Alien Invasion hybrid casual story: Full Game design, Ad monetization, UA and creatives review (#81)

can I just say that like this game has the fundamentals to be a [ __ ] rocket ship and From admon perspective just add like more Dynamic placements and play around with the rewards and to get more conversions yeah that would be like a rocket ship and yeah from the UA like we didn't give it very high scores but it's still doing so well like there's so muchis so much low hanging fruit it's exciting it's very surprising that's the whole that's the whole looking you this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast 2 and a half Gamers sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our Day-Day user acquisition game design and AD monetization jobs we are definitely not discussing the latest industry news but having so much fun let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously hello hello hello this is

episode number 881 my name is matar I'm Felix Brer and I'm and we are your hosts for today uh so should we do like a cheat cat that nobody cares about or should we just no one cares about it like let's just dive in because clearly what people want to listen to is not us talk about industry stuff it's justr the cheat let's SK it let's go yeah all right since uh since you love these kind of episodes we bring you one more hybrid casual case study and we are kind of missing one game in one game only in our hybrid casual review portfolio could you guess which one is it of course you couldn't guess because you don't know but it's Alien Invasion from crazy laps well there is a story behind the crazy laes and Alien Invasion publishing but well maybe we'll get into

it maybe we won't uh so yeah this week uh we are also going to change the order uh of us talking and Mr yakob uh is going to start with the game design intro because we heard your feedback and now we are going to witness the five hour long epis from now on yes yes yes uh we we do listen to feedback but you know you rep put you so yes the only problem is we are actually Rec like 9 900 p.m. so we might end up like 2 a.m. 4 a.m. 4 a. 4. that's what it's all about I should have brought a whiskey Jesus oh all right take it away e start this amazing game um one little tidbit here uh why we're covering Alien Invasion because uh to be honest we are running out of uh we are not running out of anything no no no

there's always more the show doesn't stop we're running out of hybrids that's what I wanted say no we are not running out of hybrids because actually this is the fifth hybrid we're covering and it's the last one in the big ones on the market because my cut off for the hybrids is 1 million IP Revenue a month at least and I don't see anything else in the chart so dear listeners wait wait wait did you add a sadness multiplier uh yeah sadness multiplier would may be still different but uh just want to kind of encourage people if they know of any other game they think it is a hybrid kind of new one and makes these similar kind of numbers tell us because we literally running out of those I know about one you were talking about in soft L sonar which is kind of launching very soon so we definitely need to cover that incraft Rumble no think again yeah we'll see yeah anyway uh back to alien invasion so

let's talk about this one uh this is definitely more IP driven hybrid that we'll be covering uh really to my liking very very wa wa wait wait wait wait you said you said 5050 what the [ __ ] talking just saying that compared to other hybrids is more skew towards I so it's like 50/50 the the ones that we covered dream Dale one and my perect hotel one or mob control one my guess is those are no no no no those are like 40 40 is okay okay yeah okay show us the game Remo yeah one big disclaimer uh this time I was spared by the ad gods that they were not presented here so I didn't see any ads I knocked I knocked off a point from my like rating one point just when I saw you read that because that's atrociously bad yeah so I played the game completely without anys because I didn't see them I didn't see them on emulator I didn't see them on my Android device and I never saw them no interstitials no banners no

rewarded video placements even though I still see them in the shop that it promotes there to kind of get rid of ads and like these kind of skip it I haven't used any of these just a proclaimer so we'll get I guess back to it with Felix's part but yeah no it's for me so it was really pleasure simulator I never watch so many ads playing a game that we review not for me let's say um yeah so let's get to it uh Starcraft immediately right after the start like if you start the game that was my first kind of a feeling when you hear this kind of a very familiar guy that I'm sure you guys get the reference nobody get the reference because nobody played Starcraft this guy I play Starcraft like [ __ ] 30 years ago so what you don't remember stov no so this guy which which you have here with the c custos Farm or custo is pretty much an anagram for stuko with directly a character from Starcraft and like the whole thing is a little little bit model even the gates the floor and

