✈️ Epic Plane Evolution: The $150K/day Hypercasual comeback

How much the game so big? Wow. Okay.
For such a
This is a hyper casual game. This is hybrid.
Hyper casual. Straight up.
Yeah, this is straight up hyper casual and he's making 100k downloads a day.
Yeah, it's a throwback. It's just like nice, but I don't think they expected it to scale this well.
No, I think that like uh JK was was talking about it in his uh in his newsletter like they changed the pricing by 300%. I mean,
just makes more money.
Yeah, exactly. It just makes more money. [Music]
We're the two and a half gamers. The midnight crew talking UA advers and game design too. Mat Felix Shak bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early day master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Felix stacks colors like a wizard in disguise. Jack lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey sick

got your back. Ads are beautiful. They like the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Aha. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome. This is another episode of how to stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry. We are talking about epic plane evolution.
My name is Matthew Lancherich.
I'm Felix Robert.
And I'm Yakubier.
And
we are
your
host hosts.
Why you're delayed?
We should just do it all together. I don't know. Or just I don't know. Make it part of our theme song.
You mean AI song? AI song. That's going to be difficult, but actually there's 11 laps which is now able to create music

as well.
So,
we can do it.
We can try to do it. So, epic plane evolution. We were talking about this type of game with Adam Teler and Steam ahead episode.
Yeah.
Actually, you
I wouldn't say called it. I mean you mentioned this game as a trend and as a trend but also mentioned epic plane evolution from voodoo like that's there is actually a game already and it was quite small and now it's a little bit bigger than that and by little meaning it actually passed the the threshold so it appears on podcast
it's actually epic
I mean the game is really annoying to be honest
for you all
for me no but not not
how far did you get
not vulner annoying. I still have the first plane. At least I have
two rockets. Yeah, the cartoon plane. But at least with uh with both wings. I

hate it so much.
I'm on the second plane, the toy plane, and I'm almost about to pass it. So, my plane is on level 46. I played this for hours.
Did you get out of the window?
What?
Did you get out of the window?
This what I'm doing right now.
Okay. I'm already on world three.
Oh, nice. How? What do you mean how?
How long? Okay. Wait, wait. Real question. How long? Well, can you show the game play? How long before you figured out you could steer the plane?
Well, yeah.
Like two worlds.
Yeah. Took me so long to figure out that you could steer the plane.
I mean, I was I found out I can do it in the world one, but I couldn't possibly steer the plane like in the direction that I want.
So, the problem is
I don't think that counts. I don't think that counts.
Yeah. Let's start. Let's start gameplay first.
So, epic plan evolution. We already start.
Yeah. Yeah.
Epic plan evolution. Uh it's actually very similar to initial build of mob control where you would just have these like three upgrade parameters and that's it. Then you would just have levels. We

don't have levels, we have worlds in this case and we have this shitty planes that are very hard to control and can wreck literally on anything. And basically what happens you start with like a just a centerpiece of the plane even without the wings.
It was so unintuitive and confused like what I'm doing. I'm launching the centerpiece and just immediately goes down and crashes.
You know why?
Why?
Because basically between every time you crash, you watch an interstitial ad and if you watch one reward, double your coins.
Not uh immediately.
I I think I I got both wings and the tail and then interstitials came in.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But but it would be super annoying if like from the in because literally what what happens after is you get this first wing and you know what it does? it crashes to the right. That's just the only difference because a plane with one wings is like as as useless as plane without any wings. So then you got two wings and without the tail, you still do this.

