🎮 Playable Trends April 2026: Puzzle Format, Long Sessions, Recognizable Mechanics

Look, and and that puzzle format is highly recognizable, right? Like even if, you know, I always think of the the mom test. Like if I gave that to my mom, would my mom understand what it is and what to do? And you know, it's highly recognizable. Everyone understands what a puzzle is. Like puzzle pieces, putting them in line. So, I think it's just smart testing by widening in the scope a little bit rather than going for your domestic and and your first kind of cohorts. It's 4:00 a.m. and we're rolling the dice. Matej drops knowledge made of gold and ice. Felix [music] with ads making those coins rise. Jakub designs worlds chasing the sky. We're the two and [music] a half gamers, the midnight crew. Talking UA adverts and game design, too. Matej feeling sharp and good, bringing the insight. We're rocking those [music] vibes till the early daylight. Matej, UA, master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyberspace skies. Felix stacking dollars like a wizard in disguise. Jakub crafting worlds lifting us to the highs. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick, got your back. Ads are beautiful, they like the way. [music] Click it fast, don't delay.

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Okay, real talk before we start. This episode is brought to you by Potensic. And if you're a mobile game publisher tired of leaving money on the table, then listen up. Potensic is a premium ad network built by people who have actually been on both sides of this industry. Game publishers, agencies, successful exits. So, they get it. Here's the thing. Potensic has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafone. It's not programmatic. It's direct. Those budgets land in your game at premium CPMs, no middleman tax. And they handle everything with their in-house team in terms of the creatives. Plus, they've partnered with Playable Maker, Ving ding. So, they will take brands YouTube videos

or static images and actually turn it into playable ads or reward video. Proper interactive format built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming native creative, publishers are getting a higher CPS. Everyone wins. Head to potentials.com to get started or check their creative portfolio in the link in the show notes. Thank you very much Potentials for sponsoring this episode. Hello everybody. Uh welcome to a playable trends episode. My name is Matija Lančarič.
My name is Andrej Mozetič.
[laughter]
Just like you right. And we are your hosts. Okay. Oh, do you know what? I was wait I was looking at Andrej but he better speak first, you know. He better know he's Nobody told us the order again, so yeah.
Exactly. That's fine. The next time Yeah, we made it. Yeah, yeah. Don't worry. I'll we'll make it we'll make it happen next time cuz we are going to do this for a while for sure because playables are very important and
[laughter]
apparently last time when we talked about this, posted one thing on LinkedIn which I think brought up some heated

conversations under under LinkedIn because the never-ending creatives or never-ending playables, we call them. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. People were just really pissed about them because they are misleading, they take a long time, they're no skip skippable elements, and it's aggressive and whatnot. I don't know. I mean, obviously, it's not really that easy to to exit the playable. Not even playable, but I mean any any ad unit on AppLovin or ironSource or or Unity or whatever. But, do we care too much? From my my perspective, if the user, like the player, wants to play the playable, who are we to kind of stop them, Matija, you know? Like if if they like the other day I actually timed myself. There was a a playable that I got when I was playing a game and I played the playable for 9 minutes. Right? And then I and then I downloaded the game. And then I and now I'm playing the

game. So I think obviously you should be able to allow people to to skip them as soon as possible depending on like the structure of of the campaign and how it's been set up. But if a user so chooses to spend 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 5 minutes, whatever playing that, then that's their choice at the end of the day. Yeah, because it's not Sorry, Andre. It's not interstitial in your face which you can skip anyway after 10 15 15 seconds. Actually, because something very similar happened to me last week when I was when I was I think I was playing something as well. And it was Magic Sort if I'm not mistaken and we talked about this John if you remember last time that you have one playable and then you can create 10 20 variations of one will be 10 seconds long, then will be 30 seconds, then you will let the user finish it and so on and so on. So basically it's still the same playable just different times when the App Store comes up. And the the Magic Sort I mean we were probably showing that I will I can I can probably find it like It was There was a lot of this colorful bottle you know, the bottles that you need to sort out. I was almost in the end like I was missing like two bottles

