Full Steam Ahead: How Steam trends influence Mobile games?

The honestly the best thing of this is just doing it with your friends. Like that that's what made it for me, right? It was like all of us jumping together. So it's almost like a Roblox game where you just come together but now you're running your little Stardew Valley. Yeah. So So this is this is I said this is released March 24th already. 170K reviews 98% first 30 days for 4,700 units sold. It's rolling dice with making those coins designs worlds chasing the sky with the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA advers and game design too mate feel bringing the insight we're rocking those vibes till the early day master eyes on the prize tracking data through the cyerspace skies stacks colors like a wizard in disguise jack to the Two and a half gamers talking smack.

Slow hockey sick got your back. Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Full steam [Music] ahead. Do it. I need a guy. I need to get a whip. Hello everybody. This is another episode of Two and a Half Gamers. Although today it's almost like three and a half gamers. It's we have a special guest. Before we introduce the guest, my name is Matelanchic. I'm Felix Braber. And [Music] I'm sorry. The whole thing is ruined. Okay, that's fine. Don't worry. Yeah, Adam. I just wanted to add myself right to the end of it. I'm actually also excited you didn't say I was another

half. Just turned it into three games. Hey, there's nothing wrong with being a half. Come on, keep telling me. We already have two halves and this Yeah, we have one. So, thank you very much for coming, Adam. So, we are your hosts and we have a special guest and today we're going to talk about Steam, which Yakob said we'll steam ahead. Why are we talking about it? because we already talked about few games and then afterwards we found out they got inspired heavily by other Steam games and this is something that's coming to mobile quite a lot. So yeah Jakob do it. We should Adam Adam Adam let let Adam let Adam introduce himself. He's got this Yeah. Yeah. Adam let finish and you can you can go into the Does anybody want to know who I am? Yeah, of course they want. No worries. Yeah. I don't know. I'm Adam. I'm I have been in PC console for a while. I've been in mobile for a while. Obviously, I know all you guys for quite a while. Previously, I was at Bungie previously to that. I was at WB also at Wuga back in the day. And I met you guys through Pixel Federation

way back in the day when I started consulting. And then you guys thought, you know, you could probably do better than this and did better than me and went off consulting. It was great. I was like, so now I've been watching from afar. You guys killing it from a side and have been a huge fan of the channel for a while. It's great great to be here. Yeah. Thank you very much for coming. I was thinking about it and I think we we wanted to have you on the podcast since the episode 10 pretty much. We're now what? Episode like 300. Yeah. I we stopped counting. Yeah. Fine. Finally. I feel like the world has had enough of me by now by this point. No, but look, so I think we wanted to have you on because every time we listen to you, you actually made sense and you know that's a good bar. That's always a good bar for a podcast. Exactly. It's always the wise wise voice and also we love you. So come on. Is it good? Thanks for coming. Great to meet you guys. This is great. Thank you very much for listening this three minutes of chit chatting and then Okay. All No,

seriously. Let's let's let's do it. Yeah, let's let's do it. 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 deal with PVX Partners, you can grow your game easily and your business. There's no equity dilution. You can repay as you get paid and it's flexible and fully tailored to your growth. So, you can secure funding in 30 days and get a term sheet in just 24 hours. Don't you wait. Take control of your UA budget without giving away uh a piece of your company. Visit pvxpartners.com and uh see how they can help you grow your game faster and stronger. Don't wait. Go to pvxpartners.com. And while you have you here, uh we also want to thank your sponsors, vibe.com, because this episode is brought to you by them as well. They

can help you grow your brand on CTV ads. Uh, with Vibe, you can launch high impact campaigns across top streaming platforms like Hulu, Roku, Tubi, and whatever else. I mean, all from one simple dashboard. We don't have all of these in Europe. Anyway, so, uh, it's built for brand all size. It's rated on 4.8 out of five on G2 for a reason. Join over 5,000 marketing teams already scaling with streaming TV. Visit vibe.com to get started. That's vibe.co. go join them and thank you very much for joining us for this special episode. Now, let's get back to it. Thank you. But so, as Matthew said, we've seen more and more games being done on the store or being successful on the mobile stores that are later that we that we learn or we learn directly that they are pretty much going from Steam directly, not iteration, inspiration, whatever. Sometimes even blatant ripoffs. So, that that's what happening. One example for

all that we can start to kind of look at and pretty much get a little bit of a example which isn't even that successful but just tells you what we're talking about is Falworld's release that was last year January 19 when it took pretty much world by storm and everybody was talking about that this is the game that's pretty much characterized by the slogan Pokemon with guns Pokemon itself is in lawsuit with them active one so that still hasn't finished up and later down the line actually the game turns into a Pokemon sweat shop because all these guys are pretty much survival crafting loop and they're sweating for your factory and stuff like that. But nevertheless, the game still needs heavy work done. It's in early access and it sold on the estimate that we have here uh 16 million units which is a lot and the estimated earnings is pretty much 500 million just from Steam. But if I understand there's

more because there's console uh numbers that we're not seeing here. I I think that 60 includes console cuz that's also like Xbox the game pass when it came out on Game Pass and then it and then it came to PlayStation later on um and still did very well on PlayStation. Okay. Okay. So that's there. Yeah. So this happened and then at some point later this happened which is pretty dear listeners if you're not not watching this on YouTube go to YouTube because this is especially important you will be able to see all those Spotify video works as well but YouTube is better. Yeah. So we have Lillet the guys which were actually at some point really owning the forex market with Rise of Kingdoms and and all their games but not anymore. Yeah that was quite some time ago. Oh, come on. Yeah, quenced time ago. And it seems that they use Fal World to their like entry into this new generation of Forexes where you have the fake on boarding and all these other things. The game actually starts as Dream Dale. Dream Dale. Yeah, it's a

