🏰👠 The Tower GD Masterclass Review: The ultimate Cinderella story

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Oh wow.
Yes.
Wow. That that's insane.
Yeah. A lot of organic.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So we have uh 60k paid ads and paid search. So it's like it's like 90,000 which is basically 50% of the
Still goes to show how important UA is. Even if you have a Cinderella story like you still need to get the UA right. UA is so important. It's 4 a.m. and we're rolling the dice. My day drops knowledge made of golden eyes. Felix with ads making those coins rise. Jack up designs worlds chasing the sky. We're the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA advers and game design too. Mat feeling shak bringing the insight. We're rocking those vibes till the early daylight master eyes on the prize. Tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Feeling stacks colors like a wizard in disguise. Jack crafter realms lift us to the high. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey sick. Got your back. Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh.

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Hello. Hello. and welcome to another fantastic episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast where we dissect games so you can stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry. Today we are doing the tower. I'm Felix Braber.
My name is Mate Leria. This is the version.
Yeah. And we are your hosts.
We are your hosts. We are not doing this.
True. Yeah. We're not doing this thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's fine. Okay. I got to say I go like how did you find this game and put it on the on the docket because honestly I really love this game. This is great.
It's in the It's in the menu. It's on the menu for years.
Yeah, it's been in the sheet for years. Been requested by like multiple fans

basically and we were I guess going back and forth of like where to put it because it's not new really and there was also stuff in the news lately. So yeah, here we go. I guess that's how it
here we go. Yeah. Also, we we had the we had an event GDC this year in March and Anthony came to visit the the event and came to me and said, "Man, I really love your podcast. I'm the guy who actually made the the game called The Tower." I was like, "Oh, then you need to come on the podcast at some point in the future." But he's busy, but we also asked a few questions and he was uh really, you know, amazing that uh he could answer some of our questions and my additional questions about UA and and some other stuff. So, you know, there are still only four full-time employees, so it's very small team and but a bunch of contractors. Obviously,
it's like like one of those answers from uh what was it? uh less more like oh we're 50 people but we have like 40

contractors.
Yeah. I mean come on it makes sense. It's like this is the smart way of doing things by the way. So
yeah it is the smart way definitely.
There's uh yeah Anthony started hiring three years ago but it's still still four full-time employees and 25 contractors. So it's a big it's a big amount of contra. But again smart way how to do it. Right.
Do you want to start with the numbers or do you want to start with the game this time?
I would go with game.
The game looks like numbers right away.
Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. just scale scaled the exo sheet. You're right.
But man, it's such an example of a game that just like someone's just like, "Oh, let me just do something different and it works."
You know, it's it's one of
this is a perfect example where you don't really need any art because that's like this is perfect example
because art is not really like art is not the game.
Game design is
this is like the power of game design. I think like it's kind of reminiscent of something like Bit Life Simulator also like a game like very niche going very strong after like such a long time and

very unique concept and there's like nobody can copy it because it's just so it's there but actually when I was digging into this I just wanted to show you that there's actually a copy on the market. There's so many copies of this.
Yeah, but like I mean from a prominent studio. So Yep. So if you remember at some point later there is the tower defense chart. Top 10 game in the chart is galaxy defense fortress CD. Our guys here from the tower are actually not there because they are not considered by s tower as a tower defense game by the idler
of course
which I guess is true to some degree but I would definitely put them here.
I can I can even show you the the video where Anthony I mean he is the the best creative. Well, he is in the screen and he's Yeah, he's telling Yeah. He's talking about how he made a tower defense game slash an incremental game.
Yeah.
So, it would be where like somewhere there between seven and eight, right? If

it was here on the list.
Um, let me let me double check.
2.1 a month, right? 2.1 a month. So,
yeah.
And that's sadness multiplier on top of that. So, yeah.
Yeah. Two two plus, let's say. Yeah.
Two plus. And I would say it's close to 2.5.
Yeah,
somewhere here.
Let's go with that.
And also, again, like I'm saying this for the 20th time, we need to cut Kingdom Grow out of this list because this is a forex, not the tower defense game. So, yeah,
but it's in the tower defense.
So, it be number six
category.
Yeah, somewhere around Rush. I think Rush makes more because it is much more ads. So, that's there.
Yeah, that's also true.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh the game I wanted to show is called Geometry Tower by Idle Defense.
I saw this actually before.
Yeah. So it kind of looks the same.
Yeah, it is exactly the same.
Yeah. And this is from
games. And what is Cyber Joy Games? It's the guys that did Collective Defense

