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Monetizer: Backyard Monsters: Unleashed
Key insights
6 takeaways- 01User acquisition and retention strategies rely on Facebook integration for cross-device play, viral gifting systems, and aggressive early-stage push notification prompts.
- 02Backyard Monsters: Unleashed adapts a legacy Facebook real-time strategy title for the mobile market, testing whether brand heritage can compete against established mobile-native leaders like Supercell and Kabam.
- 03Core gameplay mechanics follow standard real-time strategy loops, requiring players to manage four distinct resources—wood, stone, and two types of goo—while constructing bases and training troops for PvP combat.
- 04The in-game shop features five distinct price tiers for hard currency, ranging from approximately $5 to $100.
- 05The monetization model utilizes a dual-currency system centered on 'shiny' hard currency, which is used to accelerate construction timers, bypass wait times, and offset resource deficits.
- 06The game offers a transparent transaction path by allowing players to purchase additional builders directly with real-world currency rather than forcing the use of hard currency.
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Transcript
hello and welcome to pocketgamer.business monetizer feature this is where we play the first uh five to ten minutes of new free-to-play games and have a look at the user experience and the monetization techniques um today we're gonna have a quick look at uh backyard monsters unleashed from kicks eye so let's fire it up okay so you've asked us for push notifications this is something i really um don't like games companies asking um players particularly before they even played the game in this case i'll say yes just to see what they send me but um i think this is bad etiquette are we doing for audio okay okay so obviously we've got a loading loading screen here and pushed and a push notification from clash of clans um so backyard monsters um to people who didn't know was pretty pretty famous game on um facebook pretty much launched
what we now call the kind of um kind of strategy genre um for these these kind of devices um so we're seeing what's vlogging with facebook so we can play backhand monsters on multiple devices i'll just play as a guest in this case um okay let's go for that user my name yeah yeah yeah okay so this game has been a long time in coming to mobile um i think kicks i've had a couple of goes at developing it um they were working with gree at one point or was it dna i can't remember one of those two um dna i think um and then they uh kind of took the took the game back in house uh and did developed it in-house that had been developed in san francisco um so i guess they're gonna have some people comparing it to going saying they're ripping off clash of clans which is ironic given that um i'm sure supercell would have played backyard monsters on facebook um before coming up with uh them their uh ipad version anyhow let's
buy the buy let's see what the game's actually like so we've got a tutorial okay so there we go yeah that's gonna build a space have we got a defense let's build a sniper tower build with resources i need to move it here okay pick up the base okay so i'm gonna finish it using some shiny okay so straight into using the uh in-game kind of currency systems so this is our very uh limited base to begin with and these are these guys attacking it and we can speed up them as well
okay okay so we're going to attack the other base by a little bit okay so these are our troops got ten of them i'm just gonna here we go let me see we're destroying and taking the resources i've got this set period of time it's pretty standard in this kind of pvp situation there we go done
okay so resource collectors are full back my resources to build some more stuff so it's typically what we see in these kind of games so we've got uh four different resources here um and a hard currency i'm guessing i'm gonna build some resource storage placing it near the sniper towers here well there they want it okay we're not quite this isn't some funny angle and if he's not getting it quite right okay there we go now get the second bit of cracking on a monster locker so when i want to lock it okay where is it okay
and there's the hatchery open hatchery there's more of our troops okay something's been not shining the hard currency on speeding stuff up that's pretty standard okay it's an achievements menu so i'm going to collect some rewards and get some shiny and some uh hxp i guess you can see these are the other ones other other achievements so some of them i've started on so we kind of we kind of get get the idea what's going on with this this is pretty i mean if anyone who's played clash of clans or one of those type strategy games it's pretty straightforward we're going to build a base we're going to build troops we're going to unlock more troops and we're going to upgrade our different um kind of uh items so we can upgrade things um okay so pretty nice interface we kind of see what's going on with this kind of
thing so let's quickly have a look at the resources i think obviously for a feature column called monetizer that's pretty important so we've got these i'm assuming these are soft kind of resources so wooden stone and goo and other goo so to get more of those top of your storage especially with twigs um so if i wanna in terms of what storage capacity i've got i can um max max it out using um hard drives it's shiny so that's what it's all based off of so this is my shiny shop okay so this is typically what we see so there's six all right five five bands um starting so this is three pounds in english money so that's uh five dollars in the u.s um so it's kind of slightly skewed more expensive of course ending up with a hundred
dollars um the 7 000 shiny there's a pretty straightforward kind of um economy system we're buying or collecting shiny using it to speed things up and using it to um go into other resource and go into other resources let's see okay builder so we can there's an item as well just buy straightforward just buy a new builder um just not using the shiny but just with direct with money so a lot of other games you tend to be using your um hard currency to do that for some reason uh kickstarter's gone in a sense this is kind of a pure way of doing it you sometimes you have to spend you have to buy spend more money buying the resources you need and it's more resource than you need to actually unlock the builder so i guess this is a cleaner way of doing it um so there's gifts so that if i go into facebook we can do some gifting it's always good for social games okay upgrade
info okay town hall normally pretty uh important part of upgrading your base and else we've got top players okay so it's encouraging me to tweet him and uh connect with facebook so yeah so this is the very brief starter to what our backyard monsters is going to look like obviously we'll gonna keep playing it in the next couple of days uh and weeks probably be looking to see as well in our in our charticle um column uh kickstarter has been very successful on facebook and i guess the interesting question now is given it obviously can make successful games on facebook has it left it too late to come to mobile so there's obviously lots of other companies have kind of taken this kind of style of a hardcore game um to mobile pretty successfully so you've got your kabams and supercells and such like so we'll be looking to see how kicks are perform in this market
Summary
Backyard Monsters: Unleashed represents the mobile transition of a foundational Facebook real-time strategy title. The game serves as a case study for the evolution of the strategy genre, specifically examining how a pioneer of the browser-based social gaming space adapts its mechanics for the mobile market. The core gameplay loop follows established industry standards, requiring players to construct bases, manage multiple resource types—including wood, stone, and two varieties of goo—and train troops to engage in player-versus-player combat.
The monetization strategy relies on a dual-currency system featuring a hard currency known as "shiny." This currency is primarily utilized to accelerate construction timers, bypass wait times, and supplement resource shortages. The in-game shop offers five price tiers for hard currency, ranging from approximately five dollars to one hundred dollars. Notably, the game allows for the direct purchase of additional builders using real-world currency, a departure from the common practice of requiring hard currency for such upgrades, which provides a more transparent transaction path for the player.
The user experience incorporates standard social features, including Facebook integration for cross-device play and gifting systems to encourage viral growth. While the game utilizes aggressive early-stage push notification requests, the interface remains consistent with contemporary mobile strategy titles. The primary analytical question remains whether the brand’s historical success on Facebook can overcome the late entry into a mobile market now dominated by established competitors like Supercell and Kabam. The game’s performance hinges on its ability to retain players within a highly saturated genre while leveraging its legacy status to compete against newer, mobile-native strategy experiences.
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