dream. It's literally Dream Dale. If I can go here into the into the like actual Dream Dale loop. So, you you start as you would see like the character would be chopping down trees, catching things. You see those resource requirements here as you're unlocking the land. It's literally Dreamell. At some point you get this pony Pokemon or whatever which ponies as much as unicorn. Yeah, much which which lets you go out and then you can actually play it as a Forex game because suddenly you upgrading stuff from from the distance and like everything is a Forex. It turns into Forex. somewhere here later there's this uh whatever was it some scanner feature our usual where we get the quest system and everything and I think it freezes now on or doesn't just capture do they have a Pokédex in here cuz I kind of want to just like look through about how close to a lot of suit they are they have encyclopedia but I'm unfortunately this is the problem with this game that it's still crashing on me it's you know it's a problem if with your emulator

just play on the phone I played it on the phone I I got here on the phone, but on the emulator, you know, can't play all these games without the emulators. That's just not possible. You have So, you go on on like there's two battle loops. One is the typical AFK arena style one when you have five Falmons against an enemy, which is the usual one. And then you have the capture one. This is I won't go there because it freezes, but pretty much you go in, you summon your guys, and you have this kind of laser beam, and you catch it, catch the Pokemon, whatever guy that you get there. But after all, of course, it turns into a usual Forex map. So that's So what are you trying to say? Because you just said million things and I'm lost. So what I'm saying is that we see already that they took the Power World on boarding setup, translated into Dream Dell and put it behind their before their forex. But the thing is that it seems it didn't really work out because the numbers as of January this year, it's like 37K a day scale. And now they

seems to be tinkering something. So back to 30K from April. But again, this seems to be going nowhere. Yeah. Especially you see like this is a UA attempt. This is a UA attempt. Goodbye. Yeah. So just saying that these things don't always work out like copy everything from Steam and it suddenly work out. Like for instance, the supermarket manager simulator which we saw that like there were multiple games that were working out very well or the dreamy room game that we seen lately on the podcast which was taken from the unpacking game from actually 2021. That also work out pretty well. What was it? Ekame or Abby? Abby. Abby was it? Yeah. By the way, you know what that graph reminds me of the start of it? What? Star Wars Hunters. Yeah, that that looks like Star Wars out there. Can you name the shape though? Can we please come up with an animal for this shape though? Lonely Wall Street Wall Street 1929

unicorn. Yeah, there you go. But like what do you think actually broke this game? Cuz from my perspective, this this should be an outlier, right? You've got one of the strongest Steam games uh out there in terms of units sold. I think it like from watching this, this is a pretty competent 4X and I think even like to start the game in all their ads, they even did the first few seconds of POW World, right? What you had like a literal copy of the the the monsters overlooking you, right? Even the the monsters themselves. I think here's your Palmanac. So you see the monsters here. This there's your Pokedex basically. They don't have that many. Like it looks pretty good to me. So I'm just wondering like is it actually that they didn't figure out the 4x? like is the forex is not strong enough. Yeah, I think their forex part is not that great as its last war on survival. I think I think the problem is that from my side there's not enough PAL world even to begin with because there's so

much more Dreamdale and survival mechanics that there aren't even that many battles and like the capturing and because this thing is actually much more closer than Frozen City gacha style thing where of course there are few of these battles where you capture the stuff but most of those are your usual like AFK Arena style 5v5 auto battles in But do you think that if somebody did like an authentic version of Power World for mobile, then it would actually perform better than than this twist towards 4X? Let's let's just say that last time I talked to our friend Lemon, I've seen multiple games that are following the PAL world example of like catching familiars or like some kind of creature mechanic and they are much more focused on the creatures themselves and roaming around the world actually. I think because these guys kind of extract it very very fast and throw it like this is literally this stage is like in 30 minutes you get here. Yeah. So like

maybe maybe actually adding more of the power world loop here. So you can actually go that's the thing because that's also the strong point of all those white out survival kingshot and all these other games the onboarding loop of that initial game sticks. You're still playing it. You don't completely I think it's like what? Like half of the day or a day of play time. Not like 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You don't get to unfold to Forex part that fast. It's like I was trying to get there and like ah I won't be able to get there because I just had one day like literally 30 minutes you're here. So I guess yeah less Dreamdale more PAL world probably. But I I would still focus more on like exploring the world or like going around into this more because this is this turns into factory so fast. It's it's literally Dream Del. It's just dream one one. Do you have any Steam games that did make it on mobile? Not today. Not today that we think we're going to make it on mobile. That's why we're here.

Full steam ahead. Let's start with the big big guns. So shed one shed I which one is it? So one. Yeah. So this game is basically um all the low resolution version of Breaking Bad if I understand. Pretty much you building up your drug selling empire. This is going to be so big on mobile. Have you Have you guys Have you guys played this? Have you guys played this? It is actually insanely fun. Really? Yeah. It's It's really really fun. The way I'd actually describe it is it's Stardew with buds. There you go. Okay. Yeah. As in like both literally and literally. You play Stardew with friends and you also plant buds. But yeah, no, it's it's it's actually super fun. It's it's like the systems of Stardew, but you can actually run around with your friends and obviously with the