Fortress TD.
Yes.
So they are also in the chart on 10 spot. We covered their game. It's the Bang Bang Survivor sci-fi niche version. So we'll see. But yeah, it's there. Anyway, uh back to the game. So, as I said, it's one of those like going strong forever and reaching record revenue pretty much forever because it just started so low and didn't really scale that big.
So low.
Yeah, but that's like literally how it is like started like uh yeah, August 2021.
Started from the bottom. Now we are here. There you go.
From zero to her literally. So it rose to something like 6K, 7K a day and then it went all the way to something like 80K a day now jumping with these spikes. Those are I think events that that's
remember four full-time employees.
Yeah.
Four time like four full-time employees. That's all it is.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's like amazing. Like that's why we're covering the story because it's just actually uh very interesting and especially the game

design and whatever they did there. It's uh quite unique. So, as I said, like let's look the numbers. This is the game. It's the numbers.
Jesus Christ. Yes.
Don't really do the thing. How I would do this uh episode is that let me go over the feature set and game play. And while I'll play the game play and show you how to do the tactics, Matic can read us some of the answers from Anthony himself actually because yeah, we asked the guys, they couldn't come unfortunately, but they still were able to at least give us some hints because again, it's fact check our [ __ ] if we do some. So
this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast by the way. So we are
let's go. So you start within the game on tier one. It has actually difficulty ti that you select yourself. This is by the way one of those things that this like why this game is so core because you select a lot of stuff yourself and just from the beginning there's so many decisions that you need to do yourself which means there's a giant margin of error and if you screw up you know you

kind of didn't really work out. So uh by the way any comments to the highest wave?
Yeah. Like when I was playing it I didn't progress for like two days because I wasn't playing the method that you sent me.
Yeah. And then like when you start pressing the right like playing the right way, you're like, "Oh,
okay."
Like, "How would I have known that?" And then like you actually have to go on these boards and then like it's not as fun playing when you're playing that way cuz you're just upping on defense the whole time. It's just
Yeah. Yeah. But it's just like the the first tier like early beginner guide.
Yeah. Because then you need to change the build multiple times when you
This build won't work that well in tier two like
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. That's the That's the Yakob's efficient way. I was trying to play the fun way and I just ended up
Yeah. I was playing fun way and I was not progressing.
Yeah. Like okay.
And I kept losing and I was like ah god damn it. I have to play Jakob's way. Damn it.
I like we need we like now we need to actually follow the the guides.
Yeah.
Yeah. This is the game where you pull the guys from the beginning. I just like

saw it. Anyway, but this is the main menu. After a while, you unlock some of these things here in the milestones. milestone is like the main like feature unlock where we have like the lab, you have events, we have tournaments somewhere. I don't know where. I think like quite here. Yeah, from wave 60 and then it goes all the way to something like wave 4,000 where you get like T1 flux. This I think like artifacts or not like a lot of progression layers basically. So that's there. So the first progression layer are these attack upgrades. Those are exactly the ones that you have in the main core, but these you can pre- buy so you can start from a better point. So basically if I like you see here I have here defense absolute already cost you like 2.2k coins because it's like 48. Usually like normal one will be like five or something. So that's there. Then you have utility upgrades like these three main categories. And then the special one which is the ultimate weapons which cost a [ __ ] ton of money actually which

are some like very special abilities like chronoof field that I have here which like slows speed of the enemies and then you have like uh that's literally like atomic bombs or whatever like stuff like that. Uh, so very very these are like the chase items and again you see that they have a lot of upgrade layers because not only I need to first like get a lot of these like special currency for those but I need to invest in those to kind of mean something because like for instance in this current basic state this literally does nothing like it just slows time for 5 seconds every 3 minutes like really that's it doesn't work that well then there's the gacha which is just normal shard gacha that's it the interesting part is that you unlock actually the deck slots in So deck slot cost hard currency which
it's expensive expensive. So that's great. The cards are just normal ones like you upgrade those and they just scale up as you have more levels of them. Some are completely useless like we talk about in the first iteration of the build and then some are

very good. So, for instance, this one, the enemy balance, which increases cash earned. Like, yeah, that's great because basically the point of this game is that either you play for pushing tiers, like pushing the waves like as high as possible, like you invest everything into like the proper build or you do like the grindy build to like just farm money. And this like the build just to get like the most money out of it. That's it. Because when you're farming this soft currency, which we take out of the game, I mean the core gameplay. Uh, this feature I didn't download unlock because tier 2 wave 90 is like
Yeah, that's very hard.
It's going to take you half half a year.
Yeah, I know. Half a year. It would take me like a month probably. Like just like I need to just grind a lot of money because like tier 2 already scales so fast. Like my turtle like just can't keep up because it's just like everything scale so fast.
Can you show a video of what that last unlockable looks like though?
Uh, I guess we can find it. Yeah, no worries.
For sure.
Uh, lab. This is basically just research tree. Nothing really to it. So you select some researches and you kind of research it out. You can rush it and skip the timer. Let's say like bread and

butter stuff. Not really. Then there's the shop. Interestingly regarding the shop, a lot of these things are permanent which are very very good conversion items such as all coins earned permanently times two or times three or disabling ads or some packs. Basically there's an offer wall hidden here and then like yeah very very basic shop. I don't think so they didn't have offers here. What?
My disabled ads costs $9.99. By the way,
your disabled ads cost $9.99. My disabled ads cost $10.99.
You have dollars price there or what do you have there?
No, it's euros. I
Why you have one less?
I have no idea.
Okay. Have you spent the game already?
Wait a second. I did. But it doesn't matter. If you scroll up,
there's one interesting thing which I don't think you have. Can you see the the top
web store?
We store.
Wow.
And you know what? And you know what? By the way, this is an interesting thing because they use Fast Spring and this is not an ambush ad, but they do they use

