The Real Story Behind Tasty Travels’ Meteoric Rise: Merge, Monetize, Repeat!

The ARB DAO they actually has double the ARB dow of travel.
Interesting.
Nearly scale man. So
I know I know but still yeah it's
you got the revenue. I just want to see the the actual revenue.
The revenue is not comparable.
Yeah like exactly.
Jesus category.
Amazing.
It's growing so much.
Amazing. It's insane.
Yes. is the second biggest category in puzzle after mention [Music] chasing the sky with the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA advers and game design too mate feeling shaka master eyes on the prize tracking data through the cyerspace skies feeling stacks colors like a wizard in disguise jacks lift us to the Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey stick got your back. Ads are

beautiful. They like the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Hello everyone.
Hello everyone. Hello everyone and welcome for another extremely special episodes of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast. And today we're doing something special. We are taking we're going traveling somewhere tasty.
Yeah,
maybe China, maybe a Chinese type of traveling, but we don't know. But because today we are covering the new hit game from Century Games called Tasty Travels. But first, I'm Felix Broberg.
My name is Mate. My name is Jakob
and
we are
your host.

Okay. Nice. Okay.
We're like a barberh shop quartet. We just need to, you know, snap the fingers and
Yeah, like from the family guy, the the guys, we should sing actually next time maybe. But yeah, we're talking about Tasty Travels because it's killing like crazy and we're actually going to China in a few weeks. So, we're definitely going to talk about this game and multiple other games from the Century Games portfolio. There is some interesting things.
Can you mute Can you mute the sound? Yeah. Just wanted to have some calming music because we want to call Mate after the last
I'm fine. Don't worry. It's okay. It's okay. I'm I'm all right.
I'm all right.
Anyway, yeah. So, does it looks familiar?
Yeah. Very
very familiar. Just not like a little bit less of the the beach and sand.
So the beach and sand. Oh, there's even the beach.
Oh, there is some. Yeah, there is some. Yeah. Yeah, there is some.
No worries. But there's You know what?

There's this one signature thing that tells it away.
Oh, snow.
Yeah, there's actually winter.
Yes,
even ice.
Winter sells
cuz ice converts super well. Snow converts even better.
Even better. Anyway, yeah. So for those listening, let's go straight to it. So this is a follow up on travel town which already has a followup called seaside escape from micro fun which is currently the category leader with everything and we'll cover
not the gossip girl uh not the gossip girl. Gossip harbor
no gossip harbor is on love and pies.
Sure.
He said escape is on travel town like two different merge games.
Okay.
So yeah. So, regarding the game itself, when I was first playing, I was like, "Oh, this is again travel town as we know it." And like like what can you do? Yeah, you can do actually.
Oh, you can do a lot of stuff.
You can do a lot of stuff. And before I thought like before I started playing

the game and and by the way, it took me two days to get here to level 17 which unlocks the album which is like the whole I guess the whole feature set.
The whole feature set.
It's very very fast. I think much faster than I got uh it took me to get somewhere in travel town
I guess. So yeah, I think really guys at century even though this is not their forte they in in a way that like you know their forex they're upscaling king shot and all old all like white out survival whatnot. Yeah they did amazing job here and I think they really have a chance here in in a way like to kind of go and disrupt it a little bit anyway. So let's
instead of going for the match free now they're starting to do merch and then they will go to match free. I mean
are they though? So let's see. I will see
their business model is like looking at what earnings earns the most amount of revenue and be like huh
nice revenue there. Would be a shame if anything bad happens to

17. Yeah sure. The thing is which I'm really confused about is that the UA here in this game is amazing. I mean amazing. Uh it kind of goes exactly hand in hand with what they they're doing for Kingshot and the W survival.
Let's alter the game play.
I will get that.
No, it's it's mis Yeah, it's kind of it's misleading anyway. But still that's that [ __ ] works.
Kind of confused why it doesn't work for match three. Oh, there games in that category. But yeah,
merge is a little bit easier than match three as for like how much kind of background know how you need to have because this is not based
I'm talking about UA not not about the level balancing.
Ah, okay. I'm talking about game design product. So yeah, because this is not that much based on level based difficulty. It's more based on this like merge scing merch economy. Yeah. Yeah. Like that that's basically it. So

the typical feature set of a merge game. So this is merge to two things merge into one. So we you know drop these things we have lucky and magical as literally a critical strike where instead of level one item drops this is what literally level
and of course you clicked seven times and you got two too lucky then magical because you're lucky bastard.
Yeah. And again I hate merge games. I'm just going to come out and say it like Merch Merch Merch are good.
It's just the grind after 20 minutes. It's just grind. you're opening the gacha all the I don't think this is this is also in travel um emphasizes that much that you're lucky or like this kind of critical striking two things together which then goes