everything like big starc inspiration definitely um regarding the unfolding experience uh how they slowly they even have created this kind of first room as a tutorial here uh it goes a little bit faster than usual but it's still kind of unfolds properly so again you start very very uh smoothly from literally nothing you just eating these random humans and pulling them into the base to get meat and then slowly like new features are so that's definitely a check here usual hybrid progression stuff gameplay itself is very unique I don't think so we ever seen some kind of similar core gameplay where you are just going around and like eating stuff like this it's more close to something like snake IO or whole IO actually a whole IO rather than yeah yeah some kind of like similar thing but they also added the combat system lated to it so it's kind of yeah interesting but it's very satisfying that's what I wanted to say it's very satisfying again

very approachable easy one button control for the whole kind of a review of the game or whole play through that I did nothing's being complicated very easy so honestly very well it wasn't satisfying until I upgraded the speed because then it was really slow at the beginning and I was like [ __ ] why did I this was actually my biggest complaint and I didn't want to say it because I didn't feel how you could speed it up with ads because that was always my assumption that the speed of the early game could be speed up with ads and then you get this like even more satisfying feeling so I thought like oh maybe just I'm slow because I don't have but if you're saying it it means that it's slow and should it's slow it's actually slow until I upgraded the speed the only thing you you could speed up with with ads was uh the meat the additional meat which obviously helps at the beginning and then X and DNA as well but like that's that's those like Dynamic placements I think I think Felix you talk about so definitely even for me it it felt slow so I I would guess maybe a little bit of ab test wouldn't here but

yeah let's see the other interesting thing as usual with these hybrids that we lately covered uh they're offloading the UI and the mechanics onto the map itself so same Principle as with dream on M perfect hotel for instance here we have a building again if I'm not here even in this area I don't even know it exist the moment I'm here and I approached it I get a completely new context menu new possibilities blah blah blah so again complexity being pushed into the environment which is great but also it has this you know uh disadvantages that if you don't know it's there or if you not like you know remember everything you you forget it so I'm still I'm still super lost in the in the yeah exactly so it's it's a little bit of double Ed sword here but I guess that's the price you need to pay in order to kind of keep keep the hyper casual feeling and to being like super easy and then yeah going there um regarding the the gems and the the progression this is I think really

really genius and this this is something that stand out for me here is that immediately even here like with this kind of basic idle mechanic that they have here it generates the like basic soft currency the meat immediately is like it demands hard currency yes hard currency currently the only way I know how to get hard currency is that it's nicely off those units those unit those units here where every three hours here it responds to guys that if you kill you get five gems per each so 10 10 you can actually get uh the ads ads as well like free gems for ads okay so not for me but for you but if I understood this is the only way to get it and it's very very uh frustrating because there's literally everything in the game well there's one more you can [ __ ] buy the gems yeah of course you can buy the gems but it literally requires uh later down the line to to like to unlock functionality from the G through hard for instance here where we have another mechanic where progress a little bit uh faster or

let's say later throughout the game you have these Bots which are kind of help help really helpful because one is U pretty much copy of you the catcher is great yeah the copy of you that's pretty much farms in the meantime and then the other one that's even better it's called like delivery or what not this is actually cheating literally cheating I was looking at like what the [ __ ] is this like why is it coming to get the the meat yeah the meat basically it's like oh wow okay and I zoomed in like so funny yeah so that's that's really nice the humor is great in this game like here here he goes and picks up the it following this this guy so so if I look here I can directly see that only the first stage of it just like the first stage of the update requires 150 gems immediately out of the bat so that's there and not 50 for me my my friend really it's so cheap on Android damn you or maybe I upgraded oh no no I upgraded

it already to level one maybe that's why yeah because I have level one level zero the minus 150 as well and I upgraded past level one yeah okay so I upgraded it okay okay my way because also the interesting placement for a subscription is this giant Banner that when you walk to your main base it says get free gems immediately if you click on it is the subscription of course also it's still on the screen with this kind of a alien guy with crown again same button so it's very very kind of prominent placement here but again if we go further where you guys never even dare to venture because this is unlocked after level seven uh and if we move forward there's again different currencies different even eggs how do you get the eggs you pay gems directly to get them so well you get ads ads for Gem well gems for ads and then you can also kill or eat these flying humans where where you can

