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7 min read
#Data & Analytics

5 Key Takeaways From Our H1 2019 Mobile Benchmarks Report

If you haven’t seen the news, then let me be the first to tell you that we’ve recently released our latest — and biggest to date — mobile benchmarks report. Now covering 1.2 billion monthly active players across nearly 100k games, we’ve highlighted the key trends and insights from H1 2019, so that you can see how your title truly compares to the rest of the industry. Short on time? Not a problem. In this post, we’ve summarised the key takeaways from this study, and what this means for mobile game developers around the globe. Don’t forget to download yourself a free copy here for later 👇 How to read our graphs We’re packing a whole lot of data into one report, with analysis that covers both seasonal trends and breakdowns by genre. So, to keep things simple, we presented...
7 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Top 5 Indie Games Released In August

Another month has passed, and loads of new games have found their way onto the app store. New releases seem to be popping up left and right, giving me plenty of games to dip my fingers in. It’s been so much fun playing a large variety of games last month, especially when there have been quite a few releases in many different genres. So, for this post, I’ve cherry-picked my top 5 favorite indie games, and explained why each of them is so special. Let’s get to it! 1. Yokai Dungeon Developer: Gionathan Pesaresi Launch date: August 5th, 2019 Price: Free, with in-app purchases Available on: iOS, Android Recently published by Neutronized, Yokai Dungeon is an adorable pixel art dungeon crawler that tells a tale of a lantern festival gone wrong. In the game, lightning strikes an important shrine, which...
Cultural difference mobile game China blog
7 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Common Cultural Differences When Publishing Games In China

Just in case you haven’t noticed, China is massive. It’s now the largest single-language market on the planet – three times bigger than the US. To put that into perspective, China has 242 million iOS devices, which is pretty much the same number of the total mobile phones in the US. That should mean it’s rich pickings for game developers. But it’s not that simple. Because the way we market games in the West looks very different in China. Here at JoyPac, we combine the open and communicative style of western game publishers with the specialized know-how needed to be successful in Asia. And in this post, we’re going to help you navigate the potentially lucrative Chinese market, and avoid the potential pitfalls by telling you a bit about some of the cultural differences you need to be aware of...
7 min read
#Game Design

4 Steps When Using Music To Support Game Narrative

Psst… This blog belongs to a series of blog posts, all about music in gaming. And in case you missed it, you can find our last one here: Using Music As A Core Mechanic. If I asked you to hum the theme tune to a game right now, which one would you pick? Super Mario Bros? Zelda? Even casual gamers could probably come up with something (probably Tetris). My point is that you could do it – that’s because music in games plays an important role in creating atmosphere and supporting the narrative. And mobile games are no different. A good theme tune can improve players’ experiences by setting the mood and making it memorable. Let’s have a look at a couple of games which are really nailing the music. Oxenfree is a great example of well-executed music in gaming....
5 min read
#Game Design

A Voodoo Guide To Game Design: Keep Things Simple

At Voodoo, we firmly believe that simple is best when it comes to designing hyper-casual games. So in this post, we’re going to look at why that’s true, and how to make it happen. Before we get to that, we just want to take a moment to quickly go over what our market is, and what that means for the way you design games for us. The guy on the train Who are our players? The answer is: everyone. Yes, some of them are hardcore Apex Legends gamers. But most of them are just normal people going about their days, from 77-year-old grandmothers, to seven-year-old kids. Essentially, people that play our games on their smartphones, on the go. Take a look at this picture. It’s a good example of the kind of people you should be thinking of when you’re...
Voodoo
#Case study

How Voodoo identifies hundreds of hit titles with GameAnalytics

Topping the charts Speaking at Casual Connect Europe in London, CEO Alexandre Yazdi said that Voodoo was on track to reach 6 billion downloads for its games in 2022. In fact, as of 2020, Voodoo games have now been downloaded more than 1 billion times. “The Voodoo process is less of a secret and more of a mindset, a way of working.” Alexandre Yazdi, Voodoo CEO  Where it all began Voodoo started as a small team developing and releasing their own creations, and they weren’t immediately successful. What initially began as a failed attempt to bring the titles Bool and Quiz Run to market set in motion an epic journey as a publisher focusing on honing game retention, UA, and monetization optimization. The first chart-topper of Voodoo as a publisher was Paper.io, which became their first major hit back in...
Feature Image of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
12 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite – How Gameplay And Features Compare To Competition

Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Erno Kiiski, Chief Game Analyst – US at GameRefinery. In his job, he’s played and analyzed hundreds of titles on a feature level, giving him a strong sense of the current western mobile game market. So, without further ado, we’ll let him take the lead.  The AR/Location-based game market was pretty much born with the release of Pokémon GO back in the summer of 2016. Some games had made use of the technology before, but everything jumped to a whole new level when everyone across the world was chasing Pokémons. It was a phenomenon with visibility unmatched by any other mobile game thus far. Now GameRefinery has a follow up from Niantic in the form of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. But how does it fit in with Niantics own Pokémon GO and...
8 min read
#Mechanics & Features

Using Music As A Core Mechanic: Insights from Amanotes

Just like gaming, music in itself is its own career and specialty. And unless you’ve studied both gaming and music in your life, then combining the two together can be seen as a massive challenge. So for this post, we’ve spoken to music gaming industry specialists, Amanotes, about the key steps and top tips developers should know when making their own music games. (This will be the first of a series – watch this space for our next blog on music in gaming). If you want to skip to a specific section, feel free to do so here: Why use music as a core mechanic? Different ways you can use music as a core mechanic Things to keep in mind when making your game Useful resources Now that introductions are out the way, we’ll let Amanotes take the mic. Why...
8 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Prototype Phases For A Hit Casual Game – Purple Diver

Here at Voodoo Games we recently launched Purple Diver, which we developed with Viatcheslav Tarasov (the developer behind Ragdoll Archer, Truck Traffic Control, and Snake Loves numbers). And we’re pleased to say it quickly jumped to the top of the charts, now having around 15M downloads worldwide. So in this post, we’re going to talk you through how the game came into being and what we learned from making it. (If you’re new to hyper-casual games, make sure to check out our 3 snackability tips for making hit games). Why we love Purple Diver For us, one of the best things about Purple Diver is its monetization potential – in a game like this we can show a lot of ads. We know this can be irritating for some players, but we think the nature of the game and the...
8 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Top 5 Indie Games Released in July

Last month was one of the biggest months this year for indie gaming releases on all platforms. With the larger AAA titles coming out towards the end of 2019, July was prime time for indie game launches. It’s been an absolute joy to play all of these games. But for this post, I’ve cherry-picked my top 5 favorite indie games released in July, and gone into detail about exactly why they’re so special. We have puzzle platformers, cute rhythm games, stunning exploration games, and more to share with you. So without further ado, let’s dig in. 1. Total Party Kill Developer: Jussi Simpanen Launch date: July 3rd, 2019 Price: Free, with in-app purchases Available on: iOS, Android, PC In short, Total Party Kill is a puzzle platformer that gives you three different characters to control. A swordsman that can hit...
6 min read
#Ads & Monetization

How Esports Can Help Your Mobile Game Make Money

This post was originally written by Brian Mahoney, Director of Game Design at Skillz. You can read it here. Picture this – your mobile game is doing well. You have really high player engagement, and your retention is looking strong. All in all, your game is bringing in a steady stream of money, so you’re happy. However, you start to see a drop in your acquisition strategy. And on top of that, you need to keep making iterations and changes to your game to avoid losing your most highly-engaged players (the ones who expect more and more content). So, what do you do? This scenario is all too familiar amongst some of the mid-to-larger sized gaming studios. One of the biggest challenges developers face today (which I’m sure all of you can agree with) is competing in a market where...
7 min read
#Guides

A Game Developer’s Guide To Google Stadia

Google has recently dropped some new juicy info. We now know a little bit more about what this platform will bring to the world of gaming. So in this blog post, we try our best to answer some of those all-important questions: Does Stadia have what it takes to really shake up the gaming industry? What do we know so far? And what does this mean for mobile game developers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BbW6zAjL0 So, what do we know so far? Since March 2019 (when they first announced Google Stadia), a lot of us have been left in the dark into what is to come with this new service. Thankfully, there’s been a few updates since: Google Stadia will only be available on the Google Pixel Sorry Apple (and pretty much every other mobile provider), but Google has announced that they plan on...
7 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

How To Position Your Game to Social Media Influencers (Part One)

Influencers are increasingly holding sway over the performance of titles on any given week, and players these days can’t get enough of their zany content. And it’s not surprising that titles like Apex Legends and Brawl Stars owe a large part of their appeal to well-executed influencer strategies. With that in mind, how can developers not only find social media influencers, but also position their game so they’ll be lining up to review it? So in this post, influencer-experts, Matchmade, let you in on some of the best-kept secrets in how to entice influencers (especially the ones on YouTube and Twitch) to help you make a success of your new release. First things first – the fundamentals Before you start reaching out to influencers, we recommend you to hash out your expectations and goals for your influencer marketing strategy. Having...