whole theme of Breaking Bad. Yeah. Damn. If it's going to be Butts and and The Breaking Bad, it's going to have some limitations on the on the UA side of things because I know there was what was the the Canadian studio. Oh, you need more meth in this or leaderly? Less less. I mean, you need less meth. Less. Yes. Less meth. Yeah. The studio you're thinking about is Lerly. No. Eight games. They did all the weed games underly. Okay, baby. Yeah. And yeah, that that was really a problem I think on the UA side of things. You can't really run a lot of UA on weed everywhere. Okay, so we got to I don't know what I don't know what you do with this if you can't do the whole can use drugs. I you should be able to use drugs there like weed wars or whatever like these other games. I mean it is there. I I'm not saying it's not. It's just it's a little bit it was a little bit problematic. It's tricky. Yeah, it's tricky. So you think risking the risking the team

because I guess then fantasy falls apart. It needs to be about like drug selling stuff. Yeah. I mean it needs to be about drug selling but I would say this is going to get more organics than than a lot of like [ __ ] me. This is so cool. How many how many hours have you played this game Adam? Maybe four or five. Not like not that long, but it's long enough that basically long enough. But I I would say like this is a little bit close to that supermarket manager simulator. Like first person you have this, you know, upgrades of things and and like similar art style and everything. Stoned immediately like those red eyes. The honestly the best thing of this is just doing it with your friends. Like that that's what made it for me, right? It was like all of us jumping together. So it's almost like a Roblox game where you just come together Mhm. But now you're running your little Stardew Valley Stardew Valley. So, so this is this is I said this is released uh March

24th already 170K reviews, 98% first 30 days around 4,700 units sold. So yeah, this is the breakout hit of Q1 on Steam if I understand the biggest one. I already found, by the way, one uh there copy. God, I love mobile. There's no shame in mobile. Yeah. Yeah, of course. But this was taken down, of course. This is just like, you know, assets flip or some kind of whatever. I wonder if they just took the screenshots from PC and just like added icons. Yeah, it could be. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know. It's a mcraft or whatever. But yeah, this one removed already. So, we're still waiting for someone to do it properly. But uh yeah, that's my guess that this is this is in the making definitely if if like the manage supermarket manager simulators went good this should it was like it was like month one month between the steam and then the mobile game come on we can do better we can do better than this month is too fast I mean this

already like five five games in China like this I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure just open V chat yeah we need to we need to talk to heaven like hey can you can you actually send me some some links so we can way. Yeah. Is that Repo I see is the next one. The one that you made fun of me so much on my Admon episode. Yes. Yes. Yes. That's the one. That's the second biggest game on the list because this released 26th of February sold already around 3 million units in the first 30 days. And you seek reviews 96% positive. So this is the second biggest game. I don't think we we actually made fun of you. It's just we didn't make fun of you, but Felix was showing one other game that was already on mobile. Yeah, correctly. Yeah. What's the name of the game? Repost. Repo online. It's called Repo as well on mobile. Repos repo online or stalker maybe? I can't remember. Let me check it. Does it have a mobile? Repo online. It's a ripoff. It's like a copy. This one repos repo online. Yeah, there it

is. I think Yeah, I saw it already. This this was taken down already. So, this is the same same place. But the crazy thing is this this one was live for about two and a half months and it got so much organic traffic. It got nearly 10 million downloads and I estimated the ad revenue on this and it we covered it in the in the admon episode. Yeah. At its peak it was making 23k a day from interstitial ads, right? But it went down quite quickly. But still like 3 months of earning that for is quite decent for only organic. But like 10 10 million downloads in that short period of time. And if you compare that to the units sold that you've got on repo, it did better on mobile than it did on PC console. Eight 8 million downloads. 100 half a million downloads a day. And go to uh go to the active user base because basically they had interstitials stuffed in it. Right. So this is the real money maker, right? Keep in mind this is only Android, no iOS. Okay. Yeah. So this works. You just

need to do it properly, not play on the ripoff. I mean, yeah, this is one to one, I guess. Adam, have you played the game? No, I haven't. But this looks right up my alley. I love these these games. Basically, any game that I can go online with my friends and giggle my way through an evening is a good game. This is this is this is one of those like Among Us or not Among Us, Little Company, Lethal Company, Little Company, Little Company, Little Company follow-ups. So horror style, fun with friends games pretty much. And they're super trending, aren't they, these days? Seen seen multiple. I love it. I I think it's really just a whole bunch of people who used to make Roblox games or or have seen Roblox games. Like that whole generation has grown up playing Roblox and now they're getting way better experiences on Steam. And what I love is that they keep the level of jank that was on Roblox, right? This is amazing.

Watching this video just the way they all walk and [ __ ] It was the same thing with with Lethal Company. You just you can't stop laughing watching the videos. It's great. It's like watching Teletubbies fight. Yeah, pretty much. See, but yeah, this this seems like a good again good thing to kind of follow up, but again need to do it properly, not just wait the ripoff. Okay, but then like what what what's the do it properly way? Do it properly. take your own IP, you know, just shove it in a Forex. Let's get it done. That would be the first time. But we we realized that didn't work. So then like what is it, right? Like that is a good question. You can get 10 million downloads from this. Uh that's the thing because if you just put if you just put something else on top in terms of the art style, it's not going to work exactly in the same way. It needs to be at least like very similar but not too similar. Just not mean do so first.