higher it goes exponential because you know the math kicks in so it takes like 32,000 of these together. I don't know. Whatever. Yeah, that that's actually
Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know.
So,
that's why I don't really like this that much because it becomes
because you know it takes like infinite amount of time.
Exactly.
Yeah. So, you get these generators. Yeah. So, I'm not going to talk about how merch works, but let's let's compare it with
if you want to know how merch games work, go see the merch game special.
Exactly. Yeah. Which is here somewhere. I I I will put it as as a YouTube card so you can click and then go there.
Yeah. Yeah. Go watch that. We we took the whole market there. So what's new here?
Yeah. So what's new here? They have pretty much everything what travel had last time I saw it. So we have the typical generators that are just like very straightforward. Then you have these generators that like generate another

generator that is temporary. and then pretty much runs out like this whatever dish or something like you see there. Then they have these like automatic generators that you literally need to isolate somewhere else because they they like start generating stuff literally just just by like Yeah. Yeah. But it's like you know their whole point is like you know pollute your board so you you know just can go there and go into this infinite loop of merging stuff because that that's also the big beauty of this game. There's no fail state. You're just merging stuff. So like you can't fail. It's just like it's it's giant exercise. Anyway, so they have everything. There's this very interesting thing. I never saw this thing. So there's this thing called Aladdin's lamp.
And actually at some point like this thing, it it generates Aladdin's like first stage lamp. At stage three, you get this literally genie here. And what it does,

it gives you hard and soft currency. And then it goes into cool down and I guess okay. So it's three times and then it gets into some whatever liquid gin stuff. There we go.
Tonic.
Yeah.
Tonic.
So yeah, that was it. Oh, so there's my liquid gin. It's the wrong one. Can I just say, Jakob, you're getting a lot better at narrating and playing a game at the same time.
Failure is merge.
Yeah, exactly. You can't fail. You just merge. Yeah, you can merge whatever.
Two brain cells needed.
You can merge whatever, but then you're wasting your time. You need to merge again against the orders. So, yeah. Anyway, so there are these orders. There's like different generators. Like this is pretty much like a week's progress because I played the whole week in two days. like a madman here. I literally spent like I don't know how

much gems to just restore the energy.
I almost I was Yeah, I was surprised like you actually spent money,
but I thought that's what you did.
You didn't.
No, no, no. Of course, I was surprised by the you didn't
because I was testing the economy and I think this is faster faster startup than Treble Town. like I think they're either more generous or their generation or orders are scripted in a way that they're taking the users faster through the initial experience. I think maybe it's a good strategy whereas they're taking maybe seasoned players that they don't want for them to kind of crawl again through the same thing, you know, fast and same grind over again. Yeah, exactly. because like I got to the events and like this is the good part like the events and stuff in second day it it's great but I I I I think like I don't know four five hours into this game already so this is like on usual 60 60 minute session daily time this is as

I said like nearly a week 60 weeks play time anyway so they have everything here it's great some additions that they have here so yeah even these like chests like this one t like 12 hours and everything Whatever. So interesting part. You see the shop icon. I haven't seen this one here. So when you see like whatever something something the shop the token shop in the shop is directly translated into the game orders and everything. I don't know if it's in travel time or not but I haven't seen it before when we were reviewing it. So that means if I go here into the shop and I go into the section of like oh yeah what they offer they have it directly you don't need to go here it's directly there like you just click on it or you can just go here and directly
Wait wait wait go back in the shop.
What are they missing here mache? Is there something missing in there?
I'm Yeah, I'm pretty sure. But if you if

you if you scroll again isn't there isn't there a web?
No, there's not. There's no web shop, right?
That's so weird.
It's very weird actually because as we talk to Fastpring almost all all the time like during the week and and by the way they're also a sponsor of this episode. They they have they they has delivered like D2C at scale for 20 years and power top mobile developers and publishers around the world. And you know as the know that drama D2C partner with the real world experience scale like fastpring is the partner you can trust with the players and with the money. I mean quickly just go and launch a new web store replace an existing D2C vendor at fastspring.gg. So you just add one button or just a link outside outside of the game and uh

