💎​ ​Brilliant Sort review: The next Hexa Sort?

scale potential in this case. I would say like yeah I I don't see this getting more than like 100k per day whatever
I would be even more pessimistic of like
60 70k
like uh literally like hexasord style curve
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That's what we had. And uh hello everybody. Welcome to Two and a Half Gamers. It's your favorite expert again talking about Brilliant Sword. I hope so. Brilliant. Swords and another episode of a puzzle game which is you know this category is just bonanza. It's just going nuts. A lot of money.
Sword game to be specific.
Yes.
Swords. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.
Is what is Yako's favorites
and it's I mean it's growing quite nicely and there's a huge component.
No, I mean the revenue it's earning from just 50,000 DAU is really impressive.
Yeah. But it's like what like 50/50 split?
No. Oh no, it's way less than that, man. It's way more IP than that.
Really? Okay. Okay. I would say 50/50. Anyway, so yeah, welcome again. My name is Mat Lanchic.
I'm Felix Bberg.
I'm Yakub Sortara.

Oh, nice. Uh, we're your we are your hosts. Let's sort this out.
Yeah.
Oh, well done.
We go. Anyway, so yeah, finally we have a game from Triple Dot, uh, made by
Game. No, no, no. It's games,
which is known for Clock Maker, which is a hidden objects game, the first hidden objects game, which basically took on Wuga and June's Journey, right?
And added like ton of puzzle games into it, which is not really a hidden object game anymore.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, let's just go. But it's like I mean it's Belelka. It's a
triple. It's Belka Bela of course. Anyway, so this is one of those usual kind of on boardings where it starts with puzzles, no menu, no nothing. And after level X, I don't remember which one it actually unlocks the whole thing. So we have the basic shop. Nothing really to it. It works a little bit different than your usual puzzle game because you actually pay energy to go

into levels. And then there are these premium levels which you need to also pay soft currency just to enter them. And
that just screams UA. Look at these pictures. That's is UA this is a UA screams UA of course because there's lots of stuff that I guess you
there are some uh Yeah. Interesting interesting.
Yeah. Yeah. I guess we'll get to that point. Anyway, you add stuff into your gallery as you kind of complete it. You can still go and reply if you want. It's like, yeah, we'll see. There's the live ops bar on the top with stuff like daily tasks, with stuff like battle pass, stuff. [snorts] And by the way, battle pass, you unlock the possibility to watch an ad. So, so you want this booster from the free column from battle pass, you need to forge and add
or or or these 25 cards.
They're not They're pretty stingy. They're pretty stingy.
Super stingy. They're like extremely stingy. Like you want air like you want

to breathe. Yeah. 299.
Yeah. So that's how to buy some.
So how it actually plays other than I complete 18 more levels for gold rush. Thank you very much. I'm not going there because this game is one of those games that I was literally forcing myself to play because it's extremely hard on work.
There's no difficulty. There's no like balancing needed or whatever
is a giant chore. And I mean if I would compare this with something like screwdom or like some of the unscrew games which also is like similar pretty much like what what like
20 30 minute levels same same thing but there at least you need to strategize a little bit because you know like what's under this layer that layer you have the you know the the bench and stuff like that here
you also have the bench but the only thing you do is just you move stuff. So you go here and you do this. And by the

way, this is a premium level. So I have two rows of these. Otherwise, I will have just one row. And again, I need to buy those all the time for every single level just to make your life easier, which is 300 coins, which I didn't accumulate.
Show the boosters. Show the boosters cuz I used the boosters so quickly here to make my life easier.
Yeah. Complete any part of the picture. So let's say u you literally can drag this thing around and just say, "Okay, complete." and then it will switch randomly which honestly didn't really help you that much in the long term. It's just like a little bit of work. Then you have this which just clears out your uh bench and randomly, you know, just switch stuff around back
which sometimes is even worse because then it means you cannot move these giant collar
stacks and segments one by one.
I never used that one. It was too annoying. I was like no.
So it's like a trap booster actually. And then you have the magnet which does kind of the same. So, and now you're pretty much because my nice black area here is not black anymore and it's

completely segmented which means if I click here it's like it's just worse.
A good booster would have been autocomplete
because Yeah,
because the worst that can happen and it will eventually happen and it will always happen. You see like you have these like big blocks being kind of moved around and then you see that like I can do this and I can do that but eventually like you cannot like unload all of these things. So you need to compromise. So you go like okay I need to maybe take these yellow ones here and I need to take these ones and eventually you get to the point where you're doing this which is you moving one block at a time which is extremely painful for a picture that has like thousands. At least you have a mouse and you're doing it on emulator. I was doing it on a phone with my big ass thumbs. It's like you always miss.
Yeah. No, no, no. I can't imagine that I would be doing this on the phone.
And you can't zoom in. You can't zoom in either. It's just like uh
Yeah, you can zoom in. Oh, you can.

