Triple Match City: New Evolution of casual (Match 3D) games

so right next to the level button and this is the Innovation there's this other button which is like notification there already and it's it's called UA it's Innovation is called UA it's called UA is dictating your your level progression that's how it's called yeah so what we have here is pretty much a different kind of a core where instead of clicking on like a it's still zoomable by the way not like this kind of a fake 3D picture is [Music] this this is a no [ __ ] gaming show where we talk about games and their revenue in great detail powered by our ad monetization game design and user acquisition Triple Threat expertise welcome to the two and a half Gamers the unfiltered truth served with a side of giggles

let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously tune in now and stay two and a half steps ahead of the gaming industry actually interesting because they have not only one game but three games and very different scenarios I'm not sure if you if you checked that of course I checked that of course you did Felix didn't which is a shame anyway anyway welcome anyway as usual yeah welcome welcome welcome this is two and half Gamers episode number I don't care and nobody cares because we stop counting and that's a great thing because we should be tell us yeah like please guys like if you can do our homework please do anyway welcome my name is Mel anel I'm Felix Brer and I'm we are your hosts we are your hosts we're looking forward to this episode because we just finished one recording and why not record another one but it's a very different game this time we're

actually talking about uh what's Triple match City tile puzzle from radant cat studio which we didn't hear before at all but you know we check great games we uncover hidden gems and we are always two and a half steps ahead of the industry as we like to say or the hubby of the Pod of the gaming podcast anyway so okay stop the [ __ ] F Well I I was just going to say we do deeper Dives and we're more serious and then you're like okay okay yeah like I I said the hobby of the gaming podcast on the cofo okay let's go let's go it's it's actually very interesting what happened here that there's like a wild hoey STI okay okay so it's not a slow hockey stick great no this is a wild hockey stick you would counter in Pokemon so this game was

literally sitting there from July 2022 and then suddenly probably went into some kind of a maybe let's switch to downloads probably yeah it's nothing yeah yeah this terrible very limited still but regarding Revenue there's literally just scaling like there's no tomorrow already reached like 40 4K it's 40K a day only only IPS only I yeah out of nowhere out of nowhere on very slow download traffic way it's really expensive because it's really expensive to run these games but uh user Wise It's what 23k da I I think like these numbers are just too early something is wrong right because I was these earlier and like the downloads revenue and it doesn't yeah but the downloads are what like it's like 10 10K downloads per day or or something it's not a lot not even that it's 20

interesting part here the studio itself also has a one giant game called flashback tricky fun riddles which is a mini game app basically where you go and you have this like I don't even call how to call this genre like I think the closest one would be like MC pixel or whatever which is just these like real life like one steam game very popular oh okay where you have these like real life situations where you need to do something and then like it's Ultra casual it's Ultra casual but the thing is like this like if you go and then who's the killer this man who is the killer and why is she all these questions were super popular in creatives few years ago and like so many different apps were using this like who is the killer who is this amazing or what yeah so this game they did again in May 2022 so I guess even

before the game we're talking about but it it R like what 42 let's say 42 million downloads till then and still making like 1.7 million downloads a month and those games are 100% Revenue based it's all it's all yeah it's all Che Revenue there's nothing here just the game we talking about that game that game is probably making anywhere between 80 to 120k a day in ads easily because triple City for October already did nearly 1 million in Revenue y it's like it that's crazy yeah it's crazy and yeah why we're talking about it exactly by the way it's the design is very good and that's why we really need to talk about of course yes and you know where the studio is where do you think H where do you think the studio is turkeyy obviously because everything good comes out of turkey these days

it's true it's true though yeah okay so what we see immediately from the main menu is that there's the typical Royal match metup all over the place with star chest level chest ads offers you know teams and like like it's pretty much the bread and butter these days all and H same thing everybody's using it that's like the meta to going to go from now so if we go into actual core uh the pre- boosters as always and then there are boosters in the core itself and the core how it works is based on actually you uh clicking on stuff like you would do with like match Factory 3D is a match 3D a little bit different this is this is the Innovation here that you can like just imagine match 3D uh match Factory kind of a game playay but instead of a mess where you need to Rubble through things you have a