and earn additional money. Fastspring.g GG. Easy as that.
We can get back. We can get back to the episode.
That's it. I mean,
yeah. So,
don't you want to earn 30% or 50% more? You They're earning 200k per day. Like, h it's
definitely
uh anyway a day, you know, extra money on the table. inventory regions or let's say construction regions inventory again same as travel town nothing really to it there's this interesting thing where like need more tools like you can directly buy the crafting regions or let's say the construction regions for soft currency so that's there like these guys are pretty much just generators for that like temporary ones daily quests and like all these things whatn not like that's There

the interesting part starts with the events and these things now follow the royal match style events meta.
Is there a story as well or no?
Yeah. Yeah, of course. Like if if let's say
did you care about the story?
No, I just click every time. Yeah, but people care. People care, you know, housewives.
Really?
Yeah. Yeah. A little bit at least. A little bit. Just a little bit. Anyway, the stuff on the right is all offers like u Yeah. So there we have here. By the way, this looks so AI.
So yeah,
it's also so polished.
Yeah, it's very polished. So just just there. And there was that last one.
These two are events.
So we have the concert one
where again we just reward the player the event currency as he plays the game. So typical like event streaker meta like we have here and then you need to

upgrade this red panda where again gives you more stuff whatever stuff like that more
it's a fox.
What?
It's a fox.
Where do you see fox man?
Fox
is red panda as it gets.
Oh no. Okay guys. Sorry. I thought it was a fox. I would I would say it's red panda not fox.
I take it back. But nice try. Nice try.
I thought it was a fox.
Oh yeah.
No, seriously. Come on, man. Like, you don't really need to swing your dick here. It's fine. We said you're right. You're right. It's okay. It's okay. You're right.
Jakob has never been wrong in his entire life. So, yeah.
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know.
Okay. So, yeah, you upgrade him and he gives him stuff. There's handy like what you need to do, blah, blah, blah. As usual. So, this is a typical passive event. You don't really need to do anything. It just rewards you with stuff. You maybe need to merge something

up a little bit.
Was the Was the fox playing a violin?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was playing violin. Yeah. So, there we go. Uh, and there's the active event, which is actually a second board. We need to now play
board. Yeah. And this is this is really nice because a lot of times these games just creates events which just like temporary boards and stuff. And this is this is even better because just like it's on steroids. It just gets the good part and like you really need to get just like walk through. This started from like zero and I'm just walking my way actually to the door
and then you go back to your chaotic board and
it's not chaotic. It's very ordered, man.
Yeah, I know. But that's you.
I you mean as a user?
Yeah, as a user. Yes. As a user, you get like backed this chaotic stuffed boys like Jesus Christ. Not this again.
That's okay. Yeah. But this works very well as like change of pacing. So again,

this is one of those like events and how you how you play it or how you do it like just you know just check as I'm spawning and you see these totals at some point like I I just get them. So I guess I didn't get any now. Yes, I didn't. But they just kind of give give you to them blah blah blah. This there same same as these days basically. So it's like royal match trigger meta. So that that's done very well. What's on top of all of these things is actually fruit merge. So there's this icon. By the way, the game never even tells you about this. it it just sits there. Nobody points you there or like quest or but they have very good tutorial.
Same same thing as with the the detective merch or what was the game? It was exactly the same as we did with radian games or what was the find the cat or like not find the cat but the the

triple match city.
Mhm.
And they had this uh black and white kind of types of uh game play like main button in the main menu.
Yeah. But I went like the the detective merge had the same button in there. But their like kind of UA gameplay the black and white stuff never said like oh you you actually need to play it. It wasn't even like between levels. It was just sitting there. Nothing else.
Okay.
So it's here. If you click on it literally says fruit merge. It's like like the fruit merge game for those that don't know what it is. It's like very popular kind of hyper casualish game. If you go into it, you play literally reverse fruit merch because normal fruit merge goes from top to bottom. This goes from bottom.
Yeah, but this is this is the UA.
Yeah, this is this is pretty much UA purpose. Like this is the UA purpose game basically.
But it was also in Trevotan. It's also in Trevotan. If you if you remember some of of the creative trends we've talked about some times ago, like

few months like it was there as well.
Yeah. So,
it's like a college frat party. Some kind of drinking game.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's like a drinking game here. And uh the interesting part is that there's you see that there's no kind of a limits, no nothing. I could just do this.
Hey, you have an objective. No,
you have an objective. Okay. But like there's no limit to it. There's no reward.
Play more stages, please. Yeah. Play more stages, please.
Oh, there's this coffee. Okay, fine.
You looking for some typical creative? Yeah, I just want to see a little bit more. But you need one more. Yeah, just play this. Perfect.
I love that end thing with the fireworks. That's so nice.
So satisfying.
Something to It's just pretty much like uh Yeah, during Carlin.
Yeah, but this Yeah, like Felix said

