💀Review Radar #12: Which games survived & which are actually DEAD (Poke It With a Stick!!)

March 23rd and the guys are really pumping it up. They're doing 500 and a day according to this and downloadast at least
probably download right
definitely not slowing down
active users are definitely not slowing down and record revenue 700k for forex is great. Yeah,
with the two and a [music] half gamers, the midnight crew talking UA adverts and game design too. Mat Felix Shak bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight [music] master on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Felix stacks like a wizard in disguise. [music] Jacks lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick got your back. [music] Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. [music]

Uh-huh. Aha. [music] [music]
Hello.
Hey.
Hey. How are you? How are you?
Good.
All good. Review Radar 12. Let's go.
Let's [laughter] go.
Felix Robert.
Yeah, Kubre.
I can go because there's a ton of stuff because we have you too much games and then I need to go through all of them. Yes.
I look so I look so young. I look so young. [laughter] How old is
always always a time machine episode?
Yeah.
This is I just I just came back from from US. cuz I can see it on my puffy face.
January 8th. Yes. Mate mate on junk food from US.
No, no, it's not junk food.
Tacos and tacos and margaritas.
[ __ ] swollen from the jet leg.

Okay, let's go. So, last
fake fake fake chicken. Fake chicken. Okay.
So, last time we ended on Jig Solitaire. Uh, this time we're going to continue on arrows if you remember.
Yes, of course we remember January 8th. And January 8th was somewhere here where this was this like let's say nice thing that we saw that's trending and doing and then it scaled to something like million a day downloads and everybody's copying it and everybody's kind of going over it because if we go to where we go if we go to sort category and we go to downloads [snorts] this thing is doing giant numbers and there's already things going over it actually both games from arrows go from learnings the okavir guys and then easy brain arrows puzzle tap puzzle so what
what am I going to say what am I going to say [laughter]

tell tell it
who cares about download show me the dau numbers that's what actually matters here it's all right
okay
okay okay let's go I think it's still oh this is still winning okay
told you [laughter] Okay, good. I'm glad that arrows I really, man, I really really am happy for less more. Like these guys really own it now. I'm more happier than before.
That's the earnout right there. That's the earn.
Yes.
But uh yeah, so this game just rocks and we seen multiple iterations. There's one on grand games. I'm guessing there's multiple ones. We already covered like what was the game? Bastrophic fever. There's the one fever. Yeah. kind of arrows mechanic, hexa away, and like yes, multiple games that are like trying it, but none succeeded yet on big scale. So, we'll see.
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It's like more people playing arrows than there are in Finland.
Like where where this is this is Yeah. This is your active uses. You see here like like in January they like literally nearly doubled the DAU here. So like there and and like uh don't get me wrong this is still pretty tier three but also pretty good US.

Yeah. So it's not that bad. Anyway, uh right after we covered this other game called Forge Master also from less
because less more is a less is more and less more is actually killing it because if you look here this is the downloads of course like arrows is nothing like they had before but if you look here you also see that Forgemaster from the last time they were talking about it is scaling up
nice and it's on stopping. Yes, this radar will be actually about games that actually scale up after we talk about them. So, who have thought?
This was interesting cuz this was Lesmore's first title with no ad revenue. So, it's quite like
Yeah,
there was zero ad revenue on this one.
Yes, exactly.
It's like we are warriors slashed into streamline legend of mushroom. like I would need to play this game more I

guess to see like what has changed or maybe less. This will be a good episode. So yeah, so we'll see. But it's definitely scaling up and we talk about it on again January and you see in January it was this kind of a still pretty okayish like 50k a day pretty good. Come on now more than 100. So again, this is going very very well and it's even better seen on the daily active users here where you see that it's just scaling scaling up and now this is this is really pristine traffic. This is no more tier one. This is US, South Korea, Germany
and so on so forth.
Still tier one.
Yeah, this is all tier one compared to that's what I wanted to say. So yep, less more is killing it like let's let's let's go guys. I'm really really rooting for you.
Let's go. There we have the infamous pixel flow episode
which changed the puzzle industry on January 15.