they use our Fast Spring. This is the true story ad. Exactly. So, dear listeners, if you want to just use a web store you have your web store, just go to the fastpring.gg. There you go. We are actually, this is finally the case. We're actually reviewing game and they have fastpring as a web store. Thank you very much guys from passing for sponsoring the episode but also to kind of uh help other developers to earn more money in in US. It I might have the web store because I'm in the US at the moment. Do you think that's the case or you
you're still in Slovakian uh
country store is true. Yeah, that is true.
You have iOS have it Felix? Yeah.
Yeah, I don't have it. No.
Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know. Maybe just some segmentation.
Maybe I
because you paid you pay, Felix. No, I haven't paid.
But I said I I said it I I saw it before actually making a purchase. Yes. So I was like, "Oh, wait a second. I want to make a purchase." So I went to the web store and then like, "Oh, wait a second. This flashing web store amazing." Then I I I made the purchase and then add uh

came back to the game and then got all the like freebies afterwards.
Okay. Interesting.
Yes. Very interesting.
That's there.
Let's see the game.
See the loop.
Just the final thing here. Guilds unlock on tier three, which I guess is the standard feature. Then there's this whole event thing which is their again main bread and butter I'm guessing because lots of quests here that you need to do and there's lots of prizes especially it's just basically like event shop kind of setup where you farm and then you choose what you want to buy. Skins increase your currency gain permanently if you have those. They're limited so that's very very powerful. And then there's the daily missions thing which just you know go and recharge. They already have like weekly rotation. And it's not really daily, just like you daily complete eight missions and then you go in and like do these other things there. Um yeah, and there's also an ad for five gems.
I'll go over all of the placements.
Yeah. Yeah, you you'll go with those
when you're done.
Anyway, let's go. Uh we'll go tier one. I'll use my turtle build to show you how

it goes. And that way we literally be able to play for an hour. So uh here is the game. Uh, first thing immediately what you would do, you would go here and do the bonus ad because it's just like one point times multiplier for 20 minutes.
No brainer.
Yeah. And you stack these for like hours and and just go and watch like seven ads in in in a row. That's it. That's the first one. Uh, then what you do, you immediately go here and just get all the cash kind of increase your cash bonuses. I have the skip waves thing. So, I'm already on wave 10 as you see.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's the skip intro.
Speed up the stuff. Also, I researched like 3.5 game speed, which is like one of the best upgrades here.
Yes,
you can get because it's just like, you know, you go faster.
Uh, then you see the whole point of this like turtle build or what whatnot is that enemies have like this kind of a damage like 14.7 something. If we go to our defenses, we have currently defense like absolute meaning like the real

defense like 48, which means they do jack [ __ ] as you see.
Yeah, they can't.
And they just like morph there. And what we do, we also don't really like we don't invest in attack upgrades at all. Zero. Zero.
No, you're describing builds now. Can you just describe how the game works instead of the best build?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because like
I always said you were right, but Yeah.
Yeah. People usually don't get them until this point. I mean,
yeah. So, what do you do here? You know, your tower automatically kills enemies and uh you just
put in these upgrades and help your tower kill them better. Like, you know, three main upgrade vectors and the last one is the ultimate weapons as as we talked before. This unlock somewhere there later. You can turn and off or on or whatever. But we already had this game because this is a similar like this kind type of game. It's a similar game from what was it the Azour one from that Chinese theme if you remember castle something I forgot castle siege something something where it was

actually
slime
yeah slime castle
slime castle yeah where the enemies were coming in waves from the right and you just upgrading the you know like damage of your towers or something. This is very similar. It's just this is circle of defense. Enemies are coming from all the way here. You can also do this like make it nice on the full screen basically stuff like that. And and that's the beauty of it that if you really play it like the run of this kind of a one game can take very very long. I mean hours like literally hours and we'll still like skip and because you've seen like how many bas this is I think like we go over thousands and everything and there's like lots of mechanisms to kind of make it seem like you're playing an idler basically like you have like for instance interest like you see I have this thing which you have if you click here it's like I make 5k per minute 200 coins per minute and stuff like so you see a lot of idle mechanics in it as for like making money like like the the menu here on the bottom literally looks like adventure capitalist It's just like you increase

stuff then it increases in price. Therefore, you just cannot like you know if you just spam it like that's all my money basically and then I need to wait basically. So that's there very interestingly and uh yeah here we go. Plus two gems very interestingly one thing that I really haven't seen anywhere is that you can actually interact with like rest of the game during the war because it's an idol game. So if you go here you can still watch your upgrades you know like let me put another one here another research here. You can go and even summon new cards. You can go and complete missions here like you would be in the main menu. That's like super unique, but you're all doing this during the run. So that's that's really nice because I guess at some point somebody figure out like these runs take hours and like I need to, you know, set up new lab research or whatever, buy something, complete missions. So that's very very handy. And what's happening here, as you see here, the enemies are slowly kind of getting stronger and stronger. We are getting

