Blossom Sort Game Review: Exploring the Future of casual games

this is doing something around uh 60k a day in IP Revenue was soft lunch last year's July downloads wise it's slowly scanning up to something like 25k a day which isn't much but again because this is sword category which is basically nearing slowly and more slowly towards casual puzzle which is very expensive this is still very big number and then if you go to what wait yeah [Music] wait this is a no [ __ ] gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail powered by our ad monetization game design and user acquisition Triple Threat expertise welcome to the two and a half Gamers the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles

let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry of course new tool s of tower AI okay hello hello hello hello welcome welcome again my name is mat I'm Felix bber are your host and we are going to talk about Blossom sword today and why are we talking about it because it's interesting case again it's interesting case an interesting company coming from where China China China slow yeah it has all the all the keywords and then the sketch phrases that we useed before that's a nice segment uh are you watching this in China or

Vietnam or turkey or perhaps a Russian speaking country don't worry two and a half Gamers has you covered scroll down to the bottom press subtitles and we will translate what we're saying for you because we at two and a half Gamers know that some of our listeners are not in englishspeaking GEOS now let's get back to this amazing content we really need to do it like like the GTA y c advertisements in the it literally sounds like that this this is amazing why yeah it's like Korean I forgot Korean we also do Korean Korean as yeah not so many not so many people know that your previous job was subtitle salesman subtitle salesman just be for sale for subtitle subtitles anyone subtit

side titles uh yeah by the way um we good that you mentioned Korea we are going to be in South Korea in early January because we have um an event with airbridge molco and szor Tower and by the time we are there we also have and get this our dear listeners and friends from South Korea we will have a South Korean Channel with translated and DED uh content so it's gonna be there we I will post it don't worry yeah hopefully everything works out in South Korea until then everything works out which reminds me I need to book the hotel because I still need to do it okay enough share share the screen on why we're talking about this and start with revenue and active user base because I was blown away uh by this game when I first started looking at I can't believe this is happening I can see you're blown away you are blow away I think you're in correction

F it's great okay so let's start with the downloads um no no no it's why are we doing this again like our listeners said we should play the game first and then show the numbers no I want to do I want to do the revenue because it's crazy it's crazy I know but he's on level people are driving million fine okay I know let's do it let's do the numbers now yeah so uh why are we talking talking about these kind of games so few conditions needs to be met very interesting Design This is not something we have seen before this is not something that's like direct copy one to one or something something so there's interesting flowers game design let me finish produ iteration the numbers prove it meaning that we see increasing numbers even though they can be small the trend line is overall very very positive like the slow hocky sck that you see here and then usually

there's some kind of like additional USB some kind of factor like quc being suggested by someone or there's uh very good reasons why this is working as it is or crazy metrics like Felix will probably talk about and so on so forth so there we go Revenue wise as for the blossom sort yep what no it's just a Jr blip ah Jr blip yeah usual subliminal messaging it is best yeah of course so this is doing something around uh 60k a day in IP Revenue was soft lunch last year's July downloads wise it's slowly scanning up to something like 25k a day which isn't much but again because this is sword category which is basically nearing slowly and more slowly towards casual puzzle which is very expensive this is still very big number and then if you

countries countries countries countries sorry countries as usual countries important this 65% of Revenue is coming from us and then 15% from Japan nothing no revenue revenue downloads is 21% against 10% and then comes the tier three tier two countries still so um Jesus Christ yeah if we go yeah that's the same B yeah if we go to active users that's what we wanted to go around 2 10K let's say by now which is still constantly increasing uh again us Japan being on top and they're tier two tier three countries so that's there I don't even see like where's tier one like UK is here South Korea's here they're not pushing on UA I me just spending money in us not much Europe it seems yeah yeah

yeah go down you mean uh yes go to active user base or or what these are active users yeah so 83,000 active users that are driving crazy high I it's it's nuts it's it's incredible um if we go to revenue I think we should be able to see rpu which is what like yeah arow is something like nearly $2 and the revenue per download is I see that see the line there like yeah us wise is like $6 it's like super high so very very good monetization um do we want to see retention I know time don't don't think it's going to be there