and then the App Store opened and I couldn't finish the the playable actually that I was doing for like I was doing that level for like 5 minutes. And I was so pissed. I was like, "No, I will not install it
[laughter]
because because the I was so close to finish it. And I I knew what was happening. I know that okay, there's probably same ads somewhere else that it would actually let me finish. But in this case it was like the the country is I didn't mind that it was so long. It was completely fine. I was more angry that I didn't I was not able to finish it than than the length of it. Yeah. Yeah, my my was Soul Survivor. It's that one of these scrolling shooting games with like the dragon coming down by the I was playing it for 10 minutes cuz I wanted to beat that dragon. And guess what? Unlike Andre, I did beat that dragon and then I downloaded the game and now I'm playing the game. I mean, we already talked about that game on the podcast. Yeah, it's great game. It is. It is. Hard as but it is it's good. Anyway. So far, you know, because it's very popular topic and even for me,

the long-form creatives, and we discussed different kinds of playables, short, long, what not what not. So, we're going to talk about long ones again. Because that's the that's [laughter] the name of the game. That is the name of the game. I Again, just a quick intro how we are doing this article on on Matej's newsletter. We just, you know, open Sensor Tower, filter everything down to playables, new creatives only, last month, etc. etc. So, funny enough, last time we said that there were no there's no always Clash Royale or King's or something. This week there this month there are actually. So, you know, it really every month is something different, and you know, there's always something to show. But one thing that was striking the most, and I think I can start sharing and I'll will be just playing them randomly, and we can we can talk about those. Screen. Yeah, so that was actually what was exactly happening. Like there was so many long playables in top, let's say, new creatives on all platforms, all countries. Nice. You know, I think this

was actually the the one that that I [laughter] was not able to finish. Like this kind of things like you you already see just colors and the numbers and everything like this will be pretty long one unless you will not you know, put the CTA somewhere sooner or basically the redirect to the App Store and stuff like that. You know, things like that were was exactly like what we talked in couple of seconds ago. Like that's that's exactly what was happening here. Uh if you just, you know, I will do not this you can see how many of them
stars. I was going to say, George, I see this playable everywhere, but there's one where is that the the tubes in the middle and either the side like there's lots of variations of it. So,
Exactly. A lot of layout variations and stuff like that. You a lot of Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And exactly this like uh Okay, probably we will not be able to open all of them, but it happens like you will find free five variations of the same one couple of those will be opening right after couple of clicks, couple of them will be going to the full, let's say, level, you know, finishing stuff and so on and so

forth. So, I I really like that approach. I think it's it's the one that, you know, when people ask you like, "How can I create more playables?" Like when you already have one, you can already have tens of them without any, you know, doing much thinking and you just measure if you will have pissed users as me or if you will have users that will be happy that, you know, they they can do that, right? So, that was that was a very good example. I I'm not sure if it was frustrating example or not was this BitLife one. When I was literally scratching my head if I'm the not intel- intelligent one or not, but it was really like find you find the shoes. You can click on everything, just not the shoes. I was like, "Why? Like the shoes are there." And he's like, "You click somewhere else." I know, this is not shoes. I mean, I know they are not shoes. I'm trying to you know, I I found them. I think I'm good enough. It's even pointing me there. I was like, "Am I not getting that or like what's, you know, what's happening?" Maybe
you know, like that's the thing.
device because this is this is censored, I was saying. Maybe on

color that's not the real device, maybe I will be redirected after that, maybe there's just some event missing or stuff like that. I was really looking at it like, "Are there any different shoes than those?" You know, like, "Okay, man." But again, you know, it's not for those that remember podcast month ago, like it's no longer when I will be going through through different ones. No one or two taps or even like, you know, this kind of no taps at all, like just some sort of end screen. This is actually the the script that was It's not new. Like no no real rocket science here. But if you remember those levels or those playables a while ago, it was always, you know, one screen, you know, you save the king or whichever character you are saving. And you know, this is the thing, you know, this is this is the version where you are actually navigated to the to the App Store. But there are more versions where actually the king will just go through this scene to another scene, another level. And from that he goes to another level and so on and so forth. So it was kind of like almost like endless saving the saving