more and more money and then we start finally upgrading our defenses,
which you see that suddenly we're just like 10 times more or whatever. Plus, there's also defense like percentages like lower their attack. And there's the main thing why we kill them so fast, which is Thorn's damage because they just go here and kill themselves by 4 seconds currently. And we can push it to 3 seconds now. That's it. And this whole thing just goes in and scales. And my last level record that I pushed here regarding the ways was 513. And this whole take
13. I thought
this whole thing takes like an hour plus on speed three and a half. Yeah. And you see where this whole point now comes from like the fun and like whatnot from optimization from you being efficient following all of these guys different tactics, strategy. Again, this is just the turtle build as we call it in like the community calls it because it's for the like beginning of the game because enemies are very very easy in this like first sense even though Felix and Mati

were horribly dying by using the attack car because they killed because of the speed and then damage. It's like exactly
there's also no onboarding like zero onboarding. Yeah, I was I was playing this I think a couple of months ago and I said, "Look, we need to definitely start talking about this on the podcast and I was like I couldn't even pass the like third wave because I was clicking on the on the
attack
on the name of No, I was clicking on the name of like the attack speed. I like what the [ __ ] is why I'm not upgrading it." Yeah, this this basically this happened then I was like and then I was like, "Oh, wait a second. I need to click on the right." Yeah, there. Oh, okay. [ __ ] Now I got it. No, but I was I was Yeah, I was I mean eventually
it's just this build works so well because it scales damage by the HP of enemies. You see like I I'm doing currently like what like 130 damage like this guy and and my real damage is like 44 because the tors damage just scales percentage wise. So you can scale it infinitely basically.
Also, but then like this game is really core. That's why,

you know, we see the revenue go up go up, but not the like the scale of the of the UA that much because I'm pretty sure like the CPIs of these this game is just like absolutely
Yeah. Yeah.
amazingly high.
Yeah. Because the thing is and this is really the important part because as I was u digging into this more and more like you see all those like build ideas where where we are like uh for instance this one where it is I don't know if I can find like a this is some advanced guide whatever [ __ ] but
there's a lot of lot of those those guides.
Yeah. So, for instance, this one here, you see there's
he's got a star instead of a tower.
Yeah. Yeah. Of course, because there's the skin.
But but just by the sheer stuff that you see here that that's happening here that the guy has like 84% critical chance, which is max. You see like how many different things is like one 150 million HP plus the shield plus like completely

new mechanics unlock later. And like you can optimize it to the limit literally by having these other things there that are just like
Yeah.
Like this coin thing speed is maxed.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So eventually like you see how like this whole thing turns into this like disco show because there's like so many new mechanics being unlocked. Like it's the same as like the hobby, you know, survivor is stuff where like the character turns into blender basically because like there's so many weapons. Great way of describing it.
Yeah. Yeah. Like that's like pretty much it. And like here we are just at the basic stage of the game. Even though it's like could be like wave 500 or whatever, but eventually there will be so many more mechanics because if I as I said if I go tier two enemies scale much more faster and like I'll I'll get killed kind of fast because I just don't have the upgrades for or for for that. So that's there. Okay.
Should we do ads? Yeah, let's do ads and then then Matty

can read a little bit of the answers from Anthony.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
All right. Maybe we should do that now, huh? Or should I do the ads first?
Yeah, let's do ads. Let's do ads first.
Ads just fine.
It's something.
Yeah. So, the ad Yeah. So, the ad placement is not that much, right? So, it's uh five gems that you see during the runs and also during the main menu. Uh pops out I think on a 20 or 30 minute timer if you watch it and then it comes back a bit later. Uh then there's the 15 gems in the store on a 4 hour cool down. And then it's the Yeah, once a day was once a day. And then it's the coin bonus that stacks, right? And that's it. But then it also has an offer wall. And games like this that have a lot of AP, it makes complete sense to have an offer wall. There's a lot of people that don't. Like if you have a strong economy, this is the time when you should actually have an offer wall. If you go into the store, you can see it's uh right next to the ad placement. Uh if you scroll down. Yeah. Right there. You can just go in. Yeah. Yeah. Makes complete sense especially now. Uh offer walls are going crazy competing. So if

you have a game with a solid economy and a lot of AIPS, you can get paid a big signing bonus if you have a big user base. So these guys are using Tapjoy. And I think they're on Iron Source mediation because there's a lot of iron source uh a lot of Unity ads.
Could be
my little like thing here. If you go back to the store, right? uh the actual store, not this one. Uh if you go to the remove ads offer, this is kind of my first pickle to pick, right? This is super generous doing all rewarded ads for ever.
Yeah.
For like 10 or 11 or 10 depending on if you're matey or not.
I've worked on games where this really comes and bites you, right? Like I would have put this more on a like 30 days or 15 days, right? Because this is too generous. You're giving way too much away here and it doesn't give you
Yeah, exactly. for ad like even you could even do some sort of uh skip it here, but this is too generous in terms of removing ads. I'm sure it might even