hidden object kind of like picture that you can zoom in very very closely and zoom out even clouds going around it to kind of hinder your vision basically yeah that's perfect and again stuff's clocked onto top of each other so it's counting on misclicks that if you click somewhere and you you know have F fingers whatever click somewhere that you didn't want to you kind of clog your inventory at the bottom bench and then you need to kind of let's say this dinosaur which is giant I I don't have dinosaur in my objective but now I need to click on two other dinosaurs which will I lose time because I need to kind of do stuff with it then clear my bench you know when I was playing this game and my fat fingers that I hate like my big balloon animal like monster Viking Scandinavian fingers like clicked all the stuff and I was remembering you with your Precision Mouse I was like really wish I was playing this on emulator right now fix when yob mentioned fed fingers I was almost about to say you mentioned you will have really hard time playing this

game so but yeah I'm GNA hold up my figure no because I know I know how you type I know how you type like this with like normal people type with TS he's not they're too big I can't type my thums because I pit two letters at the same time and I was like yeah I was like oh my God like you will have really hard time playing this game really really hard time like if I was not playing this on an emulator with the mouse like I would be also there like cars moving like people going from left to clouds as very big innovation but let's just finish this one to can talk about the basic core so this is the basic core again see the dinosaur giant yeah I can't even click on it because I need to with the mouse and then the interstitial right after a level has been won which because they they play on iOS that is plunko the iter a of Plinko which is

a Social Casino company that everyone banss because it's Social Casino and then they remake skin the game and come up with a new one I have banned in one of my client's apps I have B banned Plinko Plinko beta Plinko Alpha plco plco in the last six months and now it's on plco Chinese company I'm gonna go crazy because I get the same messages like they're oh my God yeah click up but the think like this is like super localized like it's it says only for Slovakia you win this it's like oh my God in so great I've seen every language like so there's an insal after the level there's a star rating as usual there's the multiplier for the currency which goes from 10 to 25 and you can watch a rewarded video to multiply that as always which we won't do now which starts at level what because I didn't see that until Level

yeah no no no no no no here's an innovation as well so I've played it on iOS I still haven't seen any ads that are not rewarded so it's basically on iOS there's no intrusive ads yet there's no banners there's no intials and yeah like on Android when me Yak were talking about this like yeah they pile on the ads there okay so as usual when you're completing levels or completing Stars you get either star chest or level chest which can be again doubled for rewarded video regarding the rewards which is just basically more boosters more like unlimited lifetime or whatever some of these things the typical weekly challenge uh kind of meter on top really bread and butter Here Comes The Innovation so you see here if I go to level 20 we are on a hard level and that's kind of the usual one just like more expense more hidden more kind of Stack like I actually don't even want to do this one I think they're still missing the streak mechanic because I

haven't seen it yet or maybe somewhere later though okay there wasn't a streak mechanic in in introdu yet so dear listeners we are actually reviewing uh intertial business not a game butal business for Social Casino I don't social is like hard because you did try you hit try again in here you need to click xit you see you see like yeah you see like this is how how like your programmed like just click click click like you right you're right okay so bottom row uh so there's this B and V black and white black and white yeah okay so right next to the level button and this is the Innovation there's this other button which is like notification there already and it's called UA it's innovation called UA it's called UA is dictating

your your level progression that's how it's called yeah so what we have here is pretty much a different kind of a core where instead of clicking on like a it's still zoomable by the way but it's not like this kind of a fake 3D picture is this whatever black and white picture which is 10 times harder to do here yeah because what we doing we just need to collect this kind of colorless there's Cornelius there's Cornelius my uh investig investigator investigator yeah so we have the same time and it's just like 10 times harder I think I failed here already few times with some of the levels because you see here that you just need to be super like you have press the magnet press the magnet where's the magnet oh yeah okay gave me one doesn't really matter

we need like 10 more animals so you have the giraff on the on the right head Corner in the on the oven there's an alligator as well see this is the important thing like you don't even see the full picture you need to kind of scroll around and move it Zoom zooming in and yeah yeah so it's it's very complicated but it's still not full full weapon thing kicks I'll still show you one more yeah and then the thing is like this is just super hard as we see more more like these things are really hard in the Casual yeah where's the last crocodile there there yeah under your cursor under your Maps like right there so that's the black and white mini game which uh by the way it has very un unintuitive unlocking because it actually slows Downs afterwards so if I go here you see that it it starts to unlock after every single level until