classic stuff. Okay. But this basically is helping the UA.
Yeah.
Because I will show
the UA game which I will just call it.
Yeah, I will show you afterwards. But still I wanted to know if there's like so many other types of this because you have different objects here and uh which is fine. But they have a way different also mini games and stuff in there. I guess it's going to be quite long and harder and harder, right?
I don't think so. is actually going to be harder because like where's the difficulty in this? I just throwing this stuff forever.
That's true. It just takes long. It just takes long. You still need two more of these of those
cuz if you compare it to those like playerics puzzles, you know, with like you need to heat the stove in the freezing family. You can fail there in two moves. Like I can do this forever.
You can't do it forever. You have that line over there and if you cross that line then you're [ __ ]
Really? Okay. But like I need to really bad.

There's the fail state
pretty much.
There you go. Okay. What?
Two more I guess.
Two more. It was already two before.
Yeah. Touch or what?
So yeah, it's not moving.
Okay. No, it's fix like nobody cares. It's just there.
It's just there. Nobody cares. It's just like
UA UA mitigating the fake review.
That's there.
Uh Hey, fake game. What do you mean?
We have the album as always.
Not as always.
Yes, as always with top casual game. There's
DIY top casual game. Yes.
Yes. Uh which is again the same. There's really not much to it. There's no cosmetic reward, which is interesting because the top one should be always the cosmetic reward, but I don't see any. But I guess why if like nobody cares about it, but that's there. interesting part that they already advertised doing the tutorial of this

that you should trade with your friends which is the important part of this mechanic.
So they have it out of the box because lots of times people have this just on solo mode and you can really trade because again takes lots of backend stuff to kind of make it work. There's this one feature which I really really enjoy that they have and no other game I've seen before. You can see the overview finally of which stickers from which collections you have already. And I would really like to see this spread into other games because it's just so handy because in in in other games like Roy like you just need to go like one by one and see which one you have or you don't have whereas here over amazing. Yeah. Whoever did this like Yeah. I would say
makes Yakoup happy again.
Very. Anyway, so my guess is what's going to happen here is that they're going to have these events and they're going to be more polished and more unique and going much further than

Travel Town. Similarly, as we seen what they did with this meta in U truckar,
they also push it very hard with like very custom events like your your own track stuff like that like this. So my guess is they're going to catch them on live ops. That that's like I
think so.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's one thing that they're going to push really hard on live ops because they know how to do these things.
I mean they have a lot of casual games and they just
don't you think Moon Active knows how to do live ops as well?
Isn't there the coin master event kind of the hit or like record the revenues? You mean the disco event that's from royal match
still? I don't care.
No, no, it's casual puzzler, man. It's not social casino. It's a little bit different.
I mean, I know it's different. It's just
like I'm just like speculating the attack vectors here. Like
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
What we're going to do better. So, you

can do better live ops because
everybody is just like doing these things. Like for instance, I know that what was it three four months ago? I remember I was wr writing an article when uh travel town enabled like times two energy spent and stuff like that. So they're all like kind of jumping or still going on this train like live ops needs to get better, game needs to be optimized, so on so forth. So I think they're going to try to attack from this side. Of course, UA we're going to talk about that. We already seen it with the Fment stuff. So that's going to be the main attack. Exactly what what Travel Town was doing all for like 6 months even more.
Yeah. So,
I mean that's like it's not not even the same thing. It's just
Yeah, but they're just starting.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. I know. Like nothing against it's just
And then it's been done before.
The other thing which I can't really uh assess here because I'm probably not that far into it is the monetization and the offer system. I can't even do that because like it's you know it's really

differs from payer to payer depending on your LTV can really say like
you would get you would get anything because
do you think they segment it or like how does how do you think they do
if if you bring forex economy monetization knowhow into this you you have like everything you literally have everything
so here's what I found interesting thing with this, right? So, a lot of the merge games I've worked with, right, they monetize with ads in terms of rewarded video and interstitials. Here, there's only rewarded video after you complete the levels, which is fine, right? What I'm wondering here is,
man, what did you just say? You don't complete the levels here.
When you complete the or that's when they shows the rewarded ad, right?
No, they never show rewarded ad. Yeah, I didn't see any.
The only time you can get a reward that if I run out of energy and I click on