get gems EGS sorry yeah but I'm now having green EGS and purple EGS okay okay that's different that's the thing yeah yeah so again the usual idle arcade progression where we can do some task and like play with it in the little bit and in the meantime you know economy is running by itself like for instance here I now have a farm another one Meat Farm which like goes to 100K and it goes there I also have a DNA Farm later down the line somewhere here on the right I think I escape from jaie Chan here uh right here yeah so there's DNA farm that I can upgrade and to be honest to see the whole kind of scale of progression here if you go to this eye button you can see how much more mechanics they are ready to be unlock later down the line so we have the alien we have the B catchers the deliveries custom farm DNA farm meat farm green red purple egg mine big meat farm snow meat farm factory chemical plant whatever they so much more systems

there ah [ __ ] I want to say so much more vectors but this systems okay this is this is a system this is a vector is like all of it is just one vector pretty much okay so yeah they have it very very deep really kudos to them like whoever designed the economy and the spend depth behind it it's very deep that's why probably it's making so much money because you can literally spend a lot of money and there will be still shitload of content waiting for you to kind of get through like it goes literally like a Starcraft map level where you unlock these doors after you progress to higher levels and then new content unlocks with it the other interesting thing are these kind of quest literally reminds me like world Warcraft the old one the strategy one you just you know do your main mission or something and then suddenly there's a guy requiring you to do something and it all stes together by the way to this main quest which is again our Starcraft guy here that wants to collect his aliens and then he'll help you to escape the lab I don't know what happens probably Google it afterwards but yeah it's very nicely

kind of connected there's very straightforward kind of progression all of these different Quest there's even again combat at the later for instance here I have a guy that's already kind of fighting with me Fe what you still haven't beat defeated him on level man this is like the seventh one okay like if you want to see the boss battle like there's uh up here uh there's another guy who is actually a boss and yeah just let let me show you how hard he hits so he has like 1.7 million 1.1 million meat even if you killed him and 100 blue X and do you see like how much damage I do to him on level seven nothing yeah just yeah that's that's it so yeah there's definitely goals to kind of go through and strive for yeah these guys know what they're doing and the economy is very deep the other thing is that the hyper casual values and like how this thing is all stitched together it's also kind of seen and they didn't didn't really care that much because

game play and the whole experience it's kind of takes the priority over like values like for instance here you see like there's textures clipping over it like doesn't matter to be honest because you care nobody cares yeah exactly nobody cares and for a hybrid it's completely okay so so that's that um as I said can't believe you're revie this and you didn't like see half of the economy like it's like ads it's so ad driven you mean the ads yeah I'm also kind of a little bit uh disappoint that I've didn't see it yeah at least I will be listening to your review for this time um the the BS by the way when did you turn into like a mean [ __ ] pH asked me H H how did I how did I get to level seven so without ads yeah without ads and like in three days so let me tell you the secret the secret is literally do nothing so you pick up a SP like here where there's a high enough

respa rate and you and leave it leave it going but the key here is the delivery guy because eventually you fill up your capacity and you stop eating them so he needs to come in takes all the meat out and then you can continue without being at the computer yes and and this is how you get 300 uhk XP in like 3 hours yeah that's that's the thing because he kind of played played this on the on the ulator later so you just you know left the PC left the PC running yeah of course feel I did the same thing and I did I did the same thing uh I just had my phone uh but I was watching ads in the meantime see didn't my phone my my phone was so so hot it was almost exploding yeah so also I wanted to say like like the XPS and like the kind of the scale of the the levels I think it was like 1,000 XP or something on the level three

or no 10,000 like you you're super super big yeah I think it's like the exponential curve is super high there like from now for instance last level level six it required 380k of experience now it's one and a half million Jesus four times more nearly four times more so yeah they literally you know try to kind of keep you from going anywhere but again you have the ad so you can speed it up but I don't think it's can helps you um if I understood correctly uh there's even events coming in pity that we are not recording it like uh tomorrow because there's like a whatever soon one day in four hours so definitely there's some kind of live Ops going on we just don't don't see it my guess is this is again reserved for Friday Saturday Sunday or something like that but yeah I would guess it works pretty well um the other thing that I think you can always put it in the you know game review Radar

