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Joypac Publishing Partners Blog Cover
6 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Top Tips for Choosing Hyper-Casual Publishing Partners in China

There are quite a few things a developer or publisher needs to consider before working with a Chinese publisher. Here are some of the big questions you should be asking: Would their current partners recommend them? You can ask the publisher to show you examples of the games they’ve launched, companies they work with and what results they’re getting. But that can only tell you so much. It can be extremely insightful to check who they’re already working with and contact those people directly. We recommend talking to at least two or three of the publisher’s current partners. Every developer might have had a different experience and hearing only one story might not tell you everything you need to know. Who’s on their team and how is it structured? You should find out what the publishing team looks like. Do...
5 min read
#Guides

Making a Hyper-Casual Game? Here’s 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid

Editors note: This article was originally crafted by Sarah D. Vries, Content Creator at Coda Game. You can find the original piece here.  The hyper-casual gaming industry is constantly evolving, requiring developers to be on top of trends and the latest gaming practices to remain competitive. Like honing any craft, it’s a constant work in progress and many studios often end up making common mistakes that can easily be avoided. Thankfully at Coda, we’ve had extensive experience working with developers and studios of all sizes. From our experience, we’ve compiled a list of the top five common mistakes that hyper-casual developers make and how best to avoid them when creating your next game. 1. Getting the difficulty of levels wrong Hyper-casual games are known for their simple nature and the ability for gamers of any level to play. One common...
Idle engagement blog
5 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

How to Keep Players Engaged and Coming Back to Your Idle Game

Idle games don’t involve much in the way of thinking from the player. And they don’t have an end goal – you just continue to play them, earning more in-game currency and upgrading as you go. They’re usually free to play, relying on in-app purchases and currency passes to make money. But how can you make sure that your players want to keep coming back? In this blog we’re going to tell you how to do just that, and also share some stats on engagement metrics. Why idle games appeal to both players and developers On paper, idle games sound a bit ridiculous. Why would anyone want to play a game that involves hardly any, well, playing? The numbers say different though – idle games have really high retention rates, and users keep coming back, even when they’ve been playing...
Match 3 Blog cover
13 min read
#Strategies

How to Crack the Match 3 Code?- Part 4: Project Makeover

Editors note: Originally published on February 2, 2021, by Om Tandon. You can find the original article here. There is a new Match 3 on the block and it’s taking on casual games genre with both guns blazing! You (the reader) shouldn’t act surprised, though. The previous 3 articles in this series have been consistently forecasting that any new chart busting contender in Match 3 space was highly likely to be led by fashion & make up metas which was built on what we identified as the four “Must have” key design pillars of modern day meta Match 3 games. Magic Tavern/AppLovin’s latest fashion meta based “Project Makeover” does exactly that and even more! It goes beyond the framework of Classic and Meta Match 3 subdivided by being the first in its class of Meta Heavy Match 3 aka a MHM3 Game. But more...
3 min read
#Data & Analytics

New Report by Adjust and Facebook Reveals Opportunities for Developers

This month, Adjust has teamed up with Facebook to analyze the mobile app market and produce The Mobile App Growth Report. The report digs into the top trends across the industry, focusing on where there has been the most growth, and highlighting trends in emerging markets. And it looks like good news for game developers. Games keep going strong Growing like skeletons out of a mob spawner, games are the top-ranking industry this year. It looks like the surge of activity we’ve seen the last few years is showing no sign of slowing down and that there are more and more people turning to games for entertainment. Hyper-casual games push the industry forward It’s worth noting that Adjust believes that a big part of this growth is due to the hyper-casual genre, which makes sense. We’ve seen that over lockdown...
Cover Voodoo Art
8 min read
#Game Design

The Voodoo Art Manual: How to Make Effective Game Art in Hyper-casual

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by Voodoo. You can read the original on their blog here.  The brand new Voodoo Art Manual is now available for all partner studios on our Publishing Platform. It contains a concrete and practical guide on how to create effective and engaging game art in hyper-casual. We know that many of the studios we work with don’t always have dedicated game artists in their teams, and that it is often created by developers using the help of existing tools on Unity. Art, however, is an essential element of your game. It makes or breaks both the clarity of your gameplay and the user’s experience. Without effective art, the success of your game lies in the balance. The Voodoo Art Manual was created to maximize your chances of success in the prototyping phase. Whether you’re an experienced...
8 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Publishing Hyper-Casual Games in China: What do you need to know first?