Okay. That would have helped a lot.
Yeah,
maybe you don't.
Uh but it doesn't matter on an emulator. It's still like lots of work. You're literally doing these small things around the place. And you know, even this level, it would take us like 20 minutes to complete even this thing.
It's called playing a game.
It's It's extremely painful and the whole game
because you can't minmax this
Yeah, you can minmax. It's just like chore. It's a chore and it will be a chore. Doesn't matter what you do. Doesn't matter what you buy. It's just a giant chore. Yes. And
you know it's this uh we had this effect and in game design we call this like cleaning your room or like effect of like putting stuff into the right place which is still very appealing to people because that's what you're basically doing here. Like again this color doesn't you know belong here. So we put it here. It's in its place. Nice feeling of me completing this and cleaning this and like basically like do you want to

work? Yes, you can do it here. Yeah. You better off be tiding your flat or whatever. Or like it's basically this, but you [snorts] need to pay for it. Of course, that that's that's
it's like when you play Sims and you're not building a house, but you're playing the story mode and you're realizing you're just going to work saving up and you're just living life.
Yeah.
It's life.
It's life.
So, yeah. Um Oh, cell survivor. Here we go. Old friend.
Yeah. Let me go out of this
to just show you some other stuff that they have here. So, as I said, when you complete these pictures, you have them in my gallery. You can go there and take like the energy. I didn't really consider the energy to be that big of a stopper or like you know, gating mechanism. Usually, you have lot of energy. I guess the biggest one why this is monetizing so well is the coins where as you see there, it's really expensive. So, for instance, let's say, let's take this one 20 energy. This will be really big. You see, like
I just want to jump out of the window.
Yeah. Yeah. I was like you you go there

here and then there's like nope.
Yeah. So it just takes a lot of time. It just [clears throat] takes a lot of time.
Don't do Yakob. Don't jump. You have a family. [laughter]
And you see we just have one row and like it cost 300 coins to just make our life better. Like that's it. Like again we can watch these coins and like
Yeah.
Yeah. Watch an ad.
Got 50 coins
for 50 coins which you can't use for anything, right? It's like
Yeah. So, you need to watch like 7,000 of these.
Monetization is perfect in like how it works. You can even skip the puzzles and unlock the level, which means you don't need to follow the order if you want to, you know, be high and mighty and want to kind of get this. By the way, let me just check how much it's actually in real money. So, it's something like €4 to skip that. Pretty much just saying, which still doesn't help you anyway. It's just like you can skip to this part and then you see like these other patterns that that you have there and you can play around and like do fancy

pictures. I think you you have the what is this? Yeah, you have the sizes of the pictures here with like small, medium, large.
I hope there's not Excel because that would like
I hope there is
really really kill me.
There is Excel.
Yeah, there we go. Yeah, Excel. Unlock the stage to access the premium level.
I didn't want to play that level. I'd rather not. But
yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. But I get that it's same as like I've seen this literally in the bookstore during Christmas that they're like coloring books for adults which just like it's calming. It's relaxing. You know what's happening. You don't think you're just, you know, stuck in in this autopilot mode of moving into the structured things. Structured things are great because you don't need to think about them.
Yeah. Exactly. You can turn off your brain.
Exactly. So I literally saw like Witcher coloring book or Lord of the Rings coloring book and like or selling like old cakes.
Yeah. I mean that kind of feeling gives me like a matching game or any any type of casual game like that's my brain not turning off at that point.

People like to to like stay in this kind of flow structure of game design of like being rewarded for structured task that is slowly competing and completing and not needing to think about them. This is like a very very good feeling to have basically. So yeah and this is the main kind of part of why this this goes into core gameplay. But they also have the daily pictures which are pretty much your daily challenge kind of equivalent that they have here. If you want you can go and watch an ad and skip that and see alien trying to eat our
you talk about Foundation as well by the way.
Yeah. Foundation. That's a series by the way.
Is this a Forex almost?
Yeah. Yeah. This this Foundation is an IP. It's a series of
of like a sci-fi
from our friends fun plus.
Yeah.
And this is also going pretty good. Not that good as survive, but still getting.
Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty.
We will talk about it. Definitely add it to our Forex collection eventually.
Yeah.
So,
although we have now a puzzle collection and you can get out of that if possible.