Radar yeah yeah well will definitely keep this one on the radar this so Mr radar I don't I don't see the soon option because I'm level three only so I guess it's like six plus yeah okay so it's only for high level people like me yeah yeah necessary that addition like people like me nobody cares man exactly the the other thing here is that uh at some point I think this system kind of breaks a little bit in a way uh that of it has so much stuff uploaded uploaded onto the map that you forget what you have upgraded or not because for instance here I have let's say the black market upgrades which are pretty much a separate upgrade of the alien that is in a different building because I have the main one that's like I can access at any point then I have the one here and then my guess is that at some point later down the line or the Bots here like they also kind of you get some kind of new one and if you then forget

about it then you don't able to upgrade it so my guess is that this again I know it's arcade idle system I know it's kind of works very well in the early game but later down the line my guess is they're probably inflating it away maybe that's that's the key here because for instance this Farm like this Farm I don't know what happens if I fully upgrade it to five stars like how efficient it will be but already compared to the the other Farm I just unlock it's just three times more efficient so my guess is they just inflate the old content away any way that the new upgrades are so big that you don't care about the old ones but it's definitely a problem with the system that offloading everything onto the environment yeah piles up if you have too much stuff that that you want to offload so we'll see about that later down the line I would I would be curious how that goes in but probably again only the most relevant content is the latest one in for higher level players I think like level 10 or 15 or whatever they have the highest level we'll see um yeah regarding ads uh do you want to

tell me Felix where at least they have the ads so I can just kind of so I know yeah they appear right above the button uh for the like the store they appear there like whenever every 20 seconds essentially so you find you find treasure me then just watching that and directly give you I'll go into the my part yeah I just wanted to say like while you were talking uh I I'm watching a second ad for like 15K meat yeah 15 but 15K meat isn't that much to be honest but it's like level three okay so so so is it really helping you at your level I mean the the reward it is it is it's definitely adding value because now to be honest I'm a little bit stuck because I have like 1.6 million meat like meat's not a problem now and the only problem with the upgrade is the DNA because now I got the D as well you get DNA as well from the ads from the ads okay so now that that's a very good conversion Point here because for me I'm literally stuck

here where I already have the like purple DNA Farm but this this teal color DNA I I get just from these two guys here it's purple DNA only for now so I think anything that you can actually get by buildings or like by I know building those Farms you can you can get from ads they don't give away anything else which is premium like all these like different EGS okay that's that's that's interesting yeah we'll we'll get actually I spend quite a lot of time on it so yeah just just last thing I want to finish the arcade Idol mechanic is very very nice in a way that the things that you do are really different in a way that I mean the types of actions that are part of the arcade in a way like different things like in my perfect Hotel it was like you know cleaning the rooms doing the toilet paper blah blah blah here uh the quests are pretty much different kind of task because sometimes like for instance here

I have the fight with this guy and I can probably kite him here and like kill him near the base and get complete like full heal all the time so no problem then you have this kind of pesky satellite that you need to catch that always kind of runs away from you yeah it's super annoying then I also unlocked the actual boss fight here later down the line with these guy that I don't even have a closest kind of sense how I can beat him uh and then uh last last thing is that there's these forms of enemies of like like I think the latest when I UNL there's some kind of military guys or who's there and they just like kill me in two blows and there's like 30 of those so yeah we'll see number four add number four okay this this time for x uh the previous for DNA maybe I can kite them we'll see but yeah I can't them yeah but again arcade p is really good and the game's like super super original and love the Starcraft and barcraft kind of

references and feel so for me uh because I don't have ads 8.5 out of them interesting yeah so moving on to ad monetization which is a really interesting part of this game because I thought that alien invasions before I started playing it was going to be a master class in Dynamic ad placements when I started playing it and wow was I surprised because it turns out the ad placements in Alien Invasion are not Dynamic at all yeah so Alien Invasion is very different to the other hybrid casual games we've covered so far on the podcast since in terms of ad monetization it monetizes only with rewarded videos uh the rewarded ad placement shows up during game play above the store button at a set interval of every 20 seconds on the main screen and that helps you along with any pain points in the game and helps you progress quicker so the reward rewarded

placement starts off by offering meat and then gradually starts offering eggs and DNA as well uh the rewarded ad placements are quite interesting because of its velocity so no matter if a player like no matter what happens with a player every 20 seconds you get a new ad placement offering you something so if no matter if you just converted or ignored an ad 20 seconds after that whatever happens you'll be shown another ad placement so it's like showing up all the time uh so yeah you show you get shown ad placement every 20 seconds so pretty much the speed of your progression depends on how many ads you actually watch which is super aggressive and I really like it and I reckon that you can't really progress at speed that is like agreeable to a human being unless you do Remo's cheating trick like to an average human being unless you watch at least six to 10 rewarded ads per session or make an iip man I I watched so many