Anyway, once you figured this out, so there's the slingshot mechanic that you have and you also upgrade the slingshot as you saw there. You upgrade the plane, you upgrade the currency generation after the fall or whatever. By the way, I don't know why, but at some point it sticks energy into it. I think you don't second. Yeah, second level
because before I could just like, you know, throw it in. I guess it would be very either because I think it's a big monetization moment cuz you're kind of into it when you get to that point and then you can watch a rewarding ad to get one life or you can wait like 16 minutes. So, you either put it down or you come back or you buy it, right? So what you do again, you slingshot the plane there and as the plane goes, you see the the movement and then you try to kind of stabilize it. So it it goes constant speed. But the problem is that my plane is still without the propeller here because again it says from scratch. But for instance, in the second world or first world, I

was able to kind of steer it in a way that it stabilizes actually picking up speed and just flying straight. That that's like it can happen if you know what to do. You can't go back and play another level, right? And show us or can you? Or
can Oh, let's see. Anyway, this is the base reward that doubling the crash money. Let's just call it crash money.
Crash money.
So, that's there. You see, I'm still very far ahead from the actual goal. And there comes the interstitial.
There we go.
Calm down, bro. There we go. This is not a fake.
It's not a fake, but it's We didn't see this one.
We didn't see it. the night pick up phones.
So why do we laugh? Because we talked about it in the creation episode.
Yeah.
Which was already
which you already see on the channel by this time.
Exactly.
Yeah. Link here. Anyway, once you again I got some currency so I can upgrade this rog light. At some point you can unlock these rockets which

was the booster that I did which I couldn't because ads weren't working for me first hour.
No gems. So basically in startups gems until it gets to a certain level and then it switches to rewarded ads.
No it's rewarded ads for me always too.
No for me. No no for me. Really gems only. Yeah. Because because you're Android. It was gems for iOS.
On Android don't have gems. It took so long to me to figure out that I actually could buy rockets because I was like, I used all my gems to upgrade stuff. So, yeah.
I don't even have gems in the economy. There's no gems in the Android build.
I'm not you.
Really?
Do you see any gems here?
No, you skip it.
Yeah, there are no gems in the Android build. Do you have hard currency there?
Oh, wow.
There are gems. Yeah.
Yeah. You know why? Because Android people don't have money.
Yeah,
that's really good case. By the way, we we should look at this closer.

Closer.
I think the the revenue here if we go apps. Yeah, it's like 86%.
Yeah. Yeah. There's no point to look at revenue. Just look at a daily active user because this is pretty much a hyper casual game.
Yeah. Yeah. I know it's
but it's still it's 50/50 but like majority of the revenue is coming from iOS.
Yeah, because IP revenue IP revenue that
IP IP revenue but yeah let's see. Anyway, let me finish the the very short rundown because there aren't really that many features in the game. I was actually expecting more.
Explain the energy systems.
Yeah, so at some point they slap energy system on you. So you have a limited amount of thrive basically which we're going to use. So again another attempt maybe let's stabilize the plane again or no. You can't really stabilize the plane without the lean back. Lean back. Lean back. Lean back. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Exactly.
I'm missing parts here. So
yeah, exactly. If you don't have the full plane, it's just Yeah. Nothing happens.
Another king shot. Oh, there we go. I knew it. CSD pickup phones. So good.
Yeah, I only have I only have uh pizza ready at nothing else. Also, have you seen like this great uploading ad which instead of X button, it just says open
It's literally for me it says like Google Play.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because you're cheap.
New trend.
Cheap.
Yeah. So, as I said, there's the progression with universe one. You start with cardboard plane, toy plane, vintage plane. You increasing kilometers per hour, I guess, on max speed, but you can't really feel it because it seems that they're going the same speed. Don't really know. Just increasing numbers. Can I go back to my cardboard plane? I can't feel I don't think possible. I I would lock it myself. I will be the

developer. Why go back? You should go forward because you need to watch ads. So, yeah. So, let's use the last ticket. you upgrading these for instance what happens is that if I upgrade this one and this one and this one there's an upgrade upgrade
free
which is actually
you have a gem on iOS you have a gem there
okay so for this this is the best upgrade cost per money efficiency because you see I I'm getting like 40k with rewarded at per per jump this would be what like basically just just for just for this so you can do this um you know Let me just reuse the last shot and we'll see if they throw an ad on me afterwards.
Rocket.
Yeah.
Best friend. You're done here.
It's just very very hard especially with these like shaky planes.
Yeah. Shitty planes.
Yeah. Interest again.
Yeah.