Oh,
you Well, no, you can. You have one more ad that's [laughter] coming.
One more is coming. Yeah. Thank you. Now is the longest end card that they do in Google. the longest.
I also also checked this game on review radar shopping.
I think this was the Forex one, wasn't it?
No, it wasn't a Forex.
Maybe
should be idle.
You never know.
You never know. Yeah, but like oh my god, like why is she Okay, whatever.
Anyway, so again, I unlocked that. I can now play it if I want to spend energy and just, you know, complete the puzzle. And if you have all these things, you can go and play XXL level
for 7 hours,
which again like that window is starting to look more and more appealing to me to jump out yet. [laughter]
I can imagine.
So yeah,
why does this work so well? Cuz it's like there's a lot of games like this. Yeah, that's working right now. So
yeah, define working. I mean it's it's

growing but it's never going to be pixel flow. Yeah, it's never going to be pixel flow because this is a very specific like niche type of gameplay. As I said, it's like this kind of flow state work chore that you do. It's literally like you have like Euro Truck Simulator or Farming Simulator. There's like people riding in Euro Truck Simulator for 4 hours. That's it.
Yeah.
So, somebody just likes this kind of game.
You had a famous painting right there by the way.
Yeah, there are fun. Where was he?
Yeah, he was. He was there. Here, here he is. Yeah, I think there was also Mona Lisa I saw somewhere.
Yes, there she is.
But faceless.
Yeah,
as well. That's the usual thing we we seen with the with this whole kind of UGC style levels where same goes for pixel flow. Same goes for all these vulras whatever kind of 3D objects things. So, I wouldn't be surprised if we find like

home somewhere. numbers. Yep. Numbers. So, IP wise hitting something like K started scaling from start of the year. So, pretty fast and downloads wise there was this big jump into countries
which is driven by US incidentally
25k and the rest is just pretty much everybody
but it's tier one. It's not
well like most probably. What? Can you check if it's if it's iOS? If it's iOS, then it's just day game of the day. Just apps.
Let's do apps.
No, no, this is
creative driven.
Oh, hello. Hello there. I didn't see you. Thank you very much for coming to this episode. Uh, it's brought to you by our sponsors, PVX Partners, the simplest and most effective credit line for marketing. If you're scaling your business uh and need funding, here's the

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DAU is again I guess because of the
super small super small which is why the ad revenue is going to be really small but you know as a percentage.
Yeah. Interesting.
Yeah. And downloads wise, yeah, we covered that. So to say,
I was actually thinking like why are we even covering this? But it say it's recalibrated. I think it recalibrated. It
looked better, right? Was higher. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was it looked
I would not put a game that's not 33k a

day, which is our Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
So it did the the 1 mil revenue anyway in the last let's say what some days.
But it didn't scale. I don't think so. This this is this is
what what what do you think is the scale potential in this case? I would say like
yeah I I don't see this getting more than like 100k per day.
I would be even more pessimistic of like
60 70k like uh literally like hexasord style curve without
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Revenue Hexor scale up and then like
Okay, fair. Okay,
let's see. Again, the game play is extremely, you know, I don't want to say boring, but is this kind of a chore kind of a mentality which is just not appealing mass market. Like people wants to have more fun than this. Like it's literally like knitting like you know you could go knitting like some people like that.
Yeah, of course. I it would help millions of people.
It would help you calm down if you if you start.
Yeah, of course. You too. I'm I already knit. I already knit for years. [laughter]
It's not working.
Yeah, I know. I know. I know.
Knit me anything. M. If you knit for years and you've never given me

anything,
what do what do you want? Like what do you mean? You were like, "Hey, what what's the ad revenue? Come on." Like it's like 3,000 a day.
It's 3,000 a day.
It's really small.
Thank you very much.
The main ad placement though that they do is exactly the Hexaort one. So if you actually close and open the game as well, then you get the rewarded app open interstitial. So basically that's a good way of monetizing uh these puzzle games because essentially when you go out cuz you usually have like three or four sessions per day cuz you do one and then you come back you monetize basically the app open uh and that's usually the best way to monetize this but basically since it's th000 users a day
it's not going to be a lot of ad revenue right so the ad revenue is about 20% but as you know when it's this small scale it kind of puts everything out of whack from ad revenue perspective. Yeah, but also
not very big right now.
If we just go here, it's like their like impression kind of share of networks. It's pretty much appl every everywhere, which I can understand why.

