zero ads.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, this is my go to chill.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, everybody's addicted.

Yeah, that was UK.

That was UK.

Also, the accent was UK.

But it's also all of these still.

Merry Christmas in November.

Thank you very much.

off.

look this but this is also like, this already match free no merge match And here look at what we have in this.

Hmm Good old divorce good old divorce and here we go And it's this is yeah, this is where we start And this you see match this is how the game yeah yeah it was so emotional roller coaster

crazy.

But this is what this so this is November, twenty, twenty three.

So you see, okay, here we start and then we have some like there is some some merge, but it's not really that relevant and or like not that much.

Although that many impressions going into this still a kind of old, but then we have all of these.

Yes, this is another one.

Look, a dog and Again, the cold classic kind of choice add and then freezing in the house.

Yeah, broken music.

We've seen this so many times before.

Yeah.

And they use the ferry again, by the way.

Check, check if they use the ferry.

is a fairy.

I mean, their fairy is being dragged from all the way, through all the creative concepts and she ends up in the freezing families.

So it's freezing fairies, actually.

Freezing fairies.

It's freezing fairies.

and then yeah, the frost death, unfortunately.

So that's, that's all of these that we have here.

And then I think like, is basically the, the classic good old, scene that everybody had in their creatives in the casual space.

Well, casual meaning playricks ish and all of these.

Honestly, this is going to go live on Monday and on Friday, I'm going to post about the whole freezing families trend and all of the different games that are using the same thing.

It's literally shit out of there.

So we have two schools, basically.

You have saved the king and save me and save whatever.

And then you have freezing families.

It's like, this is what works in casual games, unfortunately.

And all the makeover sexist, misogynist stuff, which is that's terrible.

Where's that cat from?

I recognize that from somewhere.

That cat is from somewhere.

yeah.

Yeah.

That's not IP protected anymore.

So that's cool.

Yeah, it's also different colors, so it doesn't work like that, right?

It's fine.

So that's what we have.

And then, oops.

This is slightly, slightly bad.

no, douchebag boyfriend?

Oof.

mean, this is Illyllys' garden, and we also see this in project makeover.

I've seen this ad like 10 times.

And this is 2023.

So you remember when we talked about in the Save the King and the Toon Blast and all of these.

So I think people now decided to realize there were so many different performing concepts in like five years ago, now they are kind of reviving all of this for some reason.

Yeah, they're going back.

Yeah always.

There you go.

no.

See?

Now this is way more polished.

Yeah, way more polished, by the way.

This is the same ad that we saw before, but this is way more polished.

It's exactly the same.

So it's like.

It's all, yeah, so I'm not going to go into that.

Maybe we're going to see this one.

Yeah.

Okay.

All of these, you just see stuff fine.

Nothing here.

here's your fairy.

which is, guess, an attempt for a narrative story-driven whatever, and merge.

And yeah, sure.

Yeah, I'm just going to Games, don't mention matching story on their website at all.

It's only their bingo game.

Do you think they expected this?

Or is it basically the product update in the UA, lightning in a bottle, and wham?

I don't think it's surprise for them.

They've been doing this since 2020.

Yeah, for two times since 2023.

It's just honestly, I don't think anyone cares about websites these days.

Honestly, I didn't have a website when I was working.

So that's the least interesting stuff.

this game can go on to make a billion dollars, right?

Like it's just, you'd want it on your website.

Honestly, I'm not sure.

This is 250 per day, maybe 300.

I'm not sure how they can go and grow into 500k per day or a million per day.

Jacob, what do think?

you think they can go anything between like 500k per day to one meal a day?

Yeah, pretty much double the current revenue.

Like you already seen on the chart that they were kind of approaching the peak there.

mean, they're very stable for last year.

Yeah, yeah, but you know, it could be that they just like hop on a little bit better creative trend and they just...

is what they can do.

Maybe it's going to load.

Maybe it's going to load.

Look, you know what it is?

course, it's raw match.

Raw match.

exactly.

It's one minute long match villains.

Yeah, it's exactly it.

And before in the soft launch, we running Facebook only and Google.

Now they have all the channels and guess what?