be the top, right?
If you go to center, we might be able to check that. I don't think I don't think this is top at all. I mean, what do you think? Like how what's the was the actual split
event boost?
See?
Yeah, it's the one because
visible ads.
Yeah, but look, third one is ads, right?
Third one. Yes. So,
but then like how much like what's the split uh ads versus IIPS in this case?
Okay. Yeah. So, basically I don't know how many people watch these ads, but I'm estimating 45% ad view rate and six rewarded ads per day, which would mean on the 113K user base, it's about 8K per day or nine.
So, that's 10% but then offer wall is usually 10% as well. Ad revenue here is 20%.
Offer walls usually go up to 10%. Yeah, there's a lot of people who watch and you got to remember ECPMs for offer walls in the States is like $600 for offer wall.
I wanted to say like you are very good at what you do, but don't Yeah. Don't continue after that 10%. Yeah. Don't

continue after that 10%. Like let's let's let's end there.
Let's end there.
Okay. But okay, so here's the thing, right? If I were to add new ad placements, I'd probably do some sort of pre-match boosters of stats or something like that, but something before you do a run or give you an option to do it. But it's like it kind of interrupts the game flow. But the biggest pet peeve I have here is their Adups .txt file. If they added more networks, if they added more networks, they would probably increase revenues by 50 or 60% because they only have Unity. Yeah. Ad revenue. They only have Unity and Google. Sure. If you're a fourp person team, that's fine. But like every day you're losing like 2 to 3k by not having applin, by not having meta, by like none of the major networks, right? So I understand there are four people, but it's been live now for 3 years. Like
four
four you can that's a lot of money you've wasted basically by not having those extra networks, right?

Yeah. It's like 50%.
Yeah, it's majority US.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Should be pretty good money.
Yeah. I mean like honestly
that's easy easy things easy fix. Yeah. Exactly.
More competition more money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
I rest my case.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, no. I think like Anthony mentioned it's 10% but uh we don't I didn't take into consideration the the sadness multiplier. So So we I think you know it can be more than like 10k per day or 8k per day in terms of the ads.
Nice are four 5k a day. If you just add all these networks, it makes a massive difference. Like if you only have Google and Iron Source, that's not good. I mean, Unity.
Yeah, that's true.
Okay, let me upgrade some stuff and try to push tier two while you can read the questions in the course.
Of course, I can I can I can do that because there So, yeah, I could put together some questions and we we asked Anthony uh because I mean he's traveling

and having some some events and what what not. So the game itself proves the it's a great game obviously not just because of the game design like what was the inspiration behind the game and how Anthony get the idea of combining tower defense with I so there's a lot of inspiration that comes from the the idol game portfolio in terms of the large number of upgrades in game economy and the core loop of the game is heavily inspired by a web game called the perfect tower. So it felt like having a single tower instead of focusing on tower placements allows the player to spend more time thinking about the macro decisions and less on active gameplay. Turns it turns game into less of a puzzle game and more of a game about grinding. That's what everybody loves. and making the best micro decision to these days because it's literally like the same as bang bang survive like they just reveal the road
yeah making the best micro decision to progress your tower and starting with that foundation Anthony spend most of

the time focus on making the meta loops and progression systems as deep as possible which we can definitely see
really deep like Mariana Trench
really deep yeah yeah then there's a lot of inspiration coming from from uh his other titles for live ops when it comes to the tournament tournaments and event systems there. There's no energy systems and other
US. So there's no energy. You can just play play
play. Exactly.
Where are they based? Are they US based or
US? Yeah. So So he Anthony is in Austin and there is someone in San Francisco and in LA as well. They're here. So not focusing on an energy system means that the run the runs a players enters it can be any amount of time that makes sense. Right. Exactly. Unlimited. The runs that start off short enough that the energy system would have worked, but uh when you need to have enough levels to make it make the time short enough to make sense again. So this is just endless basically
because the nature of the game would be very hard to balance.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The waves start

exceeding 100 fairly early on and that point that energy system would be difficult to balance. So you know now it can go for hours. the game was already performing well enough without the energy system. So he didn't want to restrict the player freedom or just you know jumping into a game of just jumping into the game. So you can basically play one long session or just couple of sessions
leave it on an emulator with the macro is literally the community recommendation.
Yeah.
Yeah. Literally like I play like that like man you just like set up I I have even the macro here somewhere. Uh jeez here like see the tower you just leave it like this and it just buys absolute defense forever and that's it. You leave it like that for a night.
Amazing. There you go. Wave 531. So then uh the UI interactions are very unique. Um and Yakub would say nothing if he has seen before.
Yeah. the main structure and everything like you know the standard of UI UX