No, I mean like it was like a still serious question. In 90 days they have earned 1.3 million in ads, right? Plus 35 in APS from just ripping something off, right? That's Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. But then okay, but what's the like what's the relevant kind of fast follow on this? How can you translate this to mobile without getting taken down? I mean like I mean it's a serious question. I'm just joking. I'm just trying to understand like how how should we think about it? horror based pretty much a little company follow up with uh you know social mechanics and like stuff like that because I've seen games that that are still trending on mobile like I actually work with guys that that that with goose duck guys actually and that that that works pretty well on mobile which is Among Us followup also. So can you pull up goose duck like how how how much did that

actually stick? Did they actually keep players in that game or was it just kind of like Among the Among Us mobile game was obviously very popular too. Goo is what 72k reviews. I can I can check data like it's well I mean the sensor tower version the the mobile version sensor tower version. Um the problem is that they have a lot of revenue from China which you don't see because I know but still is a big problem. Yeah, it's a very big problem to have. Oh my god. Where's my $500 bill? So I can I can cry and but I know a day not not counting China there. And then yeah, but you know they're they're still their main point is PC not not mobile but okay then downloads at least it's just it's like it's small like it's it's not a breakout success don't get me wrong it's this is not the original this is not the among that's

why I work on the on but uh we can we can check Among Us if you want I am pretty sure one of the most successful games two years ago three years ago It's not co anymore. Yeah. What shape is that? Yeah. Yeah. It's this unfortunate shark fin. It's unfortunate. But I think these guys were like super heavy against free-to-play monetization mechanics if I understand. No ads. Look at the active user base and you'll see a heartbreak from my side. Even showing one interstitial ad would have been 100,000 a day. Like you guys are idiots. That's so upsetting. They had how many users at the peak? 400 million. 40 million 40 million, man. Showing two interstial ads to that, that would be like that's literally like 500k a day. But just think about the reput reputation that they gained. So they got

500,000 a day in reputation points. It's great. Exactly. Yeah. You can buy so much for like you know like just go and buy beater for reputation. Feeding my family with reputation. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on. Uh next one. Fly night. This was literally found just because I just put in the metrics. So it has 10k. What what does that mean? Like because you put the metric showed me. So it's 90% rating really good review ratio based on its unit sold in first 30 days. unit. Perfect. So definitely like a standout game. I think the visual itself is great because you are this is exactly what what I love like all of these art styles is going to do so well. Yeah. Mobile and all of this. It's amazing. It's bugs. That's the thing that I wanted to say. It's bugs and you're pretty much a bug knight or ant or whatever that is going against evil queen that curs everybody so they can

grow wings. I'm not not joking. It's literally in the bug Zelda. This is great. Bug Zelda. Yeah. And even though it looks shitty, I don't know why. What do you mean like look shitty? Uh it's not keep loading. Yeah, maybe let's just load [ __ ] like this. So it's an RPG with like survival mechanics if I understand and uh it has very very big community already as I was browsing the the interwebs and yeah it doesn't look that bad and as I said first person games going from steam to mobile is like one of the trends that we definitely see. I would definitely try to use the bug visual because we know stuff like ants underground kingdom works really well. The forex game and like worked worked but yeah animals anyway animals animal theme and varsel you see far plus also experimenting a lot with these like um I shrunk the kids backyard with ants plus

is experimenting with everything. Yeah, I know. Just saying. So yeah, we'll see. But uh looks I think that's closer to I think that's closer to grounded, right? that Microsoft game which is also on Steam but definitely and I think Grounded sold better than 160. You said 160K. Yeah, Grounded. Yeah, this one came out a while back. Yeah, that was the fun part. This was Yeah. Yeah, this is the fun part was following. Yeah, this this was definitely one. But like this one was not a breakout, right? Like if we're if this pod is also about does this work between steam to to mobile like grounded just was not nearly as big of an IP as like power world. So you would think Palman Survivals would as long as it's a good 4X would would have performed really really well. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to turn everything into Forex but just saying for instance let's take Yes. Of course, we need to Stormfall which has like what 30K reviews released 11th of Octo 11th of October and currently

it's serving the onboarding on like a 100K a day Century Games Forex game so like enough. Yeah. The number of you had 19,000 reviews. Do you know how many units sold Thronefall? Please do. So, just because I'm like I I I love this art style intuitively and obviously King Shot is an amazing game, but I'm thinking with Sentry like they they must have validated it some other way, right? Like they would have done clickthrough testing. They would have done something to to that thronefall would have worked, right? Like like I I don't think I don't think they would have been like, "Oh my god, I played this one game on Steam. We're done." 600k we sold 4 million gross revenue. Yeah. which is like which doesn't say that much, man. It's nice to have. Yeah, I know. Yeah, like compared to how like compared to what they're doing right now on the app store, like 600k units is not

a positive enough signal, right? Yeah. But it's again it's because of that creative because everything is basically this creative right there. Whole on boarding whole everything is Yes. Then but the question is like how do you know and how do you identify this is going this exactly is going to work on the creatives like you need to you need to get that data. Do you think the creative people they send some of those 400 people in their creative team to just look at steam and just try try everything into creatives I need to try everything. Yeah. But then why only Steam, right? Like why not also like Roblox games and see if there's some Roblox. Exactly. Already doing. So, not only Roblox Studio, but not only Steam, but also Roblox and also VChat mini games. So, it's all of these. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So, we need a Wechathat mini games podcast that we go through it like this. There's also in the plan. I just like need a little bit more time. We already

have WeChat and everything access to that. So, shouldn't be we don't we don't have a slogan like Yeah. Yeah. Steam. China. What are we going to do? China. Okay. China. China. That's the slogan. That's like China. You need to come with us to to Shanghai for China, Joy. Madam, for for sure. I will try. I will try. Yeah. But but just saying like this seems interesting and definitely like on on the look moving forward. This one is actually very very interesting and I think it's literally suited to be adapted into mobile. So, this is called Noob's Number Factory. It's a Plinko game. You know, come Heroes and all these other things. Felix really likes those, especially to ban them in in his waterfall. So, how this game works is basically you have this kind of a board of balls that you need to destroy with your blinker ball or pretty much the ball that's falling from the bottom. And

