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Voodoo
#Case study

How Voodoo identifies hundreds of hit titles with GameAnalytics

Topping the charts Speaking at Casual Connect Europe in London, CEO Alexandre Yazdi said that Voodoo was on track to reach 6 billion downloads for its games in 2022. In fact, as of 2020, Voodoo games have now been downloaded more than 1 billion times. “The Voodoo process is less of a secret and more of a mindset, a way of working.” Alexandre Yazdi, Voodoo CEO  Where it all began Voodoo started as a small team developing and releasing their own creations, and they weren’t immediately successful. What initially began as a failed attempt to bring the titles Bool and Quiz Run to market set in motion an epic journey as a publisher focusing on honing game retention, UA, and monetization optimization. The first chart-topper of Voodoo as a publisher was Paper.io, which became their first major hit back in...
Feature Image of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
12 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite – How Gameplay And Features Compare To Competition

Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Erno Kiiski, Chief Game Analyst – US at GameRefinery. In his job, he’s played and analyzed hundreds of titles on a feature level, giving him a strong sense of the current western mobile game market. So, without further ado, we’ll let him take the lead.  The AR/Location-based game market was pretty much born with the release of PokĂ©mon GO back in the summer of 2016. Some games had made use of the technology before, but everything jumped to a whole new level when everyone across the world was chasing PokĂ©mons. It was a phenomenon with visibility unmatched by any other mobile game thus far. Now GameRefinery has a follow up from Niantic in the form of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. But how does it fit in with Niantics own PokĂ©mon GO and...
8 min read
#Game Mechanics

Using Music As A Core Mechanic: Insights from Amanotes

Just like gaming, music in itself is its own career and specialty. And unless you’ve studied both gaming and music in your life, then combining the two together can be seen as a massive challenge. So for this post, we’ve spoken to music gaming industry specialists, Amanotes, about the key steps and top tips developers should know when making their own music games. (This will be the first of a series – watch this space for our next blog on music in gaming). If you want to skip to a specific section, feel free to do so here: Why use music as a core mechanic? Different ways you can use music as a core mechanic Things to keep in mind when making your game Useful resources Now that introductions are out the way, we’ll let Amanotes take the mic. Why...
8 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Prototype Phases For A Hit Casual Game – Purple Diver

Here at Voodoo Games we recently launched Purple Diver, which we developed with Viatcheslav Tarasov (the developer behind Ragdoll Archer, Truck Traffic Control, and Snake Loves numbers). And we’re pleased to say it quickly jumped to the top of the charts, now having around 15M downloads worldwide. So in this post, we’re going to talk you through how the game came into being and what we learned from making it. (If you’re new to hyper-casual games, make sure to check out our 3 snackability tips for making hit games). Why we love Purple Diver For us, one of the best things about Purple Diver is its monetization potential – in a game like this we can show a lot of ads. We know this can be irritating for some players, but we think the nature of the game and the...
8 min read
#Game Deconstructions

Top 5 Indie Games Released in July

Last month was one of the biggest months this year for indie gaming releases on all platforms. With the larger AAA titles coming out towards the end of 2019, July was prime time for indie game launches. It’s been an absolute joy to play all of these games. But for this post, I’ve cherry-picked my top 5 favorite indie games released in July, and gone into detail about exactly why they’re so special. We have puzzle platformers, cute rhythm games, stunning exploration games, and more to share with you. So without further ado, let’s dig in. 1. Total Party Kill Developer: Jussi Simpanen Launch date: July 3rd, 2019 Price: Free, with in-app purchases Available on: iOS, Android, PC In short, Total Party Kill is a puzzle platformer that gives you three different characters to control. A swordsman that can hit...
6 min read
#Ads & Monetization

How Esports Can Help Your Mobile Game Make Money

This post was originally written by Brian Mahoney, Director of Game Design at Skillz. You can read it here. Picture this – your mobile game is doing well. You have really high player engagement, and your retention is looking strong. All in all, your game is bringing in a steady stream of money, so you’re happy. However, you start to see a drop in your acquisition strategy. And on top of that, you need to keep making iterations and changes to your game to avoid losing your most highly-engaged players (the ones who expect more and more content). So, what do you do? This scenario is all too familiar amongst some of the mid-to-larger sized gaming studios. One of the biggest challenges developers face today (which I’m sure all of you can agree with) is competing in a market where...
7 min read
#Guides