ads yesterday it was so many I think on average probably rewarded impression per deu is 11 with an ad viewer rate of 80% but we'll get to that later so here's the really interesting thing I kept track of the ad offers that are being offered and the amounts and basically saw how they changed depending on conversions so I actually have a spreadsheet where I kept like hundred different ad offers that that I got and like measured how much I got when I actually watched it and it turns out if you don't interact with 20 ad offers or in about every six minutes of gameplay soft currency increases or only meat is the only thing they increase in terms of AD placements and they increase the amount of meat that's offered by 4% 4% that's super cheap very small yeah very small I know right that's actually one of the biggest issues I have with our admon strategy right so I don't know if this is due to progression but it feels to me that a very big opportunity

like they've missed because soft currency like it's the only thing that rises uh when a player ignores an ad placements so I'd argue that you could actually reduce the initial offering of eggs DNA and gems and increase this gradually and if conversions do don't take place uh I'd also argue that it would be really worth for these guys to test interstitials and banners for non-payers once youve pass like the normal purchase times and no segment like for from level four or like Remo level yeah exactly Remo level letting Fame get to you [Laughter] bro totally oh my God so yeah the interesting thing is that alien invasion have skippit as well uh but they call them keys so users can buy meat eggs and DNA and they're priced at the same points and can be bought either in like bundles of 10 300 or unlimited lied for $34.99 so this works out to 10 cents per

skipped rewarded video on 10 purchases three cents per skipped video on the 100 like 300 package and on like unlimited is obviously unlimited and I'm really Keen to hear from you here like why they're priced at the same points when meets is what you need the most in the early game um just yeah why is this price exactly the same um so if I understand correctly this increase in value anyway because it scales with your progression I mean the rewarded at offering so it's yeah the same I don't know why they're plac the same uh the DNA Keys it's for every type of DNA because some is more prestigious than the other or depends on where you are in this is for skiet right so this is only like the main purple DNA most probably that's it's only the ones that are the

rewarded ad placements that you can skip with the skip it but this is my question that would I would get an offering for let's say teal or white DNA if I'm so far ahead no no no no I don't think so because purple DNA is [ __ ] anyway then for me well it is for well for start it's not the [ __ ] you you you need and and you know the Skip it's it's like the color of these is different it's not like purple only so able to see the skus cuz I would love to see if any of those sqs actually rank because that was my like initial question my guess is it scales Felix both the X even maybe the X later it will offer like different I I guess so different color X because I I know I can have them now okay so I guarantee you it's not in the top five so yes because the Weekly subscription is number one then it's Crystal Peg one Crystal P two Crystal pck three and Crystal P four yeah so we're kind of like proving this hybrid casual Like the Way Forward doesn't seem

to be skip it like that is not the solution it doesn't seem we've seen it work ever in a game so far I think the way forward is to build up much deeper and kind of more enticing economy with permanent value that's very kind of alluring for you to invest in it's really interesting like how much money they make since uh like all of these are just 499 199 999 in the like the highest pack is Crystal pack four which is then $24.99 and those are like the top five and then you have key key money one which is 99 Cents key special one which is 99 cents as well so it's quite interesting yeah by the way keep in mind this you completely forgot about that you have powerups from hard currency in the shop in the shop in the shop like how close can you go to the source yeah

so overall impression per Dau is between 10 and 11 ad VR is definitely 80% uh close to there so with a DA of 420,000 users segments between us and non US based from August cpms uh this brings us to about 39K a day in August so about 1.2 million per month so ad revenues 51% I'd say uh quite a good job on admon and not amazing I would have given it seven out of 10 uh basically because of the fact that you could probably play around a lot more with other AD placements and the fact that you can play around with the pricing especially when people aren't interacting with ads like basically go even more aggressive but the fact that Remo didn't get ads on his Android phone in Slovakia uh his poor so that brings it down to a six well you really old do you have a really old