basic like thrown out of the window.
Yeah. I mean just what is exactly the unique but if you're referring to this like the the round UI is bit unique that you never interact with the the world space view that's that's the one.
Yeah that's this
and uh it's simply deciding the the upgrades for your tower. So, you know, that's all the connections there. And he didn't want any true active gameplay and the game play to lean towards like more of a like management game, which I guess that's kind of really good connects to the
I built the UI like Excel sheet. So, you can play with the Excel sheet. That's basically it.
Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
It's a bit like paper clips. They just reminded me of that paper.
Very close to paper clips actually. Like very very close to paper clips. And then then Anthony says like the vital defender did a good job of leaning into what essentially is a small number of towers instead of one that leads leans more into the RPG elements and it also did a really good job of broading the audience which I would assume like

that's definitely what we defender did because of the gameplay and the art style as well because you know
yeah it's just much more mainstream like this differentiator. this
hexagons against squares.
I mean hexagons are the bestagons, right?
Exactly. The bestagons.
So then who is the biggest competitor? Uh and yeah, surprisingly as we discussed like there's not that many clones although there are some but by the time that already built the massive community and around the game. So, I mean, everybody showed up super late anyway because this is
like the geometry tower clone which has been there from 2024 and it just went nowhere. Like its biggest scale was like what 8K a day. That's it there. I guess you just can't keep up with the deepness of like how many system these guys already p pushed in into four years. So, not really.
Yeah, but it's and also like building the community since the very beginning I would say. So that's why I mean it's quite different

and uh so the vital defender kind of comes into mind in terms of the the actual competition but even though this is a tower defense game uh Anthony tends to benchmark it against other like management/ tycoon games
much more closer to idol than yeah exactly it's definitely more what like feels like the game actually is and
looking forward to seeing what the UA creatives will look like for this.
I mean
I will get there.
There's not that many things. I will get to it. But there's not that many things that you can actually do with this stuff gameplay again. Therefore, like you have the Anthony as the the biggest
star of the of the creatives, which definitely worked well because I saw it million times before. Anyway, so the biggest milestone features for the game that you added through the years. So when the game released, it was fairly barebone with cards, labs, tournament, and ultimate weapons. Over time, the large needle movers were like adding bi-weekly events. the module system which
that's the you see these spikes here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And the module system which is more in like an in-depth gacha system that are
I guess that's one I'm missing.
Yes. And then guilds which are still barebone at the moment but they're strong foundation for engagement. Those are power users nets basically keep them there
and of course simply extending the core gameplay and adding layers to existing mechanics like cards mastery system once you've completed the card collection basically.
That's interesting.
There's a lot of complexity to the game as you get further. So it's tricky to add something new and keep the game complexity manageable. So he tends to focus on adding layers to the existing systems like ultimate weapons plus workshop enhancements and and stuff.
Yeah, that's great because like learning and adding like a new completely new progression layer, you know, increases the attention budget and the whole complexity formula. So it's this is the tricky part like how to design more progression layers without like using much new stuff.

Yeah. And then then there's uh the last question from AC was about the kind of the current team size which I already kind of mentioned but the game started with just Anthony himself
one person
it's like he launched the game. Yeah. Making entirely entirely himself and then after a bit of success he had a dev to to help run it with him for a year or so and now as again as I said four pe four people at this point devs and like artists. Come on. So
Jesus, wow,
it's it's amazing.
Skip's made like over 50 mil. Like it's impressive. Yeah,
it's very impressive. Yeah.
So now they have like also product manager and UA in house as well by the way. So it's interesting stuff
because then I asked like what like what's the actual like behind like the scale because it's just game updates or creatives or UA or whatever was that and it was actually surprise surprise mostly about the game updates because increases the engagement. L LTV over time and now

they're making only two or four creatives a month which is very little very little and we know we need to well they know they need to kind of improve this but uh it was basically the scale that's only like pushing the LTV over time increasing the LTV over time because that's what usually dictates the level of of spend you can uh you can well the level of money you can spend but they have the the the one hero created which is Anthony in the interview and I will show you that in a in a sec.
So he he told you is 10% ad revenue.
Yeah.
Does that include all you think or no? Yeah,
I think so. I think so as well. But 10% overall, you know, with the real numbers can be slightly different from what we see in Senzo Tab.
Yeah. Compared to the revenue context. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So,
anything else then or should we go UA?
Maybe we can go UAE. I mean I I literally asked like how do you feel about being the face of the best performing creative? He was like well I

was surprised but in the retrospective it makes a lot of sense. The marketing strategy was focused on connecting with the types of players that would enjoy a game like this with deep mechanics and community. You know he gets recognized more often than he expected actually because I mean honestly like if you're a dev like this and you make the game alone like you will get noticed but in a very niche community. The whole thing is
Yeah,
exactly. But like it's it's insane. It's insane. Really? I love it. Let's see. And I actually Let's sick here.
You sharing the screen or I'm sharing the screen.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to share. Don't worry. I'm going to share the screen. I just need to kind of move a little bit. Ah, you know what? I'm just going to share.
I love these Cinderella stories where it's like solo devs that just like Yeah. knock it out of the park. It's great.
Look. So,
there you go.
There you go. See, those are like all the all the things if you scale it up. It's just great great game design like exactly that's the whole game like it's just very very good game and and excellent balancing