A Game Developer’s Guide To Google Stadia

Google has recently dropped some new juicy info. We now know a little bit more about what this platform will bring to the world of gaming. So in this blog post, we try our best to answer some of those all-important questions: Does Stadia have what it takes to really shake up the gaming industry? What do we know so far? And what does this mean for mobile game developers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BbW6zAjL0 So, what do we know so far? Since March 2019 (when they first announced Google Stadia), a lot of us have been left in the dark into what is to come with this new service. Thankfully, there’s been a few updates since: Google Stadia will only be available on the Google Pixel Sorry Apple (and pretty much every other mobile provider), but Google has announced that they plan on...
7 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

How To Position Your Game to Social Media Influencers (Part One)

Influencers are increasingly holding sway over the performance of titles on any given week, and players these days can’t get enough of their zany content. And it’s not surprising that titles like Apex Legends and Brawl Stars owe a large part of their appeal to well-executed influencer strategies. With that in mind, how can developers not only find social media influencers, but also position their game so they’ll be lining up to review it? So in this post, influencer-experts, Matchmade, let you in on some of the best-kept secrets in how to entice influencers (especially the ones on YouTube and Twitch) to help you make a success of your new release. First things first – the fundamentals Before you start reaching out to influencers, we recommend you to hash out your expectations and goals for your influencer marketing strategy. Having...
7 min read
#ASO

Finding Our Hyper-Casual Niche – Lessons From Platonic Games

In June 2019, GameAnalytics hosted a mobile gaming event to talk about casual gaming, which we called ‘The Arcade (R)Evolution: Making Hit Casual Games‘. Valeria Castro of Platonic games somewhat stole the show with her presentation – speaking with wit and passion about how to find a niche in the world of hyper-casual gaming. If you couldn’t make our last event, don’t worry. Here’s Valeria to fill you in on what you missed (and here’s the video of her talk): We’re Platonic Games – a 10-person dev team from Madrid. You might know us if you’ve ever played Kawaii Kitchen, Happy Hop or Sailor Cats. As you can probably guess from those titles, we make super-cute, hyper-casual games. And there’s one question we get asked a lot. Can we actually compete against the big developers? In reality, no. We can’t....
7 min read
#Game Deconstructions

PvP Modes in Casual Games – Disney, Harry Potter, Board Kings & Love Nikki

Editor’s Note: this post was originally published by Wilhelm Voutilainen, Senior Game Analyst at GameRefinery. As a Senior Analyst, Wilhelm knows the ins and outs of game feature data in western markets, specifically on PvP games. PvP is often the key feature that defines mid-core games. For example, in shooters, RPGs, and strategy games, one of the most addictive elements is built around the possibility to show off who has the best aim, most cunning strategies, and strongest characters. But when you think about casual games, PvP is probably not the first feature that comes to mind. Considering this traditional view, could PvP be effectively implemented into lighter games such as casual Match3s, adventure, and customization games? In this blog post, our friends at GameRefinery take a closer look at PvP-mode examples in casual games of various types to shed more...
26 min read
#Marketing & Publishing

Hyper-casual in a Hyper-competitive Market – Voodoo

In this talk, our audience learned just what exactly is Voodoo’s development approach, what their publishing agreement is, and what metrics they care about. You’ll learn from start to finish, the journey of a viral hit (looking specifically at AquaPark). If you fancy watching the other talks from this event, you can find them here: How We Found A Hyper-Casual Niche – Platonic Games The Latest Trends for Hyper-Casual Games – GameAnalytics
Platonic Games Talk 2019
17 min read
#ASO

How We Found A Hyper-Casual Niche – Platonic Games

During this event, Valeria from Platonic Games took to the stage, and showed us just how exactly her small-time studio tackled the competitive market by finding their niche in Kawaii mobile games. If you fancy watching the other talks from this event, you can find them here: The Latest Trends for Hyper-Casual Games – GameAnalytics Hyper-casual in a Hyper-competitive Market – Voodoo
30 min read
#Data & Analytics

The Latest Trends for Hyper-Casual Games – GameAnalytics

Using data from our portfolio of 74,000+ mobile games, we kicked off our event with an industry update and shared the freshest insights and KPIs for the hyper-casual category (as well as news about our upcoming features). If you fancy watching the other talks from this event, you can find them here: How We Found A Hyper-Casual Niche – Platonic Games Hyper-casual in a Hyper-competitive Market – Voodoo