No interstitial. I I hit the limit
anyway. So what happens now?
No, no, there's no limit. Basically, if you watch a rewarded odd
run after you're out of tickets here.
Okay. Tap to close. Oh, that's interesting.
You can do that.
It lets you slingshot, but you can actually
That's nice. Okay. And that's the game. Like, it's Thank you much for listening.
Like, it's like one of those old games on Flash that you remember like throwing yetis or whatever was there like you know the more you fly the better. and and that's it. Because what what this does is that you eventually upgrade your plane to the point that you raise to the end of the level. You pass this kind of a whatever like finish screen and then they double your income, raise the economy basically, which means you don't get double anything because everything just gets so much more expensive and start from scratch with just a plane that's like two wheels or whatever like unusable. Exactly. Which is annoying.

Which is really annoying.
Yeah. But you do watch a lot of ads when you play this, right? The main one is they utilize this position that I call like convert or die, right? So if you don't watch the the rewarded ad after any run, right? And every run is between anywhere between 20 to 30 seconds regarding progression. That's that's the thing.
Yeah, exactly. So if you watch the rewarded ad, the run after you don't get chucked on with an interstitial. So there's some sort of cool down which is run
but essentially according to sensor tower the game play here is on average 13 minutes per day.
I can't I don't see I don't see this
I don't see it.
It's so annoying when you don't have the full
I like this game like yeah I liked it because like it pushes forward short like I put it down a bit quicker than like No, I kept it longer just cuz we're going to cover it, right? One of the main things that stuck out to me is like why don't they have like meta rewards for watching so many rewarded ads to

even slime
style. Exactly.
Yeah.
Because that's the main thing cuz after a while you're like why am I watching these just to get 40k to get the second grade out of five.
So I was just thinking like if they had something cool that you could design or like do tricks after you watch a certain amount amount of ads that's really good. Which leads me to think I don't think Voodoo expected this to take off the way it did. I think this is a complete surprise to them because they know these things and they've done so in other games, right? So, I think this is a very unexpected pleasant surprise for them, but unexpected because they're earning a lot of ad revenue. Uh I'm estimating 10 rewarded ads on 60% very low eCPM. Yeah. And I'm in like also estimating around 11 interstitial ads on 90% of the user base cuz you have to watch to progress.
That's pretty good.

Yeah. So I think this game right now is earning about 150 140k a day in ad revenue. So 80 to 84% is ad revenue.
How much? 150k.
Yeah.
So big. Wow.
Okay. for such a simple.
This is a hyper casual game. This is not hybrid. This is hyper casual. Straight up. Yeah.
Yeah. This is straight up hyper casual and it's making 100k downloads a day.
Yeah. It's a throwback. It's just like nice, but I don't think they expected it to scale this well.
No, I think that like uh Jake was was talking about it in his uh in his newsletter like they changed the pricing by 300%. I mean,
just makes more money.
Yeah, exactly. It just makes more money.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's it. Like that was the like that was the biggest change. It's like it's insane.
Yeah. Cool. So, I would add the meta thing for rewards for watching a lot of rewarded ads to basically make it a bit more interesting. Yeah. What would you do? Would you add like

I don't know some depth
events meta for sure.
I would add events that would give you more stuff even cosmetics or whatever stuff like that. But there's no incentive to like do other things.
Mob controlled it. don't want to mop control it, man. Mop controls went full midcore.
So,
gotcha and like
so you can
we want to preserve the hyper casualness to to have the you know the easibility. Therefore, we need mechanics from casual games which are the royal match meta.
Okay, fair.
So, we need to offload the complexity onto the events.
So, they complexity for us. Well, not events only, but like stuff that's kind of easy to digest for people that aren't really into gachas and midcore and like heavy simulations and stuff like that. Because let's say if you go world four to five, it's basically the same. Where do I have it? Yes, here I have it. Sorry. So, this is this is world four or