something, you run out of energy and it says you can watch a video four times a day. Or if there's a bubble offer, bubble offer being like a low value item. When I merge an item, there's like a bubble out of it.
Yeah.
Which I can like unlock. and low items that are within the rewarded ad budget can be unlocked for rewarded video. That's it. That's the whole placement.
So, exactly. Same thing as microphone.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much.
Yeah. Because these games don't make much revenue on which going to be like what like 10%.
Uh 16. But yeah,
continue. No, what I was saying is just like there's a lot of merge games that I work with that use a lot of interstitial ads and usually what you end up doing is you look at the eCPM value on a user level, what you're actually generating and then you don't show ads at all to the high value or high ecm users. But then what

you do is for the low value ones which are very low likelihood of converting after they spent whatever the average point of conversion is like if it's 5 days 2 days whenever like the average time for the first AP is that's when you actually start implementing interstitials as well during natural breaks in the game and there's merge games I've worked with where interstitial revenue is literally like of the whole revenues like 10 or 20% of the overall revenue of the app is just interstitial ads. And
but those those merch games don't really scale.
It's like obviously it's not like Microphone or the ones that like are category leaders, but still it's still a lot of revenue, right? But I'm just wondering cuz Century Games like I took a a look at their adups txt file and like it's so old they haven't updated this for like a year and a half.
Small revenues, but like it's just it's a threeinut thing to update this, right? So like why not just do it because

you're still earning probably like 18 to 20k a day on this app right in ad revenue. So why not boost that day?
Yeah, but still like knowing having spent time with these guys, they care about the revenue, right? It's just
sure.
Yeah, exactly.
I wish I was. Yeah. Sad I'm not coming actually. Unfortunate.
Yeah. I will I'll bring this up to to heaven next time. is like so
they have they have that problem still but
yeah yeah
but I don't think they updated because TC file is so old there's a lot of network names in there that
they don't exist anymore
they don't have those names anymore
yeah they don't care that's there
you know
the the other question is
how's how's this game doing in China if it's there somewhere that we don't see it either on WeChat at or either on some of the stores again and stuff like that. So that's uh

there's a question we'll hopefully find out. Yeah,
we'll find out in two weeks.
Yeah. Anyway, uh yeah, so product part is excellent like as expected like you can't really compete in this category if you don't hit the standard of travel town or microphone and it just goes from there to be even harder. But yeah, they have it everything like I was positively surprised how they did as as I said like some of the quality of life features that are done better and some of the features here are pretty much like topnotch again a little bit with a different flavor but yeah like 80% is travel but that's that's just
maybe you can actually show the numbers now.
Yeah, maybe show the numbers.
I can't believe it's been 28 minutes and we haven't seen any numbers.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. To switching the parts.
I'm very surprised as well.
So this launched during New Year's the last year. So December 2023 soft launch and then it uh slowly

started scaling from somewhere like uh July last year and then it went to overdrive somewhere like
May this year and uh currently sits somewhere at like what like 200k a day I
wonder when when they're like where they're getting the draws benchmarks from.
Yeah,
maybe PVX Lambda. I'm not sure. Everybody, you know, this episode is relatively PVX lambda because if your UA data feels like a black box, it shouldn't. You plug it into your MMP, boom, within an hour, you get clean, clear ROS, benchmarks, retention insights, and even forecasts of whether you are ready for funding. No fluff, just dashboards, real with real answers. 100% free. So go check out it on the pvxpartners.com/lambda and get your growth strategy on point. Okay, pvxpartners.comlambda.

All the benchmarks you can think of and we had a great episode about benchmarks with uh with PVX guys. So you should definitely go and check it out.
Yeah,
can get back to the episode. One very interesting tidbit.
If you look at the ARB dow,
they actually has double the AR of travel.
Interesting.
Nearly scale, man. So
I know. I know.
But still, yeah, it's
you got the revenue. I just want to see the the actual revenue.
The revenue is not comparable.
Yeah. Like exactly.
It's like how this category.
Amazing.
It's growing so much.
Amazing. It's insane.
Yes. It's the second biggest category in puzzle after match three.
Yeah.
Yeah. But only thanks to the microphone.
Yeah. Uh yeah, but you know another giant Chinese company entering the ring. So I guess going to see
it's going to be interesting like keep

in mind that also micro fun have their own new game
scaling new one. Flam birch
flam. Yeah flam something. flammy merch cook or how do you read it which is also kind of not
not really you know sitting on the sidelines doing nothing.
H but it's still in soft launch now.
No it's already in scaling phase. So 100k a day is
okay soft launch. Yeah it's not
even though it's 10k downloads a day.
That's the thing. It's just like it's I guess the CPIs are atrociously high in this.
What are the CPIs right now in the merge category? Would you say Maj?
Well, last few months when I was running a merge game, it was still like 30. It can get lower than that with proper creatives actually. uh you can get actually low as like 10 15 but it was on the scale of like 2