level I think it was what something like 30 oh yeah sorry why is this game making so much IP Revenue oh sorry sorry once again this is unlocking first five levels and then it jumps to 30 then it jumps to like 10 level kind of a difference when this is unlocking then it jumps to 20 levels then suddenly like kind of vanishes way slowly from the core just saying because it's all there for the UA part yes yes yes just saying so this is the the other thing and the Masterpiece here which is Again part of the core is this which is literally sandbox levels where you have 30 minutes you heard this right 30 minutes per level and what you need to do is pretty much collect every [ __ ] thing from the level every one of that

so you have you don't even know like hopefully say thankfully threes are not collectibl so I'm not clicking on that yes yeah not everything every single thing is collectible here and the worst part of this are like different variations of people because they kind of look the same and you need to really zoom in to kind of see the differences between them but you still need to collect them and that's it and you're doing this I could I was able to do the first one in like 12 minutes but my guesses this gets harder and on top of it there annoying clowns clouds on top of it and yeah like if you really want to have some kind of a chance of like you see how these things are those things are stacked on top of building cug to get the building you have to take the cug first yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah uh there we go exactly as Felix said so goof first there's even some of the buildings or some of the mechanics in the main game where you click on something it actually gives you two different parts which puts a giant strain on your bench

because imagine I would click on the building it would put actually both the coffee and the building into the bench together yeah so they have even these mechanics in the main core haven't seen it yet but my guess is it's also translated here and like it and as you play This intertial Will Roll in I mean you have already Banner there but the thing is you have already Banner there but inter R in disregarding the scale is not there yet for banners that's the thing like the scale is not there yet for banners so it doesn't sense what we can move on to the ad Revenue part because basically just do it quickly because it says on sensor tower that essentially there's 8,000 users 9,000 users in the States on iOS zero on Android and 12,000 on iOS so it says 21,000 users worldwide right but I doubt that's no that's not true yet like should I throw on 50K there what do we

think like 50k on Android like worldwide 20 in the usbe could be would be right I'll put on yeah yeah so we have pretty much three different types of the core which is like iteration of each other but works perfectly I would say one for the UA one for the long banners and intertial and one for the main difficulty and level progression it's very very nice and this this addition like sandbox levels they do the same thing here that you see there like unlock every 10 levels until they don't and then they unlock every 20 levels every what like 50 40 levels and then suddenly every 50 levels yeah why do you think this game is making so much on IP uh because the boosters are really appealing especially in this thing like if you like spend 30 minutes with it and you you don't

yeah is just giant here sorry don't want to reply this for another 30 minutes uh the levels themselves are kind of short so it's like two to three minutes but again if you are in a good position there it's harder and harder guys hard and hard moving Parts in it so let's say the level before I had literally like a road with a tunnel and cars were going on it the cars you need to match and you literally need to wait them out yeah yeah yeah yeah so so my guess is why it is so good and probably I just won't be able to see it here is the mechanics curve meaning like all these different kind of triple match SL Hidden Object mechanics that they add later to it which are Super interesting which are then taking on the audience and that that's why they're just so look look like the you know like the metch 3D kind of core is really sticky and that's why like people are kind of jump or were jumping on the this train in the past so here it's kind of it so I can imagine

like this is really really good retention profile with the hidden objects it's the same thing right like Hidden Object it's the time management core here because you know you can't lose like if if I let's say even click on the wrong [ __ ] I can still get my way out of it just click on two more even though there no objective and like it just takes time see this is the again the mechanic where I need to first get the coffee and the house and so on so forth but these these gaming companies they're they're clever right like they're doing stuff for UA they're doing the game play that's like forgivable and also they're designing levels around ads so basically a level takes not more than 90 seconds because you need to show 14 intials to users to be able to scale up and earn ad Revenue but also people want to stay premium field keep in mind this is the third podcast in a row where we see a mini game being put into the game for the UA purposes third podcast in a row basically exactly from here is something