the king. I don't know why why it's it's why it's not here anymore, but but it was there quite a lot. And and again, one playable, multiple variations just depending on what is the timing of you telling the user to, you know, to go go away and just download the app.
You have the long one and then you cut it to pieces pretty much. Yeah. There you go. Very very similar stuff to to this tricky story, too. Brain test. Yeah. A lot of a lot of playables with with these games where you actually need to like just what should I do here in this one? You want the money. Okay. Give me the money. Give me the money. I don't know. Even when when when you talked about the the variations and it's pretty much iterations of the of the playables. You have the one long playable, you cut it into pieces. You have multiple rooms and then therefore you can have multiple multiple playables. Like we discussed with the Draw the Breaker. I had we had short one, but we had also long one. We have multiple call to actions there,

different different messaging. And suddenly from one playable we have seven. And it's super easy. Same with the magic game we we just did. We do have one scene pretty much, but then you can have a dragon there, you can have snake there, you can have fire there, you can have electricity, whatever else. And it's not that hard to produce. Well, kind of not not that hard, kind of, but still less work than if you do if you build something from scratch. So instead of 4 weeks, you have it in two. Yeah. I mean, you know, because in this specific case that you are now mentioning, like you are pretty hands-on with the development of the playables, and you see that yes, in the script it often looks like it's actually four different playable because there is, you know, dragon or snake or whatever. In the end, you can really keep the 90% concept of the of the whole story and just, you know, reshuffle a couple of things. I'm not saying it's super easy, mostly with 3D objects and all this stuff, of course it needs some development, but it can be literally as easy as that, like just

have one good script that is working and just change the enemies, change the colors in the example of Magic Sword, like it's it's one template, and you know, they're clearly experimenting with just number of colors and different colorful palettes, you know, in between all those. I mean, probably it works, otherwise it will they will not be doing that, right? So, so yeah, I mean, You need the volume, man.
there is this kind of there's kind of thing like, oh, but I have already created this playable. Like, no, have you really drained everything from that playable? Have you created all of the variations that, you know, that you So, that that is that is the question that you should be probably asking. Always. Always, and it can be applied to any game, pretty much. Any type of gameplay. Yeah. Unless, you know, again, going back to the previous episode, like, you know, that was the that was the mobile application stuff like that. There's probably a smaller space to create some sort of long playables when you have, I don't know, PDF viewer or something like that, you know, that's probably
What do you mean? It's like a you just you're just going to

do if if it's a PDF viewer, then you just view 10 10 different PDFs or whatever. [laughter] Okay, and You can be You can be creative. already viewed enough? Have you already viewed enough of PDFs yesterday? If yes, Can you view this better? Exactly. That's it. That's it. No, but uh Yeah, there you go. Nice. It's pretty cool. Very cool because we looked at the the royal match as well in the in the trends and how long playables again are just winning. The thing is what what one one guy mentioned is that it's shouldn't be about actually the length, but actually about the percentage of finish like finished the two the playable actually. So, if you have 60-second or 90-second long playable, but nobody's actually finishing it, then it sucks. But then there is the other part of the equation. It's that's the the player

experience, but then you have the well, algo- algorithmic experience, which I'm I think I'm I'm somewhere in the middle. I care also about the actual like the format and it's like long then because then you have multiple clicks, and if you have even long-form playable and you finish it in the middle, you can still have more clicks than if you have a short one. So, that's for me, that's the the KPI. More clicks, usually better. Cuz then more higher chance of converting the the user. Yeah, look, the the more engagement points or the more times that you engage, the more like sentiment there is towards the creative, right? So, if that person has engaged with it multiple times, then the likelihood of them eventually downloading it is going to be much higher than someone who just has clicked it twice.
Yeah. How would you then might you mention measure measure events for example in this kind of playable where I'm not per se clicking, I'm holding the I need to hold the right button?