you have a lot of these powerups that helps you out. And once you pretty much start shooting it, again, complete randomness of dopamine loop. You get currency that you can then use to buy powerups between the rounds. So, if we move here, yeah, there's actually a gacha that you can do. The best part is this like graphics are completely atrocious. It doesn't matter at all because the mechanics are just so good. Who's the Who's the guy in the sunglasses? He's the main character. That's the default character. That's what we get. But let me get to some kind of upgrade that the guy is doing. Yeah. See, so like market mechanic, whatever. Rewarded plus spins. Yeah, what what is the what is this? Uh creative some kind of for a match free game. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you you pretty much go and you see how stuff stuff stuff on the top gets gets more and more populated. Now he has the

pregnancy test, he has the cactus and so on so forth. And it's about like all of those bigger numbers like similar to like balato where like each each round you need to achieve a little bit more higher number which these power ups on the top help you with. So like our typical rog light and works very very well. Just just saying that because looking at the numbers 10K reviews already released March 7 so not that far off and if this K unit sold in first 30 days looks pretty well and as I said it seems very very easily adaptable to mobile that that's that's how I see it because it's literally like you just take the mechanics and do what with them you do um hobby style version mobile game with it. I feel like we already went through this cycle though with like Voodoo back in the day, right? Like they they did all those like Brick Breaker games. Was it like five, six years ago? They did the Cub Heroes with the Peggling game if you

remember that one. So there's the Peggling game on Steam, which is this kind of goblin Plinko game. Yeah. And when I was talking to Julian last time, he said that this this is the one behind Cub Heroes inspiration. So they they have few of those, but again, this this seems much more complex. Uh especially because of these like this literally the top top um power-ups and mechanics reminds me of the you know it's a survivor IO rog light loop where you have weapons on one side you have ammunition or whatever the complementing mechanics that creates abilities and stuff like that. So could be an easy translation into something like hobby dust. I look forward to these ads with Windows 95 style. That would be amazing fonts in here especially like comic sands. This is great sense. Yeah, those work well with Adro Empires Mobile. Yeah, looks good. Yeah. Um, next one. But I would even say with that one like the Bolacho model can apply to a lot more games and we should

see more and more games. Dig deeper on that. Yeah, this is just like one on Steam, but I'm assuming more more and more mobile games are testing this model. This one's my favorite actually. This is great. This is already on. This is all mobile with like every developer jumped on this like all Vietnamese developer had to dig a hole game. So actually I have two digging games in this setup. So this was released uh 7th of February already passed nearly 13k reviews sold 300k units already. So really good numbers. It's actually super super short. Like if you see the play through video that I have from Markiplier here, you literally get to the end in an hour. And the loop is pretty simple. You go in into your backyard and start digging a hole. And once you start digging it, you get some resources out of it. You go there and then you upgrade your where is it? Yeah, let me just get the screen

there. your shovel strength, your your inventory, your battery, your pretty much the usual kind of incremental upgrade loop that you get here. And once you go there, you start to go deeper and deeper and deeper. And then later on, there's like more advanced mechanics such as dynamites, lights, you need to literally mark your way there. And then somewhere there later on there's even monsters or whatever something. It doesn't seems really finished to be honest because as I said it's very slow, very short but the mechanic seems super super engaging because again it's first person it's simulation seems like it's really really good any ideas anybody played this or anybody seen the mobile game I saw the trend there's XGame Global from Vietnam that did a version of it that's gotten half a million downloads but it was not the first so there's quite a lot

of Let me bring up the biggest one. But uh there was uh I can see like eight or nine just when I searched dig hole. Yeah, backyard ho simulator get smart like there's a Yeah, I think the important part is the whole kind of structure of this like digging process where because the guy have his because on PC it's easy to do 360 and you can dig everywhere and everywhere in mobile it's a little bit more clunky. So figuring out how to dig properly and how to create the movement and and the smoothness of this whole thing kind of to be fitting mobile platform should be the key here. Not just like random put everything there. This this won't work as supermarket simulator immediately like just throw it onto mobile and it work. So I guess and you also need to finish the game because as I said the game's not finished like one hour gameplay won't won't save us here on mobile. So you need to be able to kind of dig deeper or reset the hole or something like that. This can have a

This game can have a 4x on it. This will work. Just imagine like your 4X base and you just got this big hole in the middle. You're like, I'm bored. I'm just going to go down my hole and just go tap the screen. Go in deeper. Go in deeper. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. Uh, that's there. Continuing on, we have Spilled which is again pretty new. 26th of March, around 2,000 reviews. This one is actually a very very like laidback cozy game about you removing oil spill and upgrading your ship by increasing increasing the size of your oil spill catcher, your speed, and your whatever you have there, the the tank at the back, like how much oil you can carry. And that's basically it. like it's it's very very simple but the important part as everybody sees here uh

who follows the podcast this is pretty much Golden Goblins creatives it's literally that which trends like crazy everywhere everything and as I said because this already looks like that and it seems very very natural for mobile gameplay you have upgrade loop there already and this is basically it like you just have these three upgrades in what in eight different areas after those eight different areas there's a boss fight with like a giant uh oil tanker which spits out more oil that you need to then uh you know take out and that's it basically and then it's like after like 15 minutes the ship goes to sleep or something. So yeah that that's the game. So again you need to iterate. It's just like won't help you like Supermarket Simulator put it on mobile. You need to finish the loops and do the environments and do it a little bit more polished. But afterwards like again seems to me that this would work very very good.