whatever. So, literally just like shooting a commercial liner.
Yeah.
Which is amazing. Yeah,
that's quite fun. Yeah, but this one you can actually building.
Yeah,
I think he'll avoid it. Uh, so there we go. But you see how like uh at some point like a skill skill kicks in.
Yeah, sure. I can see I can see
be able to control the plane, not lose speed and da da da da da da da all these other things. So, I don't know if you
There's actually a lot of lot of the like plane evolution videos on YouTube.
Yeah, I'm sure.
Oh, you get to world cleared. Yeah. So, this is what happens. Doubles your income. Claim. Great. He's already gold bricks. Seems like some old build of a game. There we go. This is 9 months old. So, this is definitely old. But you'll see you see where where it

gets you like you get some kind of a shitty
you want to see what it progresses and what kind what kind of upgrades you get.
So you upgrade the plane first, not the slingshot. That that's also like the the idea. This is how it starts as a new level. Like 200 m is all you can do. Goodbye.
Exactly. Yeah. And that's that's what's annoys me the most.
Yeah.
The hard reset of this
because you world are you in?
You literally lose all the maneuverability. you lose all the speed and like
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Just doing this for like 20 minutes until you get enough money to actually upgrade the plane.
Yeah. That's what's Yeah, that's why I was like, "No, I mean I already lost my life for all. I'm not losing any any other years." That's that's also make one fun like remark here on like the sad state of that is currently eCPMs for banner because basically in the last 18 months banner eCPMs have gone from low to super low and the main reason for

this is basically max enabling 5second refresh rate on banners which has tanked eCPMs.
Really? Do you want to know how much this game would earn every day if it added banners?
This explains why they don't have banners, right?
300
grand a day.
Grand a day to their 150k. Wow.
650 on the video stuff.
You don't I'm seeing
what? Oh my god, that's so bad. So well when my app's like, "Hey, we got 5second refresh rates." I'm like, "Okay." And then it's just like,
"So banners are basically useless by now." Yeah. Okay.
Oh man, I know you were talking about, "Oh my god, banners are making so much money."
That was 18 months ago, man. Like

anymore, not anymore. Not anymore. Okay, it makes all the sense.
Let's look a little bit more scientific on this. So, I actually found a competitor called Flight Challenge. Build a plane which uh makes
Yeah, there's actually merge.
Oo,
merge gameplay on Twitter.
Wait, wait, wait. Look at active users cuz this is 85% ad revenue based. Let's see if this is
I know. I know. I know. I'm just saying like it's it's like interesting iteration. Uh this is this is not that big. It's it's already passed. It's like uh prime basically. This was last year, September actually.
Active users.
Yeah, I know. It'll be man.
Half a mill. We're still making a lot of money.
Not bad.
Yeah, not that much.
How long before we see a Vietnam clone?
You You see the
No, the the country filter here.
Yeah. Yeah. 7.
Yeah. Yeah.
Still a couple of thousands should be.
So, some more data here along the way.

If you look at this category, this is actually called arcade driving. Yeah, arcade driving.
Arcade driving. Sure.
Then if you go by downloads, there's traffic rider by Sky Games, which I don't even know what this
What is this? How did we miss this?
Yeah, Traffic Rider, which means first person riding a bike, which makes uh quarter a million downloads a day. So we can
I bet you it's all India.
Almost probably.
Wow. Before it was doing like a 9y old game.
Yeah, that's why I was like it's quite old game.
Active users hitting record levels of active users.
What is this?
How did I miss this? I guess it's too old to pick it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pakistan.
All these driving games, all these driving games are getting baked in India.
So that's there.

That's why we didn't go.
Then there's hill climbing racing. Of course, friendsoft. They're still there with their most u you know famous arcade driver. Dr. Driving by Suit. I don't know what's that.
Doesn't matter.
Did you read my newsletter? It was in my newsletter a month ago. How dare you?
I didn't read that. Epic plane evolution on fourth spot climber sync 2 and then some other basically like I guess 90% of this is either bikes or cars I would guess. So yeah and if you go to actual revenue numbers oh there's medkills motocross 3. Yeah,
if you go to actual revenue numbers, Hill Climb Racing 2,
Epic Plane Evolution in the second spot, then Hill Clive Racing one, Bike Race by Wildlife Studios, and then we have Tool Borilla, Motocross 3
doesn't mean anything. These are all admonetized games. It means zero.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's there. But Fingersoft makes