Playtime. So, just a playtime? Yeah. Number of enemies eaten? For example.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can map it the same way you would any event in a game, right? Yeah, exactly.
Like you just map all of the events and you get all of the data, then you optimize towards it. Simple. Yeah, because I well, I would be really curious to see like how long you can actually play this. I think until I you you see the top bar on top. I think when I really be
Okay. No, you just evolve. You just evolve. You just evolve. Okay. Never ending playable. I was already eaten twice, I think. Only the head. Yeah.
Okay. I'm already level 2007. Okay.
Okay. So, so this was time sensitive. So, they put a timer on that, but they didn't show you the timer. They just like timed it.
And the timer or the or the level, it was like 270 or something. It was like the Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting because then you have the You you unlock the new snake. Get it now. And then you go to the to the actual game. It's like, "Oh, where

the is that snake?" Yeah, that's it. You go through to the actual game and you can't get that snake for 500 levels. But then and then you think about Well, I'm going to show you afterwards the Royal Match samples. It's it's such an insane thing because if you have and we talked about it last time. If you have a long playable, you need ton of assets and it still needs to be under 5 megabytes. How How How are you even going to compress all of the stuff because I There is one game in one level which from Royal Match which is like 28 moves and it's fully It's like I just took one level directly from the game and it's a playable. Like really high quality, all all sorts of particle effects and everything. It's It's actually happening there. So, like How? How? Because sometimes you look at the some some playable wasn't playable click Because the game is really 3D 3D very polished and CGI and whatnot. high fidelity game and you have no idea how to compress all the assets to like under

5 megabytes. It's just like it's impossible. Yeah. I just received actually yesterday this question. One It was one of I mean, it's not a customer. It's just a person that reached out and like trying He was trying to understand like the concept of of some playables and he was doing He was referencing some 3D car racing games. He was like if that's possible like of course anything is possible to do I mean but this is pretty heavy stuff to have like really long you know some sort of full what's what's it called like racing track or whatever it is. To have that 3D with all the like you know when you are drifting with all of the animations everything like that's probably custom way to do it like not some sort of templated way as as as for example we do but I checked his competitors I sent him a couple of them actually were using our tool for that. All of these end cards all of these you know puzzle stuff all the simple stuff you can still do so if if your game is the type of game as Matias was now referencing to you know hard assets lot of heavy stuff. And you feel that you

are not able to invest or create the fully polished playable then okay and you are trying to start with them then you'll start with some sort of simple stuff and that's it you know and then you can be wiser if playables are working for you or not. Yeah look I would if it's racing thing I would go after like some sort of customization you know like upgrading the car or picking the track. Like it doesn't you don't need to have like the full one-to-one experience of the like the core loop especially if it's like a high-def mobile game Andre like you know you're not going to get all of that into 5 meg and you have to be realistic so it's just about kind of pivoting and and equally what I would say is depending on the type of racing game a lot of people like the playables which um focus on the race themselves are not the best performing. It's all the ones around the side stuff. Like the customization and or or editing and the car blah blah blah all of that is better. We discussed it with the War Robots pretty much their best performing creative for playable was customization

of the robot pretty much. Yeah exactly. Which is I mean easy well again easy but it's not kind you can't have just the full game pretty much. So I can make an understand.
the good part is that you are not, you know, a lot of people are afraid of this kind of false promises. You are not even doing that. You are pretty clear. Like, you will be able to customize your robots eventually, you know? It's It's not a core game play. Obviously, you need to understand that user that the the full game will probably not be about you customizing the robots. You will probably need to fight them in, you know, certain time or place. So, yeah. Look at this one, man.
I'm looking at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are creating something very similar currently.
They're like, Yes. I was just Yeah, I was just like, "Oh, wait a second. This reminds me of Robot Break."
[laughter]
But, I like the pace. You can see See how fast it is? Like, everything is happening. So, Yeah, yeah.
So, I'm I'm interested in how far will I go because the install button is Keep flashing on me. But, when will this end? I hope it will not be like Magic Sword, like, you know, one tap before I kill

the zombie or something. I mean, yeah, someone's Yeah, someone set that up to be maximum frustration point. Maximum I mean, it kind of works. All right, that's it. It creates that that that thing in your head, right? Like, now I have to do this now. Like, I'm going to have to download this game and prove this game wrong. There's a thing like, if this would be on my mobile devices a real playable, I would like I'm already too far. I'm already too far to to leave. Yeah, exactly. You invested so much already in the time.
So, I want to see if I can go in there. Yeah. And this probably the power first. Okay. Probably not be so easy. But, the pace is good. I really like the pace of it. Like, it this can be done much much If this would be slower, then I guess probably I would not be, you know, that far. So, maybe that's another takeaway. Like, if you are creating really long playable, then think about the pacing. Like, when will user actually, you know, gets to the stage where you want him to be? But, still like there's probably another ending here. Mhm.

