If you look at hybrid-casual today, SORT puzzle games are EVERYWHERE.

In 2020-2021, HC puzzle was led by Physics, Logic & 'Draw Line' puzzle games.

By 2025, SORT mechanics dominated revshare (IAP+Ad*)

What's the story there?

My hypothesis

Sort is a rare genre that checks 4 boxes at once

  1. Accessible single-tap gameplay
  2. UA-friendly: readable boards, visual transformation, re-skinnable / relatable themes
  3. Low production cost: procedural levels
  4. Loss aversion compatible. Losses & near-losses easily engineered.

These are serious advantages.

...yielding a significant survivability advantage over genres that lack them.

(With ~50k games hitting app stores yearly, natural selection feels apt.)

Here's the timeline.

June 2020 — WATER / STACK SORT

Water Sort (IEC Games Australia) launches.

1 month to $10M ARR (annual run rate, IAP+Ads*) pace.

~800 'stack sort' clones ship from 2020–23 + new themes (balls, yarn, screws, donuts, birds).

Today 75+ titles with >1M lifetime downloads.

2020–2023 — GOODS / SHELVES SORT

"Goods sorting" was thematically inspired by Match-3D.

Nov 2022 — Goods Sort (Shinrays) launches.

8 months to $10M ARR.

This category has 35+ titles above 1M downloads

SUMMER 2022 — MONETIZATION INFLECTION

From May - Aug, Sort and non-sort games rapidly cloned Royal Match's loss aversion stack: layered win streak systems & events, hard levels.

E.g. in May, Hexa Sort, Screw & Block Jam, Twisted Tangle, Wood Nut & Bolt all launched streaks.

SORT gameplay proved highly compatible with them, and new SORT titles would out-monetize other puzzle formats.

2022–2024 — DOCK SORT PUZZLE (DSP)

Jun 2022 — Block Jam 3D (Voodoo) introduces pathing + character sorting.

Jun 2023 — Bus Jam (Rollic) adds color containers ("bus"), defining the DSP format.

6 months to $10M ARR pace.

Key innovation: capacity-constrained staging slots ("docks") create engineered losses / near-losses. Borrowed from Tile / 3D Match, by Voodoo.

June 2023 — HEXA SORT

Hexa Sort (Lion Studios, a Tripledot Studio) reimagines Water Sort on a 3D hex grid.

Nine clones have surpassed 1M downloads, but Hexa Sort was the only to reach $10M ARR.

2024–2026 — DSP EXPANSION

Studios layer in new mechanics

Games like Girl Rescue: Dragon Out! and, later, Pixel Flow rapidly grow to $10M ARR.

And that brings us to today!

What comes next? If you ask me, SORT has plenty of headroom left.

Data from AppMagic.

*Ad Rev est.