It reminds me Idle Fishing or what was the the other game from before Ali Invasion? Before Alien Invasion. Yeah. Idle Fishing I think was Fishing I would say. Yeah. Multiccast Gaming. Yeah. Yeah. So that's also like one possibility. Amazing credit scene. But yeah, Adam already plotting Forex. I don't think this one will work. This is a bit weird. We'll keep this one as hybrid casual. Okay, RPG. Yeah, fair. Let's do that. Yeah, but looks great. Like uh the mechanic and everything. And actually that that fishing game from Multiccast is I think it's been revived now because they sold the invasion. Yeah, we talked about it. I think like yeah, last year. I didn't I I'm not sure like what's what that game is doing, but that loop is still kind of being being touched upon the alien invasion one. Like a lot of people are still going after it. I know Role is going after it. A few few other companies are still going after it. Well, even Mini Clip was

going for Octopus Feast or what Fast is Ro, but then there's other thing like Ghost something. Yeah. One more. Yeah. Okay. Um Aia assembly. This I take note from April, but again looks really really good and has amazing numbers. Nearly three reviews, but amazing numbers. Calm down, please. Man, just for that small of a game. It's like amazing numbers. It's got like less than 3,000 reviews. Exactly. Like what are you talking about? Amazing numbers are 70,000. Amazing numbers. I'm less than month. I don't care. Come on. Just be realistic. Be realistic. Okay. This is very very easy game about you building a plane and upgrading it between the airports as you deliver stuff and it has a lot of physics and then you need to load the cargo and pretty much do the the usual upgrade loop where you go, you fly and

then you get more upgrades and then you get more stuff and so on so forth. Very very easy. Again, nothing really to it. Why should we do this on mobile? Because it's original. Yeah. Still I I think it's under the I think it's under the line. Like if we say Thronefall was what? Okay. And this one's got Oh, yeah. It's super new. As I said, it's about predictable, right? And I think like there's just not enough. It was the lowest game I had on the list actually. That that's also also I think it's just slightly too complex, right? Like a little bit 3D motion instead of like proper proper simple gameplay like our oil tanking game. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's like Yeah. 3D World is much more but yeah. Yeah. You have you have Metal Storm now on on model doing okay which is uh game. Yeah. So I mean can work but

that's like realistic jets. I just don't know if like vehicle combat games where you can like directly customize every piece is really a viable customize every piece. We simplified that didn't do too well after a while. Yeah. Yeah. Cats. I remember cats. Yeah. I also remember cats everybody. Yeah. I mean like and this is I think like in the same line as like Kerbal space programming and all those ones, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's physics space. Yeah. That was a fun game too or physics based. But yeah, this is really on the line like if if it can have legs or not on mobile. Okay. Sultan game. Um this has pretty strong metrics. But you played it, Adam? I haven't. No, this one looked too complicated for me. Yeah. Also, right? Because you said it. So I I don't giggle enough with this one. So yeah, the giggle testing funny. Like this is like a hardcore hardcore game. This is like very good trending metrics because again

nearly a month old release already like 14k uh reviews and what's 566k units sold. The problem with this game because as you see it is super complex because it's this as I heard in the comments is the follow-up to Cultist Simulator. And what you do in this game you play as this kind of psychopathic sultan who just wants to kill people pretty much. And you have this witch which witch come ups to him and says open cards and on each card pretty much somebody needs to die. And you have these characters on the bottom that you choose which one of them needs to die. And uh yeah, there's like 20 minute very long tutorial. And afterwards you are task to pretty much do his bidding or whatever survive until day seven. And you then need to again pair these cards with like very very complex interactions with just like

for instance you you draw a card. That card tells you that somebody needs to die for instance like like here. You think this would work on mobile? Yeah, I don't think so this would work on mobile. Just saying. Talking about it. It was in the list. So just just like saying one of the very good metrics games. It's in the list so we need to talk about it. Yeah. Now on mobile any anybody wants to add anything to this? I think this won't work in apparently. What is this? You never heard about this? No. Yeah, I heard. Yeah, of course he It's one of the biggest releases. Yeah. Again, 520k units sold, 20k,000 reviews, nearly released March 28. This is basically better version of Sims. Sims. Yeah. Wow. So, if I understand, Sims are currently kind of slacking off uh somewhere on the store with their old uh version, and this is What happened? Did they stop this gave

up or what happened with Sims? No, they haven't given up. It's a huge money maker for EA. It's just that they stuck to Sims 4 for a long, long time and have just kept up the DLC. So, do we think this will do do something or like this this could be a good thing to follow up here? I don't know. Like, I had huge hopes for this pre-launch. Really? I know. Like, right. Like, just not that exciting. So, I hope that actually eventually some streamers start to pick it up because this thing is like a content creation machine, right? Like the amount of crazy [ __ ] you can make with this game. Keep posting online. Well, yeah. You can customize so much, right? And create situations, create all this stuff. Yeah. So, I was hoping actually only one one Tik Tok trend away of success. Like you just Yeah. You just need one one or two Tik Tok videos and then you're you're there.

