Match-3 about zombies appeared in the box office tops. Perhaps this is a trend
Chinese match-3 pro zombie Puzzles & Survival earns $23 million a month. It can already be called one of the highest-grossing puzzles on the market. And she is far from the only match-3 dedicated to the post-apocalypse and the living dead.
Puzzles & Survival
The Sensor Tower service was the first to pay attention to this, which considered it part of a more global trend — the growing interest in zombie games in general.
If in May last year the total earnings of mobile games on the theme of zombies was around $122.5 million, then in May this year it was already $180 million.
Based on the success of Puzzles & Survival, as well as the good performance of Puzzle Combat, a similar game whose monthly box office, according to AppMagic, recently reached $1.1 million, Sensor Tower analysts conclude that the next mobile “breakthrough” may just be related to match-3 about the apocalypse that has come to life on Earth the dead.
Specialists can be understood. They have two successful similar products in front of their eyes and at least one similar one that has not yet been widely distributed (we are talking about Puzzle Raiders from MY.GAMES). However, it is unlikely that the main role is played by the theme.
All the games listed above are clones of the super-successful Empires & Puzzles from Small Giant Games, which several years ago reached a plateau of $20 million in monthly revenue. It was made in a fantasy setting, and its uniqueness lay in the successful mixing of match-3, collectible butter and 4X strategy.
The success of Empires & Puzzles forced us to reconsider the attitude of the market towards genre mixes in general and the match-3 audience in particular. The Finnish game has demonstrated that midcore and hardcore players, just like ten years ago in the days of Puzzle & Dragons, are ready to make chips in a row if a complex meta is attached to this core mechanics (and preferably several at once).
And the success of the same Puzzles & Survival primarily consists in the skillful borrowing and development of gameplay findings of Small Giant Games. As for the chosen setting, then, most likely, it was chosen solely based on the results that the test creatives showed.
Given the pandemic, as well as the popularity of zombie themes among the midcore and hardcore audience both on mobile devices and on “big” platforms, it is not surprising that they received the best conversion rate.