A triple do own game scaling on Applovin. I
never seeing this. Yeah,
what a surprise. What a surprise. So, but it's actually like an interesting set of different kind of videos. So, what In altered game play, it's one minute.
Completely altered because you will never have five rows.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter]
But see, I mean, again, it's one minute long.
Yeah. The amount of coins you need for that to happen.
Yeah. And see, I mean, and this is
never this smooth. Never.
Yeah. It never of course. Like, of course, it's never this smooth.
True fake advertising.
The first time I've seen Yakob upset over fake advertising. This is so painful to go block by block completing these pictures. I know.
Oh, see what satisfying feel.
It's easy because they're just two colors. Of course.
Yeah, but even even these two colors, I can't even do anything with them. That's that's the main problem. Look, I I can't

even see. I mean, brilliant sword. Like, it's it's brilliant. I clicked seven times and I didn't move.
Jesus Christ. Oh boy. Oh boy. So yeah,
again, two colors, three colors.
Yes. Okay.
I mean, this needs to be easy, right?
Yeah. Not like the game.
Not like the game. No, not at all. Not at all. Okay. I see. But now I need to click here and click here. So it's scripted. I don't I can't click anywhere else. Okay.
Yeah. Because otherwise you would see the true scale of your suffering.
The true scale. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And that's that's it. I mean, it's it's gameplay, right? So, oh my god, this looks great.
Is that beaver? Please jump into the cells.
See, I mean, this is so satisfying. It's really satisfying cuz now it's off. Okay, it's you know what reminds me
this is coloring again completely.
But from from down up like you know it's

like it's actually moving. So again, altered game play. Where did we see this before with pixel flow from?
It's not even altered gameplay. This is fake game play.
Ah, I know. I know. You're so sad. But look, this is a Jeez. I mean,
the Einstein right there.
I know. I know. I know. So
AI.
This is AI. This is complet. This is 100% AI.
Raunting families instead of freezing families.
Yes. Look. See, this is how you This is how you color this
Yeah. That's That's the true fake game play.
Yeah. Look. Oh, yeah. We can fix everything here. Let's Let's go in another room.
For a tool like that, you actually use to fix trash.
Trash. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it it usually works well in creatives. You need to watch more more ads to be able to just, you know, clean.
Watch more ads than your home.
Yeah. Home will improve.
Yeah. Here is Einstein, which is amazing, actually. And I can I mean, this is exactly what what Pixel needs. See,

thank you very much. Oh, that's it. By the way, you see that? You see what's happening in the creative?
It's a mouse.
That's my mouse. You idiot.
That's my mouse.
Wow, that was [laughter] really funny. Thank you for that, Yakub. I've had a cold for a couple days, but now you put a joy in my face. That was great. Thank you. I wish I was in Slovakia so I could give you a hug. so traumatized by going block by block with these levels.
I'm not sure if I if this is I think this is even better than the like Felix referencing Banju Kazoui in the the other episode as as
Yeah, the stink eye Yakub gave me. He's like what?
10th most played game on N64. How do you not know this? Oh okay. But see like this is all the Einsteines and what not like this is also like interesting uh

concept which is quite complex actually. I was looking at like what's happening. It's pretty much multiple things that you need to do here. Okay. And then just put all these colors again.
No. This is a video. This is a video.
Is this glitter or what is he doing?
Like he's trying to do all like the part of this. Oh hello. Now I need to
Man, these guys are great with UA. This is a great UA. Yeah.
And you have triple dot, Bela, and Applav in combination. Like what else do you need? Give me this.
You want expertise? What's the
expertise? Yeah. Yeah. That's monkey. Here's like some
imagine super bear adventure with UA.
Yeah. See? Oh, this looks
Come on. Like that was great. I mean, the Google dinosaur. The Google connection dinosaur. Yep. Yep. Yep. Here we have all like other stuff as well. So I mean see they have so many different concepts. It's perfect. What is this