So the advantage here is they haven't like launched on console or anything. So maybe they can go there, but right now it just isn't getting a lot of traction as much as they would have hoped. So I still think there's lots of potential in the life sim space for going after Sims just given the size of Sims, the amount of people that love playing these types of games. But I think it just launched in such a rough shape that even the people that did show up just didn't really stick to it. So they've got a road road map ahead to fix fix and then hopefully get that viral Tik Tok campaign and shift it because if you say viral Tik Tok campaign like Iron Cat still keeps running on top of my head which yeah exactly yeah exactly like VR game that really make it on mobile. That's exactly it. That's exactly what I'm talking about that or I'm I'm security but I'm kid is better. And this genre as well is like really really susceptible to AI. Like it AI could have a ton of value here. So I'm open they can get some good integration to that and then people can create some crazy [ __ ] and this can be this can be my

giggles money. Forex will be good. I don't think this is forex. That's more that's more top girl. Yeah. Oh yeah. Which top girl could work here for sure. Which is kind of forex. Yeah. It's Forex. It's not kind of It's like completely Forex. Yeah. Let's see. Okay. Few more games until we finish this off. So, there's Haste released April 1st. Uh 5,000 reviews. Where's the trailer? This is already past 153K units sold. And the interesting part about this game that it's very, very speedy and it has a lot of endless runner. No, this has these terrain physics basically that you need to go and on top of it you have you seen that the choice mechanic with the rog lights. This could work on mobile if it's just an endless runner. It's the way to solve subway servers is

just add a rogike. I don't believe no. Yeah, I think this works because of the graphics. Uh sorry, teran physics and physics. So, so it's like I like the I like the camera angle and like it's very very satisfying to to go and and watch like actually this reminds me I'm not satisfied at all man. This reminds me of Tribes actually if you remember the game that was the the shooter game where you would like throw discs that you can teleport on that that was back and you also had this like very very fast movement in it which was so niche that only five people know about it. Oh, it's like they they did like three games or whatever. Free. This one. This one. You see? So, it's like it plays like Unreal Tournament, but you you have this like very long sliding movements and it was all about keeping up speed and not not being able to kind of fall off of off the speed because the moment you stop, it's basically quake free. Yeah, kind

of. But much much bigger jumps, much much more speed and everything. Well, this looks slow as [ __ ] Where's the speed? Look at his feet. The guy compared to like Quake. Compared to Yeah. No, this is not even an arcade shooter. It's not even Boomer shooter. Okay. Now, I think [Laughter] you Yeah. So, again, this guy just don't know how to play it properly, but whatever. So, yeah, this this could work. I don't know. Let's see. Under the bus immediately. This was even more interesting. So there's Digim 5K reviews 9 December 2024 50k units sold already. And this is about this actually looks like some of those mini games that Royal Match is running. It looks like in Capar Go where you one of those

active events, not the passive ones where you dig out stuff. So, what you do here, you Let me go to the actual game plan on the trailer. Marketing, that's what we need. Yeah. So, you dig out stuff and uh you have like limited stamina on the dig where it is. And once you run out of stamina, you can dig it out again. And you see how many relics there are hidden in the thing. So, you can either restart or like go again or whatever. And once you get those, you go into your museum. you add there to your museum and again you upgrade. Very very similar to digging a hole mechanic where again incrementally you get more and more of everything and you just can progress and do stuff and then somewhere here you see that we are already whatever different things much bigger dicks much bigger energy so on so forth. This looks like an amazing in-game event for mobile. Yeah yeah yeah not a game but like a great event.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Like this. This looks interesting. Can you make it more complicated? Like could you do that with like bulletacho mechanics and go nuts? They also have some like additional mechanics. It's not that simple as I said like just didn't bother explaining it completely because you have as you see like multiples of these. So not just one one upgrade three. They have some other things on top of it. But I would guess that like you need a little bit more depth to to make it like see the skill tree and everything. So I'd say any other questions or anything else? I mean not really. Yeah. But looks great and as I said it's already being used by mobile games uh in a similar setup as an event. Yeah. Yeah. Magic Archery 5.5K reviews 98% 4th of October 6K. This is actually an idol game. Really? Yes.

What? Yes, this is an idol game. So, you're an archer. What the [ __ ] You're an archer and you're shooting arrows and you upgrade your stuff and everything and uh that's all you do. Like, he's basically shooting arrows on the target. Uh let me show you the actual gameplay. I can see this as like a very good creative for for archery game. So, here we have, you see, you start with this kind of basic thing and you upgrade your stuff. And where's the actual damage counter? Roio's paying attention here. Here we go. Angry birds flying, smacking targets. Let's see this probably somewhere here. Where is it? Like, stop upgrading, man. Yeah. See, so damage per minute 100k or whatever something is. Do you want to double that with a rewarded ad? Yeah, absolutely. It's missing a marketing stat that you can upgrade. That's the thing is really missing. And then the somewhere here we're at like

5.6 million a minute. We already have some kind of wizard portals shooting arrows like 10 Legolas and stuff like that. So it's an idol game basically. Is an idol game. So that's there. But looks good. Like I've seen worse on mobile. But we are not here for seeing worse. Yeah. But as I said, like it's a good idea, I think, because I haven't seen this one. If you have some zombies coming at you and you're shooting zombies, maybe doesn't need to be zombies. Like this is about, you know, damage numbers, but could be just crowd of zombies responding in front of you. Just combine this with bang bang survivor and there you go. Why? Why not? Or doodle magic. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. I think this is actually much more close to slime castle, the Azour game, if you remember. Really? Okay. Yeah, that that's you seen that, Adam? Nope, I haven't seen that one. So, there's a there's a game that's like idle tower defense game, which is the

one that's similar to doodle magic where instead of going on rog light progression, you have idle progression and sideline stuff kind of coming at you. This is quite successful. like not not that much strike out of a hit, but it it works pretty well. And especially we don't see the China revenue because this done this done by a Chinese team published by Azour, which is unheard of. I'm still waiting to see a new lane shooting mechanic. Something that's like just as magnetic. This I don't feel like this is going to hit that same bar as like lane shooters. We'll see. Yeah. And I think I have the last one now. And this is more of No, please more. Yakob, don't don't mind him. Full steam ahead. Web fishing. Uh 11 October 53k. No, now we're talking. You're never talking.