Android or like he Che he's cheap [ __ ] so I'm I wouldn't be surprised I hate gue you have an iph well I I have ads and I have Apple phone so I like I'm I'm pretty confident that you could add on nonp purchasers uh banner ads with a 20 second refresh rate and not hurt retention that much because all the other like all the other hybrid casual games we've covered they utilize all the other AD genres so I'm very surprised not not Happ ones not not Happ ones okay calm down so speaking of retention so we I guess we need to use this happiness multiplier that mik mentioned because I see day one 47% day seven 133% day 30 4% and then day 62% and then maybe yeah day 90 is like 1% so I guess like the day one is definitely not that high but day 34% is pretty much checks

out with survivor iio really no yeah I think they have like 5% they have 15 15 yes in in your tool okay not in mine tool yes it's like on day 90 Survivor iio has 6% okay these one these guys are they they're drinking the happiness I think sorry but you do agree like Remo that like yeah adding a more Dynamic segment and actually being like more aggressive on what you give out in terms of reward for ads if you don't interact with ads is quite clever and yeah like mean segmentation here yeah exactly yeah definitely like if if it's like I think it is they're leaving a lot of money on the table because they're not using segmentation they're actually using it to the detriment where I don't have the ads which is the problem here that's the wrong segmentation guys yeah yeah exactly but I'm I'm I'm curious if they

have any kind of social Mechanics for possibly those white whales weal last time but I don't think so and at this volume and at this scale that's definitely leaving money on the table well but the thing is what was the da I shared it was like 300 4 yeah 420 this type of Da like would really the banners like make a lot of sense the thing is also they scale only now scaled to like the Six Million or 5.2 million downloads per month it wasn't like that before maybe because they remove ads on Android well honestly the like majority of the new installs is coming from Android see like is it removed from Android or is it the fact that you used to have a [ __ ] phone mate like exactly like I'm mean I just want to be honest like so what I what I'm going to do is I

actually gonna install this game on my daughter's tablet and then and then uh obviously let let her play let her play Invasion but then I will also post the the result or the comment into our select channel so if you want to join and see if this is uh the case of yakob shitty device or Android in general then uh you need to join the SL and then you will find you will find out and then we can start a drive help Remo buy new Android phone yes I have a new Android phone like sitting right behind me by the way bought it this week actually o did you did you play The Invasion not yet not yet there one on it but I can I can tell like pretty much posted into slack how how that test you should you should okay let's see then uh UA I would say uh the best part at the end but

again not the best part at the end uh but they are doing actually something something right so in the last last episode when you both uh made fun of me uh because of the Tik Tok I kind of oh that was so funny oh so funny that's why I have the Tik Tok C now so I can defend myself now but anyway you can show off your yes exactly these guys have quite uh some Tik Tok activities but very small and almost non-existent but actually someone from Tik Tok joined our slag and then send me suggestion to actually go to ads uh well not ads library. tiktok.com because the search works better and I I searched and it definitely didn't work better yeah it was the same almost the same disappointment as as we had in last recording but anyway so uh I was talking about the new way of doing creative research and I wanted to do it for Alien Invasion but it kind of failed and do

you know why or could you know like why do you remember how do you need to do the Creative research on Facebook ads Library guys it needs to have a fan page yes and it didn't have a fun page uh maybe it had a fun page you didn't found it but Alien Invasion as a as a term has at least 20 different fan pages from movies Comm Merce Brands music bands so it was really impossible to find the correct one I was like what the [ __ ] like I really checked like almost all of them and uh maybe it's under crazy crazy Labs or under whatever I just couldn't find so hello all good old tools that let us down multiple times but this time I cross checked few other uh things to make sure um things are little bit more accurate so in terms of the iOS not iOS the UA Channel mix uh but we can start with iOS the Facebook looks quite big on

on iOS which is a surprise but then we have mintegral again quite a big surprise but then uh F on my mic uh so they have M and Google M so interesting thing uh was basically the country mix in terms of spend so they're spending like the top spender is us uh and then it was basically Korea South Korea Japan Australia Netherlands and UK but if we look at mintegral only it's Korea us Thailand Japan and Vietnam basically southeast Asia and or Asia and us an interesting thing that happened was that I wasn't able to find appin in one of the tools I used but then obviously I checked the other tools and voila Apple was there it was quite big so all these these [ __ ] tools playing as all the time uh but then I also changed uh the

the view of of checking the UA channels to the last seven days and then bum integral exploded and then uh just with like 56% of the budget spent in the last seven days so the whole uh enomic changed quite heavily so it was the integral Facebook app and then Google and something else where is Crazy Love based Israel I think okay I think um we can we can check afterwards as well by the way the developer of the game is called multicast gaming we forgot to mention that yes and they are from nobody knows don't know where they are from okay know but I want to buy them a beer love to have a conversation with game amazing the game is great I was I was actually playing this for for like way way longer than other other games that we reviewed uh okay so back to to actually UA part Android apparently the biggest

