Who's winning in hybrid casual puzzle?

Infographic: TOP-7 pubs by IAP+AD* Rev (Jan/Feb, NET)

One of the Top-7 publishers has shipped 1,107 games.

The chart shows who's on top. What it doesn't show - how many total games each has shipped!

Rollic — 351 games Loom — 120 games (at Crescive) iKame — 250 1SOFT — 370 Grand — 4 games (+10 at Good Job Games) Lion — 196 ABI — 1,107

6 of 7 have shipped hundreds of titles. ABI has shipped over a thousand. These are high-volume operators who have been iterating, learning and building infrastructure for years.

Two backstories worth calling out

Loom's (Pixel Sort) founders previously ran Crescive, which published ~120 games, so Pixel Sort is, like the rest, a result of high-volume iteration and learning.

Grand, the notable exception on this list, has just 4 published games, but their founders are ex-Good Job Games, where they built Zen Match, then operated it alongside Moon Active.

A few other things

6 of 7 top publishers lead with sort puzzle variants. Rollic is the only exception (Color Block Jam = color block extraction, not sort).

Turkey and Vietnam account for 6 of the 7 top publishers. Rollic, Loom, and Grand are Turkish. iKame, 1SOFT, and ABI are Vietnamese. No US or EU publisher in sight.

If you're a studio evaluating hybrid casual puzzle entry right now — the publishers you'd be competing against have, on average, shipped hundreds of games to get here.

So, if you're planning to be the next to launch a $10M+ hybrid casual puzzle game, plan on launching 200 prototypes first!

Time to get crackin.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

IAP Data from AppMagic *Ad revenue estimated (Turbine model)