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Tile Busters: Leaving The Reddest Ocean To Find A Blue Spot

Deconstructor of Fun

We talked about the emerging Tile Match subgenre in a previous article and also deconstructed its first success story with Zen Match in another. Thus, Tile Busters was born. Before delving into the game and its details, it is worth noting how the metagame of Tile Busters is constructed. Do you lack depth in your puzzle levels?

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[Event Spotlight] How Mobile Game Developers Can Boost Engagement In The Casual Puzzle Genre With Competitive 1v1 Events

Game Refinery

This has become especially prevalent in the puzzle subgenre, with around 75% of casual puzzle games in the US top-grossing 200 implementing these features. Only 15% of casual puzzle games in the US top grossing 200 have implemented it, despite it proving reasonably effective at boosting performance in several level-based puzzle games.

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Even older hypercasual games break into the Top 10 in Q1 2023

PreMortem.Games

Hypercasual Q1 regional split Comparing the total downloads in Q1 2023 with those in Q4 2022, we see a decrease of 5%. However, an even more significant downtrend can be noticed when comparing Q1 2022 to Q1 2023. Thief Puzzle: to pass a level Another new hit with 27M downloads is Thief Puzzle: to pass a level.

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The Zen Match Case: How a First Mover Fell Behind

Deconstructor of Fun

Christmas 2022 was made very special for some as Moon Active announced the acquisition of the casual puzzle game Zen Match for as much as $150M. Designing a Tile Match level When designing puzzle levels, one of the initial goals should be to ensure that players can easily recognize patterns.

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2021 Predictions #1 Puzzle Games Becomes the Top Grossing Genre on Mobile

Deconstructor of Fun

Laura Taranto has 12 years experience in casual games and is a product advisor and puzzle game aficionado. Thankfully, your faithful crew at DoF are here to try and help you make sense of it, well, at least the very specific part of it related to puzzle games. Mat Baker has been making mobile games for 15 years. It made $5.1

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My Elephant in the Room, Part 1

Designer Notes

I gave an Old World postmortem at GDC 2022, which is available on YouTube: However, I fully scripted the talk ahead of time, so I decided it would be worth taking the time to post the slides online, in three parts to have mercy on your browser. So, why should I go back to make a historical, tile-based 4X game? A Civ-like, so to speak.

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Based 2023’s data, which casual game genres are likely to perform well in 2024?

PreMortem.Games

User spending went down by around 3.5%, following the decline trend of 2022. From the entire list, 5 casual genres were selected for further in-depth study: Merge-2 with Meta : the genre was the most promising one in 2022, and in 2023 it showed strong revenue growth. Top image: Merge Mansion.

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