Yeah, I see a lot of a lot of AI creatives rather than the playables. But, I'm just already looking at it from on the site. So, that's what we saw it too. Check anyway. Was it two Oh, yes. So, you send it there. So, you meant to go, but was that because you went to the door? And you tried to
Yeah, but but but you could get to the door only when you finish like the five or six spaces with when and you clear them, right? So, I mean, I like that one. Why not? For this type of game and then, you know, exactly what what will you do, Mati? You know, six versions of this these Wait. The third gate, the fourth gate, the fifth gate. And you know, you have you have all of a sudden six playables. You don't need to like develop anything anything else. You will just put the CTA and the triggering events sooner.
Also, faster pace, slower pace as well. Yeah, exactly. Easy. Yeah, yeah. Easy as that. All right. So, this is As you can see, I'm just I'm in random like I When I was doing my stuff, I was not even this deep and every playable that I clicked was kind of long. So,

Super long, yeah. There is there is almost zero or very very rarely new creatives uh last month that was actually not People because people listen to the to the podcast and they heard, "Oh my god, the long-form playables." And there you go. Suddenly, they're everywhere. Yeah, but you I mean, then the podcast podcast last time was that look like a lot of short playables. So, I mean, they're doing quite the opposite, right? In that case. Well, I suggested I suggested to to do more long-form. So, you know what you know. I know. I know. Jokes aside, but I can I can show you the the actual stuff for the royal Yeah, okay. Let me just stop and I will So, Andre doesn't want to stop now. He's in the middle of the You know, he's like you're trying to drag him away from it, that's what I'm saying. I have already panda dragon or what is it? Snake, so level 60 Oh, hello. Hello there. I didn't see you. Thank you very much for coming to this episode. 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 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, fast, 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 of a piece of your company. Visit pvxpartners.com and see how they can help you grow your game. Second. Okay, now it's the the other game. So, it went directly to Murder Hill instead instead of Royal Match. Okay, I'm here. Which is again I was going through all of these and I think I had Well, it doesn't matter. We can we can do multiple multiple levels. Oh, yeah, this is the one. So, we have 30 moves. Okay, now I need to

turn off the the sound. Okay. And this looks exactly like like one-to-one game level. You have the power-ups here even all everything and it's still and the quality of this it's it's insane. I mean Look all the all the effects. It's true it's it's let's call it the board is not as huge as with other levels, but still Come on, how can you even make this? But then I always always come back to the fact that they're spending a couple millions a day. It's almost like when we were talking to to Heaven from Century Games like how the are you even able to to do White Hat Survival on WeChat? I was like absolutely cold face poker face like technology is not a problem in China. It's like okay, fine. So, obviously obviously there's no problem. So, that was very fun moment. It took me four 14 moves and then I made level, but still I see like how like huge quality it is. One for one basically. Exactly. Except for the the

board size and shape, you're right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, let's see. This is the This is the top one for our for for April. 75% of impression share. Oh my god. I see. Here we go. Even this. See? Even this looks Yeah, like the whole like quality of the whole playable pretty much. Cuz usually again like you need to compress all the all the assets and then suddenly it looks like But this I mean if it would be only this one level that would be I think still doable. There's not that many assets to be honest. But Like it looks like the balls are actually individual. Yeah, but that the ball is one asset, you know? Here you go. Hello. And we have We have room number two. Oh my god. Okay. And then I would I would click out. But still You know, I take a look but this is this is actually interesting thing because uh I saw playables that were doing this. So, they redirect you sooner but you can still exit the app store and come back