UA channel is Unity interesting followed by Facebook in the last 30 days but again when I looked at the last seven days and last week Apple was sitting on the top with F Well 34 or 43 [ __ ] 43 budgets B and also [ __ ] my life uh clicking on the x button in ads in Alien Invasion made me 10 years older every time I saw an ad in this game I tried to click on the x button and I was redirect to the store and there was always like a lot of different I tried to record it I tried to record one ad uh because it kept just sending me to the store automatically and then every time I I record it it just didn't like show up but it was just yeah there was also like this never- ending Creed video uh creative uh from our friends at vitrol laps uh which didn't even had the x button for a long time very second yes the 60c yes and I was like and I saw it yesterday like 10

times I was like [ __ ] like uh but also care about quality at all no but then that's the thing that uh I think we need to talk about if this is iron source of L Ling but they have we can we can talk about it at the end uh but I also saw an amazing video by our favorite company say games for Squad Alpha and this video has everything uh we can actually play uh play that video right away and then we can actually talk about does it have a good hook it has a very good hook like I do have a good hook uh so well actually I can talk about I I will show you so there was a teaser I I will tell you like uh what kind of creativ we have for Alien Invasion because it's very simple yet effective so AK like what you see is what you get thanks to the nature of the kind of like visual Styles they don't have any hooks so that's why I wanted to show the squ so we have at least one you're comparing

something good and then showing yeah yes and then uh I saw also a few new hooks from White House survival when I was playing this game so it was very very good for Creative research actually but anyway uh like very straightforward um creatives showing the elements of the game a little bit altered game playay but not too far from too far away from the game actually they were playing a little bit with the colors and filters uh a few FL few playables but nothing extraordinary actually like only one playable end car and one playable which is basically like uh some of these videos that I'm going to show but okay let's let's check this out let's check this out I was expecting alen versus Predator yes i' that would be I think there's a new alien movie coming I hope so now I hope so you're going to hear the music because now I actually

ticked the button okay but let's see this is the squad Alpha and this video is it's amazing I was I was literally watching this from the start until the very end oh looks like H that's like blade you know right before the last battle every blade movie and I was like okay W what came is this I this looks very cool I was like kind ah okay what's what's happening and it's quite long it's one minute long as well but this time I was actually watching the the whole ad from the start is from the katana there you go and this is just it I me this look so good I like oh man wow there like 40 40 seconds of this uh CGI and then directly into the game play so this video is all like everything this is how it should be done like again like fuing heads off to the SE games team so yes okay that's really nice

there you go of course I a fail of course finish fail what did you expect blade coming in and slicing everyone yeah so when I was talking about uh them using colors this was basically it but there's no ho you mean using colors there's no color yes exactly uh but yeah like this uh kind of like that doesn't exist choose the element and upgrade yeah that doesn't exist though but the eating sounds great why it's not in the game why the game doesn't have the eating sound because it's great yeah that's true actually but you have the all satisfying yes yeah that way better look how quicker quicker the gameplay looks in these ads compared to the reality yeah exactly because I was I was watching the ads before uh before I actually play the game I was like wow

this is really really fast I love it and then I started playing the game like [ __ ] you know what what this could be by the way because this same thing happened with my perfect Hotel this could be the old version of the game when they made the creative they found the winning creatives but in the in between they iterated the game this could be the old version yeah the claws you didn't see any claws you can't get claws right um I think you can later down the line on like higher stages but that thing that happened there that you walk up to a building and meat started flowing into it's not in the game this mechanic but my guess is it was there this doesn't even have sound but this like again this upgrade thing yeah this is this is quite weird like uh you have like two million a month kind of Revenue on iips which is most probably more because of the S it's multiplier so let's say it's it's free fre million a month and then you have 50% ads so it's you earn 6 million right right you scale quite heavily in the