AppLavin, Ofcourse and all of this.

Look, it's exactly match villains instead of coins.

Yeah exactly.

The whole family.

Yeah exactly.

And this is just the...

Oh, don't worry.

She's fine.

She's okay.

Sure, the hard-stealing of the cheese fine man, for sure.

fine.

Why is it going to be fine?

You see?

to save them, I guess.

They're fine, yet she's not fine in like two seconds.

See, she's dead.

She wasn't.

Everything man.

the thing.

And there are so many of these.

But look.

of this whole market now.

If you don't master this shit, you are not going anywhere.

Exactly.

Like this is a must.

so there's a, it's an old lady.

Yeah exactly.

And I say, I'm not actually reading a book.

I'm playing a game, which is super fun.

And I'm just like, she's cleaning a shit on the floor.

I'm just like, what's happening?

Yeah, it's mud.

Yeah, of course it's mud.

See, over 6,000 levels.

what a lie.

Emotional rollercoaster again.

again, the same thing.

And yeah, we are fixing this exactly because this is exactly in these levels.

Help me.

Yeah, that's the layout.

That's the layout.

That's the layout.

And again, yeah.

Nice.

So we saw this.

This is not interesting.

Yeah, there is also another one.

Oh, this is just like, yeah.

where did they roll up the credit?

Where they roll up the?

Yeah no.

Kind of.

this is my favorite because like the head on fire, burning hair.

This go.

So again, we see the same thing.

So like this is.

That's the girl from Monsters UNC.

That's Boo.

Okay.

really know what they're doing on the UI side.

I will do the small one Yeah, Monsters Inc. Yeah.

Yeah yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Please.

Please do.

I've never seen the movie.

It looks more like the...

No, it looks more like...

Yeah, I'm fine.

More like the small girl from Minions.

Despicable Me.

That's the one.

it's kind of of if we're talking about all this anyway so look okay we saw this already they have all the networks with Facebook unity Google app love in Moloko and stuff and they have hundred pages of the crazy way This is current, yeah?

April, this month.

yeah, it's April, but I need to check with the playables and everything.

It's way more.

Yeah.

150.

So yeah.

It's yeah.

The classic you can see.

So the only thing they're missing is AI creatives.

Now I haven't seen AI creatives.

I haven't seen any of those.

Look.

Match.

You remember the shark whale?

Or the crumbling stones on the hand with the sand?

That's like AI hooks.

That's what the Royal Match is now running.

This is basically their gameplay, they have exactly this in the game.

Yeah, it's the same thing.

Yeah, keep them warm.

my God.

look.

Again most of the time I girl.

Yeah man it's like robot so disgusting I mean, seriously.

Each camera zoom just gets worse.

any lower with creatives, I'm always surprised.

Like, wait, wait, don't worry guys.

We've reached the bottom.

We've reached the bottom.

Don't worry.

wait, there's more.

It's like, if like this is like, you think there's no surprise and you can go lower.

It's always like we can.

It's a new law.

It's always a new law.

All the way down, please.

Let's see if we have anything.

Yeah let's the new creatives only for April.

Yeah, it's great.

Look.

Felix.

This is just another kind of like spectrum of low.

Like let's say the What the fuck is this?

Of course you know what this is.

You know what it is.

three plug in.

It's like we're testing the creatives of different games and ripping the evolve directly on our account.

That's what it is.

This could be, this could be a bit of Chinese.

no.

Lely's garden, Lely's garden.

Doesn't throw a match.

Yeah.

It's about, we rip off everything and it's about the speed of it.

Like how fast we rip it off.

Yeah.

is like, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wouldn't be surprised because these.

Yeah, after all.

Yeah.

I have to be after seeing all of these.

wait.

Of course.

Of course.

See?

There we go.

Like, it's not about ripping people.

You rip them by default.

It's like how fast you can rip them off.

my God, but this is terrible.

this is new, this is new.

No, this is like new peak creatives that we went over.

This is like from last month.

And they're already running them on their own account.

Yeah, you have the matching story.

The matching story.

What is happening?

What?

I mean...

off, that's where we get there.