and play. But on certain ad networks, correct me if I'm wrong. Sorry, dear listeners. I think it's Mintergral and some others as well. They have these events like game end and when you trigger that event, you cannot you know you then even if you come back you know you cannot do anything else and stuff like that. Uh it's very interesting that they for example are experimenting even with this like okay, you are redirected. You can still come back you know you can continue and you can do this you know multiple times actually. Oof. Another level. Another 20. Yeah, and they would have AB tested the number of moves as well, right? Like less moves, more moves, like
is this is it's actually in Spanish. I don't see it properly but still even that yeah. Oh, whatever.
not English but I want English. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry guys. Yeah. I'm going to be eaten alive. For sure. But I think they are they are definitely experimenting not just with the length and with the levels and clicks, but also with different you know, all these special effects and bonuses. Really one playable is this

unlocking the Sorry, I cannot see it properly. The stone, you know, or the frozen frozen items. The second one was saving the king. The second one is having a lot of uh explosions and the TNT, you know, special effects and all that stuff. So, they're clearly trying to see even like which one which one is like better hook for the user. Yeah, I would say that playable and this one would have been built in different things different different ways. If you look at like the special effects, like you said, Andre, it looks it looks different to the ones in the first playable. So, I would say they were developed in different different platforms, different providers, you know. Or even maybe just different teams, you know, big guys like these, you know.
It can be just team A was doing this and team B was doing very similar, but just differently, you know. Mhm. And then Oh, I have the claw master. This is this is the one that you were trying to show us, you John? Yeah, this is Yeah, this is the one one of them that got me

recently. So, this is the one you installed? Yeah, this and Cell Survivor In the last week, Cell Survivor and this are the only two that got me to download. And I see a lot of ads, okay? Okay, I never seen this one even the mechanic with the claw. They are not targeting me. I don't know why. I can't tell I mean This is again, as I said before, like it's cup heroes and something else and the claw scene. And okay. But I mean, it's multiple touch points again. Mhm. And things are happening.
Where were you interacting? Sorry, you are only clicking on the claw? Yeah, you're just moving the claw. Yeah, you're not actually doing any of the fighting per se. It's like it's like the Royal Match one where you're engaging with the the match free board. In this you're just interacting with the claw. And the Mhm. It's It's the same as the traditional kind of small giant games, you know, like that whole thing of like the RPG at the top and like the engagement point at the But

yeah, exactly at the bottom. So, just split split screen basically, but you're not controlling any of them. And this is the only other thing you have to do. You You have the ability to choose your upgrades. Right? So, every so often you'll say, "Do you want to do this or do you want to do that?" And that's the multiple choice, but the engagement is on the bottom screen, not on the top. All right. And the game was like this when you already installed it?
Yeah, I mean, this is the game pretty much. Yeah, this is This is it, yeah. Okay. Oh, puzzle mechanic. I mean, honestly, this is pretty well made. It's multiple things, I guess. So many things happening at the one. It's pretty on the on the screen. It's pretty complex. I mean, I would most probably download the game as well. But only because I would want to Think about it again from the asset perspective that you were claiming with the all these assets. Yeah. Who finds your assets? There there was not even so many different assets, you know. Again, you know, same enemies, almost the same. I think there were two or three types, you know, two two colored balls and the rest is basically reusing. And if you do this, then you can have

seven screens like this easily because, you know, you you will be within the limits. That's true. That's very true. And I want to show like the the White Out Survival stuff because it's also quite impressive how they're making all of the different playables because here, look, even this I mean, this is 5 months old, but still I can do I can do the Yeah, it's the trends. It's the trends for April, of course. And there was the Oh, hello. Oh, hello. You can see this See? 99% impressions. puzzle On Google though, but still. I mean, this is all you need pretty much. I mean, this is something we know quite a lot.
is the puzzle trend that is happening like half a year already, right? Exactly, yeah. And it's it's so simple and so easy that it still works. I just love it. This is great and it's you see you don't really need any really high fidelity Yeah, because this is the I think you know, there are always more than one type of users and eventually

playable ads are good at in catching attention. Of course, videos, images, I mean, they are good at as well, but you know, the interactivity is always catching a little bit more attention. So, you already get your first cohort of users just by doing anything interactive. And then the rest with the, you know, some sort of nice stuff or or the or the good stuff, you know. Yeah, look and and that puzzle format is highly recognizable, right? Like even if you know, I always think of the the mom test. Like if I gave that to my mom, would my mom understand what it is and what to do? And you know, it's highly recognizable. Everyone understands what a puzzle is. Like puzzle pieces putting them in line. So, I think it's just smart testing by widening in the scope a little bit rather than going for your domestic and and your first kind of cohorts. Yeah, but the thing is thing [clears throat] is people don't think this is good enough. That's what I That's what I kind of encountered when I said, "Look, you have a Forex game, but you should you should try this." Oh, but it's it's a puzzle. It's not

