Top 10 Hypercasual Games in Q4 2023
With the Christmas season behind us and the new year of 2024 underway, it's time for our final recap of the Hypercasual market's last quarter of 2023.
— by Diana Levintova
With the Christmas season behind us and the new year of 2024 underway, it's time for our final recap of the hypercasual market for the last quarter of 2023. This time we were joined by the Marketing Lead from Z2A Digital, David Hartery.
General Market Trends
Starting from the general overview of the market dynamics - you know it!
Looking at the total installs in Q4 and Q3 2023 we will observe a 6% decline with the total number of downloads per quarter reaching 3.2B compared to 3.4B in the previous period. 16% decline is also noticeable on the yearly basis: Q4 2022 installs were 3.8B compared to 3.2B mentioned in Q4 2023.
Tier-1 East and Tier-1 West countries were accountable for the largest decline percentage of annual decline - 23% and 21% respectively. While all other countries' installs went down by 10%. As of quarter by quarter dynamics, the trend shifted and while in Q3 2023 Tier-1 East market showed a positive growth, this period it went down by 22% which was the largest decline among all the regions. Tier-1 West market decreased by 8% and all other countries' downloads went down by 2%.
Top 10 Games by Downloads
Now let’s have a look at this quarter's top-10 leading games by downloads!
Similarly to the last period, we can see some old timers in the top, some of which improved their quarterly downloads metrics, such as My Perfect Hotel (23%), Race Master 3D (+24%), Car Race 3D (+15%) and Magic Tiles 3 (+6% QoQ). However, others faced a downturn: Burger Please (-13%) and Bridge Race (-4% QoQ) or stayed on the same level like Going Balls.
This time we have four new titles that made it to our quarterly top by downloads for the first time. Let’s start one by one!
Build a Queen
Build a Queen has taken a third place in the top 10 by installs with 35.5M of downloads. Interestingly, while the game's monthly install peaked in September, it made it to the top only in Q4 2023.
The game is a familiar runner where a player has to run through the gates choosing right parts of the outfit and avoiding body-horror type penalties, like massive head. Beating the bot-competitors allows one to earn more points towards ‘friendship’ with a Prince Charming, and some dollars to decorate an apartment in between the levels.
Main monetization technique of the game is rewarded videos which appear in various places in the game, including during the game allowing players to earn extra money, between levels to get other rewards or in the ‘house’ to get more points for decoration.
Supersonic, creators of Build a Queen, mainly invests in Ironsource (81%). Their top ad is a short playable showing the game's basic mechanic: choosing gates and seeing their impact on the character, followed by a 'Play Now' call to action.
Other successful ads are video clips of gameplay, emphasizing the quirky outcomes of consistently choosing the wrong gate, blending an old ad trick (viewer frustration) with the game's unique feature of styling a playable mannequin.
Hunter Assassin
Next one in line is Hunter Assassin with 24.5M installs. It was published by Ruby Game Studios back in 2019 but made it to the top only this year. In the game a player is taking a role of knife-wielding assassin who is trying to get in behind guards and eliminate them, using obstacles in the map for cover.
Hunter Assassin offers a bunch of ways for users to part with their cash: buying gems to level up the character, purchase skips or ad-free experience, watch rewarded videos for more gems or ‘Spin the Wheel’ mechanic for extra rewards.
Ruby Games Studio allocated most of its ad spend for this title to Facebook (46%), with a smaller focus on Ironsource (22%) and Applovin (18%).
The top creatives for Hunter Assassin are all gameplay videos, usually with some kind of ‘spy’ sounding background music. The one thing that all the videos have in common is the Assassin gets blown to pieces at the end, complete with different over the top failure notifications. Since the game’s main market is India (accounts for 50% of installs), there are some creatives in Hindi in the top performing ones, which shows the importance of localization for success in global markets.
Another notable approach Ruby Games Studio used in their creatives is ads with real people, which is one of the ways to exploit the trend of 2023 on User Generated content.
Color ASMR: Painting Book
Last but not least in the newbies least is Color ASMR: Painting Book with 22.9M installs by Zego Studio. The main idea of the game is to color the sketch in the way it is suggested in the task.
Significantly, the game focused extensively on Christmas-themed content throughout December, a strategy that was instrumental in propelling it into the top 10 by installs. Zego Studio incorporated festive Christmas music and provided users with an array of Christmas characters to color, enhancing the game's seasonal appeal.
Another aspect of title’s ads is exploration of footage (either licensed or imitated) that look like crafting video, which have a rather high number of impressions.
Finally, in the Q4 2023 Zego Studio focused mainly on Applovin, investing more than 80% into this source, followed by Unity with the considerably lower number of 13%.
Conclusion
In the final quarter of 2023, market trends reveal a consistent downturn in game downloads, continuing the pattern of evolving existing games seen in previous periods. Once again, there are no new games inspired by social media trends.
Regarding the advertising strategies we chose to focus on, common tactics included showcasing gameplay and leveraging player frustration by highlighting the game's challenging aspects. Additionally, some developers incorporated seasonal elements in their ads, featuring Christmas-themed characters and music.
A novel trend observed was the utilization of User Generated Content, popular in 2023. This approach varied, with some ads featuring real-life scenarios reminiscent of the games, or using footage that resembled crafting videos.
The article was prepared with contributions by AppMagic's guest expert David Hartery, Marketing Lead from Z2A Digital.