saying that you're better than x amount of players or how hard the level is just wait just wait just the way the this is the same kind of not template but kind of blueprint as playu for example right like short levels that people play a lot of and come back playing a lot of to maximize that Revenue same as Royal match like Royal match had the asset King you know why except ex yeah except like like this is way higher C oh well play do could be also High CPR like all this voku Sudoku stuff it's like aimed for like all I mean like that's that's coming from yeah it's that's the thing it's not it's not really like that cheap honestly and also like match free the games are also not that cheap in terms of the CPI so that's the thing like it's a little bit cheaper than match free uh but still watching what is this are you obsessed also with this self mixing

mug of course of course I'm going to go buy this for both of your wives but the kickers I'll pay for the mug but you have to tell me the reactions when you say that you're the one who gave it to yeah mug so if I assume that basically money does he make 50,000 Android users a day active users a day plus the 8,000 and 12,000 iOS users it's making right now about 2,000 yeah a day so still really small it's about 37% in terms of overall Revenue but we have no idea about the active user base uh the one thing that sticks out here to me is like they don't really push the remove ads that much and they don't have the rewarded app open intial but the thing is I think they probably segment this quite heavy right because that's also the one Playbook from this game so you segment users to try to keep the premium field to keep

them in for as long as possible so it's it's just about like figuring out which users are going to pay which are never going to pay and then you show them either 14 intertial ads a day or you let them pay and it seems like can you split by countries yeah yeah I just want based on the shape of this curve of course the heavy us 7 76% is US based on the shape of this curve they either Peak very fast or they just keep growing and then we'll see see it and again will be probably another radar pick very fast and not and then grow then the kind of decrease and slow down and then grow again because I think like theyig took two years to slow down right like so yeah yes but triple match was first game that was actually doing this before everybody else the bench I don't know I've said it before I'm going to say it again if you want to make it work you hire a Turk these guys are gonna make it and then then you you watch two and a

half Gamers obviously yeah I I think we need to review this a little bit more review radar because it's still a bit too early with active user base to basically give a score I would say at least from ad Revenue because it's just impossible to calculate anything that could be realistic like I'm guessing here on the active user base so it's like impossible yeah they're getting like 7,000 users per day on on this which 5,000 is basically iOS and 2,000 is Google Play It's just sure it doesn't really yeah it doesn't really match I'm assuming all the creators are the black and white with a coloring book or something like that yes thank you very much for listening but I will I will I will give I will give them 10 out of 10 because of one creative in one creative really don't worry don't worry I mean I'm joking but still uh you will see you

will see what I'm talking already they're doing great because they have a plan for you way from product exactly yeah exactly look uh I mean already doing great because they a plan from admon like built in perfectly into the core right okay I see I've tried 4 you are such a cheap date M you such a cheap I'm joking I'm drunking obviously it's not 10 out of 10 at all because the basically what is this is this is the only concept they have 464 times can find 100 animals and then it ends as fail and that's it it's flamingos then there is the the playable ad which is basically a frog okay here's the Frog thank you very much they have the royal Royal match and as well choose your level one yeah yeah

yeah yeah yep I mean everybody does that these days it's uh this a frog now this should be a turtle or whatever is this one sec no frog again here's the Frog here's the Frog here's the Frog playable it's playable yeah this is a playable here's a frog here's a frog here's a frog okay I can't click on this anymore here's a frog so I mean I mean it's like I mean I can I can kind of see all see so I don't think like I don't know like why are you the playable let you click on 100 frogs Yeah and then here here we have the same thing but in actually black but it's like trying to find the hearts yeah and again 464 times 10 100 kind of objects and I what's the thing that the hand is holding in it's like screwdriver or was that no no it's not crew driver like like uh I don't know like how I had them in Woodcraft when I was like

in thir grade exactly that's exactly it it's like when you Pik to Pike you can tell that both Machi and I work with our hands quite a lot the thing yeah exactly the thing yeah that's the thing the thing and then again hearts and then all of these like small then there we have pumpkins obviously because of the Halloween Halloween 777 this time not six for like it's but it's again like it's nothing else it's the this is the all things so that's why I think it's going to die quite quickly because this I think it's again like the the situation where they were not ready for like such a scale yet I mean let's see what they do on Facebook which is exactly the same thing but there's no scale that that's very simple there's no scale yet yeah and this is just like something with they tried in the past but it's definitely not working as great as the the black and white stuff but at least they have some other um