even close to whatever we are doing and it's looks like I was like, "Yeah, but I mean, it works." Yeah, look if people like it dude, if it's getting downloads, then who are we to say otherwise?
That's right. I mean, who is to choose? Yeah, exactly. Who am I Who am I to judge? Yeah, exactly. End of the day, like what you what you got to think about? I think we sometimes get a bit lost on the numbers sometimes. Like I we talk about IPM, we talk about the install volume, but what exactly does installs translate into in the real world? It means that the ad is good enough to get people as people's attention and for them to be interested enough to download the game. Right? And so, it's just we just the the users are making the decision. If I tell you or I ask ask a question like who do you think if I say playables, then which game do you have in mind right away? Or like who is doing it well? Oh, I mean look my my first choice right now would be Wild Survival. I think the the amount of sort of playables that I've seen and the high

quality type playables I've seen is some of the best. Uh yeah, Wild Survival would be mine. Yeah, I will tell you Township or Wild Survival. This is is usually insanely good. I think you can easily measure it, sorry, but you can track it down, not measure it, sorry. You're really going like how many copied of your playables was actually, you know, copied and how many different variations you can find from different ones and if you can track it to the original source, then you're like, okay, so this one these guys were probably doing it the best because, you know, they invented the the whole mechanism for it. So, which game is it for you, Andre?
Oh, sorry, Wild Survival in Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, how many times you seen it, you know? That's true. Yeah, I would say it's I reckon probably one in four or five playables that I used to see were from Wild Survival at one point. Yeah, but if you if you look at this, I mean, it's an it's amazing, but they are still they're super old. Because they made only three

new playables in in April, which which were the puzzle stuff. Yeah, but Matei, if how old is this game now? Like how many years have they been I mean, it's still 2020 three or two? You can you can check it.
Okay. Yeah, I mean, look It's still, come on. I mean, it's not that old.
but remember, when you launch a new game, you're going to find new winning creatives all the time, right? And the older the game gets, the more optimization that you've done, the less opportunity for success you find. So, maybe after two or three years they've just you know like squeeze the lemon as much as they can and now they're going to be testing new concepts like the puzzle thing but overall they they're they've already found like the the optimal playable for them right but they don't need to do much work.
I I can understand but then you still need to make a new new iterations and even if it's an if it's an iteration but you still need to make it again. Yeah fair enough. So that's that's what I'm kind of will be puzzled by.

Yeah yeah yeah anyway. But again this is also something that I can play for forever. Yeah exactly. And this is exactly what we saw two playables ago which is the town which is the township concept. And they reuse it as The original one of this is the from Supercell right? The pizza game was the first one that I remember. Well [clears throat] it was more like the golden goblins stuff and I remember that I remember rather than Township actually. Yeah. Or a Supercell the pizza pizza ready. Can I send you one here in chat? It's it's actually from Royal Kingdom and I did very good copy in March from from this check if you can open that.
It was first seen in in end of March and it was very good I really was playing that for a while. Let's see let's see oh this one. Yeah. But I mean again Township come on man like this this is the same same thing we just saw for Township and even

Wild Frontier. Yep. But if you can see like is this their core gameplay? No not really. You know right? And it's working like as I said like the more you see the others are copying you then the the more you know that you are doing good. Doing a good job yes. Until one of them outperforms you then you lose your market share and you're pissed. Of course. But again there are so many iterations like you know this one specifically I was playing for a while unless I was able to until I was able to unlock, you know, the first helpers here, you know, they were chopping the wood. You see different variations [clears throat] when you buy the first upgrade, right, in couple of, you know, almost nanoseconds and stuff like that. So, even things like these, you know, copying or, you know, inspiring is one thing. And then, you know, how many different things you actually create out of it, it's it's it's completely different different Did anyone say web revenue? Oh, yeah. This episode is brought to you by FastSpring, the no drama D2C partner that's been scaling with mobile