And so January 15, everybody was just here um like you know
somewhere here on the top.
That's like the euphoria stage was like we're not slowing down, everyone's going to play it.
Yeah.
And they kind of slowed down unfortunately. And
remember what I said?
What?
This is not going to hold. Yeah, this is not going to hold much.
Oh, I thought you going to do another dad joke. Oh, you did too many dad jokes in a row. So hard taking you seriously.
I was [ __ ] right.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, I mean, kudos to the team and the game is amazing.
I'm still making giant amount of money.
Yeah. still I mean if if I have a game with this amount of money I will be
I think it's also based on the fact that there's a lot of competition now actually and we'll get to that later
it's not a lot of competition man it's just like the game is nowhere near the level of like royal match king
a lot of competition you'll [ __ ] see later
yes there is a lot of comp sure yes

you'll see later
there's a lot of competition for all the match three
gen to the team but it's like you see here it's not declining it's stabilized it's stabilized basically
yeah I This still makes [ __ ] ton of money.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
But even here you see is stabilizing. So Pixel Flow then then we did new genre then cozy games which I very let's say skillfully predicted.
I'm so happy you did this one alone. [laughter]
Of course you're happy.
Oh my god. Yes.
Yeah.
This was the best episode that we did best ever.
So actually what is this game about? We have this episode. I have a video store and I need to sell my pajamas and then I need
to [ __ ] the VCI video store. Not the [ __ ] man. This is actually the leader. It is the leader. If you look at the game, uh you see that there's this giant spike because that was the US release. Still, they're making giant amount of money like 200k, 400k, whatever per day because again it's gacha based. So you

see that they do what like 10 million a month easily. Easily. What? What?
It looks to be dying.
No,
it's not dying. Look at that graph. It's just spiky. [snorts] Definitely not dying.
Spiky.
I don't know. But uh but but but that game dead and that that game is definitely not dead. It's it's just that's how gacha games work, man. Like they work on gacha spikes as you see. See this nice curve like 1 million on a gacha game. Let's Let's cook the game with a stick. No,
it's not breathing. It's not raining. Avatar life category. This game is by a long shot the best one there. Like right under it's like Sunday City Life like fear which is not even an Avatar game. It's like in the GTA casino. So
let's not even talk let's just not even talk about this. So this game is solid. The category is
Oh my god. Category leader.
Yeah. Anyway, sand loop. Oh, this must I

don't think this this I don't think this lasted.
No, no, no way.
I do not think this game did good after.
Ah, no, no. Uh, this game I think it's like a very important predecessor on all the other casual puzzles. So, again, somewhere when we review it again at its hype and then just went downhill.
But I think it went downhill not only because it couldn't make it. I think Voodoo just literally just you know took a lot of learnings from it and incorporated into the next game portfolio and they went pretty much the rollic way of like we don't need to you know die on this hill rather like fight on two or three other more fronts and go from there. So I think that's that's like it did it did what it needed to do. Hunting sniper January 20
I don't know man like this was a fun game. hunting sniper game.
Actually, this must be this must be doing really well. This is
guys. It's like the the sniper elite loop applied to hunting basically. So,

we talk about that one.
Yeah, it's doing pretty well. Like if we go monthly revenue, a little bit of a dip, but still like 4 mil, 5 mil a month. Like
thing about hunting games go, it's going to stay at that level.
Yeah. For eternity. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. like
except 10 square. Look at that. It didn't stay for that level forever. Uh yeah, if I understand this is a Chinese company.
Yeah.
Do I get it right?
Uh
I think so.
Singapore. Yeah, it's Chinese.
Chinese.
Okay, that's Chinese. That's that's staple. Okay, so this is doing still pretty well. Didn't really uh die that much. Then we continue with Finch. If you remember,
yes,
this is not a game. This is an app.
Clever. Yes.
Subscription
method. Yeah. Subscription we've ever seen
the unlimited subscription if you remember where you can go and buy unlimited subscription for your friends or what was the option or like
genius.
Yeah, exactly. So if I understand this

this was the app that reminds you to drink water and then you have this nice little pet to kind of accompany you and gamify the experience and that's it pretty much. And uh yeah, this thing grew like hell. So we talk about that in what was it
Jan
February February 9th. So February 9 was something here and then it still keep on kicking until then a little bit decline but still doing pretty good I would say for what it is and again we are disregarding the web revenue which is monstrous in this case if I remember correctly and active user base is going up actually so I'm guessing that this whole like this is the picture of like a D2C revenue game going much more higher God, did anyone say web revenue? Oh, yeah. This episode is brought to you by Fastpring, the no drama D2C partner that's been scaling

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because you see how it [ __ ] scaled on daily active users
compared to the revenue chart like just look at these numbers against each other like it just goes down and this still thing is up.
It goes up. Yeah.
So this this is like a major major example of like DTC in my opinion.
There's so many layers to unpack there.