million day revenues and all that that that scale definitely between 20 and 40 depends on the scale
crazy like when we were going to Singapore
50 it was easily 50
yeah when we were going to Singapore I spent some time with the CEO of a merge uh gaming company and he told me a funny story that he had said he's probably been marked by Microphone because as soon as he comes out with a new creative within 3 hours, no matter what time of day it is, Microphone comes out with a copy.
Everyone was marked by Microphone.
Yeah.
Everyone everyone in the merch
Chinese one
creative strategy.
Yeah. Now I know I I thought you were talking about our other friend, but now I know who you were talking about.
Now I know.
Sending regards. um to both.
Yeah. So, looking at the category last 30 days, let's recap. So, Gossip Harbor

is hitting alltime high of 50 million a month. Let that sink in. Where do we have this beauty? So, it's doing currently 1.6 million IP a day. Insane.
And it seems it's not still stopping its scale from growing. Yes, still on growth trajectory. Downloads wise that's I guess also records. Oh wow. Nearly a day this month.
Where is that? Go countries. I'm just super curious.
This is this means like some giant money is being thrown into it. Maybe maybe they got scared by by Century and Terring so they want to price them out.
You don't price century games out of the market my friend.
Yeah. But in merch games you know you can you can get you can make Yeah. You can make their life a little bit more miserable.
Very hard.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I guess heaven, we will need to really speak with heaven about this.

Oh, it's going to be fun.
Yeah.
Anyway,
it's not going to be micro, but a lot of fun.
Yeah, it's going to be macro fun. Anyway, so, uh, Gossip Harbor downloads all times high.
Oh my god, these dead jokes. I love it. I love it. I guess merch mansion with the come on, man.
Lens of jail icon. They They're just going to get there and sit there and hopefully like not get eaten alive,
which they will.
Which they I guess will. It's still doing 10 million a month. Like it's it's
Yeah. Not Not really moving anywhere.
It's not moving anywhere, but it's good because it could be moving down to the Stegosaurus curve and they're at least surviving. Yeah.
Yeah. But look on
those spikes and the events. It's not really going up that much.
This is stable. It's It's very stable. So we can I don't know.

Maybe maybe they work with Fastpring. I don't know.
So Gossip Harbor Seaside Escape also isn't moving anywhere. It seems even though it's still doing something like half a million, more than half a million a day. which is not bad at all.
Which is not bad. But revenue wise, I guess everything's been switched to Gossip Harbor because this literally means like screams that like they kind of went all in there. As for microphone, regarding Travel Town, it's doing okayish with similar to Seaside Escape. So 600K a day.
They're getting squeezed.
They're getting squeezed. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Downloads. Yeah, there's decline. So they're getting squeezed definitely. And the what was the last one? Yeah, Merch Cooking. We haven't really talked about this game. We need to talk about it a little bit more. It's still on our like to-do list. So, this game is actually growing, which

is very interesting. It's hitting pretty much the same size as where where are they from?
Happy Bits.
Where do I think?
Probably China,
I would say. So, we don't know yet.
I I would say either China or Cyprus, one or the other. Anyway, so this game seems to be hanging pretty well. Uh there it's on the Where is it? It's on the fifth spot. 6 million. Then we have Dy Travels. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. But this is all like very irrelevant because all those like like linear curves up. So it's going to be completely different situation in month. My guess is that these the both of these going to jump over metacore and metacore going to like position seven. So
yeah going to be very hard for guys there and then yeah that's that's the

whole category pretty much as it is. So my prediction is that gossip harbor is going to even grow more. Seaside escape is going to be as it is pretty much hovering there with travel town and dasty travels. I would bet that yeah century can really scale scale this up because the game's top notch definitely as for how it plays how good it's positioned with their UA expertise and everything and they know what what happens in ch yeah know their way around.
Let's get some energy back in this and let's do some creative
Yeah, let's do this. Yeah, you should you should definitely be amazing. I don't even know about this. You should families like go.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not even close. Not even close because Oh, hello. Here I am. I have something very important to say. This episode is brought to you by vibe.com. Have you ever thought about TV ads and how they

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but uh I Yeah, this is not the the core of the creative strategy. This is the the core um not not exactly this but
AI
AI meth

objects but here this is the core of the the AI the the creative strategy moving this [ __ ] stuff from left to right
some fake random game
this is
this is the core creative
yes this is basically everything they they do you will see Yeah, you will see. You will see. You'll see. Uh they have also some some of the other stuff which is kind of the conveyor belts and kind of merging and stuff. They have so many different concepts.
Everything's fake.
They 100%.
Yeah. Fruit merch.
This is even this is
fruit merch. That's from fruit merch.
Yeah, that's fruit merch.
Yeah. At least. Well, you
So it's you know all the hooks like this is Yeah, this is the core.
Why this again,
man? Honestly, I think it goes back to family farm adventure or this
and travel. Food and travel. Should I

