Learnings from Learnings: From Hypercasual Hits to $25M Merge-2
We explore why Hypercasual publishers are increasingly expanding into IAP-first genres, and how Learnings has become one of the best examples by launching one of 2026’s biggest Merge-2 successes.
— Maria Bolshman
If you’ve been following the top charts lately, one name has been in the spotlight increasingly often: Learnings, a Chinese Hypercasual games publisher founded in 2016.
Just look at the most downloaded games of June 2026: for starters, Amaze GO! sits at #2 worldwide with 21.8M installs. A little further down, there's Meowdoku breaking into the Top 10 with almost 9.4M downloads. And right below is Vita Mahjong with another 9.3M. Over 40M downloads in a single month from just three games, and there are dozens of them under the Learnings account.
June 2026 Top Free rankings and Learnings' long-term portfolio growth
In total, Learnings has generated more than 1.7B downloads, making it one of the most notable players on the Hypercasual scene. However, toward the end of this piece, Learnings may no longer appear as a purely Hypercasual company. For now, though, let’s take a closer look at its three June hits!
Most Downloaded Games in June: Mahjong, Arrows, and Cats
Despite sharing the same publisher, each of those games found its audience in a different corner of the Puzzle market: Mahjong, Block Puzzle, and Logic Puzzle.
Vita Mahjong is the oldest of the three. Released back in 2024, it's far from a one-month wonder, still pulling in millions of downloads and bringing its lifetime total to more than 237M installs.
Worldwide downloads: Vita Mahjong, Amaze GO!, and Meowdoku
At its core, the game is a classic Mahjong Solitaire. Instead of reinventing the formula, Learnings focused on making it more approachable with larger tiles, cleaner visuals, and a slower pace designed to appeal to a broader Casual audience, especially older players.
Then there's Amaze GO!, one of Learnings' biggest breakouts this year so far. The whole puzzle comes down to finding the right order: every arrow needs a clear path off the board, so each move changes the setup for everything that follows. Players remove one arrow, opening the way for the next until the entire puzzle falls into place.
Gameplay in Vita Mahjong and Amaze GO!
The game only launched in February, yet it has already crossed 68M lifetime downloads. So yes, that #2 spot mentioned earlier makes perfect sense.
The June chart also puts Amaze GO! into context, because it wasn't the only Arrow Puzzle taking the rankings by storm. Arrows – Puzzle Escape by Miniclip actually finished the month at #1 worldwide by downloads.
Worldwide downloads: Arrows – Puzzle Escape vs. Amaze GO!
This is part of the broader Arrow Puzzle trend that we’ve been observing throughout 2026. Just look at the number of Puzzle games with “arrow” in the title: growing tenfold from 9 in 2024 to 86 in 2025—and then tenfold yet again, skyrocketing to 871 in 2026! Meanwhile, Amaze GO! doesn’t even mention “arrow” in the title, so the trend is clearly bigger than that.
While everyone was watching Amaze GO!, Learnings released another hit in April 2026. The idea? Ditch the arrows, bring in the cats!
Meowdoku mixed two classics (Sudoku and Minesweeper) into a single logic game, where every cat needs its own territory. Players need to find all the hidden cats on a grid subject to a few basic conditions: cats can't share rows, columns, and tile colors. It all sounds simple until the board fills up and every move starts affecting the rest of it. The concept worked, and the game has been downloaded over 10M since its release in late April!
Gameplay in Meowdoku: Brain Puzzle Games
While Vita Mahjong, Amaze GO!, and Meowdoku were driving millions of installs, another part of Learnings' portfolio was climbing the IAP revenue charts. And not in just any genre, either! This time, it was Merge-2, one of the mobile market's highest-grossing Puzzle subgenres.
From Hypercasual to Merge-2
That brings us to Mystery Town: Merge Games. By Q2 2026, it reached #8 in the Merge-2 charts by IAP revenue, bringing in $25M over the quarter. That was almost enough to overtake Merge Mansion, one of the genre's defining titles, and close the gap with Microfun's category leader Gossip Harbor, followed by Tasty Travels, Travel Town, and Seaside Escape.
Top 10 Merge-2 games by IAP revenue, Q2 2026
Since its April 2025 release, Mystery Town has generated more than $53M in lifetime IAP revenue from 7.4M installs, and its growth is far from over. But what helped Mystery Town get there? From the product side, we believe that its success comes not from distinct innovation—but from perfect execution and following the best genre standards.
The core loop will feel familiar to any Merge-2 player: combine items, complete orders, unlock new areas, and rebuild the town. The detective-style and mystery-driven meta is not entirely new either, having been popularized by games such as Merge Mansion. All the essential LiveOps systems are also in place, which is now a must for any Merge game aiming for the top.
Gameplay in Mystery Town: Merge Games
However, when it comes to UA, we believe Learnings’ Hypercasual background could be its biggest advantage. While market leader Gossip Harbor excels with polished, narrative-driven 3D creatives with the “save the freezing woman” hooks you all know, Learnings takes a very different approach. Its campaigns lean heavily on misleading ads built around different core themes and art styles.
Examples of Learnings' UA creatives
The same approach has been used in Tasty Travels: Merge Game, a recent Merge-2 hit by none other than Century Games, so we can't say Learnings is the only publisher doing this. However, it is clearly one of the ingredients of success and surely a trend worth following!
From IAA to IAP: The Evolution of Hypercasual Publishers
We've seen this story before: former Hypercasual publishers shifting to IAP monetization as the market changes, with Rollic becoming the blueprint for smart transition to Hybridcasual over time. But sometimes, Hypercasual publishers take a different path and aim straight for the IAP-first genres.
The most recent example is VOODOO, which not only launched Hybridcasual hits—Marble Sort! and Sand Loop—but also pushed into Midcore with Castle Busters ($5M+ in June only!). We broke that story down on our blog, so if you missed it, it's definitely worth a read.
Learnings once again proves that the path from IAA to IAP does not always run through hybrid monetization. Sometimes, it means jumping straight into larger genres, entering one of the market's most saturated segments, and going all in by applying the resources, speed, and UA expertise built in Hypercasual. The real strength, however, lies in balancing the two in a single portfolio: not only does Learnings continue to scale and build new IAP-driven hits, but it also upholds its Hypercasual legacy.
This article was featured, along with other pieces, in our biweekly AppMagic Newsletter from July 1, 2026. If you’d like to receive insights like this ahead of others, subscribe here or in the form bellow.