Like what does that say about modern contemporary society? I'm not even going to go there but whoa.
Yeah. And and like look at this 77% revenue coming from US. This is insane. And they're DAU also. So this is pristine. This is like [laughter] I think it's like one of the biggest DAUs of US we ever seen.
Like does anybody has bigger? Really?
Yeah. There's an app I'll come up with a name that's bigger. Let me find it. But yeah, it's like a tracking app for families. It's way bigger.
But like gamified at least to to this degree like
Oh yeah. No. No.
Yeah. It's like this thing is just like a monster.
Anyway,
okay, moving on. Uh, Ark Knights Enfield, if you remember.
Yes, unfortunately.
Another one of those great games that you did miss because you
wear I I don't remember it. I'm really happy.
I remember it because I did the post-prouction, but that's it.
There's the guy in the There's the guy in the video store. The VSP Sierra guy.
No, no, [laughter] no, no. Giant panda.

So if you remember this is the factory game. So this is the factory Genshin style game when you have like open world and you build these factories and all these other things. Let me just say that it's doing reasonably well for its form.
Get your stick out. Get your stick out. Let's [ __ ] it.
Even though it's still in heavy decline, of course, because this is ana RPG. So this is not something [laughter] that you would touch with a temple stick.
[snorts]
And
that game is dead.
Yeah, but look at the daily active users. They stabilize pretty nicely. And you have this hardcore audience that doing pretty hell.
This This is again This is the the life cycle of of these big gacha games, man.
What happened with your voice?
Defending a dead game. That's always what you do.
It's not dead yet.
It's not dead yet. Of course.
I'm sorry. This game is dead.
Just Just look at the This is on PC. This Also, this is on stream. This is

everywhere. Just like
users are down. Everything is dead.
[ __ ] hell.
Oh, revenue 66%.
Dragon Traveler. I played this game for nearly a like Yeah,
a year.
Year since podcast. So, it was not a year, but like half year.
Five months. Poor you.
It didn't go well. [laughter] Let me just say that.
Where's my sword? Where's my sword?
It's not bad, but it's quite bad. But the crazy thing is, right, like these games, these games earned 46 million probably some on web as well. Like it probably paid for it development cost and then some, right?
I hope so. I guess so. Yeah. Oh, for sure. You know, like this is this is again the way of RPGs. Like they're missing the layer of forex where you could go and fight with each other and have these giant economy spent syncs like to do these things. Like RPGs just cannot do that. So that that's like that's the problem. Then we move on. Angry Birds Rush on February 16th. If

you remember, there was this very nice talk with actually Luis, the CMO of Roio was there. Guys from OBB were there. Uh, yeah, it's still in soft launch. I can't really say anything about it. So,
also it's not even Angry Birds Rush anymore. It's something else.
And what it is?
I have no idea. It was I think it was
changed. No, the name was changed. I think it was
What do you mean? Angry Bird Rush is right there.
It was taken down from the store after the episode. People were actually writing this into the comments section on YouTube. So, it's back online. Maybe it's not.
Okay.
So, it's not as easy to say how is it doing right now. So, that's the only
Okay. Again, fingers crossed when this goes live, we'll see it or if it ever goes. But again, the guys have time. They need to fine-tune it. Okay, moving on. Warn C.
War if you remember.

War Inc.
War Inc. Which one was this?
This was
Are you watching Zena the Sulu Warrior on YouTube?
Uh, no. This is like, of course,
what's a documentary on Hercules or what was that?
This game was quite good. I remember.
No.
Yes, it was. But
it was good. It was okayish, but you see that it's like it's that. Yeah,
exactly.
What?
Who [clears throat] made this again?
Fast Games.
They were the ones that made that art of war. Yes.
Ah, yeah.
And if I understand correctly, it's not really looking that well for the guys.
Yes. If this is their biggest game because it means that they don't have anything else in the in the revolver. But yeah, let's see. Malpa games. This was March 5th and we were actually doing this with Ritzky and talking about a game that was hopping on the jigsaw trend. This was what was it?