Should you or should you not try to launch your hyper-casual title in China? There are a bunch of rules and regulations to consider before trying to enter the Chinese market. Which are changing all of the time. Keeping up is a challenge, as we’ve seen a lot of changes over the past year – with even more coming over the next year. While bringing mid-core mobile games to China is more complicated, there’s a different process and different things to consider for hyper-casual games. There are plenty of interesting opportunities for hyper-casual developers who might not have even considered publishing in China, or perhaps just don’t know where to start. China’s mobile game market is huge The Chinese mobile market is a 25 billion USD market and it’s predicted to grow even bigger this year. Of course, the global...
5 min read
#Data & Analytics

The Metrics Behind Successful Tower Defense Games

Get ready to plan your layout, as you’ve got waves upon waves of metrics coming at you. We’ve been taking a gander at Tower Defense games in our latest report, so let’s look at what the perfect set up is when developing yours. If you’d like to jump straight into the stats, download the full report. And, if you’re a keen strategist, you can dive even deeper with Benchmarks+. What’s a Tower Defense game? It’s a strategic genre where the player needs to defend their territory from increasingly large waves of enemies. Usually, the waves of mobs swarm down a path and the player must line it with traps and attacks, usually towers. The key is that the player doesn’t typically control these towers themselves. They automatically fire when an enemy approaches. Why are they popular? Tower Defense combines elements...
9 min read
#Data & Analytics

Left or Right? How Data Warehouses Make it Easy to Make Decisions

Deciding between two different courses of action is perhaps the hardest part of running any business. Recently we wrote about how data warehouses can give you insights, trends and information. Everything you need to make informed decisions. But what sort of decisions do they help with? How do you actually take that insight and make practical choices? In this article, we’re going to talk through nine decisions you might need to make. And how a data warehouse can help. Why do studios and publishers use data warehouses? Most hit studios and publishers have a portfolio of games. A data warehouse brings together the data from across them all and converts it into a format they can search through. With more data, they can spot trends. Knowing the trends, they can fix bugs, optimize their ads, see which ideas perform the...
6 min read
#Strategies

4 Habits any Successful Developer should pick up

Editor’s note: This article was written by Sarah D. Vries, Content Creator at Coda Games. You can find the original piece here.  When it comes to developing a hit hyper-casual game, your chances for success are not entirely based on luck. Any successful hyper-casual developer can tell you that it’s a lot of hard work, trial, and error and identifying best practices that help optimize and streamline their development process. At Coda, we’ve had the pleasure of working closely with many talented developers, even having had the chance to interview those that have created hit games. From observation and conversations, we’ve come to realize that many often share the same habits and best practices that help them to increase their chances of success. Keep reading as we identify four key habits successful hyper-casual developers share and how you can employ...
7 min read
#Game Design

Voodoo Talks Trends: How to Stay Ahead of the Game in 2021

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by Théophile Tabary, Publishing Manager at Voodoo. You can read the original here.  As Publishing Managers at Voodoo, we often receive questions on current and future trends in hyper-casual. Trends can be difficult to navigate for studios and developers; sometimes you want to be following trends, and sometimes you want to be creating new ones. We’re here to give you some guidance on how to approach trends when creating hyper-casual games, and how to stay ahead of the game in 2021. What are trends in the hyper-casual market? The first thing to remember is that there are several different types of trends in hyper-casual. Each type contributes to the market in a slightly different way, and it is helpful to define which category your ideas or prototype fit into in the ideation and...
1 min read
#Guides

Sub-Genre Snapshot: Tower Defense Games

We break down the top KPIs that Tower Defense developers should be aiming for, and reveal a few of the rising superstars that entered the market in 2020. What’s inside? Using aggregated data from our network of games, we’re dissecting the industry at a sub-genre level. All to bring you more actionable and granular insights to better your game development. Stats for key metrics Aggregated data from 134k+ games for all key metrics, including retention, ARPDAU, and more. New Superstar TD games Ranking data for over 200k+ games, with over 100k tagged with sub-genres. Secrets behind the genre A behind-the-curtain look at what makes Tower Defense games so successful.
3 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Hyper-Casual in 2021: What to Expect in Eastern and Western Markets

Hyper-casual games boomed in 2020. With so many of us confined to our homes, the mobile gaming industry saw a peak worldwide – especially in the Chinese, Indian and Brazilian markets.  During the lockdowns, active users went up 200%. The average length of gaming sessions went up 20%. And hyper-casual games alone generated 1bn monthly downloads.   Can these numbers remain so high? Could they go even higher? Here’s what we’re expecting to see in the market in 2021. IDFA changes will affect hyper-casual the least While IDFA still remains a question mark, the iOS changes seem unlikely to affect hyper-casual games directly. This is because the hyper-casual genre has a broader audience than other categories and targets users differently. Meanwhile, ad money could prove to be an issue due to other genres like mid-core games getting hit with the IDFA...