VOODOO’s New Big Three: Castle Busters, Marble Sort!, and Sand Loop
One Midcore hit, two successful Sort Puzzles, and millions in IAP revenue: join us as we dig into the numbers, monetization, and design choices behind three of VOODOO’s recent wins.
— Maria Bolshman
VOODOO made its name on Hypercasual games, helping define an entire era of mobile gaming. But the market didn’t stand still, and neither did VOODOO. Over the past few years, the publisher expanded beyond Hypercasual, testing new genres, monetization tricks, and ways to keep players engaged.
Then 2026 happened, and VOODOO suddenly had three hits on its hands, climbing the charts at once… And honestly, the numbers do not look like the old Hypercasual VOODOO anymore.
VOODOO’s top revenue drivers in 2026
Over April and May, Castle Busters generated over $10M in IAP revenue worldwide, Marble Sort! added nearly $9M, and Sand Loop brought in more than $5M. Again, this is IAP revenue only, which is a huge change for a company known for its excellent IAA execution.
Interestingly, two of the games are of the same trending Sort Puzzle genre, which led the Hybridcasual shift over the last couple of years. To be more specific, they are built around loop-based sorting gameplay, popularized by the success of Pixel Flow! and now being adopted across the industry. This clearly paid off: in May 2026, Marble Sort! ranked among the top-grossing Sort Puzzle games, while Sand Loop landed right next to it!
At the same time, Castle Busters is the obvious outlier here—a Midcore battler with extremely recognizable Supercell fingerprints all over it. The game climbed to #11 by downloads in the Midcore rankings with 5.8M installs during the month. And yes, that was enough to outperform Brawl Stars by downloads. Of course, comparing a relatively new title to an eight-year-old live-service giant isn't exactly a fair fight. Still, for a game that borrows so openly from the Brawl Stars playbook, there is something almost poetic about that, but we’ll get back to it later.
Top mobile games in May 2026: Sort Puzzle and Midcore
VOODOO may be chasing bigger genres and heavier monetization now, but the company’s vast IAA expertise is still easy to spot once you spend some time on these games. So let’s look at VOODOO’s new “big three” properly: how these titles perform, monetize, and tap into the trends driving mobile gaming today!
VOODOO Bursting Into the Midcore Charts
Midcore? Since when is VOODOO making games of the sort? In fact, they've been at it for a while now! Castle Busters wasn't VOODOO's first attempt at the genre. The publisher had been testing the waters since 2022. There were some promising signs along the way, including games like Hex Warriors and Tiny Clash!, but none of those experiments came close to what happened next.
Castle Busters launched in May 2025, and by now, the game is already past $14.8M in IAP revenue with more than 19.7M downloads to its name. Safe to say, this one hit on a whole new level.
Castle Busters: game performance to date
But what is Castle Busters? It is a tactical turn-based PvP brawler built around destructible castles, squad drafting, and short competitive matches. Two players, two castles, and a lot of things exploding in between. Every wall, tower, and platform can be destroyed. Sometimes, a single shot is all it takes to collapse half a fortress and flip the entire battle.
Castle Busters gameplay
The game feels like the teams behind Angry Birds and Brawl Stars somehow ended up in the same design meeting. A couple of matches in, and the comparisons start making a lot more sense. Let's just say, while some influences are subtle, others really aren't. Then again, inspiration only gets you so far. What matters is how VOODOO adapted those ideas.
Despite going fully Midcore, the game still carries plenty of VOODOO’s authentic DNA. The onboarding is fast, rewards arrive constantly, and progression keeps moving almost all the time. Whether it is a tournament, a seasonal event, or a daily reward, everything seems to push players toward one more session, one more upgrade, and eventually one more login tomorrow.
Inside Castle Busters: quests, rewards, offers, passes, boosts, and more
In Castle Busters, players have daily streaks and chests, plus long-term progression rewards like exclusive unit unlocks and other powerful upgrades—all of this keeps them coming back.
Unlike Brawl Stars, players are not just upgrading units; they're doing it with timers, which creates additional pressure and monetization opportunities. Of course, waiting is optional. Castle Busters offers plenty of shortcuts, from the Forge Pass and resource packs to unit bundles and special offers that let players progress faster. Limited-time event deals like Wizard's Bargain, Treasure Hunt Tournament, and Druid’s Trial Tournament add even more ways to speed things up.
Druid's Trial Tournament: an example of a limited-time event in Castle Busters
Then there are rewarded ads, still very much part of the package. Watch a video, speed something up, grab a few extra resources, repeat—a very VOODOO way of doing things. If you want to see what that looks like turned up to eleven, check out our Epic Plane breakdown.
What's changed? In games like Epic Plane, rewarded ads carried most of the monetization load, which led to rapid spending spikes and quick drop-offs as many players left. Newer titles like Castle Busters test a different balance: ads are there for certain rewards, but IAPs and long-term retention now take center stage, letting the game grow steadily rather than burn out.
Castle Busters' No Ads offer
While Castle Busters shows what happens when VOODOO goes after bigger genres, the next game proves that the publisher keeps up well with the industry trends!
VOODOO’s Sort Puzzle Breakthrough
Mobile Puzzles are having a bit of a loop moment right now. Loom’s pig-tapping conveyor puzzle, Pixel Flow!, made over $100M in IAP revenue and eventually ended up in a ~$1B acquisition by Scopely. This success couldn't go unnoticed. Before that, there were screws and yarns, and now, there are loops and conveyors all across the subgenre!