uh yeah it's there not that good it seems like 7% day 30 I would expect more could also be wrong I think it is more yeah more I think probably sadness multiplayer appli here anyway let's go to the actual game so oh really fin prod wise what do you see here already from the first look Royal match Royal match M exactly Sal stuff on the right engagement stuff on the left as usual battle pass in the top so this is becoming a very very clear pattern these days uh feature-wise also stuff like collectible album which is already here where you can see uh yeah they're following like the very very kind of a tried and tested metag game system for for casual level based Games events wise yeah as usual very short timer very pushy very aggressive

win with other players being matched against you then we have uh yeah Guardians scavenger had again very similar setup with again random players match against you are competing against some kind of a top price on a short timer and the last one it's I guess we'll get to it during the B some kind of new unlock feature uh yeah decoration wise or let's say the the the visual meta wise Style it's again one of those um building not really restoring what why is it even there there needs to be some visualization of progress moving from A to B it's still like needs to be there what I'm saying is that there's only one round down room kind of the thing that you can get rid of in the first step and that's it so this is again following the the the thing that we were talking with Royal match in Royal Kingdom that there's no more restoration it's just building plim building on clean slate yeah because you don't need then double

the assets yeah but you don't really build almost anything in here or you you decorate orate I did two things because I'm not the target audience for decorating I hate decorating so I mean it's kind of nice but yeah yeah okay fair enough we're not the target audience right we're playing this for the podcast not because I want to play it yeah okay I mean I kind of like it it was quite easy you have skinny fingers I have fat fingers which means that I always selected the wrong flower it's super frustrating I can imagine I can imagine yeah whatever um yeah so you see like this is the the usual like there's nothing really kind of new to this whatever yeah uh after you finish the room I guess it resets and then it goes into another room because this is room one and uh yeah I don't think so we have yeah the flower shop and blah blah blah rooms unlocked so forth interesting part

is that these uh what's this these other uh Journeys and gems I guess that's some more kind of level progression like what decorational items you can use in the decoration meta but whatever uh yeah let's get to the game play this is important so right out of the bed there's a streak mechanic which is really good which gives you uh three boosters immediately on start of a level if you keep it up of course there's PR selection boosters it already kind of pushes you towards that event that's running currently so you see the progress of the randomly selected players that are fighting against you AB the fake how I script of course everything's scripted that's for sure okay uh so it's a sword game which means we're matching stuff together that's the same but uh compared to other sword games that are especially in like water sword and all these other

sword kind of genres uh this has actually much more lenient condition so we can move stuff around actually so this is a little bit more similar to something like match 3D where you can pick up stuff and then move it like pretty much match it on the bench but we don't even have the bench that that's really interesting so the the super super kind of a relaxing part about this that there are pretty much not that many wrong moves but they are wrong moves and you can break your level that that's the problem that never happened to me in the early game the difficult is very easy let's say but for for instance if I if I just do stupid moves like for instance unhide other flowers like the ones that are behind oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so you you block yourself Bas I can block myself and break my level so in the beginning you need to think at least a little bit because there are mechanics there are for instance there was this ice by the way in the level you can watch the ad and break the ice

then there are these Wes which contains flowers which you don't see and you need to kind of take them by order and then yeah as you see I can just take any flowers that I want and move them around doesn't matter and just match them in a trial somewhere in like an empty spot and then it pretty much goes to me being able to kind of move all these things the levels are time based only and you can still prolong that but one one more minute so as I said it's very very relaxing and late it's super super satisfying and relaxing yeah it's just yeah it's very calm you just sort the the flowers it's really I mean I enjoyed yeah you work your way to like through the level pretty much there's not much kind of pressure as I said there are few mechanics I've seen few levels being uh marked as hard it's hard but didn't feel like hard yeah didn't like it's really hard to even build difficulty within this setup so most of the difficulty there is is that just a like all moving stuff takes so much also those flowers

some of them look very similar yeah that's by design of course yeah and I was first I was I really didn't really get those numbers on the on the vases as well like what the numbers and then I uncovered the the the another layer of flowers like ah okay now I get now I get it I felt really stupid yeah so you see for I need to like unhide these different flowers behind the other flowers to be able to even match them so for instance now we want to kind of match one from the way here I'm so jealous you're playing with a mouse and not my fat finger yeah this is definitely much better it helps it helps for sure one of the most frustrating things me was just like yeah with my fingers always yeah it's hard like we even the match three game match 3D games are much more comfortable emulator yeah yeah because