a lot of money on on IP. It's million.
Yeah, it's million a month. which is not bad obviously but for the company
they're probably making what like five from ads so yeah
so I'm really curious how this whole thing will play out now because essentially what happened here is that you know you have a base to create another mob control pretty much but again as I would say don't go midcore please just like add more features into it
yeah please meta for the ads like oh my god give me some rewards for watching my 30 rewarded ads
would work pretty well because Again, you already have the three parameters right there in the main menu. Like, you know, one one would be slingshot, power, plane, whatever speed, something power, and income upgrade right there. Like, it's quite easy to create. Same goes for the rocket boosters or whatever you have there. So, yeah. Let's see.
I think it's I think it's time for another spring offensive.

I think so as well. things so as well because we're looking at these games and I'm wondering like they're making some IIP money and majority of that money is coming from US. So if you're if you want to make more money in US you should call Fastr because this episode is brought to you by Fastring our dear sponsors the no drama DTOC partner that's been scaling with mobile publishers over 20 years. They're fast growing, profitable, and seriously reliable, which is more than you can save for most other D2C vendors. Whether you're launching a new web store, replacing your current D2C setup, or adding a new uh or adding a backup plan, a Fastpring is there for you. Check them out fastpring.gg and launch a new web shop easily. That's fastpring. And when you reach out to them, say, "Ask for the spring offensive discount." And they might be surprised because I just made it up.

They will be definitely very surprised. Or say a code name spring that came here really fast. Okay. Okay.
Like checking what are the other thing, but there's literally like no other features there.
No, no, no. There is not
like Okay. Oh, VIP. There's VIP.
VIP.
Yeah, but this is old, man. I don't think that's
This is one month ago.
Okay.
So, there's VIP, which is I mean, you go to send sensor tower. Oh,
you mean the purchases?
Yeah. Yeah, the purchases. And then check it out
if it's there. Yeah, it should be there. If it's month ago, then it definitely should be there.
PIP 10 gems remove at

VIP last one week. So, the subscription. Okay,
I guess they unlock it too late for it to make a dent.
It's too late.
And keep in mind that all of these like gems purchases are completely non-existent on Android.
Yeah. On Android. Yeah, exactly. Which is only on iOS. That's why it makes so much more money on iOS.
And why is that, Jakob? Why don't they give in my gems?
Well, I think it's pretty clear you wouldn't make any purchase at all, which fits into their Android landscape. And I know exactly why you have an Android phone. Because you're a cheap
I don't have an Android phone. I have an Android emulator,
which is even worse. That's even worse.
Let's take a look at the UA strategy. I want to see planes flying in creatives.
Well, what do you think we're going to see?

Like, that's a real question.
Hyper casual gameplay. Hyper casual creatives.
Oh
This really reminds me of 2021. It's really nice.
This is even sooner. Really?
No Yes.
Wow. Wow.
I mean, but the thing is like
creat Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course, like it it doesn't make the logo on the left screens mob control.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I actually learned how I can fly and steer the plane in the greatest.
No way. Yes. Really?
It took me so long to work out I could steer the plane. And I'm like,
"Yeah, yeah, but the thing is like I can't steer the plane when it's not kind of fully built.
It doesn't make any sense."
But yeah, here we go. And it's the same creative all over again.
Like it's quite clever.
One minute. One.

No, they have a fighter jet.
No, they don't.
See, this is the part you start this.
Yeah, this is Yeah, exactly. This one fighter jet
one mink up.
This is the toy level. The second level.
And here we have two. But still here like Yeah. Look this. Yeah.
This is
Such a big But I mean the gates creative actually here. It really fits. It really fits well. It really fits well. But this you can't really plain.
You can't really plane. I I see that.
Yeah. You can't really play. It's like this when it's you have
Minecraft really. Yeah, you have Minecraft obviously.
Of course. Want to steal as much IP as possible.
Yeah, I remember this.
I mean, let's be honest, a UA can feel like that's why Lambda is a game