March 5th. So on March 5th, yeah, it was pretty good and then it went kind of downhill.
No, no, no, no, no, no. Add monetized games need. Yeah. Okay.
Not [laughter] not like not great. Not terrible. We still got 200,000 deu down from what is that 600,000
I guess again if you look here I guess the guys have another one already. Yeah, exactly.
Which is this uh whatever this is like some cross word puzzle which is doing [snorts] like
Yeah,
I think
yeah just double
active users. Yeah, 400k 300k active users 500k. So they they pretty much like move on. It's normal. So I guess doing okayish. Cell survivor. O March 9. I hate this game. Yes.
Yeah. I hated the artwork. The artwork was like so so Asian couldn't make any sense of it. So we covered somewhere here. Then it went

downhill as usual. It's not that bad on the revenue side actually like still doing like three and something million a month. If we go active users, we see that it's kind of stabilized but again not that big. So nothing to show off that much. But again I'm guessing especially because it's not localized at all. So either like a Asian version of this game on either WeChatad or Chinese stores is doing maybe the major revenue and we just don't see it cuz this is definitely not playing there. Last asylum. So, Last Asylum March 23rd,
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March 23rd and the guys are really pumping it up. They're doing 500 and a day according to this and download
at least probably downloads about
definitely not slowing down.
Active users are definitely not slowing down and record revenue 700K for 4x is great.
Yeah. And that is mainly driven by US still. Even though interestingly active users are higher in US but revenue is coming from oh sorry downloads not revenue from from Russia. So that's there. Let me get the revenue filter here. Yeah, now it's now it's correct. Of course it's US. A pretty pretty good uh graph of like what what the country filter says. So yeah, I'm expecting this game just to rise up especially because it has the very nice micro on boarding. He's a [ __ ]

Then there's Subway Surfer City,
which you can get.
Get your stick out. Get your stick.
You can't even touch it with the stick.
This is just dead.
Like, uh, I'm sorry.
Yes.
Show me. Show me the I just want to double check. I'm pretty sure it's dead. But
yeah,
you can't call a game dead if it's got a million DA.
I'm sorry. Even if it's all in India.
Yeah, man. Come on. I don't know, man.
I don't know, man. Like, can we talk about this game? Let me do a double check here if they have any creatives. No, they don't. So, again, they just left left it out to die.
I think we made a good short on this. That summarizes it pretty well.
Like, u Yeah, that's it. That's how these things go. Anyway, now we go to the big guns. Yanoop.
Yeah, that's doing quite well. March of March,
it's going up. Yeah,

it's going up. And there's few things I want to put into perspective here
because you see it's going up. And let me add pixel flow.
Oh, it's going down.
So if we see this graph, we see that it's slowly converging to each other. So what? Yeah. Few more months and it can go up.
I don't know, man. Okay, let's see.
And the put like Smashfest there as well. Let's see. You know, like no puzzle game.
No, you need to put a different game there. Actually,
which one?
You know which game you need to put here now.
Oh, yeah. Jelly but Yes. Jelly but
Jelly Busters because Jelly Busters is doing rounds now. And it's actually over
Yes.
the downloads of Yarn Loop. Yes.
Show me DU just just for context because there's still a bit big ad revenue component here.
Yeah. Yeah. But it's going to catch up quickly with those downloads.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, of course it is.

We see Jelly busters quite a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm really really surprised because I know we written off that game on on soft launch sonar.
We didn't written off.
Yeah, we said that they're too late. We said that they're too late already. We said that that it's like in the pixel flow wave. It's too late. And now it's like the third biggest one.
Third biggest one. Sure. But let's see.
Let's see. But yeah, sword is getting very very interesting. And I think this again is the reason why Pixlow is not doing that smooth riding because these guys are breathing down their neck very heavily.
But not only them,
I know, but them directly directly based on the core. And we're like they're still not grand scaling their game there, which they could.
Yes. Yes.
So we'll see. Anyway, again, fingers crossed for Spike. Uh happy for them that they hop onto this castle clashers. Ooh,
they're going up.
Granny, growing.
That's the voodoo meat core. Nope. The

stable. We covered this on April 2nd. April 2nd is somewhere here when they were going up aggressively.
April 2nd.
It was April 22nd. Maybe
April 2nd. What do you mean?
No, just show the [ __ ] graph. April 2nd, we're going up peak somewhere at the end of May and then they're just like again stabilized. It's not bad, but it's still not going up. And I was expecting this to go even higher. So, there must be some kind of an issue here with either scaling or metagame problem because based on the game, like at least early game and all these other things, I think it's maybe they're hitting the like the limit of their gacha because their gacha is not really a gacha. It's a little bit of a mob control mutation. We talk about that one. Uh if you look at the latest year with Voodoo, like what's been happening, this was actually the driving force during May and so on, but now it's actually went down and Marble Sword took again the number one