Popular conveyor-based Puzzle games
Marble Sort! fits in that line of trending loop games perfectly. It is built around marbles dropping onto a moving conveyor belt, and players sort them into matching containers below before the belt runs out of space. The basics take seconds to understand. The challenge comes later, once new mechanics, tighter spaces, and increasingly chaotic and unpredictable layouts start showing up.
Marble Sort! gameplay
The secret sauce of Marble Sort! is how it handles sorting mechanics, adding a strategic depth to players' decisions. Marbles are not just being put on the conveyor belt: they are being thrown at it, which makes them bounce, mix together, and land out of order. This creates moments when players can use the physics to their advantage, such as quickly tapping several colors to place them on the belt in random order—something impossible in Pixel Flow! or Sand Loop that we’ll get to later.
It also helps that the game feels surprisingly good to interact with. The marbles roll, click, and tumble into boxes with just enough physics to make each move feel satisfying. Because if mobile gaming has taught us anything, it is that "satisfying" sells.
Since launching in October 2025, the game has picked up more than 13.7M downloads and generated over $10.8M in IAP revenue. Once again, we see the RpD unprecedented for the older VOODOO titles, achieved through well-crafted monetization in line with the best Hybridcasual practices.
Marble Sort!: game performance to date
Players can buy bundles of coins, lives, and various boosts. The Premium Kit packages several of them together, while Streak Bonus rewards players who keep coming back with doubled coin earnings over time. The Sugar Rush event adds another layer on top, tying streak progression to a limited-time event with additional rewards.
Inside Marble Sort!: bundles, special offers, streak bonuses, and more
Then there are rewarded ads, still deeply woven into the experience. Need a few extra coins? Watch a video. Made a mistake? Watch another one. Tired of ads between levels? Skip the whole thing and grab the No Ads package instead.
Looking at the game's IAP mix, the two No Ads offers account for 3.7% of revenue combined, while fail offers contribute another 1.9%. Most of the spending, however, comes from the Marble Sort Pack, which generates 85.5% of revenue and 86.9% of purchases.
You can check out our IAP Revenue Distribution tool and see exactly where that revenue comes from.
Marble Sort!: IAP Revenue Distribution (iPhone App Store)")
What makes Marble Sort! interesting is not that it reinvented Sort Puzzles—because it didn't. The genre has already seen countless variations. Marble Sort! simply identified that small twist, built a strong gameplay loop around it, and made a familiar genre feel fresh again. And the next game proves that this was not just random success but a formula that the publisher can replicate!
Another Sort Puzzle, Another Hit
Though it’s the third game in our analysis, Sand Loop was the first to launch out of all three titles, hitting the market in October 2025. Since then, it has brought in over $15M in IAP revenue from 9.5M downloads, with an RpD of $1.58—one of the strongest results in VOODOO’s portfolio to date.
Sand Loop: game performance to date
It doesn’t take long to figure out what Sand Loop is about. Buckets move along a conveyor belt, and players fill them up with sand of the matching color, “unpainting” the image above. But half of the appeal is watching the whole thing work! Just like in Marble Sort!, VOODOO uses physics to create satisfying experiences and unique moments for the players. The beautiful sand picture at the beginning of the level gradually and realistically melts and distorts as certain colors get removed.
And since it’s impossible to calculate the exact number of sand grains that will fit into the bucket (especially since this number is inconsistent and gets tweaked by the devs level by level!), it is easy to make a mistake, which helps with both balancing the difficulty curve and monetization failures.
Sand Loop gameplay
As levels become less forgiving, those extra lives and boosts start looking a lot more tempting—a familiar Hybridcasual move. Fail a level, run out of patience, need another attempt? The game is usually right there with a solution. Coin packs, extra lives, boosts, and even a No Ads option are always within reach.
Inside Sand Loop: No Ads, fail offers, and coin and booster bundles
If Sand Loop reminds you of Marble Sort!, that's because it does. VOODOO seems to have found a formula that works and keeps refining it. The mechanics change, but many of the same monetization systems keep showing up from one Puzzle game to the next. In fact, Marble Sort! and Sand Loop are only part of the publisher’s much larger Sort Puzzle lineup.
VOODOO's growing Sort Puzzle portfolio
The category keeps growing, and VOODOO isn't stopping there. It continues to explore new mechanics and genres, building on successful ideas while searching for the next one. Given their track record, we wouldn't be surprised if more hits come from VOODOO in the near future!
What’s the Takeaway?
2026 feels like the start of a new chapter for VOODOO. Open the publisher’s revenue chart in AppMagic, and three fresh games immediately stand out, pushing the graph higher and higher. Marble Sort! and Sand Loop show that VOODOO is not falling behind Rollic or Loom Games in the Hybridcasual space, while Castle Busters proves it can also compete in the Midcore domain.
Their Hypercasual era may be wrapping up, but the publisher’s expertise in the space is still very much alive. The result is a new generation of games that combine catchy concepts, satisfying gameplay loops, and that signature ASMR feel with deeper monetization systems—all built according to the best Hybridcasual practices.
Knowing VOODOO’s history of scaling successful concepts, this “new big three” may soon become a big four… a big five… just keep counting!