kind of Concepts yeah so altered gam playay basically have the bench yeah but still we have horses I'm I'm actually really really worried why there are no unicorns but I guess they put it there all jokes asides also like I mean they're kind of paying attention what works outside of um like their kind of casual space because they're like this is working for apps as as well like this black and white where is valo type of thing and Creative Concepts I've seen this a lot so this is great they build inside here they are trying to find these like Flags which flags are working really well I think we saw it in the previous creative trends for the seaside Escape also here like animals uh the headlines um right here um that's like the the hyper casual stuff so I mean they do have quite a lot of like iterations on this but it's like what like free like different

con I mean because this is working way yeah this is working way better than than the like colored and also this is in the game that's the they just have this black and white thing and then they have the the altered core game plan that's it so just to Crea concept all together no but few other stuff which I mean in the Rotten Tomato and ASMR stuff as a hook and then we have we have this so look I mean what yes so Rotten Tomato with meots and then like switches to black and white find other frogs you could literally put anything there a h i know yes you could put literally anything but this ASMR stuff you know I mean because kind of strong emotions it's gross basically everything gross works also sense it's mobile exactly and also you know like you see like this is this is borrowed

from match Factory in all of the different um match 3D games that play Creative this is just like static it's not like going going up uh because then usually the right hand side it's going it's going up and you need to match different things so yeah and that's that's basically it so it's not bad but they could do much better obviously uh but I mean sometimes like I'm asking myself like who am I to judge but I would definitely add like four or five different concepts into into this like the definitely where V I think it would make sense uh because why not like like why Egypt I mean seriously so many different things that yeah but still it's the the the art style is gorgeous I mean I really like it it's really it's really nice I mean what you gon to see going to see all of this little bit more oh really yeah yeah

that's terrible I don't want I don't want the baby but it's yours and it gets kicked out of the balcony by John and then yeah yeah pretty much find my babies I lost them so I mean we would see this more often I'm I'm pretty sure which is terrible but I mean like at least they have yeah at least they have hearts in black and white afterwards so they're kind of yeah I would I mean anything they have like a lot of um great art that they can they can use anything like you see with the narrative like the the positive ads that the match Factory was doing like why don't you use this it's just it's such such a great thing like it's it's really nice so like things like that not like B babies coming out of your B like like when you are kicked out of the balcony and like that's the thing so you know where this is coming from

yeah tell me project makeover actually this is coming from their first game I'm just yes that's true yeah that's true I want to say like who is the killer and all of this yes that's true yeah yeah yeah that's true yeah yeah so they're using some of the creatives from the first game definitely yeah I mean yeah I mean there there's the the the weird Playbook or the weird uh stuff that is working well for for them in the in the first first game yeah the question that I have here what would you do to kind like positive for positive ads definitely if they want to if they want to go into that direction I mean there's lot of different things on the altered gaml they can try I think and you have the you have the 30 minute um you have the 30 minute uh level the sandbox can you imagine this where like slowly getting all of these as like almost slightly like ASMR type of thing

with like elevator music there it's huge map it's almost like very calming and type of thing when you just try to find all the objects for like two minutes like the actual game play like these things like long very slow relaxational things that like C is doing and all like that's that's one thing then you have the the slicing and and stuff I think like the what here they could do they could do the the positive ads the anything story driven on top of this because they have quite the nice art so you can you can create Like Comics type of um interactive stories as well like you have so many different options like Lily's Garden kind almost almost they're not like advertising with all the pregnancy stuff but yes that's in that way which they already have there they already have there yeah we already yeah exactly so like so many different things I mean don't really need to go directly to project makeover and then just freezing