spot on IP revenue per day. And Castle Clashers is on second and there's also this chat app called Whis app.
Whis.
Yeah. which now is on the third spot which is
quite funny compared to mob control but yeah let's see next one brilliant sword
is not an xord
this is the game that I hated even more so yeah it's not doing well it's okay
I say that I'd say that's okay
this is okay
well you you said for a game that is actually done that's oh that's not did. So, come on.
Could look better though. Could look better.
Could look better.
Could look better.
They will literally turn off UA tomorrow.
Yeah, but last one.
Last one. Bacher Hero. This is the star.
Oh, no. This is the star of the thing.

And I'm playing it right now.
Really?
Like, yes,
they changed.
[ __ ] check this
scale. Oh my god. Yes. This episode is brought to you by Potencus. And if you're a mobile game publisher tired of leaving money on the table, listen up. Potencus 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. Potencus has direct deals with Amazon, Apple, Coca-Cola, Vodafon. 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 critics. Plus, they've partnered with playable maker wing. So, they will take brands YouTube videos or static images and actually turned into playable ad or revert video proper interactive format built for gaming inventory. Brands getting a gaming

native creative publishers are getting a higher CPMs. Everyone wins. Head to potensus.com to get started or check their creative portfolio in the link in the show notes. Thank you very much Potencus for sponsoring this episode. So our favorite team from Multiccast is killing it again and I am not even you know joking because they did [ __ ] ton of work. If you go here, there's literally this
major update [snorts]
point0 major update rewatch presentation.
There's so much stuff they put into this. Now
there's tons of new features, complete rebalance of the game,
completely new currencies, new modes.
So now it's now are we talking?
Now we're talking. Now we're talking.
Yes. And
play that again. I spent actually like I made like four IPs in this game. So you want to play.
Yeah, I was playing this game even today just to kind of check what was new. Just

you remember this kind of giant like inventory that you couldn't like this is it.
Yeah.
Much more easier. Much
better.
Did they fix the pacing? Because it was so boring.
Yeah. Yeah. It's much better now. You remember that these trees in the ice area, they were like 20k.
Now you can kill them in two shots.
Oh, [snorts] nice.
So, and they also added this like quest system similar to Alien Invasion where you
But they were listening to the podcast.
What? They listen to the podcast,
of course. See, so you have like a quest guys here now popping up and doing things. You have hidden areas that you can go here and like literally collect these chests
like this.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like very very engaging. And uh all of these kind of other environmental things that they added into the mix. Yeah. Like kudos to them. It's scaling like there's no tomorrow. I really hope this will be another alien invasion because again they know this loop really well and like how to kind of do something. Yeah, this was the chest here. So yeah, this looks as as best as possible and you've seen

that most of these changes actually I think Felix you will see them more if you log into your account because they're mainly they're even talking about it in the mail metag game uh sorry midame and end game. So, I think that's why if you look at this, of course, they're scaling now much more downloads, but if you look at active users,
it's
Oh, wow.
It wasn't that big. But again, I guess because it unlocks so much spending for their players because now they have [ __ ] content to kind of pull the spend in, they're scaling up much higher.
I'm going to play it again and see where I'm at because I was uh pretty much at the end game.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, again, what was the ad revenue? Because I think it's quite significant. Yeah, it was uh I can't find it really quickly, but let me see if I can.
But it was something within 40 50% of
Yeah, it was 35 I think
because they have these very very good rewarded videos here. I think I don't know if they had like the times two like critical hit on them where you would get like like giant amount of HP or whatever whatever that you

that is new. They didn't have that before cuz I would remember that.
Yeah, the critical one. So they have it now and it's like so worth it. like you like you literally you're an idiot if you're not clicking on that.
Yeah.
So yeah, this game this game works perfect now.
So I'm playing it a little bit more just to see how all these new mechanics are being added and again
maybe I'll retune it once again one day. Scale it up because looks really as I said this is the winner for me for the podcast. Like hard work pays off again.
Yeah. Well, as always
that's always okay. It wasn't that bad actually. 30 minutes. You know, usually it's it's way longer.
Yeah. Off to record Mecca Chameleon.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. Thank you very much for coming. See you in the comment section and in our Slack channel. Cheers. Bye.
Bye-bye.