easily we it's yeah it's uh while you play uh at least you can talk actually if it is even though it gets a little little bit uh hard from time to time I was looking at the kind of the the the board like what what should I do I don't see I don't see any moves they like oh wait a second there's the red rose and slightly different roll again it's like ah okay sometimes you need to literally move the whole combo somewhere El exactly just to uncover the flowers from behind yeah to uncover the flowers so they can like finish the other matches that are waiting for you somewhere yeah that's there you go you didn't help yourself ah you did I did no worries yeah it's fine okay so um so I think we uh we said this because I it's the

company is coming from China I feel like you want to talk about the Chinese background uh or just wait until yaku finishes the the level well I can I can show you because basically I had to look at the adabs txt files right when I was doing the the ads uh so basically it's under two Studios so like it's smart imagine and it's under zero maze studio and let me show you the website of smart imagined it's kind of funny so give me the screen for a second just finish the level let me just finish the level and um there we go as I said quite comaling and quite easy uh right off the bat when you finish the level there's always a choice to watch an advertisement to multiply the soft currency the Santa Claus is the event currency for the battle pass and then this like rainbow currency that's the decoration currency yeah so if I don't watch that then

ital intertial nice because and I didn't see the interstitial by the way and I haven't watched any yet so 16 level 16 is when they come I'm level 17 and I didn't see it so yeah and uh what okay there go I'm getting spammed by white out survival uh playables through this the the the worst ones because the ones that you need to click on the store otherwise the x button is not clickable I don't know why but this is bus right yeah or something like that yeah I think like there's like 20 of those games out there already yeah and then then pretty much the like the cycle continues you again get some resources all of these kind of events get reinforced again which means play play play again on the main Saga so you can compete or get some rewards on these short timers and then you move on forward in the in the meantime when Felix shows the website please play the

level 29 so so you you actually get to level 30 so we know what's the last feature that's know happening yeah so uh let me show you here so this is smart imagins website it's the privacy policy but then the contact us the contact us the contact site is1 163.com which is this okay so I I don't know what 163 is but you know yeah let me translated you know looks like a new site uh couldn't be translated so yeah looks like a new site in Chinese so definitely a Chinese company and then on uh Android uh it's smart imagined and on iOS it's zero ma studio and zero ma Studio essentially has the adaps txt file that's exactly the same as smart imagine.com once is is actually the real website but yeah so here and you can see

that they have a cat trip which is a agava games uh rip aava games yeah Beauty makeover car Jam yeah everything and a nice Outlook there's definitely like some weird stuff going but the main important thing is that uh how you check this is basically you go to one of the direct sources so like the Google one here is direct you can do a command find and then the direct and then if you go to the smart imagin this is a different web ads txt file go find and then it's still the same so it's the same company so they're getting paid to the same SP which is this so it's definitely one company and they're definitely Chinese so yeah beautiful I mean I really like that now we're doing Panama paper style investigations yeah but Chinese companies is like you have to scoop through the layers no one knows what's going on and I don't know why they do it like this but like yeah there must be a

reason I mean usually Chinese companies have like HQ in Singapore anyway uh outside of China so and you know they go they go quite uh creative with the names and and companies and everything so there you go but I I watched one ad and the first thing I asked before before the recording are these Chinese like feeling like yes yes 100% so I I there was one second that I was one ad like wow okay so I know I I knew immediately so I will be testing you guys my dear co-host uh but the the trend kind of goes with some ad monetization trends that we saw when we did the ad monetization episodes that ad monetization is being pushed later and later if you have a lot of Ip revenue and this game has primarily iip Revenue so ad Revenue I estimate to be 20 7% uh because the Dau is still kind of