last month this is nice this is very nice this is very good and you have these like uh another you mini mini Bas I'm going to check how the event actually looks my guess is that there will be something simar yeah with the event yeah M it could be yeah but this is very nice like really creative in a way not that altered well not that altered exactly not that altered but it's it is to a certain extent y you have these upgrades like uh golden goblins uh anyway I wanted to say um this but we already saw it and then we have this again different music so uh yeah I wanted to say much quicker

moves rues most most probably well way way faster most probably also like spending a lot of money and you have five creatives which are basically the same and even the the playables looked like this it was just like nothing else and then again nothing else so yeah like this is basically it we saw everything man is it at least yeah I'll leave it for you when you give your Maven score well you'll be surprised they have clouds in the game by the way just think yeah this is this is how actually look at level 14 for instance yeah the T and the guy is going very fast yeah very fast but this like this crate is great and also the music is great and like everything basically but the thing is was there a tank there was a tank ah here oh yes thank you have a

t so yeah that's it that's it in terms of the creatives H but maybe mat rating is seven out of 10 let let me explain so appla is is not being the top spender here and the lack of creatives kind of leads me to think that they're actually using level play mediation maybe on the other hand uh there was almost no spend on on IR Source according to the external tools so again interesting fact was the the peak in downloads on like 5.1 million mainly on Android so I think if they were on Max we could see way different numbers meaning way different way better and also like quite the big spend on iOS which never happened so I but I believe that for everybody to else to decide and I I believe this game deserves more on the creative side and more spend on Google especially with hybrid R campaign on the other hand they must be doing

something right on Facebook since since it's like their top channel and they did get five million installs in one month so they might have cracked at Facebook even with these like very few uh Creative Concepts so I guess they are doing something really really right so I I guess they're doing this like old trick with sending ads Revenue in the purchase event but uh yeah I think a solid seven out of 10 which I changed uh last minute from from six to S actually but I also asked my new tool AI M to to get score to score UA Invasion U alen Invasion your AI that spelled Remo's name wrong yes yes exactly I need to fix that sorry sorry Remo but I I just I just asked like what's score would you give Alien Invasion UA oh Alien Invasion

UA the inter Galactic quest for users well my friend the score I would give it would depend on few factors are you targeting the right users are your ad creatives out of this world is your campaign optimization on point oh my God you see it's just not about score but how you play the game however if I give a general score I would shoot for the star and aim for solid nine out of 10 so I don't think I don't think this is this is right but most important thing is to continuously iterate experiment adapt to your us strategy blah blah blah can I just say that like this game has the fundamentals to be a [ __ ] rocket ship and From admon perspective just add like more Dynamic placements and play around with the rewards and to get more conversions yeah that would be like a rocket ship and yeah from the UA like we didn't give it very high scores but it's still doing so well like there's so much so much low hanging fruit it's

exciting it's very surprising that's the whole that's the whole rating here like from all of us I guess it's like the main team is UN untapped potential not that the game is bad it's it's bad just this a fun one to review like really fun one to review what are you talking like like we we we have pretty solid pretty big scores like yeah like compared to yours it's like compared to like my perfect Hotel like I'm like struggling hard to say how I can improve it but this one is just so clear what you need to do at least from the ex and it's making already so much money that's the thing yeah by the way here's the event how it looks like for instance is a Easter mon so there's like a new area where you have some kind of mechanic I don't know what's happening in the temperature here but yeah you actually go very fast if you if you know this is level 14 character so nice yeah okay okay perfect all right so I guess that's it so I will end this uh when I was at it I also asked uh AI M AI about two and a half Gamers podcast rating M from wish M

from wish M from it is M from wish it's M from wish so in terms of bribes if it's for you you needed two caps to talk good like does the AI just needs some of course I I yeah I trained the I trained the AI on on caps and uh what else feed them feed them more Capt t-shirts t-shirts t-shirts but uh look so mat I gave us solid 10 out of 10 no questions and saying we bring the fun the WID the brutally honest insights and all things gaming UA game design ad monetization and more it's like hanging out with your best buddies uh but without the lag so don't miss all the all the loves and Industry wisdom subscribe to our podcast join our slack Gaming Community and become a part of two and a half Gamers family so don't forget to subscribe to U

YouTube channel so I think uh it's the AI just took us home IFA took us home thank you very much cheers bye byee [Music] [Music] [Applause] a [Music]