excellent balancing. It look like the discord community and everything. So basically this is the best performing creative and this is Anthony. So I mean easy as that basically I'm and uh as if you remember I was talking about these types of creatives in our in Istanbul in the in my presentation like the dev kind of generated videos because this is what works especially in this look this is your almost your turtle
oh the hundreds of enemies creative
yeah hundreds of
looks like fireworks
yeah exactly I mean it's like the drones this what you this is exactly what you need to do
this All is real basically. Nothing's fake.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, you need to use the the
dam anything into defense and you win.
Yeah. Yeah. There you go. That's your That's your
You need to upgrade the tors. They're literally telling you the best tactic to like help the funnel.
Exactly. I mean, like that's that's it. I would assume like this would work the like Miami Neon thing like Yeah. It

can turn into that if you change the skins and [ __ ] Yeah, this would work if it's way more if it's 60cond video by the way, but uh you know. Okay, so this is again and I had this I mean they're using some of the different things obviously AI as well but it's
this is AI now.
Yeah. Yeah, it is AI. Yeah, but it's not that strong. I mean the the latest, you know, see I mean if you combine this with what uh Cole mentioned on the on the podcast before where they do live video live action videos like people and then combine it with the game play and long ones like that of creative.
Exactly. T of Yeah, that's that's what that's what definitely works because this is kind this feels a little bit like random.
That's definitely random.
Yeah. So, so it's like uh I mean I can I can see this as a little bit better. But I I wanted to show you one one face which I will get into. See was all of all of these creatives are short and uh

14 seconds
14 seconds. Then there was 20 seconds 15 seconds
like dealer drug dealer.
I don't know. It feels it feels super random. So like that's that's there but you have you have Anthony here as as a different version obviously and then
again
good old street interviews which is fine but this is exactly like Rush is doing which is great. So I can I can imagine this works quite well. Again, 30 seconds only. And then we have like, you know, the UGC stuff. We have also a little bit of AI again, but it's 11 seconds, so it's quite short. Although Anthony mentioned that they're kind of not able to scale up Lavin that much. So I immediately said it's because of the creative part and the playables. uh which is quite hard to to figure out obviously but then we have something like this.
Yeah.
Nice.
Yeah, it's nice. I mean again there are

some some interesting creatives but it's not I mean the the worst part of this is just you need to use this game play so you don't have so many options.
So you need to be very creative. I mean which is fine or crazy which is which is fine as well and use a lot of a lot of people. And then I'm trying to find I guess it was on the on the Facebook side of things because their biggest channel is Google which was surprising for me but I mean I don't judge.
Explain for a nonUA person why that's surprising.
Because the top channel is Applavin and usually every game that we discuss on this podcast which is non chi not based in China are killing it on Applavin.
But it might have pretty good your expertise on that don't you?
Yeah that's true. That's true. That's true. I mean, they're running everything in house at the moment, which is fine, but I'm trying to find this one, which is our
like I wouldn't be surprised if Anthony is the one running the campaigns. Actually, the C.
No, no, he's not.
He's not. Okay.
They used No, no. They used an agency

before and now there's internal internal person. This
No, no. The the one on the floor.
Yeah. Pink.
Yeah. Look. Hello.
That's so random.
Yeah. Yeah.
Where's the Where's the Where's the the guy on the floor? What happened to that?
Exactly. That's the guy on the floor. What?
Oh, wait. Here.
Yeah.
Okay.
Try. Yeah. So, so this is pretty much this is pretty much it. I'm trying to find our good old friend Jason who was in this
the UGC Jason.
Yeah, the UGC guy. Yeah. Yeah. I saw I saw Jason somewhere here, but
I guess
I'm not sure where where he's
Yeah, he's getting at. I mean,
is that Junior's journey creative?
Yeah, it is. It is but I don't think
static image
I don't think that must be a sensor tower mistake.
Yeah. Yeah. That's correct. But it's okay.
Yeah. These guys wouldn't do it like the Chinese ones would do.
Yeah. So I mean it's like multiple different Yeah.

Means are I think okay because it's very niche community so only niche people will get captured by anyway.
That's true. Yeah. But then do you want the niche people?
You want nichy. Yeah. Exactly. The niche. $20.
Well, exactly. So, that's why they have only 7,000 I mean uh instas per day, right?
But like this is exactly like Felix said, it's a Cinderella story. You know, you start to work on your favorite game and you turn it into hobby, then you turn it into job, then you turn it into like, you know, this giant success story. Yeah, that's
still completely like you know people would laugh at this like if it's like you know compared to some like big games we cover during the year but in the end like what they ever need like they have so much money they don't even care
and and so what that's perfect in my opinion.
Oh yeah 100%. I mean
do you know how much he spends on you? Like
no I didn't ask. I didn't want to be too pushy and I think that's
like this is like
they want to have close to their heart but they're kind of optimizing for like