low but basically the the ads really start increasing after you play for a while uh so I estimated interstitials to be about four or five uh but on like a 60% ad viewer rate because they come so late rewarded ads five on 55% and then banners about 80 because they also come quite late but the interesting thing is here is that they've managed to get so much I AP revenue from so few users it's uh quite impressive so yeah and it's not really it's not really pushy I mean I wasn't really I maybe it just comes later down the line but it's comes later with these level B meta works like that yes I know I know but honestly I had that pain point of kind of uh trying to to pay or just finish the level in Royal match quite early Royal Kingdom Royal Kingdom because Ro kingdom is not much yeah sorry yeah yeah well my main pain Point

here was I don't like this game and I didn't like playing it because all the misclicks so I was using so many boosters to use the hammer basically if you share your screen again yako wouldn't show the hammer yob there the rumor has it that the the retention of Royal match and Royal Kingdom is exactly the same really yeah who did you hear that from I'm not surprised those games look like on the surface level kind kind of the same yeah pig that's there oh yeah so hard level oh there you go perfect how it actually looks use the hammer yes so so it's seven minutes eight okay you see what happened here they lower the amount of free space so I can break myself much faster that's yeah we need to we need to leave yakob some space so she he doesn't really talk and he can focus on on the

play time and playing the game because you know the listeners you you remember hammers you have seven hammers use seven Hummers I want to see the booster I'll use when I need them yeah come on how to play casual games use all the boosters yeah there you go easy Wow have you played the game [Laughter] Felix God I was just trying to get to levels to see the ads right and then it was just like God fair enough yeah yeah fair enough but I you you see it's it's almost all the time yeah yeah yeah also this is very is this is terrible game for men we don't see we don't see so many so many colors So Many Colors yeah so many colors it's just uh there you go well done yob so yeah well done well done uh yeah okay we'll see yeah that's yeah that's the one you have on the left

hand side great I okay should be in few seconds but it's super nice iteration regarding the Sorting genre basically it is it is the only thing I didn't really enjoy that much this because I yeah the flowers doesn't really don't really resonate with me that much the only thing I want to say on the ads as well is uh the banner ads I think they're on a super low refresh rate so basically either they have a really long waterfall because you can see even here like since we started playing the game it's been two minutes and it's still in the same Banner ad same so yeah something is definitely going on there on their mediation side that they should probably take a look at but probably what they have done yeah is probably what they've done is that they have too many placements in the waterfall for banners and they just need to remove a bunch of placements that are not filling over 1% and uh yeah

work with them because then you have less latency uh I kind of I think I just um I think when I was playing I saw the the banner ads after level what 14 but maybe I was blind before was it from the very beginning no uh level 11 comes later yeah it come it came later okay overt of Flink Loops what is this dude this game it's and they what their strategy is because I I've had to ban them like eight times with the clients so they started with a game they started they started with a game called Plinko and then I banned it and then the same game came up under plunko and then now it's over taking of flinko loop flinko so it's just like this is the this is the eighth one I see and what did do is like it's complete gaming and gambling

and then they just do fake creatives and then when they get banned they just re-upload it under like a new name and it's just yeah and is it the new company or just new game a new game the same yeah I think it's both like it's just nuts oh my God okay Plinko yeah flinko yeah hilarious they must to be having a great yeah yeah more words endless blossom this is what I think clear them clear this same thing thisas oh wow oo hexa sword kind of oh no no you need to do line match yeah that's super interesting so there's actually a different core in it yeah wow so again coming back to the and yeah that's very

nice kind of goes with the saying the merge the matching mechanic hasn't been innovated on yeah reminds me one thing which I'm going to show you in five minutes it's in the creatives of course isn't it um everything is UA that's why they everything is UA man yes everything is UA I didn't want to say anything but I U life UA is live yeah this is for sure UA I I really LED vasos question yesterday during the AMA like why do you think people the match uh 3D games or well not the triple match CD they are doing the black and white find the cat types of creatives besides the CPI well there's no no other way it's only because of CPI is nothing else all right I want to see some UA creatives now because this is quite interesting but uh let's see some let

him finish let him finish because it's it's actually moves to do yeah yeah look and he a yeah you you potentially yeah think think think think okay good a easy you have six no whatever on the right hand side yeah there's all looking there oh he did it he did it Well Done even with us hassling that's really good very oh SL oh my go play it play super bger ra cooking what happened now B bom yeah you can you can play 30 30day pass remaining chances yeah yeah you look rewards it's completing reward so they basically add the second game mode on level yeah pretty much four stats okay oh no there is not the second game mode so they add a second game mode