changer. You plug it in your MLV and boom within an hour you can get clean benchmarkation insights and even a forecast of whether you are actually ready for funding. Uh no fluff just real answers 100% free. Go to PVX/ Lambda and get your strategy on point all the benchmarks sites pvxman.com/la. Even if you know if you can't fly the plane like me
like the person who was doing the creatives.
Oh man. Yeah, of course. I mean maybe it was me or maybe it was you. It was also like this. See
Mhm.
actual actual gates in the game.
This stuff reminds me a bit of that boom bit game when you're racing boats down a jump. What's it called? Boat jump or something like that. Yeah,
it was a car car jump ramp jumping. Car

ramp jumping and then everything jump ramp jumping.
All the different Yeah, it's like man. Yeah, all of it. Yeah.
Yeah, all of it. I mean, Gonzo was showing this to us. It's exactly the same. Not the same concept, but very similar.
Let's see. I mean, this is it basically. So, this is all you get.
They just have gates creative and then
Oh, yeah. gates and gameplay shitty shitty not being able to control the playing creative.
Yeah, which is like it's super annoying, right? So
that's it.
Yeah, pretty much. We have that Apple.
Do you think there's any truth to what I thought was happening or that shouldn't be an excuse anymore because it's been around for so long now?
What do you mean?
You mean their game?
But they didn't expect this to be
Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, no, 100%. I think they didn't expect this.
It's 2 years old. more than two years old.
But it started scaling in November, right?
It started scaling. Yeah.

And even play the the play. Look, it's just
Oh, it doesn't even load.
Yeah, that's kind of hard. That's all.
Well, that was nice.
Well, that was nice. But I don't think it's any any like the game.
Yeah, this is fake.
Oh no, at least it's low poly.
Low poly fake.
Low poly fake. Yes.
Yeah. Oh, that's pretty much Yeah. Draw your ramp. Okay, let's see. I'm really curious if this will follow the same path as all in hole where like voodoo will have the ad game and somebody figures out the IP game and stole is right in front of their eyes.
I came I came is going to come in and be like yo
yo I think that's going to happen.

Yeah,
but Vietnam will copy this for sure. I
I heard you I heard you like playing so I made a plane game with loads of IPs on it. Just think about it like it's not that hard to actually put into an IP thread to treadmill like you can do this.
Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah. I mean, would you think like still like the Vietnamese would just bother with this
if it's having so much?
It's making money, man. It's it's like
I mean it is. Yeah.
The run rate 10 million in a year. Like that's the run rate right now if it keeps going.
Yeah. Four games, right?
Yeah. This is like a week's job for them or two weeks max, you know? You mean 3 days?
Yeah. Okay. Three days and take doesn't take me that much that much work to do.
I think so as well. Okay.
Our hardest part is basically level design of those locations. So it's at least a little bit interesting.
This is this AI. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
It's the same creative uh

word like the font. Oh
man. Why would you put a head on on this anyway? So yeah, that's it pretty much.
I'm starting to really think now that like somebody will stole not stole this but basically iterated this in the bigger game.
Well, now after the episode definitely.
Yeah. Yeah. Sending guys sending hearts everybody.
Shout out to Voodoo for keeping Hyper Casual alive. This is great to see.
It's great to see. It's still up there. Okay. So, dear listeners, please comment under the video. Share any ideas for the episode you might have. We most probably won't do it immediately, but we'll put it in the into the backlog because I mean like we will put it into the backlog because we have some plan. Thank you for an idea. Thank you for idea. Well, not do it immediately.
No, because Yeah. Like people are asking like, "Hey, do this next next episode." Well, I mean,

no. No, unfortunately we can't do it, but we will put it into the into the plan and we will eventually do it. So, thank you. Yes, please keep coming.
Oh, we we eventually do like a lot of lot of episodes we were actually fan fan inspired or fan like uh people pointed us to the right game, but it's just that a lot of lot of things are being done even though you don't know. But we pre-record these at some point, especially now during the summer. So, it's not that flexible.
Who cares? Who cares?
No one listens to this part anyway. So,
exactly. Yeah,
if you're still listening. Thank you.
Yeah, if you're still here, thank you very much. See you next time. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]