Should I just search food and travel?
You can. Yeah, go for it.
Go food and travel.
Is that someone else's creative for another game? You think?
My guess is yes. What is sorting game magazine?
Look, all of this, right? I don't know. Food and Travel is basically their I guess their old name like some old tasty tasty. So it's it's their old game. But look, it's all of these. Again, as I was saying, it goes back to the the family farm adventure where they had similar stuff, but it was more with with slightly different objects and it was almost like again like a hyper casual game.
Does Travel Town have this? Look at this. No, throw that.
Oh, they stole that from magic sword.
Yeah,
this is magic sword 100%. This is magic.

Exactly. Magic sword create eventually one to one.
Yes. And see, look.
And now it ends.
See, this is the part I I told you that I think they have a chance here because they're century games and they're just this UA and they don't [ __ ] care about anything.
Yeah, exactly. That's that's what I want to say. And here, look. So the previous creative, you know what? It didn't have the end card
because it was cut off.
Because it was stolen.
Yes.
Because And I was like, "This must be a mistake." No, it's not. I I've seen that created like five times.
Okay.
So it's like, "Yeah,
but see this is this is the thing. Like those are the rules. Like you can do this [ __ ] There's no app police
and the networks will take your money no matter what."
Yes. Exactly. Like that's the name of the game.
Even though nobody's doing these things, doesn't mean that you can't do this.
Call up police. Again, like this is, as

I said, like this is the core
core creative strategy. All of these different objects. That's why I was kind of waiting for you to to unlock other stages if we have this in there, but I don't think it's going to be there. No,
I don't think it's going to be there.
But for some reason, this works really well. So many of these.
No, no, no. I don't I don't think it's there, but it's uh it's it's amazing. Here's here's your fluid merch.
There you go. There's one.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. I mean, this is exactly why it is in the game.
Do you think they have different on boardings based on creatives? I doubt
could be, but it really What would you like what exactly different would you have like the different fluid merge on boarding if you're coming from that creative basically
could be yeah it could I mean it's not that hard for them to do as
haven't as mentioned the last time in

China technology is not a problem
yeah of course
but look I also saw
this we're talking a lot about heaven in this episode for anyone listening he's the CMO of Century Games
yes so share this type instead. I I went a little bit back to to January. It's all up loving by the way back then. And we can see all of the different interesting playables. So this is the first one, right?
This is
now we seen this
simple here.
Have we seen this? I stole that one or what?
No, iterated it.
This is another playable which is
Gossip Harbor. Yes,
this is 101 gossipy barber basically.
Exactly.
So that's second. Here we have the third one. H what is this
fruit merch
looks very familiar with all this beach

theme.
Fruit merch.
It's fruit merch.
Yeah, but it's it's travel town basically.
Yeah, town had this also.
Hike. Where's the Where's the granny coming from? Oh, is there any other merge game where there is?
Yes.
Is there Pedro Pascal one? Please tell me this. Pedro Pascal.
No, no, this is all this is all the different concepts from the different games. And this
Kakashi Kakashi way, you know, like copy Ninja. It's like if you uh when did they start scaling the actual like it's
May last year May. Last year
this year
this year May
like really started like this way.
Yeah. Yeah. Because this is January. So I would like my assumption is like in January like
Okay. So what what are we going to do? Hm. Let's just use all the competitors. Let's put it in into the in the playable

ads and see see what's going to what's going to happen.
Yeah. And make sure to cut the end cards.
Yeah. Look, you see like good sort shopping list in Hello.
Crazy.
Amazing. It's crazy. And this is only playable. One, two, three. Just use all the competitors. Six, seven, eight, nine, 10. 10 different critteries. Do you know how much work this is for like ordinary gaming company? It's insane.
But they have like 100 people, right? Yeah.
I mean, of course. I mean, the 4,000 people in the company,
4,000 people 4,000 people in the whole company. So, the one team, it's it's definitely quite big.
There's hundreds people doing in Century Games that sink in. Hundreds.
Yeah. Again, we're not stopping because I'm I know I'm curious person and I I

want to know what exactly they're running on Facebook because that's my go-to. Here we go. Launch in July. We've already seen this.
Yeah, the magic like copy.
Exactly. That's the magic circle. Fine. Okay. Okay,
there's real world ice cream on the right.
There is a lot of different stuff, man. [Music]
Ah, this is the thing that they had in uh Kingshot.
Exactly.
I know that AI template. Really? That was interesting.
Very interesting stuff. Very, very interesting stuff. Yeah. The masters of the real real life hooks. Ah, there's AI. We go back to that nice AI.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, there we go. That's AI.
3 seconds, two. Okay, that's good.
That's nice.