publishers for over 20 years. They're fast growing, profitable, and seriously reliable, which is more than you can say about most vendors in this space. Anyway, whether you're launching a new web store, replacing your current D2C stack, or adding a backup plan, FastSpring is here for you. Visit fastspring.gg to set up your web store today. fastspring.gg Hello, FastSpring. Thank you very much, guys, for sponsoring this episode. Yeah, and I will be playing this for a while. Yes, great. Oh my god. Now, I love it. I love it. So, okay. So, long playables, different genres, again, new stuff, great great things from Dream Games, as usual. So, I guess that's that's pretty much it. That's pretty much it. So, what will be our guest for next month because

it was one one month short playables, which I will if I will see it I will just not do the review anymore because otherwise we will be just, you know, switching from long I wish we could be switching, man. This is Yeah, let's see. I mean, just any tips, John? What what will be the night and we can check in a month like if if we were right. What will be the trend in what
No, but he's always right. No, I'm always right. Tom is never wrong, baby. Never forget that. Never forget that. I know. No, do you know what? Like I I I think as boring as it may sound, I think long-form are going to be continually dominant until something else comes along. And what that next thing is, I think what you touched upon with the puzzle and like the going back to simple very very highly recognized mechanics like the puzzle one. I think we're going to see more variation of this. So, yeah, I like puzzle game like a like a jigsaw puzzle and other kind of really old like formats. Like I I can't

give another really good example right now cuz I've only seen really the puzzle one take off, but I think you're going back to like very basic core roots stuff will also start being more popular. Let me check what's what's actually now we are starting My guess My guess even for the last one was that we'll be seeing more AI playables like visually clearly AI playables. Maybe I'm just not scrolling long enough in 2000 or 3000 new playables in less than 2000 every month or maybe I will do the homework better and and just force the trend and the next trend will be just AI playables because I will just set it. Either that, dude, or the AI playables are looking so good you can't tell they're AI, right? I mean, not all of them. Like a couple of them you clearly see on the first try. Mostly the simple ones, of course. And the more complicated the game, then, you know, the more more harder it is to for you to tell if it was actually done with any AI or not. And again, then there's a question like what's what do you still consider AI

because even even you said, John, that you know, you are using some sort of AI to develop something. So, is that AI playable if AI was just doing the code for you or AI playable something that just automated through AI, you know? This is the AI generated versus AI assisted. You know, that's the big diff- the big sort of differentiator, right? Like Maybe this we can do that next time. Maybe we can look at ones that I think AI assisted versus AI generated. I would listen to that podcast. Yeah, for sure, man. I think that we are going to see a lot of arrows themed labels within within the casual games because it's popping up lately quite a lot. I've seen it actually. And even like yeah, there's like so many arrows games. Definitely the big big guys are going to I'm going to try to to leverage this mechanic. Because we see we saw pretty much pixel flow stuff all over the place for these guys. And then there is this all the jewel coloring and whatnot. And I think you Andre you put it into the into the

Yes, here. Yeah. Into the article. This is here. I'm going to show you quick stuff. So, this is look. See, we have like and The arrow stuff. Yeah. Arrows is here. Arrows Arrows is here. There's like jewel color coloring and all of this And this is I mean this is pretty much like arrows like game. But I'm saying like all of what we see here is going to be just adapted to let's say Royal Match or Royal Kingdom or any other these types of games match three games because these games are now popping up so much. And even this this bus What was it? Bus Where do I have it? Bus Rush Fever.
[laughter]
Bus Rush Fever. That's a new game which is also kind of scaling. So, this type of stuff. We're going to see more. One One more thing. Interesting how much we will see football themed like small next two months.
Yeah, you're right. World Cup, yeah. Yeah, good good World Will there be King games different clashing games with

soccer balls all of a sudden? Like let's see. Yeah, that's a very good good point. Yeah, a good one to watch actually all the the football related stuff for the World Cup. Yeah. All right. Perfect. Thank you very much for listening guys. Thanks for coming again. See you next time. Bye-bye. Thank you guys. Thanks guys.