cat?
I don't know. Anyway, so we have
yeah avocado like so many different players.
So I told my boss I made a [music] playable app with Playable Maker and he said to me, "What language did you code it in?" And I said, "I don't know. with Playable Maker. All you do is drag, [music] drop, click, and it does it all for you. So again, he said, "What language did you want to make it in?" I went, "I don't [music] know, English." At the end of the day, as long as a playable maker does it all for you, why do you care? [music] It's just like magic.
It's the same thing that we saw before.
Yeah. I mean, like, if if you scroll down, uh,
you know what? We can do something else. I mean, I can just go here. By the way, thousand creatives already.
Yeah. And it's pretty much all uploading. See here. See? Okay. So, we have Einstein videos. They're running some Facebook stuff as well. Oh,
there's your hand instead of a mouse.
There's my hand. Yeah. Yeah, there's my hand
for sure. For sure.
I would like to see your finger being as

big as one block, Mr. Hobbit.
Come on. I mean, it's like a baby hand.
Baby hand. That's me. That's pretty.
So, basically playing the plasma TV if you would need to scale.
Yeah. Yeah. The the giant TV creative. The giant TV creative. That's That's exactly what you need to be playing. See, but even even on on Facebook, they have so much stuff. Tap and hold. Sure. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. That's a That's a great hook.
Yeah, that's a great hook. I like how it speeds up so you don't need to wait. But this was the the screen picture.
Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. We have Look, look. I mean just and amazing. This looks like a Oh, that this must be
That's a
That's a hook.
Oh, wow.
That's nice.
That's really nice transition, man. Like it's So yeah, they have so many different things like this. So yeah,

pretty good look and never ending pretty much. So it's it's 400 creatives only on Facebook. So,
I'm still quite surprised that they go for conventional art rather than a little bit more IP.
I really see Homer Simpsons.
Yeah, Homer Simpson. Yeah, not really.
You just see conventional art like Fangog, Mona Lisa, whatever.
Maybe if we go here and check the demo if there is some. It's 36 7. Yeah. So mean
I guess you can't really do a picture of JLo that would be
that easy to recognize.
Yeah, exactly. Right. So it's and it's 80% female and 36 average. So I guess you need to go for that conventional art to be relevant to the audience. And JLo would look like

J look like crap on this do it
pretty much. Yeah, you can't really do anything there. So
could also work.
Actually that's true. Actually that's true. So again we have so many of these let's say new creatives only in last 30 days 500.
Mhm.
So this is this is going to yeah this is going to go definitely up. The question then is what's the actual ceiling which I think is what like yeah the 60 70k. So I would say they need more of these on their account just to make it like a business case. guess that they also need a little bit more boost in the game play because I don't know like just maybe the difficulty of this I would just balance a little bit different. So there's like
what do you mean like the balance differently?
Because you can do like more of these like monochromatic pictures in the beginning so you don't get stuck immediately like in fourth or fifth picture where it's like block by block once you get to the point that you literally need to go block by block. It's so so slow and slow. Oh, you've

scrolling on the floor.
Yeah. So if you look at you look at Bela right now it's pretty much the most downloaded game is brilliant sword they have color cube match sword puzzle again and then this is what clock master I guess right
and train of hope survive there so let's see what is
the most money maker this clock clock master
no the clock but there's the color cube match which is
bottom is pictures
oo variable Seems like iteration of this.
Yeah, kind of.
I see also blocks.
Yeah. Okay. So, they have already this I mean Yeah. Okay. So, it's like few of these games and they're making the same amount of money. If you look at this here. Okay. So, in last 30 days, 200k both. Yeah. Okay. So, if if they keep pushing these out, then it might be quite meaningful revenue.

Yeah. Let's see. Definitely interesting concept and we see more and more of these like choreog like games happening.
Is this that is that the the future of the sword category?
No to go against merch man like I want another pixel flow or whatever that kind of goes and like
maybe we will wait for that for another five years
man. Chinese pixel flow comes around once every you know five years. It's like
Chinese pixel flow is coming in a year. I'm guessing that
but it's not going to be as successful as
Pixel. It's going to be iteration. This is this won't work as merch like like you just copy merge and like you know
undercut people on live ops or acquisition process. You will need iteration like heavy iteration. We're still not there.
Like this is the engine and it works like people are still figuring out the engine itself. Merge already figured out the engine.
Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Fair. Yeah. I mean flam based scaling like there's no tomorrow.
Yeah.
So I mean yeah kudos to that. Okay. So, Chinese pixel hall next year. Okay,

we'll see. We'll see. So, that's it. Thank you very much, guys, for coming. Uh, hope you enjoyed the episode. Uh, join the Slack channel, comment under the video, and subscribe. We need your subscriptions. Thank you very much. See you later. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. Ciao.