Like it's pretty much a complete cutthroat jungle now.

Wow.

It doesn't say where they're based on the web page.

I'm just looking at it right now.

There's nothing.

I'm telling you, it's Yeah, it's like look.

it's just, yeah, 100 % Chinese.

Incentive ads and payment options exist in certain levels.

Don't mandatory choose as needed.

The final result, it's published in the app.

They don't even say the name in that fine print.

Okay, no, I mean, this is just brilliant.

Just getting ridiculous by the minute, like- is, it is, it is.

But still, as you said, like the speed on like how they copy everything and like this is mainly, look, nobody is still, okay, still.

thing, you steal, you don't copy.

This is this, this is copy because you at least change the art.

is copy.

Yeah, that's what I want to say.

This is copy because, but I mean, they're using the, this is not tap to blast.

fuck.

mean, yeah, I'm so confused.

Anyway, so I want to say, yeah, yeah, understand.

Yeah.

I think we can close here.

snake, there we go.

Yeah yeah yeah.

There's a girl...

Man, it's that peak again.

It's ripped off.

Yeah, it's ripped off.

It's not theirs.

nice okay but still pretty good man i mean i'm i'm impressed i'm impressed good, it's done by peak.

You can see that Matty also does similar stuff.

So he's just praising the shit out of this.

It's like when we did Super Sent and he's like, you see Nike and Gucci in the creatives?

I love it.

And then people are like, it's copyright infringement.

He's like, it's just aggressive ads.

So?

So?

OK.

Yeah.

Hello?

Hello, app police?

wait a second.

You don't exist.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, you can go.

Yeah, you can go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

One of our listeners was very grateful for them showing us how to do proper charts on the category ranking.

We can look there back in time how it was.

What was it, 2022?

Yeah, we'll get there.

The blue one is Merge 2.

which is our travel towns, gossip harbors and everything and the black one is merge tree which didn't go anywhere and stagnating forever.

Yeah, you can see here.

So much to much mention travel tango, see harbor.

If we go merge tree is merged.

can't ever merge.

Blah blah blah blah.

And the inflection point is somewhere here like start of 2023 when they really, you know, the couple pretty much and that led that curve or what?

I can double check.

This is the curve for the top game.

So we have Seaside, Seaside Escape, Love and Pies, Gossip of Harbour, Matchington's Story, Terrible Town and Merch.

So you see that Merch Mansion is leading pretty much all the way from 2020 when it started.

It was doing like...

leading because it was the only game that was leading.

Yeah sure.

I need them to put evermarch here, by the way.

think if I could go, I can put this also here.

So we're kind of complete.

Are we gonna beat the dead horse or what are we doing?

Yeah, we're already beating it.

Yeah, so Evermerch was even before.

So just to be correct.

So then comes MerchMention and you see Evermerch never kind of went up.

They just like, yeah, summer March 2021, it's like peaked.

And then you see how this thing went.

And by the matching stories in the chart.

So you see there also, but then it's just go ballistic here in like 2023.

And then you see that's the microphone kind of...

if they, if they had merge two instead of merge three, wouldn't be the same thing.

You can do merge to and merge to because you have literally two competing boards against each other.

It would be too heavy for the user.

That's why merge, like the isometric part is supplementing the abandoned villa progression of gardenscapes, literally.

So, because it fits and they're lucky that it fits by the way.

So that's there.

But again, the moral of the story is again, what we see, which is that get.

that we have old games, like literally four year old game that's hitting record revenue, even though it's off lunch, it's still four year old game.

Yeah, it's off lunch, but it's four year old game, It's four year old game.

You know what I'm gonna tell you, you motherfucker?

Because you are shitting on MoCo all the time and it's like, oh, it's not going anywhere.

Here you are saying, oh, it's a four year old game.

pessimism works against you.

And on that bombshell, it's time to end.

It's been another lovely episode of Two and a Half Gamers where you can stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry where we cover all the new hit games, all the hit titles.

So don't forget to tune in for future episodes so you can also stay what, Jakob?

Meow.

two and a half years ahead of the gaming industry.

Of course, there you go.

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Cheers.

Bye-bye.