98% and the problem is that this is not really a game. K unit sold and this seems to be some kind of a chat app that Perfect. Yeah, you go and you fish stuff. Multiplayer chat room focused fishing game. Relax, go fish on the web and that's it. And I was just checking the game plays here and everything and it's just Yeah, it's this like you go there and there's a lot of people doing the same thing and uh that's pretty much it. you you fish you you like I guess there's some progression around it or whatever, but it's definitely not the main thing. It's about the social experience. I think that that's the that's that's the main part here. Vuber the VTuber is super weird. Wouldn't wouldn't couldn't find a better video. He has really the best one. So that that was the one I wanted to show. But yeah, there's fishing mechanics.

There's some kind of progression as you saw there on clothing. this kind of Minecrafty world from third person and uh yeah it has giant numbers like very very big numbers I think I could see this like do a schedule one or schedule I inside this oh damn why did that Vtuber get big too creepy you know you do schedule one in this style of like Animal Crossing but it's all drugs that'll that'll blow up that'll blow up more meth though go away Please can you put it here somewhere else? Yeah, but I didn't even heard about this and it seems it's really big. Let me let me double check the the player. You can hear about a lot of lot of things that are big on Steam. Yeah, especially that's why we're doing So, if you have one advice for any aspiring mobile studio that's looking for ideas on how to utilize Steam, what would you advice would you you and Adam give them?

I I I don't think you can just copy paste stuff from Steam. Like I I think even in the examples you're talking about like repo and where they just literally copy paste the thing to mobile. I think you still have to like this is a good spot to fill up your creative well and figure out some new interesting mechanics. But everything still has to be tested after this point to figure out if this is really like the right theme, the right gameplay that can really suck people in. also if it's marketable enough because or be the what was the sound swap game or what I what I had there. No, we had the repo one that that made like 1.3 million from ads. Yeah. Yeah. That's not sustainable. But uh for instance, if we if you look at uh Yeah. Says the tower died on me. If you look at the what's this market? Which one? Yeah. Only million of them.

The game district one. Yeah. Supermarket manager. Yeah. Good. Good. Good. How like how well did this do on Steam? I don't I remember it being big, but not that big. So, it's still doing pretty good. Like nearly 150k downloads a day. Yeah. But if you go to the country filter, then you will see it's got all mainly Brazil and all these tier three countries. Indonesia. Zillian loves market manager, but still it was still like 60% ad revenue and they never fixed that app open interstitial which is like they didn't listen to Felix. Yeah. No check the supermarket simulator. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're talking about the supermarket simulator right away from the Polish studio and it was already doing couple of hundreds installs per day. But again, Brazil didn't have ads. Indonesia and whatever else. Yeah. Yeah. But still no 25

million gross revenue, 2.6 million units sold. That's supermarket. Similar to game six in like how in 30 days or how long? Lifetime. Lifetime. Okay. That's still pretty that's pretty low, right? Like it's just not clearly as like connected of a signal as correlated of a signal as you'd love to see, which is still sense says to me like you got to test this stuff before you do it. or or we're looking at it from like wrong perspective. Like that's the thing that I don't think so you need to be that big in order to work like that's the throne for example but okay but how do you know what you should look for that's the thing is it are you going to the the Felix area where you just oh I didn't know what to ask oh you should you should so first thing you need to do this just go through the things and see what's not translatable at all like we had for instance the sultan game I don't think so this can work on mobile like in it in its current iteration like play the gameplay mechanics again, but it looks too complicated. I haven't played. Yeah.

So, so you filter those out. Then you end up with stuff like these that are should definitely work on mobile. Yeah. Should definitely work on mobile. Then you you take the the teams that that like the teams I think should be like the important part because we again talking about something that works and that's proven and we want to capitalize. So it's like we don't really need to figure out CPI that much like the steam trend of like reviews and everything. What matter? You don't need to figure out you don't need to figure out the CPI that much. Well, you you do. Of course, you do, but like this is a direction that already gives you the the right right thing to do like throneful. But should we be looking at signals on like YouTube or Tik Tok or video watching apps to be like cuz I bet you on like Repo and on Power World you're getting crazy YouTube videos because people love Pokemon with guns. Love Yeah. Repo. just only looking at the the reviews and the growth here, it's not enough. Yeah, it's definitely

not enough. But also, even having the the power best game ever think it still can end up within the where is it? This Lilith lilit failure. Yeah, but again like I don't think this is a good example because the power here is just minimal. It's just almost not there. Not enough power. But again, boils down to execution anyway. Yeah, sure. That's the thing. But yeah, Steam trends, oh, sorry, Tik Tok trends, YouTube trends, and all these other things that we when we were doing the I am Cat U game. Yeah, it was all over the place. Yeah, we definitely saw that there's like 55 million videos plus on on or shorts on YouTube just just on YouTube and everywhere. Like 50 million views on some of these. So I guess for the next kind of episode we should we should also look at the YouTube and then Tik Tok trends as well because this is only the picture look at MetaQuest

I don't think so Metac will do it. Yeah. Should we wrap it up here? Yeah. Yeah. I think we should wrap it up again. This is the initial setup. So, let us know what you want to see, what you don't want to see, what we get right or wrong, because we're trying to learn here. So, I guess we'll figure it out and fine-tune as we go with the new segment. As usual. As usual. So, we do. All right. Thank you very much for coming. Also, Adam, thank you very much for bearing with us um in this episode as well. It was great. It Thank you. Thank you. And also, guys, please uh subscribe. Let us know as as Yak mentioned in the comments and join the Slack channel. See you next time. Bye-bye. [Music]