and a calendar Challenge and calendar yeah yeah play please yeah challenge typical one see 2 minutes 30 2 minutes 30 yeah o now it okay so now it gets interesting what happens if those you move the bombs are you moving no no no the bombs the bombs go off with every single match single yeah and if they are together oh my God this is great well match more I want to see what happens with the bombs yeah you need to mat oh yeah yeah and every match it's yeah it's sticking the Bob is sticking okay otherwise they would destroy the flowers and break your level probably most probably you very interesting very see see they have very good IP Revenue because they have a lot of interesting mechanics mechanics is everything with level based game well no UA is everything what are you

talking u u is even more no but the combination which is deadly it's just that this is what ad monetizations game design and UA together right it's just a triple instead of silent but deadly fake but deadly no it's not fake you just played you just you just play what I talking about come on let's see the U no no look look look look look look look so watch this and tell me what do you see brain TR again this Mind Trick Mind Trick but how did I see this is a Chinese company tell me uh Alzheimer it's no look is AI no guys you you don't you don't listen oh the oh they have the The

Watermark yes exactly that's so clever yes why don't chines company every Chinese company has because they steal their creatives over there much much frequently this is the trick so you see every Chinese company exactly because you you push the creatives out you go take you get the coffee and then you go back and then 10 other compan just copied your ads just not not even copy just just stole it and then just run it on your on their account but exactly so but honestly I just I was also this hook Last Christmas I was diagnosed with I mean wow just this is the IQ hook on steroids basically IQ hook on stero exactly yeah yeah and look so sword cures Alzheimer's OB obvious yes of course so this is the second that this is the second core exct yeah yeah yeah I mean

they do a lot of great stuff on the creative side actually because I'm I'm just showing you Facebook they have uh obviously app and some other other stuff we'll get to that but this is exactly it so it's it's all you can you can imagine all the cute stuff but again this is is mainly uh the the second core I I wonder if this is is if this has better cpis than the actual sword I would say the otherwise and of course decoration uh looks exactly like a redor ad yeah I was I was working with with few decoration games and the CPI were quite low for decoration so I can I can understand like why they're doing this how much I would so I know I don't know like 20 20% I think maybe but game was the game was about decoration so I couldn't really show

anything else game screens everywhere yeah but you know it's they they're still one step behind because they they don't have the best the beston exactly so they they have some some interesting stuff marble cake yeah marble cake and the watermark it's there and nail polish finger well that's the thing nail polish is very important don't forget yeah don't forget about it's very very important this also like the music you know you can you can't hear it because your ears probably yeah explode but again hello all of this where did you see it yeah all match 3D games basically so and also yeah also that one yeah the Shelf the Shelf background is goes Master basically for the Shelf anyway uh it's oh AR is just sending

me text messages he he's using Sora now so it's it's gonna be most probably very interesting is he Ai No No but did did you read the text yeah so cures Alzheimer it also cures the dog no no no grandma sent me sent me her dog so she can she can focus on playing Blossom sort Jesus ah this is brilliant is I love like there's some like there's some like office space in ch and these guys are like H Alzheimer's Alzheimer no like but you again this is all it needs to be you remember the grand mind the creatives the old good old great old lady which was just like on all the Crea out there Obi and Obi style creatives yeah it's

just insane there's this dog and free to download like it's not no as but it's free to download like what what is I don't know man anyway so it's it's all of these and this is all on Facebook again nail polish really really really uh nice music and then calf on top but of course butterflies everything it's very slow it really you know there's no timers nothing so you actually enjoy watching this you want to play this because you want to relax and you know embark on the vibrant Journey whatever that means and we have also there go also the water sort because why why not so all of these and you know uh have have counted like the number of different creatives we we just six one already exactly a lot of different

concept and that's that's beautiful so that's uh this is why they can um grow so so quickly not so quickly but they can go like steadily from from where they were before and they just still growing because this is they have 61 pages on of Facebook only ah there you go what is this there we go so they have all of it all of them matching P pyramid yeah they're yeah match Factory pyramid they know what they're doing I'm really positively surprised uh like a checklist with some yeah exactly yeah yeah so so which the impression story all over again we need new creatives how many of Concepts all of them all of all the concepts everybody's winning yes how many Concepts yes yes I think y you mentioned it when when we discussed that like what's the the the