180 days which is fairly conservative
half of your pay and yeah 5 to 6 months nowadays.
Yeah. Like this is literally like the stu belly of mobile freeto play like this is it basically.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess they get a lot of organics as well then from their community and stuff right. Oh
for sure. kind of
man they have I think a lot of their UA is done through the content creators as I was checking the builds and everything even though they you know they they don't pay them that hard like Supercell does but uh they have I think in the game
I think I've seen it yeah can can give me the screen for a second so even though they're that small they still have the creator code program
nice yeah
so I guess they're also using this angle very much because when I was looking at the turtle build Right, which like again at some point was like like let me just Google this [ __ ] because it's obviously not optimal how I play.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I found multitudes of videos. Multitudes of

videos. Lots of [ __ ] like you know similar to something like Granny like big pushes and everything. Not that big because it's not that, you know, mainstream. Let's just, you know,
yeah,
say like it is. But still a lot a lot of creators, lot of community people kind of doing this. I'm guessing their Discord is super strong. So yeah, it's even like here there's a link for it. So yeah, they it's like it's just the usual playbook for this like Cinderella story game. Like you you try to grow it more to community through quality through not know scamming people through fake ads whatever something like 50% if you go well it's one second it's March paid ads is like 30% at the moment. What? No noisord 50%. 50% is
Discord is 100k people with even now 25k online.
Oh wow.
Yes.
Oh wow. That that's insane. Yeah,
a lot of organics.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, we have uh 60k paid ads and paid search. So, it's like it's like 90,000 which is basically 50% of the the whole kind of installs.

Still goes to show how important UA is even if you have a Cinderella story like you still need to get the UA right. Yeah. like UA is so important
of course and also it's uh if if you want to scale UA you can also call PVX partners if you want if you want to grow your budget without giving away of your a piece of your company just go to pvxpartners.com and get the credit line for marketing which is the most efficient way how to scale your game uh without getting additional investment or just getting away piece of your company. Okay, so pivix partners.com and that's pretty much the Cinderella story we have here. Anthony, kudos and to the team. This is insane.
Credit this is also 55k.
Oh, nice.
Yeah. So community is [ __ ] strong.
Yeah, I mean that is and you build it step by step, right? This is not like a Yeah.
Wait, before we finish, Anthony, where was he working before? or is he like a selftaught game like designer or

I'm not sure. We can
or is he from one of the big uh game gaming?
I don't think so.
This is not the game story you're looking for.
Yeah, I hear.
I was wondering. Yeah.
Not the Microsoft Harvard dropout, I'm guessing. Definitely.
So, he's a great great game designer, right? Like, how do you teach yourself this? Like, it's just really like
you just dig very deep into the games you like to play because you play them so much.
He was working at Praxar Inc., whatever that is, a chemical manufacturing company and he was an operation manager for 5 years.
I'm guessing it's one of those like I don't like my job so I'm going to build this game to kind of switch different job. That's my dream.
Exactly. I think so.
So he started as a cryogenic control room engineer then he was a plant engineer and then operation manager and then he built a he built a game which is absolutely killing it.
Yeah. Yeah. I think like this also like a very very strong kind of pushing force for it to work because you don't want I don't know but I'm just guessing.
No, like this is like he he he literally

like he quit the job started the company and build the game and you know like this is exactly what I was always talking about like it has to work because there's no
when did he actually left the job just just so we see the overlap.
When he was 2017 and immediate well so in 2019 but started a company in 2017 his own like the the game 2021. So it's like
Yeah, but it's this like this not their only game. It's not the first game. Yeah, it's not
you don't become a Cinderella from the first game.
Not usually.
Unless you're Steven Carvato and just you get super lucky.
Anyway, great game. Definitely one of my next kind of go-to examples of idle game design. Definitely.
Okay.
I'm trying to find like if there is look because you didn't mention the, you know, like the the whole portfolio obviously. Yeah, this planet is like every second ad.
Yeah,
I guess preloaded or something.
Yes, doesn't matter. So there is a additional money on top of this and as he mentioned like the old idol games

that are you know taking or like from the from all these idol games they took inspiration just implemented this idol mechanics into
by the way that game is also not that small just saying the planet miner it's like it's even older
2019
m give me the screen I have it here uh it's even older but it's also currently hitting its alltime high Yeah, 20k a day.
Also, I think the ads in this game are way
it's easier to have good odds or what?
I wouldn't say so to be honest.
Okay.
Okay.
Like if they have the TXT thing as Felix said like uh yeah, I wouldn't guess. It's like seems to me just like a like dabber is a better iteration on like their lens from this game. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Not the core but like systems and stuff.
All right. Awesome. Thank you very much guys for listening. Also again, Ty Anthony and all the all your
Yeah. Well done. But don't forget to add those networks like unnecessary money to

lose. Yeah.
Yeah. More more creatives playables and then you can you can scale even more. Thank you very much dear listeners. Check out the the Slack channel. Comment under the video because this is very very important for us as well. Share it with your industry friends and colleagues and see you next time. Bye-bye.