families but something in the middle would be actually great yeah but it will end up in freezing families most probably yeah most probably yeah most probably and then you know like what's going to happen like they're they're going to add like all the pins and freezing families in the mini games next to the the black and white where Volo type of thing it's I mean that's my assumption okay I was just checking the other game and it's just like don't even go there no no no don't even go there yeah I don't even even worse yeah it's even worse I know it's even worse it's even worse yeah yeah yeah exactly we're definitely guys at some point can I transplant my eyes please I know exactly I know exactly because like who's the killer was exactly like the the predecessor of all of this freezing families [ __ ] it's like I I've seen this so many times before and the thing is like it's it works it creates the drama and like the question and like people are intrigued

like oh wait a second like who's the killer okay whatever whatever so yeah flam Flamingo gets like one plus point but that's it basically so from my side like the game's great like I really like the Innovation the you know ready for UA three types of game mode for the core B and butter meta from Royal match yeah I don't I don't really know like what they have the but like probably need to sort like the real mechanics scurve there what they have like every whatever until Level 500 like how they add new mechanics and like which which of those are there but my guess is if it's working so well then they have them yeah so I already saw like few of those and they're very very Innovative so it's a nice blend of triple match plus Hidden Object so that that's like yeah for me is like definitely a nine for me it's Absol yeah yeah I mean honestly like Felix this this in one year it's gonna be grossing really high if they don't

screw up which I don't think they take 80% that work and you do the 20% super hard Innovation they did this they did this yeah also like the only part which is going to be tough is the UA part honestly because they yeah yeah the hardest part here it's going to be with the Min game yes which I think it's going to be quite easy to just flip to something else right it's just because it's those side so it's just going to flip to something else pimples or whatever else can name it it's yeah like that's going to be the hardest part to figure out because really expensive yeah it's really expensive on the CPI they need to decrease and how we do it this is the how we do it uh don't judge games only by their scale of Revenue and like it's much more harder to spot before basically before yeah no like this this is really good like very solid from from different points like they're preparing

like it's not quite there yet but it's like you you remember what what to Total battle guys said like we were trying to figure this out for years and now look where they are where they are and it's still not a silver bullet it's like uh you know different things get that they did yeah same will be done here I give it a for admon but like because you don't see the full picture it's hard to see the full picture but the main drawback I might even F six right like I shouldn't be able to pay play 43 levels on iOS without seeing a single ad when I haven't paid for anything it's just too slow like if yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely to push they definitely need to do that something around that right like and I looked at videos as well going up to level 200 on iOS and there's still no ads right so I'm assuming if it's just they kind of assumed that people on iOS will pay so they will monetize with IPS and then Android and then you know that's a bit uh yeah the here for me is

like what's the percentage of like how many people actually play the other game modes the black and white one and the sandbox one because the sandbox one if I understand is probably the biggest source of AD Revenue currently I would guess if you really play like for 30 minutes usually it's uh it's the between level ones where basically people spend most of the time right because you want the interstitial Impressions like Banner Impressions you have have to watch 30 minutes and they slap interstitials into those 30 minutes they don't care about you that's the thing keep that in mind you played the level you was like 10 interstitials just to finish it that's going to be an issue on Android Google as soon as they find that if they say it's like interrupting they're gonna have issues with that like uploading it yeah let's see let's see because one last thing I wanted to add when you press the pause button on those 30 levels the moment you unpress unul it it goes into interstitials okay let me show well let me show you one thing just to finish this up just to to to tell

you oh yeah yeah the discrepancy weal with Felix yeah it's just come on yeah I think the Android is not there yet but still like if you make 8% 97% of Revenue coming from IOS then yes I think you know what I think is they try to test ads on Android and then they move the like the best possible outcomes from Android just to iOS yeah yeah yeah that's my assumption I'd like to know like the actual user base because then you could actually do some calcul because if you assume this number is somewhat correct with sadness multiplier and stuff because then you can calculate like what they would be earning right and we have no idea like the downloads or active user base is uh probably quite off from this because is quite new because we stay two and a steps ahead and just to report on these quickly as we spot

them because otherwise we would be two and a half steps behind and then we wouldn't be two and a half Gamers now would we have on that show it's time to end share this episode with dogs cats fans and everyone else catch us in the slack HQ where we talk you can ask us questions we reply I reply Mata replies and yob replies feelings rarely have a good evening thank you very much bye bye [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]