Top 10 Hypercasual Games in Q3 2023
We’re knee-and-elbow deep into the pumpkin spice latte season, so let's have a look at what happened with the Hypercasual market over the summer months.
— by Diana Levintova
Introduction
We’re knee-and-elbow deep into the pumpkin spice latte season, so we might as well have a look at what happened with the Hypercasual market over the summer months. This time, we are joined by our regular—Anatoly Maximov, the Hypercasual games expert with more than 10 years of experience in the industry, and Oleg Rakitskiy, Business Development Producer of Playducky.
General Market Trends
As always, let’s begin by examining the market dynamics for the period in question.
Comparing the total installs of Q3 2023 to Q2 2023, we observe an 8% decrease. The market has contracted from 3.8B to 3.5B installs during this period. A broader perspective is gained by looking at Q3 2022, where the installs stood at 4B. This showcases a notable year-on-year decline. However, it must be pointed out that this downtrend from Q2 to Q3 has been consistent over the past few years.
In terms of regional split, this time Tier-1 East has left its downturn of the previous period behind and showed some positive dynamics with a 7% rise in downloads up to a total of 113M. However, the other two regions continued to fall: it is –10% for Tier-1 West (down to 529M overall) and –7% for all the other countries (down to 2.8B).
Top 10 Games By Downloads
Now, let’s proceed to the top 10 games by downloads!
As always, there are a bunch of old-timers, such as Bridge Race and Going Balls, as well as a few games from the previous quarter that are not ready to give up their standings just yet, e.g., Tomb of the Mask and Burger Please!. Quick side note: the number of installs over the period for Tomb of the Mask went down by 14% this quarter, while Burger Please! have upped their downloads by a solid 13%.
This quarter is not as big on the newcomers as we’ve seen before: we ended up picking just three titles to cover in this piece.
The first one on the list is My Perfect Hotel, sitting proudly at the top of our chart with 28M installs. It’s an Idle Arcade game where the user is playing as this bellboy character, running various errands around the hotel and profiting from them, which allows him to unlock new areas and build his own hotel emire. It is worth noting that rewards in this game are not UI elements: instead, they’re placed on the floor. Also, let us highlight that the game was released back in April 2022 and has been hanging around with its monthly installs fluctuating between 2M and 5M until Say Games released an update in July 2023. It made the metric skyrocket to 13M monthly downloads - apparently, the game's improvement found a great response in the audience.
Next up with its 26M downloads is Magic Piano Tiles: music game, the first game by a Pakistan-based studio called XGAME STUDIO. It looks like yet another title inspired by the extremely popular Magic Tiles series by Amanotes. (One of the games from this “saga” can be also found in our list at the 5th position, and it’s called Magic Tiles 3). The difference from what we’re used to seeing in this type of games is embedded in the approach to music selection: developers created regional playlists and actively exploited them in the creatives, showing pieces of Magic Piano Tiles gameplay together with music currently popular in the country of user’s geolocation. Thus, there is a good chance that the game will have the player encouraged from their very introduction to each other, since there’s a playlist of local hits prepared for them.
The last one on our list is an Arcade Runner called Twerk Race 3D — Running Game with its 22M installs. At first glance, the game looks like a classic runner; however, after 10 to 15 min of gameplay, the user is introduced to its meta layer in the form of gym management. It looks like a typical hybrid product where the player is asked to upgrade equipment, refill the water cooler, or increase the cash flow. However, the core and the meta here are logically interlinked: the user has to run for the core part of the game, earn rewards for their accomplishments and spend them in the gym to upgrade it. It allows the developers to keep the CPI low (its publisher Freeplay uses only core mechanics in their ad creatives) and the level of engagement typical of that of hybrid casual games!
Also, let’s note here that the game has been on the market for a while: its release took place in September 2021. However, it started getting noticeable traction only in February 2022, then had its monthly downloads shrunk by almost three times, and picked itself back up to double the downloads again only in summer 2023. We discussed what might have been the reason for this improved traction, and one of the ideas proposed is that the leading factor was merely the overhaul of the creatives used by Freeplay. They started adding trending characters like Wednesday Addams and showing the actual gameplay more openly. Another thing that the guys did was constantly improve the user experience by twerking—sorry, tweaking—the in-game metrics: for example, one year ago, the building regime was added based on Idle Arcade mechanics, and it has a proven record of boosting games metrics.
Conclusion
Surprisingly, this time we haven’t encountered any games in the top 10 by downloads that were inspired by social media trends. So that’s new! However, clones of popular games persist just as usual. We’ve increasingly observed games that blend a hybrid meta with a hypercasual core. Another emerging trend is the rise of games that had garnered some attention previously but have refined their mechanics and creatives since and returned to the charts more glorious than ever, claiming some of the top spots.
We sought insights from Azur Games, too. Their cofounder Dmitry Yaminsky tells us that it has indeed become more challenging to put out a hit game. Nowadays, any prototype demands significantly more resources to develop compared to a few years ago. The likelihood of them going on to rank high is diminishing rapidly, and not just due to increased competition but also because the established hits are clinging to their positions with mighty effort. That is why working on improvements to already successful projects and finding their growth points seems like a very workable strategy in the current market.
What is there left to say? Let’s wait and see what the next quarter brings!
The article was prepared with contributions by AppMagic's guest experts, Anatoly Maximov and Oleg Rakitskiy. Anatoly is a game developer with 10+ year of experience who currently is focusing on the Hypercasual segment. Oleg is the Business Development Producer at Playducky.com.