And again, you're not This is not the end.
The burger. There's AI. Oh, there's also AI. That was Sora.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's
that's Sora.
That's Sora right there. So, it's a lot because
a shitty yellow tint. You can see it there. because I was like, why they why they don't have a lot of AI when the Kingshot is doing so well on AI? I'm pretty sure like we need something a different point of view, which here in Facebook, you can see basically everything with like without no lag. So, most probably we will see all of this AI stuff next month in Central Tower.
Mhm.
Again,
there's all AI.
All AI. All AI. The whole thing, everything tast quite nice. But then there's one very specific creative and only thanks to this. I see already the cutting gold there. Yes. Look

Margarita.
Margarita creative resist
10 out of 10. Spot it immediately. You you really miss the rim. So put the salt or the or tahin in there.
They left it just for mate. Go over it.
Exactly. I was like spot this immediately. But no, like if you think about it, this the all of these like cocktails you were merging in your game play.
Yeah. Yeah, of course.
It's it's all there and cutting the lemon. But yes, I mean where is the
Where was the AI one?
Yeah. Don't worry. Don't worry. Yeah. Yeah. This is this is the one that I want to show you. The cutting
the cutting glass fruit thing had like millions of views on Tik Tok. Millions.
Yeah.
Is it real? [ __ ] I thought it would be gold.
No. Why it's real? It should have been golden. Yeah.
Be gold or glass.
Yeah. Oh, of course. So, yeah. I mean, all of these look.

Wow. That was a nice
Where was start?
So we That's definitely They stole that video. Look for something.
There's also AI by the way that transition into the table.
Look, another merch. Magic sword.
Magic sword was the one on the right.
Okay.
AI.
That's Wow. Show it. Show it. Show it. Oh, that's that's the that's the transition we're talking about with that.
Yeah, that's that's that's the very nice image to video. Yep. That's nice.
That's very nice. So, yeah, like and my favorite.
It's insane. So, so many and this is why I was talking about Hello. I was talking about the like all the different UA stuff that they are doing

here and they're not doing on the match free category. It's just I don't get it like how good
for their like when we talking about the century games match free category.
Ah
their UA was just like
on the family what was it? Family farm. What was that game?
No no no whatever disco stuff. Disco match.
The old ones. Yeah, the old ones and then the I mean even the the new one and still like I mean this is something that you've seen with match factory and I can see it working well but they're not experimenting like this with the with the match free category yet which they absolutely should. So that's why I'm so so confused. Anyway, like here like
maybe different UA team
could be. But the tasty travels and the UA stuff is insanely good. Insanely good. I love it. Really, you have basically everything everything that resonates with this target audience and

AI on top of it and all of the the altered fake misleading gameplay which usually works for this audience.
All the buzzwords.
Exactly. You have you have everything here. You don't really need
You have everything already.
Yeah. Exactly. So I I was just like, "Oh, wow." But yeah, exactly. very surprised that freezing families aren't that prevalent compared to this used for so long. It's just
you know what they haven't mentioned like they don't like going to go like copy one to one last war when they did the TV spot somewhere they was like okay well I don't do this why cuz why would you go neck to neck like you create a different strategy here I don't see any other game merge game using exactly these type of creatives it's that's why they're going to scale like this is exactly that that's it
be super interesting I think great episode, amazing creatives. I would not want to compete against Century Games.

Like,
yeah, it's like
even if you're micro fun,
like Demetri said, like this is exactly the competition you don't want to have.
Yeah,
it's like
I guess he's very happy now that like micro fun has an even competition.
Yeah,
their battle will be epic. Ah, this has been another amazing episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Comments do help us quite a lot. If you have anything mean to say, I'm sure you're gonna say it in the comments. If you have something nice to say,
say it.
Say that as well, please.
Usually the mean things are about Mach.
Yeah. Yeah. I have a biggest fan. Yeah, there's the biggest fan who wants to replace me with the robot and then something else. So, it's fine. It's okay. Good stuff.
All right.
See you later.
See you next time.
Yeah. and join the SL for sure.
Thank you. Cheers.
Cheers. [Music]