brief for the creatives it's usually check competitors take all all their creatives they ran last week make them let's let's produce all of E Yeah like what's like what's the brief like do this every everything oops is also uh coming from from the different uh 1 games and match 3D kind of games it's stacking game yeah sorting game what is it called good swords or whatever it's called they flowers being threatened by snake or by Rock no no no no no I didn't see any any that could be actually interesting no only seniors in Al I don't want to see her again oh my God no no don't worry oh don't worry don't worry H we're going to go to actually you know outside of Facebook because they're running like majority of the stuff is uplo in in unity and and up in unity and guess what it's all all playables like first first page is all

playables really nice music I feel oh and and there's a guitar in the in the background oh my God this is beautiful I really enjoy continue download so there you go another one it's look it's just so many do you think this game play is completely new and they innovate it or did they steal it from someone what do you think what do you mean new I think it's quite new like think think of it as let's say water sort so so they they uh removed one of the main rules which is you can only connect the Sorting pieces onto the same pieces which is broken here because you can move the flowers anywhere you want there just needs to be space that that's the main principle so it gives you a

much more easier time and much harder for the level designed to create difficulty actually but because they are now doing with the timer it creates the difficulty basically itself like that that's what I'm saying like with all of these other like new sorting games probably will'll just see them being on a timer still the problem is if you break your level you don't know you breaked it and won't tell you and then you just like being clicking for the rest of the time but it's still like up to 3 minutes but for the like rela wow what's this whoa salimy balloons it's like but nobody cares like this is yeah this is great yeah here somebody had an LSD idea LSD for seniors that's perfect no like it's cures Alzheimer for sure man I see myself playing that game that

doesn't exist but basically I would have two fat fingers to do anything yeah and I'm also really liking that there's no bench for the flowers or anything like additional inventory or something it's just that you just need to kind of manually move them around that that that's it which is the like I think the source of this kind of calmic thing because you yeah exactly like that's that's like one of the main motivations like like this like cleaning up the room thing it's it's very common everybody wants to do it it's just like very calming very satisfying and it's very structured that that's why it's so good yeah it's uh it's really nice it's really really nice I can see why is this uh doing so well and I can also see why is this coming from China I mean yeah ah next next year it's going to be um you know what we are just deconstructing games where they base the

company CH China like what's happening in China this this this month this year Vietnam but but I mean like looking at their portfolio the company portfolio you can see that they are just you know following kind of a latest trends and trying to innovate and this is pretty much the one that actually made it so this is not like one time something it's just that they were doing this again it's still hard work it is yeah of course so oh nice I need to start uh I need to start wrapping up unfortunately of course oh like we I I'm done uh I showed you everything everything I wanted like light light episodes for today me light episode it's just it's it's already 40 minutes and we discussed everything that that we needed to discuss we don't really need to like record 4 Hour always so it's okay just got into the long

episodes yeah I think like it's an very interesting case very interesting case similar to something like we saw with like triple match City again these very Innovative level based puzzle genre kind of setups that are kind of trying to storm in in and the category these are way more prepared for scaling yeah because of the creative work and the the the channels you know like the first AG of the all the old cred were just playables if we saw five different playables seriously and this is not even that that like big of a scale it's what like one and one and a half million or something in the last couple of days or three days so it's it's growing and it's going to grow uh after Christmas and early next year for sure because they the the setup they have at the moment it suggests that they can grow quite quickly after the all the Christmas is is done and that's that's my prediction

by the way for for next year that sword category is going to be disrupted very heavily then solit category Sol watch solit and you'll see similarly how Domino was candy has a Sol I know I know I know so that one and then Hidden Object yeah yeah all right so yeah I think that's it thank you very much for listening uh go and check the three hour long episode uh which which we did with matre it's definitely worth it um please subscribe comment on the YouTube uh and also share read our subtitles friends yeah check the subtitles and see you next time join the slack Channel as well bye-bye byebye [Music] [Music] [Applause]

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